Supreme Commander - A random CPU question

Dark_Angel · 17 May 2007 at 19:04

Something I wondered.

With SC being multicore, would a Athlon 64 say 3500, be better than a 3.2GHZ P4 HT? Since HT is basically mutlicore?

I am using conroe at the moment, so this isn't really asked for a purpose, other than P4's have HT, but generally worse for games... so which would be better :confused:

Minstadave · 17 May 2007 at 19:08

Dark_Angel said:
Something I wondered.

With SC being multicore, would a Athlon 64 say 3500, be better than a 3.2GHZ P4 HT? Since HT is basically mutlicore?

I am using conroe at the moment, so this isn't really asked for a purpose, other than P4's have HT, but generally worse for games... so which would be better

HT isn't multicore, it basically means the CPU saves some of its resources and presents them to the OS as a second core, making for smoother multitasking, the CPU is still a single core CPU.

The Athlon 3500 is a more powerful CPU and will probably still outperform the P4.

Dark_Angel · 17 May 2007 at 19:10

Minstadave said:
HT isn't multicore, it basically means the CPU saves some of its resources and presents them to the OS as a second core, making for smoother multitasking, the CPU is still a single core CPU.

The Athlon 3500 is a more powerful CPU and will probably still outperform the P4.

Hmm, well I perhaps badly worded my post, I actually meant that windows/Adobe Premiere/whatever sees it as a second core... Sorry, that was my mistake

Cartho · 17 May 2007 at 19:13

a CPU with Hyper Threading is, I believe, an ARRAY PROCESSOR
This means that it has a single CPU core, but 2 Arithmetic Logic units - meaning that it can thread calculations etc onto the second ALU.
However it is not capable of 99.9% of things that a true dual core CPU is - think of it as "virtual dual core"

Dark_Angel · 17 May 2007 at 19:15

Cartho said:
a CPU with Hyper Threading is, I believe, an ARRAY PROCESSOR
This means that it has a single CPU core, but 2 Arithmetic Logic units - meaning that it can thread calculations etc onto the second ALU.
However it is not capable of 99.9% of things that a true dual core CPU is - think of it as "virtual dual core"

I know its not a true dual core, I was saying that most programs pick it up as a second core, so was just curious about if a P4 (which is tradionaly worse at games than an Athlon 64) would suddenly claw in to the lead in multithreaded apps (this obviously is NOT the X2 athlon 64 range).

HighlandeR · 17 May 2007 at 22:18

Sc even on an A64-3500 will struggle, just wait till u have 100s of units and 2 sides battling in the middle

Dual core even an basic X2 3800 dual core and a good graphics card 1950+ will do the job fine as long as its not to high rez

SkeeterUK · 17 May 2007 at 22:34

Hmm i have a 3500+ venice oc to 2.5ghz. Hope i can play with 100's units.

snowdog · 17 May 2007 at 22:42

Aslong as not adding too much ai (ie not more as 2 ai's), I recon you'll be fine skeet...

Mate plays it on a p4 3.06 ghz ht cpu and has no trouble with 2 ai's, a 3rd ai player (regardless of human players) makes his pc struggle though...

This is all considered on a 1000 unit cap game, with lower unit caps you can play with more (ai) players probably...

SkeeterUK · 18 May 2007 at 00:21

1000 seems too many, 500-800 per player seems better for the sake of able to manage such a large force.

Streeteh · 18 May 2007 at 00:39

With my 3700 athlon 64 it really did struggle at anything above the lowest graphical settings (with a 7800GTX reasonably overclocked). THrew in a dual core opteron 175 and it suddenly runs smoothly on the highest settings no matter what i throw at it.

This game lives for multiple cores.

calnen · 18 May 2007 at 07:57

Streeteh said:
With my 3700 athlon 64 it really did struggle at anything above the lowest graphical settings (with a 7800GTX reasonably overclocked). THrew in a dual core opteron 175 and it suddenly runs smoothly on the highest settings no matter what i throw at it.

This game lives for multiple cores.

That cant be true

175s aren't that fast.
Try 8 players on a thousand unit limit and then tell us it can handle anything

PinkFloyd · 18 May 2007 at 11:16

My Quadcore at 2.7GHz starts to really stuggle on big games with 1000 unit counts at 7AIs

Main problem is my units get unresponsive.

Streeteh · 18 May 2007 at 13:29

obviously it will struggle under those conditions

, however i'm a 1v1/2v2 online player so to be honest have never even come close to those sort of numbers (not have much of an intention of). In a 1v1 if we got close to the 1000 unit caps my 3700 would die, with the opty in 2v2 it runs smooth at right up till the endgame.

titaniumx3 · 18 May 2007 at 14:34

PinkFloyd said:
My Quadcore at 2.7GHz starts to really stuggle on big games with 1000 unit counts at 7AIs

Main problem is my units get unresponsive.

Wow, they haven't fixed unit response lag yet?! Sorry haven't been playing lately due to exams, but that problem really drove me crazy at times and incredibly annoying.

calnen · 18 May 2007 at 14:43

titaniumx3 said:
Wow, they haven't fixed unit response lag yet?! Sorry haven't been playing lately due to exams, but that problem really drove me crazy at times and incredibly annoying.

I havnt noticed this. When I overload it (ie more units than my opteron can handle) it just slows the game down - I can watch the seconds tick past at about half speed

titaniumx3 · 18 May 2007 at 16:14

For me, on some larger games even though the frame rate isn't too low, I get up 20 seconds of delay between orders. The the construction units seem to be worst affected, especially when you have lots of them working on a long queue of structures, they just sit around doing nothing. I read around and it's supposed to be some sort of pathfinding issue.

SkeeterUK · 18 May 2007 at 18:04

Tryed the demo and it went really bad halfway through a 2v2 with 1000 unit cap. Is there any chance i can scuttle (blow up) my own units if i have too many to get some performance back?