COD on an AMD A10 APU with HD6670 support

[Fortkentdad]

I built me a computer last fall. (pictured below) First time builder, I've had my son build me many a PC (he's an IT tech) but sadly he and his family live thousands of miles away and the time came to build a new rig. This time I was on my own (with telephone support if I needed it from my son). I surprised myself I assembled this new "rig" and it worked.

It is based on the new AMD A10-5800K APU with integrated graphics. I've used the ASUS F2 A85M Pro mBoard with the new Trinity chipset. This was released with much fanfare in October. To this system I added initally one HD6670 which I had noted will pair up with the iGPU on the APU in what AMD calls "Dual Graphics", basically Xfire your APU with an dGPU. The A10 will only match up this way with two of the Radeon GPU and the 6670 was the more powerful of the two. When selecting the GPU I read that since the APU uses your computer's RAM for video ram, if you are using DDR3 then the dGPU memory will be run as DDR3 whether it is DDR3 or DDR5. I had a choice between 2GB of DDR3 or 1GB of DDR5 when i bought the first HD6670. So knowing the DDR5 memory would be humbled to DDR3 standards I went with the 2GB DDR3 version. BTW I loaded up the RAM, this puppy has 32 GB of "HyperX Red RAM" a Kingston Special Edition (it's not that special runs at 1600). I also bought a Kingston HyperX SSD for my OS. It is a dual boot system with Win8 on one SSD and Win7 on a different SSD. They share one 2T SATA3 hard drive, backed up by two 750GB drives (one internal and one an eSata external). I'll need to add another 2T internal drive to mirror the one I have someday and let the two 750's mirror each other. Threw in a Blue Ray Optical drive with Lightscribe (love those engraved disks). The display is two 20" LG LED screens on either side of an LG LCD 24" screen. Try as a may I cannot get true colour matching across the LCD's & LED, a 24" LED is on my wish list.

I was the decision to go with the three screens that threw a monkey wrench into my GPU planning. I needed the dGPU to have a display-port and the 2GB version I bought did not have one and I'd had it too long to return it. So I bought the other one, the DDR5 HD6670 which did come with a display-port. Had to learn about "active display port adaptors as none of my monitors have a display port input, got one of those and I put it in, fired it up, and it ran all three displays very nicely. LCD display $99, display-port GPU $75, display-port adaptor $40, three screen display, priceless.

But now I had 2 HD6670's. So I xfired them and all was well. Did some benchmarking and the system out performed the A10 iGPU and did a little better than the iGPU in dual graphic mode with one of the HD6670's. If I knew then what I know now I'd only have one HD6670 with a display port. The performance improvement xfireing the two GPU's is not worth it over the performance of the dual graphic mode with one GPU. But since I have it sitting around collecting dust might as well put it into the system right? And it did perform just a little better.

All was well.

Until I tried to play COD. It kept failing, stuttering, etc. When I disabled the Xfire it worked, but the FPS dropped from 25 ish to 15ish. Not good. At 25 the game play "ok" but 15 has lots of lag. Then I tried that Dual-Graphic mode that I had used with just one of my HD6670's. And what do you know. It worked. And even when I enabled the Lucid MVP software optimizer for the Dual-Graphic mode it worked even better. I was back up in the 25 range.

TO get there I had downgraded several of the setting to medium and a few to low. It looked OK, but could look better. But remember I was pushing three screens - 55" of display running at 4800x900. I noticed I could downgrade the resolution, and I did, and with each step down, the FPS went up. The sweet spot i think is the 2512-600 with FPS in the 40's. Although I might go up one tp 3840x720 with FPS in the 30's. I'll have to experiment. Not sure my old eye's notice that much of a difference in the image quality between the various displays.


It is rather dark but I think you'll be able to read it.

This is my 'virtual cockpit". You'll notice I use the Thrustmaster T-Filight HOTAS-X controls. I as amazed that COD recognized my gamepad and my controller and I can use the buttons on the gampad too. I'm going to use them for bombs (orange to arm the ordinance, Green to open the door, red to drop the bomb and blue to close the bomb bay doors, have not yet learned how to manage a bomber but when I do, I've got the buttons ready to go).




I do need to learn more about this game, about the commander's commands, how to navigate besides keeping the map open and following the paths, how to find the air strips (i fly over and over the place where the map says there is an air strip, I can't see no frigging air port???). So much to learn. I think I'll need to quick my job and take up a career as a virtual WWII pilot. I think they call that retirement (which in my case will be in seven years when I'm 65 or less).

[Outlaw]

Wow! So much for baby steps!!! Nice work on a big leap for a first time builder, especially the troubleshooting, working to get the frame rates up, AND posting the info for others.

--Outlaw.

[Löwe]

Man I didn't read the post (I'm in a hurry) but I noticed you have "Building Amount" on HIGH, and "Building Detail" and "Forest" on MEDIUM, which is totally a waste in my opinion, it just drops your fps. Putting them on LOW is absolutely the same, you won't notice any difference anywhere but in your fps. Why don't you try it out?

[Fortkentdad]

Originally Posted by Löwe

Man I didn't read the post (I'm in a hurry) but I noticed you have "Building Amount" on HIGH, and "Building Detail" and "Forest" on MEDIUM, which is totally a waste in my opinion, it just drops your fps. Putting them on LOW is absolutely the same, you won't notice any difference anywhere but in your fps. Why don't you try it out?

Good to know. I'll drop those down and see what it does. Tried it without shadows but I like the shadow effect. I suppose I can try them one by one to see what I want to enable and disable what does not add that much to the game.

I think I bumped up the Building Amounts thinking it might help me spot those airfields when I return to base. It didn't help, still can't spot those runways when I'm flying low over the area where the map says there is an airfield. Maybe I'm reading the map all wrong.

I still don't know how to land, even though I went through the landing training several times.

I need lessons on this game. Is there any threads with advice for new pilots? The manual in the Steam folder helps a little but I need COD for Dummies I'm afraid. I do not have much experience in Flight SIMS at all. Played around a bit with Xplane and can land the Cessna. (Xplanes by the way is one of the few games that works well on the Win8 side of my dual boot PC). I like the compass and navigational instruments in the Cessna and miss them in my Spitfire. From reading the Manual I think I need to pick a plane (I like the Spitfire) and learn to fly it well first. I'm thinking one even wants to save different controls for different planes, e.g. the Spitfire does not need more than one button to fire, the other joystick fire buttons can be used for other purposes. (I reset one to return my pan-view to straight ahead which my HAT button seems to have a little problem with, it works but not as easily as I like, and not as instant as the one button does now).

[TonyD]

Hi Fortkentdad

Nice post on your build, and good to see your logic in making decisions. I would not have suggested an iGPU set-up; despite what they say, these are more suitable for notebooks than desktops due to their power/performance ratio, their gaming performance is not comparable to a decent mid-range graphics card. The good overclock helps though, and your efforts at optimising the system seems to have worked

The graphics settings in CloD are confusing due to the choice of names used, as they don’t always affect what they seem to imply. Two things about your settings I would experiment further with are:

• Model Detail: this setting works in conjunction with the ‘Texture quality’ setting – I have found that you will only get high Model Detail if the texture setting is on ‘Original’. If set to below this, the model detail is reduced automatically, but still costs FPS. Try setting this to ‘Medium’ and see how much the frame rate improves, and if you can see any reduction in quality.

• Buildings Amount: this setting does not affect the number of buildings that are rendered, but how many of those rendered are textured. If you set this very low you will see that the outer group of buildings that are rendered will appear as brown boxes, and will have textures closer to the ‘camera’. This is very easily noticeable over London, and you can change this setting ‘on the fly’ to see its influence.

You may also want to try using an ‘after-market’ routine for AA – the in-game AA is not very good and costs fps. I use Buchon’s SMAA that is solely for AA and works very well with no FPS hit. You can also try SweetFX if you want to fiddle with other graphics effects, but read this post and see what others have to say.

[Sokol1]

I like the compass and navigational instruments in the Cessna and miss them in my Spitfire. From reading the Manual I think I need to pick a plane (I like the Spitfire) and learn to fly it well first.

For compass use in British planes look here:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...hlight=Compass

BTW - See Spit compass is not difficult (someone suggest a transparent control column at some time :

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...7&postcount=12

This (RL) mirror adjust setting method propose by Robo is not practical to use in CloD, due parallax error in 3D cockpit you are not able to look straight to compass, better watch and use "HUD" numbers to set DG.

A good intro in Navigation with sample mission is attached on topic.

I'm thinking one even wants to save different controls for different planes, e.g. the Spitfire does not need more than one button to fire, the other joystick fire buttons can be used for other purposes.

Yew, notice that in Controls you can made some assignments and the use "SAVE AS" and save as "Spitfire", another with different keys for "BF-109", etc. Use "LOAD" before start flight with specific plane.

You can see many people "moaning" about CloD controls setup, in fact they have many flaws, are incomplete... but the fact they are divide in various sections is a good improvement over previous IL-2 1946, you see benefits after get used with this.

(I reset one to return my pan-view to straight ahead which my HAT button seems to have a little problem with, it works but not as easily as I like, and not as instant as the one button does now).

IL-2 series (Il-2, 1946, CloD) POV control is far from good with default "SNAP" and "PAN" (hit F9) system.
If you dont plan buy a TrackIR, or DIY a Freetrack, I suggest use a third part software to emulate mouse view with POV HAT, easy to use is JoyToKey - useful too for anothers CloD flaws like ZOMM, another option is the (Russian) NewVIew. (PITA to config...)

And after you "get your wings" a good read is this "Bible" about online simulation air combat with WWII planes.

In Pursuit:http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/.../inpursuit.pdf
http://www.mediafire.com/?kcy2enhahezcu9g

Sokol1

[:FI:Sneaky]

Similar build to mine, which I got off the shelf as I needed a fast replacement for my Phenom x4 rig.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=FS-300-OE
+
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...odid=GX-099-GI

only 2 screens herem and just use 1 for gameplay

I'm getting 30-70 FPS on this with graphics maxed.
On board GPU was able to run CloD and some other titles, but best performance all round is with the 7870 solo