Dual v Quad

[Tim1981]

Hi, I am currently downloading Cliffs Of Dover and wanted to get some advice on my system:

E8500 (dual 3.16)
ATI HD 5770 (1gig)
4 gig ddr3 (mushkin)
XP Pro sp3

What sort of settings am I likely to acheive with this limited rig?

Would there be much of a boost upgrading to a quad core cpu?

Any help, much appreciated.

[z0ttel]

Hi Tim,

in my case, the best upgrade so far (w.r.t. COD) was to go from Windows XP to Windows 7 - seriously :D

Before waisting tons of money in a new system I would wait for the patches which will arrive in the next weeks and then decide what to upgrade first. To get a feeling what the limiting factors are you can use perfmon.exe and gpu-z to monitor CPU-, RAM-, GPU- and VRAM-consumption while playing the game. The component which reaches the 100% limit, needs to be replaced.

On my system, the game runs between 30 and 50fps smoothly (not over London).

[kingpinda]

At the moment its better to have a fast dualcore than a slightly slower quadcore. since the game is not optimized (yet) for multi-cores.

I myself have the e8400. If you find you lack cpu speed simply buy a better cooler for 20 dollars and OC your cpu. our cpus should be able to run 4ghz fine on air with maybe a slight voltage increase. I have it at stock now though. cpu is not the bottleneck in this case. The game is.

[Peril]

At the moment its better to have a fast dualcore than a slightly slower quadcore. since the game is not optimized (yet) for multi-cores.

I myself have the e8400. If you find you lack cpu speed simply buy a better cooler for 20 dollars and OC your cpu. our cpus should be able to run 4ghz fine on air with maybe a slight voltage increase. I have it at stock now though. cpu is not the bottleneck in this case. The game is.

Having just upgraded from a Core 2 Duo to an i5 I can vouch for this bit. I think my Core 2 Duo was actually better/faster/smoother in CoD.

[Ataros]

Overclock your cpu and try my settings (in sig). Try these mods if you are not happy with performance http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=21048

Video card is more important in this game if you run more then 1280 resolution.

[Rattlehead]

I'm not totally convinced a fast CPU makes any real difference in this game or indeed in any other graphically intensive game, especially at higher resolutions like 1900x1080. At that point, in my experience, the game becomes GPU bound.

For games optimized for mutlicore CPUs it's nice to have a quad core though, but until this game is optimized for that a dual core is fine.

I'm running a dual core myself and am enjoying smooth framerates (40+ at 1000m or higher) over land with all settings on high or medium. But then again I think my graphics card is taking most of the load anyway. (5870)

Put it this way, I'd rather have a fast graphics card than a fast Cpu for this game if you plan on running at high resolutions.

[Tim1981]

Thanks for the help, I only tried playing for a bit last night and my frame rates are terrible over land.

I think I might need to try those mods to make it playable.I have every thing on low apart from a couple that are on medium.

[hockeywarrior]

Hi Tim,

in my case, the best upgrade so far (w.r.t. COD) was to go from Windows XP to Windows 7 - seriously :D

Before waisting tons of money in a new system I would wait for the patches which will arrive in the next weeks and then decide what to upgrade first. To get a feeling what the limiting factors are you can use perfmon.exe and gpu-z to monitor CPU-, RAM-, GPU- and VRAM-consumption while playing the game. The component which reaches the 100% limit, needs to be replaced.

On my system, the game runs between 30 and 50fps smoothly (not over London).What settings are you running? I have an i7 930 2.8 ghz (stock clock), GTX 260 896 MB graphics card, 6 gigs of DDR3 RAM, and Winds 7 and am getting awful performance, even though I should be doing better than you lol.

[335th_GRAthos]

In all honesty,

1.) True, it is too eraly to tell because some more patches are needed for this game to run well.

2.) As a matter of principle and common logic, following things you will have to do anyway:
- Install Win7 64bit - No point discussing WinXP performance with this game as it is definitively running better in DX10 (and not in DX9 which is WinXP limited to).

- Upgrade to Quad-core if you find a cheap CPU fitting in your existing motherboad, because new graphics drivers are able to handle multiple CPUs and the CoD game will be able to handle more than one CPU (within limits) therefore better having four cores than only two (besides Win7 has real core management, unlilke WinXP)

3.) Download the MOD that is available which give a tremendous improvement on the frame rate FPS by removing some "unecessary" (for the current state of pain and misery most users experience) graphics thus making the game playable in every PC.


I did points 1 and 2 myself, point 3 I can not comment upon as it was not necessary for me.

Happy Flying !

[Ivan Fooker]

I made the following tests:

Running an I7 920 on 2.67GHz leads to 28FPS max.
Overclocking it to 3.01GHz leads to 32max.
Overclocking to 3.4Ghz leads to 44max.
Running it on max possible overclocked with that cooler at 3.84 leads to 59Fps.

Running the game on a C2D @ 4.8Ghz leads to 80Fps max.

As my HD5870VaporX (clocked 1200mhz) is running in idle mode while running CoD at 400mhz, i suppose the gpu power in general is not the bottleneck atm. for users.

So i come to the conclusion that ,similar to Il2-Sturmovik ,a high Dual Core has a better performance on CoD than a Quad Core atm, which is less clocked.

Means atm the GPu isnt a bottleneck, as the game doesnt seem to be correct adressed to it.ThePU keeps hanging in idle mode.

[SEE]

3.) Download the MOD that is available which give a tremendous improvement on the frame rate FPS by removing some "unecessary" (for the current state of pain and misery most users experience) graphics thus making the game playable in every PC. !

Been trawling the various threads with no luck, where are the details/location for these 'mods' and are these the ones that can only be used 'off-line' that Luthier referred to in his patch update?

[garengarch]

Been trawling the various threads with no luck, where are the details/location for these 'mods' and are these the ones that can only be used 'off-line' that Luthier referred to in his patch update?

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3265101/Performance_improvement_mod_s_.html#Post3265101

[Oldschool61]

what settings are you running? I have an i7 930 2.8 ghz (stock clock), gtx 260 896 mb graphics card, 6 gigs of ddr3 ram, and winds 7 and am getting awful performance, even though i should be doing better than you lol.

lower your resolution

[335th_GRAthos]

The new patch (curretly beta version availble, final patch probably on Monday) solves a lot of these issues:

No need for the MOD as they put the option to lower the graphic settings in the menu.
Kudos to the guy who worked in order to make the MOD possible as he was the main motivator to make this official ;-)
(I am a great believer of "pressure groups") :-)

Besides this, the game now uses well four CPUs so Quad-core is the CPU to have for this game!

~S~

[TonyD]

...

Besides this, the game now uses well four CPUs so Quad-core is the CPU to have for this game!

~S~

+1

[15JG52_Brauer]

In fact it will use 6 cores - but from what I can tell does not use hyperthreading, so best bang for your buck may be a 2500k as a 2600k with hyperthreading may not help - certainly my cpu only uses 6 cores - the other 6 hyperthreads lay dormant (The only thing I have that uses them is for video encodding - then they work !!).

[KDN]

Hey Athos
Did you do any change on your conf.ini...along the following lines....
2 cores - 3
3 cores - 7
4 cores - 15
6 cores - 63
8 cores - 255
for the ProcessAffinityMask=?

[335th_GRAthos]

Actually, I do not!

Sometime ago somebody (sorry did not keep his name) told me that Win7 is pretty good handling the CPU cores itself so I removed the line from my conf.ini

It is true, all my cores are working now, INCLUDING the Hyperthreading ones!
I have overall CPU utilisation of 57% out of eight cores (which means that my four real CPU cores are working 100%).

Happy Flying!

~S~

[KDN]

You are right Athos,
I did a little experimentation and although the ProcessAffinityMask=XX line does have an effect, commenting it out (default) will let the IL2CoD use whatever it is available CPU wise (lastest beta patch).

Although, I have not seen the hyperthreading cores in action yet, all my 6 cores are showing around 30% activity on the free hunt mission (loaded to max) in any of the settings below:
;ProcessAffinityMask=63
ProcessAffinityMask=63
ProcessAffinityMask=255

There is still CPU processing room left unused, so I am assuming this why I don't see the hyperthreading cores waking up.

[335th_GRAthos]

Interesting,


on my PC I see all cores (real+hyperthreading ones) working:

THIS IS PHOTO PATCHED (ver. beta 14....) 3840x resolution, move sliders to the right to see the game
http://www.stoimenos.com/temp/CoD/CoD_3840x1024_1280x1024_beta14_CPUload1.jpg

http://www.stoimenos.com/temp/CoD/CoD_3840x1024_1280x1024_beta14_CPUload2.jpg

Anyway, Quad core (at least) is the way to go in the future.

~S~

[KDN]

Ok, Athos I found how to get the Hyperthreading cores active.
Aparently the extra power is PARKED and used only when needed. I found a small registry tweak which unparks them and now I got activity on ALL 12 cores!!
Here is the tweak:


- Go to Regedit

- Find this key:- " 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 "

- Within this key, there is a value called: " ValueMax "

- This value represents the % number of cores the system will park - the default 100% ie: all Cores are potentially park-able

- Change the value from 64 to 0 so the " ValueMin " and " ValueMax " are both zero

- You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found - the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system [ in my DAW it was only found twice ]

- Do a full shutdown and power-off and cold-re-start


So far it does not seem to break anything but the day is young. It seems reversible in case...

[335th_GRAthos]

Amazing KDN !

Never seen this before, I will definitively keep your knowledge and, you should post it to the Q&A thread as many people may experience this! (you can use my pictures if you want).

Happy Flying!

~S~

[2033cyborg]

WAIT for few patches before upgrading....

[onlyforbrian]

I'm currently running a samsung 17" laptop with an intel i5 M460 dual core, 4 gig ram, windows 64 bit 7, and an nvidia gforce GT330m, and I'm hoping when I get my boxed version of Cliffs of Dove, it should handle it. I'm guessing yes, because I presently run Battlefield Bad Co.2, and the new "Homefront" , both on the highest graphic settings and they run as smooth as silk, even online...

[onlyforbrian]

KDN...Re. Regedit change...

can you be a little more specific? Regedit is a big place...which folder? Idid a registry search for 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 and nothing came up, so could you list the folders you found it in your registry? example:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER?
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE?
HKEY_USERS?
and so on ..plus subfolders...it would sure help if you could narrow it down thanks...forgot to address it

[KDN]

Here is how you do it.
Once in registry, on the left window, click on the "-" sign next to MY COMPUTER.
Now you should not see any tree.

Go file and export your current .reg file somewhere safe...just in case

While MY COMPUTER is high lighted
Go to edit---.Find--> copy and paste that long string in my post and hit the find next button. Do the changes and repeat the process until your search ends.


Make sure when copy and paste you don't carry over any spaces by accident

[onlyforbrian]

KDN, Maybe I should ask which operating system you have..XP? I'm using windows 7 64bit...there are no such "..." marks anywhere in the left menu box...doesnt even say My Computer, just Computer with none of those quotation lines...sorry...didnt help

[KDN]

You are correct, just Computer. I was typing it by memory. System specs are in my signature. OS: Windows 7 Pro 64bit
When you do the search just make sure the word COMPUTER is highlighted.

[z0ttel]

Sorry for bringing this thread back to life, but I for me, the question "Dual vs. Quad" is still not answered :(

In my particular situation, I was playing one of the quick missions and recorded the CPU-usage with perfmon for about 1 hour. The log shows that both physical cores do not get over 55% load, the load on both (virtual) threads have been much lower.


Anyway, Quad core (at least) is the way to go in the future.

So how would the game benefit from additional two physical cores, if the already existing two are not fully used at all? :confused:

[Vengeanze]

Sorry for bringing this thread back to life, but I for me, the question "Dual vs. Quad" is still not answered :(

In my particular situation, I was playing one of the quick missions and recorded the CPU-usage with perfmon for about 1 hour. The log shows that both physical cores do not get over 55% load, the load on both (virtual) threads have been much lower.




So how would the game benefit from additional two physical cores, if the already existing two are not fully used at all? :confused:

In one of the patches the devs added a feature so the game uses one core for textures only. This will give quad+ cores a benefith.
1st core for for OS
2nd core CloD
3rd core for textures
4th core for porn (joke)

Hopefully we will see more optimization in coming patches.

[z0ttel]

In one of the patches the devs added a feature so the game uses one core for textures only. This will give quad+ cores a benefith.
1st core for for OS
2nd core CloD
3rd core for textures
4th core for porn (joke)

Hopefully we will see more optimization in coming patches.


I know that there was the announcement that the rendering task has been shifted to another core, but AFAIK there was no specific core assignment given.

If your example would be true, then my second core should boil (because it would have to handle CloD and its rendering task) but it doesn't. This would also mean that my OS uses 55% of core #1 while running CloD - which seems not to be reasonable - because nothing else runs in the background (except for the Steam client).
So from my current point of view, core #1 is occupied by OS and CloD, core #2 is occupied by the rendering task and from that understanding, I can't see any benefit by using a Quad-Cpu.

What do you think?

[Vengeanze]

I know that there was the announcement that the rendering task has been shifted to another core, but AFAIK there was no specific core assignment given.

If your example would be true, then my second core should boil (because it would have to handle CloD and its rendering task) but it doesn't. This would also mean that my OS uses 55% of core #1 while running CloD - which seems not to be reasonable - because nothing else runs in the background (except for the Steam client).
So from my current point of view, core #1 is occupied by OS and CloD, core #2 is occupied by the rendering task and from that understanding, I can't see any benefit by using a Quad-Cpu.

What do you think?
I'm no programmer so can only repeat what I've read here in the forum...and that is that in one of the patches you can set so that CloD will use one core for rendering textures only.
According to the patch readme this is supposed to give a performance boost to quads (over duals). If this is true I don't know.
As you say CloD doesn't use resources efficiantly today so I agree with what you're saying but perhaps CloD will utilize the cores differently and more efficiently in the future...hopefully.

[Thee_oddball]

try this
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22158

[z0ttel]

try this
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=22158

I don't think there is a problem with unbalanced loads (because both cores run on ~55% during CloD), my question was if it would make sense to add another two physical cores ;)

Luckily, I got my hands on an i7-870 (4x2.93GHz), so I (and you) will have an answer soon :grin: