Iron out Total War tech myths

[Crazyeyesreaper]

Hello everyone,

added yet another myth: Faster RAM gives you a better performance - Curious? Have a look on the facts in the OP and enjoy.

In Shogun 2 at least on the CPU side with Intel chips from the Sandy Bridge/ Ivy Bridge and Haswell lineup faster memory does in fact improve minimum FPS

1066-1600 is about 1-1.5 FPS
1600- 2133 is another 1-1.5 FPS
2133 - 2400-2600 is another 1 - 1.5 FPS

is worth the difference not really but considering a 2133 kit can be had for $10 more than 1600 the extra 2-3 fps paired with an overclock of around 4.2 GHz on Ivy Bridge is infact enough to get the minimum frame rate at or above 30 FPS.

So faster memory does in fact scale more memory not so much.

As for VRAM as a matter of fact it does indeed matter when Shogun 2 launched the Nvidia GTX 580 was shown to be much faster than AMD's Radeon HD 6970 what no one realized at the start was the vram limit of 1.5gb ment the game auto reduced settings during battles thus changing the results. Eventually CA seemed to have lowered the Level of Detail render distances and remove or simplify the shaders image quality suffered a small bit which pissed alot of people off but also lowered the VRAM usage by a fairly substantial amount so I rule this as a good thing it helped the game run better on larger assortment of hardware with only a small penalty in image quality.

AMDs GPU performance in Shogun 2 was unmatched untill the release of Nvidia's GTX 600 series which in the end came a full year after the game had been out. So in retrospect on the hardware the game was optimized for originally AMD GPUs were superior. There is also the fact that AMD never sponsored the game CPU wise AMD's Gaming Evolved program applies to GPUs primarily when a game is optimized for AMD CPUs which pretty much never happens it tends to feature the traditional green AMD logo.

So while yes the game cant really access more than 4gb of ram the big change is the fact that with DX11 Vram no longer has to be mirrored into system memory. for DX9 the Vram is in fact mirrored into system memory thus having higher memory usage footprint. It doesn't show up but its there due to the way Direct X9 was coded.

Regardless this thread makes my head hurt

Karamazovmm good luck.

[karamazovmm]

faster ram really matters on pro apps (depending on what app ECC buffered is preferred), outside that igps.

more ram is generally better, more than 8gb of ram is generally good, more than 32gb of ram is great, 256gb of ram that I have now is just awesome

[alQamar]

While I can second the first thing you said, the further about the RAM size is really not applicable for gaming at all. It reads like you are saying 32GB RAM is great for gaming. That's not true but I think you know that.

[SamueleD]

While I can second the first thing you said, the further about the RAM size is really not applicable for gaming at all. It reads like you are saying 32GB RAM is great for gaming. That's not true but I think you know that.

He's probably trolling alQ, I mean, 256GB of RAM? What's he playing on? A server?

[karamazovmm]

He's probably trolling alQ, I mean, 256GB of RAM? What's he playing on? A server?

nah I play on old msi ex 625, which is a P7350 + 4670m + 4gb of ram + 120gb SSD

256gb is what is on my workstation that I don't play on it, which is a shame, it has 2x titans + 2x 8 core xeons + 256gb of ram + 2x 512gb pcie SSD in raid 0 + assorted storage, which sits on uni

indeed the 256gb of ram is great, looking forward to upgrade to 512gb and add 2 more cpus

but anyway, I didn't say that its good for gaming 32gb of ram, its good for your system to be more responsive and etc.. for gaming I said before 8gb+ is preferable, due to the others apps and OS running on the background, for example, I usually listen to music while playing so iTunes is on, along with chrome for some other tips or boring turns that take too long to happen, or even a movie or something that Im watching while playing, sometimes a book, while some are not common for other users, they will do have some other apps open.

[SamueleD]

nah I play on old msi ex 625, which is a P7350 + 4670m + 4gb of ram + 120gb SSD

256gb is what is on my workstation that I don't play on it, which is a shame, it has 2x titans + 2x 8 core xeons + 256gb of ram + 2x 512gb pcie SSD in raid 0 + assorted storage, which sits on uni

indeed the 256gb of ram is great, looking forward to upgrade to 512gb and add 2 more cpus

but anyway, I didn't say that its good for gaming 32gb of ram, its good for your system to be more responsive and etc.. for gaming I said before 8gb+ is preferable, due to the others apps and OS running on the background, for example, I usually listen to music while playing so iTunes is on, along with chrome for some other tips or boring turns that take too long to happen, or even a movie or something that Im watching while playing, sometimes a book, while some are not common for other users, they will do have some other apps open.

Quite a workstation you got there!

Until most games won't be 64-bit I don't think 8GB+ will bring much of a benefit, at least for music and browsers while gaming, but yeah, if you add a movie and some other things they will pile up and eventually you're gonna need more RAM.

[karamazovmm]

64 bits OSes use in general 1.5gb+ add chrome (300-450mb) + AV + music player + other things like messaging app and you get yourself in the house of 3.5gb easily. add that generally games will use around 2gb+ of ram + the Vram of the gpu that they will use, you are left with some spare change in there

but in the end you are right, more than 8gb is not going to be used in games till you have more 64bit games, which should become a reality specially with DDR4, when the majority of systems will have DDR3 and at least higher than 8gb of ram

[alQamar]

your words in gods ears or at least at CA ones.

[alQamar]

This makes your head hurt? Why? Good luck? Confusing.

Can you please give me the sources of the talk about RAM. Thank you. Currently with the data I have I cannot second yours but will change it if you can give me the according logfiles proving that.

Then you posted a long section about GPUs. I never said AMD gpus are crappy. I talked about AMD processors. Thanks for editing your posting at it is confusing. People may think you are defending something I never accused

The AMD logo at lauch of Shogun 2 represents the efforts AMD made to help CA programming DX11 routines and shaders. No doubt.

[Dominian]

Glad my RAM tests cleared up that I spent that money on nothing

No but seriously, the 7.6% (the 6% are wrong because you rounded) on CPU performance is actually not shabby imho. Of course it just matters to wealthy enthusiasts. You certainly don't need it for TW.

[alQamar]

Thank you for backup my opinion.
And of course it is not worth a penny in case of Total War. I don't want to blame you and your personal decision.

This thread is about Total War of course and some statements may not apply to other games or software. This thread is called TW myths not hardware myths take me by word lads. Hopefully we do not need nitpicking then.

[alQamar]

Bumpidy bump

[Totalheadache]

I guess Rome2 is coming with it's own benchmark?

[alQamar]

just another one, but thanks for the idea.


Myth: Monitors with higher refresh rates like 120 or 144 Hz give me a visibly fluent gaming experience and advantage playing a Total War game.

Answer: Not at all, they are only useful if you use 3D glasses, then the monitor can display 2 pictures with each 60 frames per second instead of 30 frames per second. However your graphics card must be powerful enough to serve this. Usally you need an SLI to have a constant framerate beyond 100 frames per second in Total War.
Despite from the 3D use it is physically senseless as a human eye cannot see more than 85 pictures per second (aka Hertz (Hz) aka Frames per second (FPS). Who ever tells you he/she has got a visibly better gaming experience with a FPS higher than 85 FPS must have super powers indeed.

[craziii]

120 ones are perfect for fps games if you played any type of fps games you will know high fps is always better than low fps fps pros, counter strike pros, uses 120 monitors only for games like starcraft 2, high responsiveness is more important. some things you have to experience, it may look logical on paper, but it is very different once you have experience it.

[alQamar]

Err. Please note: We are talking about Total War, which is not yet a FPS game, if you read the topics title.

Still I deny with medical facts that any further "responsiveness" is able to see.
Your monitor does not display more than it's vertical refresh rate which is usual at 60 frames per second and you cannot see the difference. Imho this is, apart that it is offtopic for Total War really a thing of "imagination" or beyond. I met Fatal1ty once and I do not think he needs more than 85 fps to win, honestly

[craziii]

it is all about advantage 120 gives about 2-3 fps advantage. in a tourney with high stakes, you want all the advantage you can get

I know this is about tw + hardware, but you were speaking in very general terms.

[alQamar]

if you say so.

[craziii]

hehe, I do say so.

[Crazyeyesreaper]

And I agree

at 30 60 90 and 120 FPS my ability to do well in games improves to a degree

Using Battlefield 3 as an example

at 30 fps I average a .75 k/d and around 300 SPM
at 60 fps I average a 1.15-1.2 k/d and around 350 SPM
at 90 fps I average 1.5 k/d and 410 SPM
at 120 fps I average 1.6 k/d and 440 SPM

in RTS games etc I notice no difference but Racing games / shooters etc the frame rate heavily impacts my ability to do well. This has remained true for Battlefield Bad Company 2 / BF3 / CoD (Call of Duty being based on the older Quake 3 engine actually has specific FPS targets people try to hit because it allows for faster reloads higher jumping ability faster firing etc due to how the game engine was designed. Granted non of this matters in Total War games but it does matter in other titles.