Soldato
- Joined
- 12 May 2011
- Posts
- 6,280
- Location
- Southampton
I've been impressed at how well my little 1.6GHz Windows tablet handles some modern games (namely GRID Autosport) and I thought I'd see how low I could go with another well optimised game- GTA V. I wanted to see what effect massively reducing the clock speed and thread count had on frame rate and also compare it to Just Cause 3 (a 'poorly optimised' game).
My PC:
i7 4770k @ 4.2GHz
8GB 2133MHz DDR3 RAM
390x
Samsung Evo 850 SSD
I therefore set the games to run at medium-y settings, at 720p windowed, and manually started limiting the clock speed using windows power settings. I'd then set the affinity to work on 8, 4, 3 and 2 cores. Like this 4c, 1.6Ghz example:
I did a 30 second benchmark running forwards in a busy part of Los Santos. Anyway basically the results came out like this. It took a little while to realised that I needed to allocate alternate threads (e.g. thread 0, 2, 4 for the 3 thread run) unless I was using all threads. The random jumps in the frame rate is when I got run over and the camera points to the ground (high frame rate) or sky (low frame rate)!
Average frame rate for each run.
This really surprised me - I could play it fluidly at 1.6GHz 3 cores, 1.2GHz on 4 cores, and I even scraped a sort of playable 23fps at 800MHz using 8 cores. The frame rate was consistent too, not all over the place (except for aforementioned hit and runs!)
I did then cranked the settings back up to my normal Very High/Ultra level @1080p, using 3 cores @1.6GHz and the frame rate was the same. I drove around fast and did stuff and it was just as playable as the 'benchmark' run.
ANd then I tried Just Cause 3 (only 8 threads tested):
The dip which occurs at around the same time is when I turn a corner onto a street scene. Again, Considering how this game "seems" to run terribly even at 4.2GHz, it runs very nicely at 1.6GHz. Again, I whacked the settings back up @ 1080p and played it for 15 mins or so at 1.6GHz and it stayed pretty playable.
I'm not sure what I was hoping to prove with this, maybe just point what we already knew, that games seem to be going towards many cores and fewer GHZ (e.g consoles) ?
My PC:
i7 4770k @ 4.2GHz
8GB 2133MHz DDR3 RAM
390x
Samsung Evo 850 SSD
I therefore set the games to run at medium-y settings, at 720p windowed, and manually started limiting the clock speed using windows power settings. I'd then set the affinity to work on 8, 4, 3 and 2 cores. Like this 4c, 1.6Ghz example:
I did a 30 second benchmark running forwards in a busy part of Los Santos. Anyway basically the results came out like this. It took a little while to realised that I needed to allocate alternate threads (e.g. thread 0, 2, 4 for the 3 thread run) unless I was using all threads. The random jumps in the frame rate is when I got run over and the camera points to the ground (high frame rate) or sky (low frame rate)!
Average frame rate for each run.
This really surprised me - I could play it fluidly at 1.6GHz 3 cores, 1.2GHz on 4 cores, and I even scraped a sort of playable 23fps at 800MHz using 8 cores. The frame rate was consistent too, not all over the place (except for aforementioned hit and runs!)
I did then cranked the settings back up to my normal Very High/Ultra level @1080p, using 3 cores @1.6GHz and the frame rate was the same. I drove around fast and did stuff and it was just as playable as the 'benchmark' run.
ANd then I tried Just Cause 3 (only 8 threads tested):
The dip which occurs at around the same time is when I turn a corner onto a street scene. Again, Considering how this game "seems" to run terribly even at 4.2GHz, it runs very nicely at 1.6GHz. Again, I whacked the settings back up @ 1080p and played it for 15 mins or so at 1.6GHz and it stayed pretty playable.
I'm not sure what I was hoping to prove with this, maybe just point what we already knew, that games seem to be going towards many cores and fewer GHZ (e.g consoles) ?
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