CPU Bottleneck - What is it, and how it affects your games.

[GasMask]

yep only dx9



i will try a bit later today and report

Nice i thought so !

Something else im looking forward to now DX11 !.

[Chopy]

DX11 should not affect CPU, its only related to GPU.

I got a Q9550 3.57Ghz + HD5850, no bottleneck for me! To be honest, this is a game that eats both CPU and GPU equally, it is a very hungry game!

So i thought to , but we will see.

What performance do you get on what settings ? i am curious as i have HD5850 to.

[Dragooon]

You should try it honestly, I forced it to the maximum possible in the demo and still manage 30-35FPS during battles and 20-30FPS when zoomed in during tight action.

[Chopy]

So i knocked down my cpu to 3ghz , frame-rate became much more unstable constant jumping from 40fps to 65fps when zoomed out while in small battles when zoomed in it remained about the same and in bigger one 5units fighting it got down by about 2-4fps on average.So in my opinion cpu is more of a weak point than gpu.I am eager to try full version with dx11.

Dragoon i have similar performance , tough on very tight action (especially with dozen of dead body's) it dips to 15-19.

[mrcrusty]

Ok guys i really need some help from u.
The demo of shogun 2 works flaweleslly except when i zoom in on large blobs of units fighting...which drops my framerate at 5-20( like the big arm ies fighting in the historical battle)
Now im really afraid my cpu is bottlenecking me but i have a strange widescreen monitor that works well only on it s native resolution......1400x900...which is also the highest.
Anything lower it messes things up in all games.

So the question is do u think theoretically i should have this problem with my computer or is it demo optimization related?
My specs are:
Core 2 Duo E8650 at 3 Ghz
4 GB RAM
Nvidia 460 GTX 1 GB ddr5
Windows 7

Edit: I run everything on ultra btw as this was the default setup anyways and i get superb performance from all other games


Thanks in advance

I do believe that the problem lies with the demo, but try again with either lower settings or a lower resolution and see what happens.

actually am sure if i pushed 4.2ghz i'd get a few more fps. hence there is still a bottleneck or for use of a different anology my perf will improve (in certain games).

bottlenecking is rather mis-used and i think thats why people get confused by it.

Well, there's bottlenecking, and there's bottlenecking.

Here is something from official forum

DX11: You can expect a major leap in graphical quality and performance. DX11 allows tessalation which will be applied to character models allowing a massive increase in geometry detail with less performance hit. This could and may also be used on terrain in and outside of the battle map. It also allows direct compute and physics enabling complex particle interaction such as volumetric clouds and fog that swirls when a horse runs through it for example, banners that ripple and move realistically when carried or when there is a wind along with particle effects such as dust and smoke, water effects such as dynamic interactive splashing when a soldier walks through a puddle/river. You can also expect substantially better quality shading/lighting with less performance hit, more light sources (like lanterns the troops hold and how the light interacts with the models geometry) and much improved performance for visuals with CPU's with more then 2 cores.


This makes me optimistic , apparently as far as i understand dx9 and dx10 will use 2 cores , but dx11 will use 3-4

To be perfectly honest, that makes zero sense from a technical standpoint.

I'm not a game developer, but there is no reason why an application's multithreading support is reliant on an API for graphics processing. I call BS, in that either the statement is nonsensical, or that if it is true, it's total BS for players.

[kaliku]

lowering video settings didn t improving anything...im still getting low fps in big blobs and large bodies even on lowest settings

[davsim]

Watch this video about what's bottlenecking and what does it do.



Way better than mrcrusty's explanation!

[Lord_Lotz]

TBH I just think you're unlucky. Does it happen with other games too.

NO! and that is kind of the worst part! I made this upgrade to max out this specific game. Total War is kinda the reason I still spend the money and the time on a pc instead of falling to the console dark side (that and the fact that I can't stand those things they call "controllers" haha)

[Maizel]

Even with I5/7'sa CPU Bottleneck could be there, seeing that the demo hardly touches my second core, and that's an upgrade from pre-patch, even.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

Okay im gonna clear a few things up in this thread so watch this post

Most of what Mr Crusty has stated is correct, and in multi gpu configurations most CPUs stock today do bottleneck gpus hands down, example 8800gts 512mb in SLI can get around a 10% performance boost in game running on an i7 920 overclocked vs say a Core2 Quad when overclocked. it comes down to work processes per clock cycle, its why comparing speeds of say AMD cpus to Intel cpus makes no sense these days example core i5 750 2.6ghz at stock is slightly faster then say an AMD 975BE quad core at 3.6ghz the reason for this is because per clock the Intel cpu does more work, so overclocking say an i5 750 to 4ghz vs an AMD quad at 4ghz the game is still heavily in favor of the Intel chip currently. That headroom offers far more processing power to be thrown towards the GPUs,

And yes Mrcrusty the API itself causes issues with the GPUs

DX9 DX10 DX10.1 only allows 1 dedicated thread to feed the graphics card information, now imagine 1 thread to feed multiple GPUs this becomes a source of a bottleneck not only that Ram and System Bandwidth also enter into this equation, Heres the Fun stuff tho DX11 removes the 1 thread restriction on the cpu to gpu information subsystem. This means that there is room for huge improvements here, but developers have to actually use it, and since most games are still using old game engines from 5-6 years ago with no real updates and bolted on support means this wont change for sometime yet. Hell everyones favorite game Call of Duty is still based on a heavily modified Quake 3 engine thats now at the 12 year old milestone yea its that old. Needless to say the API does make a huge difference in this situation but it only helps when developers truly catch up, most game engines havent changed at all yet, Id Tech 5 even uses mostly older code and ideas, Id Tech 6 will be the first game engine to most likely advance in a different Direction aka Ray Tracing and all that nice stuff but no hardware even exists on the market that can run the Engine so its gonna be awhile lol. Now this dosent mean developers cant multi thread aka Physics, AI, Scipts, and General Purpose computing tasks can be divided among cores hell most games now process Audio directly on the CPU since EAX and other proprietary standards were destroyed with the release of Vista. But while they can still multi thread they cant really increase the threads dedicated to feeding a GPU the info it needs to process and render the data in 3d for are enjoyment.

the Age old PCIE x16 vs X8 makes no difference, even a GTX 580 maintains 95% of its max performance which means dual gpu systems in an x8 x8 sli or xfire system will see no difference from x16 x16 the only time that extra x16 x16 bandwidth is needed is with Dual GPU cards gotta remember if your running 2x dual gpu cards thats 4 gpus in 2 slots meaning x8 x8 x8 x8 speeds where as at x8x8 its drops to x4x4x4x4 which due to the software overhead of Drivers themselves and the fact all the GPUs need to sync the same info the bandwidth becomes more important in this situation.

Good example its not really my clock speed on my AMD quad its the fact that even at 1333 6 7 6 1t timings my ram is still only getting 11-12k read write and copy, where as an Intel i7 920 can get up to 30k read write and copy speeds thats 3 times the bandwidth, Its extremely important with Multi GPU systems.

so to sum it up

1) DX 9 10 10.1 all have the same design flaw DX11 dosent and offers more threads to feed the GPU info from the CPU which is key for Multi GPU systems thus API is important

2) these important changes are great but most game engines are based on 10 year old code thats just had new tech bolted on making it inefficient and generally clunky Call Of Duty for instance is based on Id Tech 3 which is now 12 years old untill a new game engines are developed ground up to fully support the new tech nothing will change. How does this apply to you? well look at the warscape engine for Total War is now 4 years old and was in development before that. Shogun marks the 3rd game on this engine where as previously it was 2 games per engine. Shogun + Medieval 1... Rome + Medieval 2, then we went to warscape which has been used on Empire , Napoleon, Shogun II, its running on old code now DX11 has been added but the engine is developed for the api thus the issue all current games have.

3) This is probably over most peoples head and i should learn to just shut up and keep this to myself. and i really suck at explaining stuff.....

As for the Demo ive been extremely lucky its using 3 out of 4 cores and averaging 50-75% usage depending on the situation that said it has yet to use my 4th core at all

[Crozz]

I have a Quad Core Q6600 @ 3,0 GHz and a Radeon HD 5870 (playing at 1920x1080). Would you say upgrading to an i5 2500k would be wise or should I just try to OC my current processor more?

Any tips or feedback is very appreciated!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that it has been very interesting reading you're posts and links, you seem very educated in the subject.

[Totalheadache]

I have a Quad Core Q6600 @ 3,0 GHz and a Radeon HD 5870 (playing at 1920x1080). Would you say upgrading to an i5 2500k would be wise or should I just try to OC my current processor more?

Any tips or feedback is very appreciated!

well try and oc more and see what happens no?

upgrading to a i5 will def be worth it in terms of an improvement. but you will need new mobo and new ram. if you are lucky u can hit 3.6ghz on a q6660 but that takes some doing on air.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

im only educated because i bought a Dell and got pissed off at how crappy it was, years ago and ever since then ive refused get caught with my pants down and hosed that way again lol

anyway if you Q6600 is a G0 stepping there known to hit 3.4ghz or more some can hit 3.6 but its pretty tough to get there. If you got a good aftermarket cooler you can try pushing for 3.2-3.4 wont make a giant difference and the 2500k is a huge jump cpu performance wise. but the Q6600 is still serviceable for bit longer, a Q6600 at say 3.4ghz is roughly on par with say a Phenom II x4 at 3.2ghz the older Intel quad is showing its age but she still has gas in the tank to make it another year and gotta remember the Q6600 is roughly 5 years old now and still holding pretty strong thats no small feat in and of itself

[Crozz]

Thanks for both of you're fast responses!

The story about the dell made me giggle, been there done that. I think I would need a new cooler if I'm going to OC my Q6600 any more since I have the stock one now (which is totally useless it seems). I also think that my current RAM is to slow, could be wrong about that thought. As soon as the new and fixed Sandy Bridge motherboards starts dropping in here I think I'll make the leap to a 2500k.

Does this look any good http://www.inet.se/kundvagn/visa/220629/2011-02-22 ?

[Crazyeyesreaper]

looks good to me altho if you plan to use more then 1HDD and 1Optical Drive wait for the new motherboards in March as currently only the Sata 6 ports are working 100% with no chance of degrading personally id still take a board and if it died rma it afterall the boards are still covered just for most other users better to hold out untill the new P67 boards arrive. AKA look for B3 revision boards some are avaible now actually

http://www.inet.se/artikel/1901973/a...p67-pro-rev-b3

I prefer the Asus over MSI, MSI is a good brand but then tend to have weaker Power Phases then Asus or Gigabyte seen a couple MSI AMD boards actually burst into flames, but thats on the AMD side of things on Intel theyve been pretty damn spot on in terms of performance, But overall i see no issues just a personal preference thing. ( i really prefer gigabyte, but there p67 boards just seem Meh so i cant recommend them.

[Crozz]

looks good to me altho if you plan to use more then 1HDD and 1Optical Drive wait for the new motherboards in March as currently only the Sata 6 ports are working 100% with no chance of degrading personally id still take a board and if it died rma it afterall the boards are still covered just for most other users better to hold out untill the new P67 boards arrive. AKA look for B3 revision boards some are avaible now actually

http://www.inet.se/artikel/1901973/a...p67-pro-rev-b3

I prefer the Asus over MSI, MSI is a good brand but then tend to have weaker Power Phases then Asus or Gigabyte seen a couple MSI AMD boards actually burst into flames, but thats on the AMD side of things on Intel theyve been pretty damn spot on in terms of performance, But overall i see no issues just a personal preference thing. ( i really prefer gigabyte, but there p67 boards just seem Meh so i cant recommend them.

I'm aware of the Sata 3 problems that's why I said I wait for the new and "fixed" sandy bridge motherboards.

From what I've heard they sould start dropping in the beginning of march. I'll take a look at that Asus board thanks for the recommendations!

[Crazyeyesreaper]

B3 are fixed, there out even sooner then my buddies reviewing the damn things expected they were told March, its only Feb still but yea b3 boards are fixed there good to go

[Crozz]

B3 are fixed, there out even sooner then my buddies reviewing the damn things expected they were told March, its only Feb still but yea b3 boards are fixed there good to go

Yeah once they got going they got them out fast, inet doesn't have any yet though but shouldn't be to long.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

all the boards on that site are B3 revision boards aka you can buy them now, Intels been shipping fixed chipsets for nearly 2 weeks. I just didnt expect to see them in retail this soon your lucky lol

[Crozz]

all the boards on that site are B3 revision boards aka you can buy them now, Intels been shipping fixed chipsets for nearly 2 weeks. I just didnt expect to see them in retail this soon your lucky lol

All the boards are there but if you look it says in the storage status that they don't have any in (the yellow dot). They should start dropping in soon though, however the ones who bought a faulty motherboard has priority to change there's so hopefully there be some left for me