AMD vs Intel

[zeromajin]

JollyFE

Whats your build budget, if you don't mind me asking?

[skribetm]

Hmmm...this is gonna talke a while I think.....


I play AH, son plays WoW

world of warcrack. i lost a friend to that game.
haven't seen him in two(three?) years.

[Skuzzy]

thank you thank you thank you. what i've been saying all along. AH2 gaming is NOT as CPU intensive as fsx or GTA4.
hence you do not need a balls-out CPU. that money is better spent on a top-end GPU for max resolution gaming!

Aces High is a very balanced game.  A high end CPU will run the game better with a low end video card, than vice-versa.  If the CPU is not fast enough to process the data, then a high end video card is going to be sitting and waiting for it.

99% of all the stutter complaints with the game boil down to CPU load, not GPU load.

Now, if you want to run at really high resolutions (>2000x1600), then yes, you need a high end video card and a modest CPU will be able to keep up, but if you want to run 1900x1280 resolution without stutters, then you you need a high end CPU and a decent video card.

[ToeTag]

Aces High is a very balanced game.  A high end CPU will run the game better with a low end video card, than vice-versa.  If the CPU is not fast enough to process the data, then a high end video card is going to be sitting and waiting for it.

99% of all the stutter complaints with the game boil down to CPU load, not GPU load.

Now, if you want to run at really high resolutions (>2000x1600), then yes, you need a high end video card and a modest CPU will be able to keep up, but if you want to run 1900x1280 resolution without stutters, then you you need a high end CPU and a decent video card.

Just talking about stutters gets skuzzy going.......

[skribetm]

Aces High is a very balanced game.  A high end CPU will run the game better with a low end video card, than vice-versa.  If the CPU is not fast enough to process the data, then a high end video card is going to be sitting and waiting for it.

99% of all the stutter complaints with the game boil down to CPU load, not GPU load.

Now, if you want to run at really high resolutions (>2000x1600), then yes, you need a high end video card and a modest CPU will be able to keep up, but if you want to run 1900x1280 resolution without stutters, then you you need a high end CPU and a decent video card.

stuttering is more because of all the crapware processes running in the background competing with AH2 for cpu resources.
with a clean system, an Athlon II dual core is more than enough for this game, as his experience indicates.

I do not regret it as his system FLIES!

so clearly, an Athlon II dual core is a high end cpu. 
but just to show i can be fair, heres a good deal for y'all Core2 fans.

[zack1234]

I want some of what your smokin.  Granted AMD is cheaper GHz to GHz, but it can not compete with the Intel chips of the same GHz.

i know i no nothing about PCs lol

+1 to me

[Skuzzy]

stuttering is more because of all the crapware processes running in the background competing with AH2 for cpu resources.
with a clean system, an Athlon II dual core is more than enough for this game, as his experience indicates.

so clearly, an Athlon II dual core is a high end cpu. 
but just to show i can be fair, heres a good deal for y'all Core2 fans.

Do you have access to the profiling data for the game?  That is the data that actually measures the usage of all the components of the game.  You have no idea how the game scales things and cannot know exactly what the balance of video to CPU usage really is.

There is no one answer as to what combination of CPU/video card is the correct one.  Resolution is one aspect of the load.  Shader performance is another.  System RAM is another.  There are many more.

The constant is the game is very balanced between CPU and GPU usage.  HiTech has always done a very good job at maintaining that balance.  Leaning one way or the other will cause game play to not be as smooth as it could be.  It is a tenant in good game design.

[skribetm]

Do you have access to the profiling data for the game?  That is the data that actually measures the usage of all the components of the game.  You have no idea how the game scales things and cannot know exactly what the balance of video to CPU usage really is.

There is no one answer as to what combination of CPU/video card is the correct one.  Resolution is one aspect of the load.  Shader performance is another.  System RAM is another.  There are many more.

The constant is the game is very balanced between CPU and GPU usage.  HiTech has always done a very good job at maintaining that balance.  Leaning one way or the other will cause game play to not be as smooth as it could be.  It is a tenant in good game design.

i am not disputing anything you say above. so, when are we getting a baseline/standardized benchmark?
would ultimately help in evaluating gaming set-ups, right?

what i'm trying to say is for whatever amount of CPU workload AH2 requires, a cheap, lowly Athlon II is enough for a fluid, fast gaming system at whatever resolution tigger's friend plays on. the higher the resolution, the more GPU-dependent this game becomes(1080P and above)- in other words the GPU workload increases due to moar pixels needing to be rasterized. the CPU workload however, i observed, remain constant across all higher HD resolutions. having said that, i dont even notice the CPU workload significantly increase at 1024x768 or 1440x900.

and you probably meant "tenet."

[zeromajin]

question :

Since AH is, as I understand all flight sim games are, CPU intensive due to the elaborate physics calculations needed to run the engine, my question is this.

Would it bode well for players with a single GPU card to purchase a lower-end (read: cheap) second GPU as a dedicated Physx processor?

Also, players that are already running an SLI setup with 2 cards, would switching the 2nd card from SLI to dedicated Physx, produce a greater overall net gain in performance in this particular application? Would this help alleviate issues of slower CPU builds?

Would this configuration be more cost efficient then going for a higher tier CPU, subsidizing a cheaper second GPU?

[Skuzzy]

i am not disputing anything you say above. so, when are we getting a baseline/standardized benchmark?
would ultimately help in evaluating gaming set-ups, right?

what i'm trying to say is for whatever amount of CPU workload AH2 requires, a cheap, lowly Athlon II is enough for a fluid, fast gaming system at whatever resolution tigger's friend plays on. the higher the resolution, the more GPU-dependent this game becomes(1080P and above)- in other words the GPU workload increases due to moar pixels needing to be rasterized. the CPU workload however, i observed, remain constant across all higher HD resolutions. having said that, i dont even notice the CPU workload significantly increase at 1024x768 or 1440x900.

and you probably meant "tenet."

The amount of time to generate and maintain a proper benchmark, based on the game is prohibitive.

And yes, I goofed my spelling of "tenet".

By the way, the Athlon II will stutter very badly if you toss 100 B17 bombers launching at one time in an FSO.  It cannot get the data to the video card fast enough for each frame loop.  Many think it is because the video card cannot handle it, and while that can impact things, it is not what causes the stutters.  Data bound for a video card is, for the most part, completely asynchronous to the CPU/frame loop.  As long as the data can get generated, the frame loop runs smoothly.  Ther are a few situations where data will block and the CPU has to wait for it to process on the video card, but not many of those happen in the game.

Unusual situation?  Sure, but it is a valid one.  That is where you find out what is the bottleneck in your computer.

Flight is always complex to model.  I remember when we upped the number of test points on the wings and how many people yelled and screamed how it was killing thier performance.  Had absolutely nothing to do with the graphics.

I will be the first to admit there is no easy answer to this.  The same exact hardware given to ten different people will all run the game differently due to everything else the player will use the computer for.

I recall posting a film of my computer at home running the game.  With everything enabled it was butter smooth.  Disabling vsync showed it was running over 200FPS, with all the shadows on, in the middle of a fight with a dozen planes around me over a filed with ack bursts going off.

A simple E8400 with 2GB of system RAM and an ATI4850.  Well, maybe not so simple.  It is very tweaked.  Booting Windows XP in 4 seconds flat is not common.  Point being, that someone else, whose computer has the same hardware, will not perform the same.

question :

Since AH is, as I understand all flight sim games are, CPU intensive due to the elaborate physics calculations needed to run the engine, my question is this.

Would it bode well for players with a single GPU card to purchase a lower-end (read: cheap) second GPU as a dedicated Physx processor?

Also, players that are already running an SLI setup with 2 cards, would switching the 2nd card from SLI to dedicated Physx, produce a greater overall net gain in performance in this particular application? Would this help alleviate issues of slower CPU builds?

Would this configuration be more cost efficient then going for a higher tier CPU, subsidizing a cheaper second GPU?

The game does not support the Physx processor, nor does it support using a GPU for floating point calculations.  Someday, when there is single API that supports all that hardware (ATI or NVidia or...), the game might support it.

[skribetm]

By the way, the Athlon II will stutter very badly if you toss 100 B17 bombers launching at one time in an FSO.

that would be one scenario where the serial threaded CPU code would significantly increase proportionately to the number of planes in the area(specially when on the runway). but then again, any dual core would choke on that. that being the exception though, rather than the norm as you said.

The game does not support the Physx processor, nor does it support using a GPU for floating point calculations.  Someday, when there is single API that supports all that hardware (ATI or NVidia or...), the game might support it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(software)
been used in 2012(the movie), the A team, sherlock holmes, shrek 4, etc.
GTA4 uses it and some other small budget titles. cross-platform too, was used in an xbox360 game.

[jollyFE]

was looking $800-1200.

[zeromajin]

jollyFE

Will you be reusing any components from your previous PC, (case, PSU) ? Or will this be a from scratch build?

I'm assuming you won't be needing input devices (keyB, mouse ect) or monitor?

[Tigger29]

so clearly, an Athlon II dual core is a high end cpu. 

Actually no.. it's a BUDGET CPU that handles Aces High quite nicely.  The entire build cost $585 including operating system.

By "it FLIES" I meant for 'normal' computer usage.  It was a great bang for the buck (performance vs. cost) and while I wouldn't bank on it smoothly handling anything serious, it's plenty fast enough for the vast majority of people out there, including most Aces High players.

[Skuzzy]

that would be one scenario where the serial threaded CPU code would significantly increase proportionately to the number of planes in the area(specially when on the runway). but then again, any dual core would choke on that. that being the exception though, rather than the norm as you said.

Actually, my home computer ran that film very smoothly.  The video card does not have to do much as it is drawing multiple instances of the same model.  A pretty low end modern day video card could handle it.  The CPU, on the other hand is having to handle flight modeling for each plane.

And in the Athlon II's case, we cannot run multi-threaded either, which also hurts game performance.  This is due to a bug we happen to hit in the CPU.  AMD provided a work-around for it which forces the game to run only on one core.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_(software)
been used in 2012(the movie), the A team, sherlock holmes, shrek 4, etc.
GTA4 uses it and some other small budget titles. cross-platform too, was used in an xbox360 game.

Not sure why you bring up "Bullet" as it uses the OpenCL library, which is one of the API's available.  "Bullet" itself is more for dynamic modeling and collision detection.