Benchmark analysis part 1: over water. VRAM bottleneck ?

[Skinny]

How could I have missed that. I actually had GPU-z running on my second monitor while benching, mostly to keep an eye on temps and load, I never noticed the "memory used".

Well, if I had any doubts, then I guess that settles it. Thanks for the tip!

As for threading, I wish I could say I agree, but I dont. First of all, you have 4 cores, but you also have hyperthreading, which means 8 cores are exposed to the OS. Each core has the ability to run 2 threads, so its presented as 8 logical cores.

Now by setting affinity mask to 6, you are doing the exact thing you should NOT do, that is pin the threads to 2 logical cores on the same physical core (logical core counting starts with zero). Thats precisely what you need to avoid.

Dont have time for elaborate explanation, but people should leave those affinity mask settings alone if you are using windows 7. You will not gain from it, you will only lose. Windows 7 scheduler is aware of hyperthreading, will not schedule one logical cores sharing physical resources unless all other cores are busy. The only reason to set a mask is if you need one or more cores to be entirely dedicated to another application.

XP is different as it doesnt know about hyperthreading and might therefore schedule 2 heavy threads on the same physical core even if 3 other cores are idle.

[Skinny]

OK now I know why I missed the "memory used" entry in GPU-Z. It doesnt show with my videocard.

As point of reference, can someone run it while playing IL2 or some other game? Im actually wondering if it really is reporting texture memory and not just OS memory.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by Skinny

How could I have missed that. I actually had GPU-z running on my second monitor while benching, mostly to keep an eye on temps and load, I never noticed the "memory used".

Dont have time for elaborate explanation, but people should leave those affinity mask settings alone if you are using windows 7. You will not gain from it, you will only lose. Windows 7 scheduler is aware of hyperthreading, will not schedule one logical cores sharing physical resources unless all other cores are busy.

You were probably using your GPU-Z on your second GPU (if you have SLI)

Thanks for the tip regarding process affinity under Win7 I will try.

Apart from that, IL2FB usage (processafinity=6 )
GPU Memory used: 229Mb Mouahahahahahaha!




~S~

[CharveL]

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

[Skinny]

Originally Posted by CharveL

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

I certainly intend to rerun those tests after patches arrive, but for now they clearly indicate where the bottleneck is, at least on systems similar to mine.

I also think people are too optimistic about the result of those patches; I remember promises of patches to fix stuttering over cities in IL2 (especially with narrow FOV) , but ~10 years later the problem persists, even if hardware became almost 10x faster since.

Perhaps there is some low hanging fruit, like SLI support, that should be fairly easy to implement or fix, but they spent over 6 years developing this game. As Ilya posted elsewhere "Optimization has always been our top priority". Its unlikely in the next few weeks they will suddenly achieve miracle breakthroughs they couldnt achieve all these years.
I certainly hope to be wrong, but I wouldnt hold my breath.

[Flanker35M]

S!

I had MSI AfterBurner(latest beta) running while playing COD. Noticed that over water GPU usage was 98-100% and over land varied between 30-80% depending on what was visible(higher with water in sight).

Also overclocked my 6970HD from stock clocks 880/1375MHz to 900/1400MHz and the clock speeds did ramp up to that during gameplay. And also stayed there. When in splash screen or GUI the speeds dropped slightly, but in 3D they were constant. So works here.

My frame rate was around 45-80fps over water, even over 100fps when looking to sky. Over land I got 20-60fps average being around 35-40fps. Checked with game's own fps gauge. I run at 1650x1080 with low forest/buildings(+low building detail). Rest is medium except models High. Grass is disabled, roads/shadows on.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by CharveL

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

What you are saying is very right CharveL.

But still, with my exeprience of 9 years flying this IL2 simulation, I bet that even after twenty patches, nothing will change in the big picture: Our PCs today have CPUs with power like hell, RAM in vast amounts, the only bottleneck is our graphic cards.
I have changed fifteen GPUs in the past ten years, it was always the same story (plus four sound cards - the sound chip was a bottleneck in the early years as well).