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Farseer Fehanna
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Posted - 2011.05.18 11:48:00 -
[1]
Hi,
I'm not happy with the performance when running multiple clients and I'm thinking about which options I have on upgrading.
Before - Eve client was very very CPU dependant. But after new engine was implemented I guess it started to also get GPU dependant?
Im currently running a Q6600 @ 3.0GHz, but I'm able to stabily run it at 3.6GHz if I put back in some of the (noisy) fans.
However, I'm running a XFX GF 8800GTS GPU which is getting old.
Other than that I have 6GB of "decent" RAM.
Based on your experiences - Will buying a GF 560 GTX increase my performance alot or will there be other bottlenecks?
(I know I should post more system details, but I dont have them currently)
BR
Farseer
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Teh Scout
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Posted - 2011.05.18 11:53:00 -
[2]
Edited by: Teh Scout on 18/05/2011 11:54:40
I routinely run 4 accounts at a time on a 9550, 4GB RAM, with a 5970, and the graphics card barely heats up. It's more CPU than GPU, imo.
Do you have all your graphics options turned all the way down?
Edit - I'm not sure it makes a big difference, but do you change priority and the number of cores per client? I do, but haven't noticed if it helps, but it can't hurt.
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RaTTuS
BIG
Gentlemen's Agreement
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Posted - 2011.05.18 11:55:00 -
[3]
RAM is all you need,
lots of it...
also who can tell before the next patch as things will change...
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Morgenholt Blue
Swift Redemption
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Posted - 2011.05.18 11:57:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Morgenholt Blue on 18/05/2011 11:59:00
It is mostly dependent on the CPU as the majority of the EVE client is not threaded.
In simple terms a single EVE client can't take advantage of a multi-core CPU.
On another note though it does take about 1GB - 1.5GB of RAM and EVE clients can use allot of VRAM (graphics card RAM) if you have a high resolution. I rarely see the GPU usage go high, sometimes VRAM bottlenecks things.. mostly CPU though.
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Opertone
Caldari
World - of - Empire
Cassiopeia.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 11:58:00 -
[5]
 Originally by: Teh Scout
Do you have all your graphics options turned all the way down?
what he said... optimize your client to have no shadows, no HDR, no extra shiny shi...
optimize your OS... get a gaming edition. All services turned off. Nothing extra, no explorer task.
optimize your game client location and hard drives - it has been described not long ago in a similar thread. Eve on separate HARD DRIVE can show some improvement, also SSD are wonderful
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Neamus
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Posted - 2011.05.18 12:08:00 -
[6]
Um, well just to fly in the face of what everyone else has been saying...
Your CPU and RAM are fine, you don't need to upgrade there yet. Take a look at the market again in about 8 months time when the new high-end sandy i7's start to arrive. The best bang for buck upgrade for you right now is the GPU, and the 560 is a decent choice. Good thing about the GPU is that it will help with all your games, not just eve (although it will make a difference there as well).
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Noemie
Caldari
Pinky's Cream Pie Boutique
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Posted - 2011.05.18 12:20:00 -
[7]
Edited by: Noemie on 18/05/2011 12:21:19
Firstly, your HD will increase load/save time adding time to start the client. A SSD works nicely for that, however I would recommend a SSD as drive 1 (only for OS) and second drive for apps/data.
Eve client is single threaded so a CPU can run a client nicely, but if you can assign cores to clients, that would mean you could get a quad core and comfortably run 4 clients PROVIDED ...
Your RAM base per client should be in the region of 1.5GB (2GB for safety). With 3GB for Windows (if thats ur poison of choice) that means around 10-12GB RAM and of course a 64bit OS to address all that RAM.
Graphics is a very high priority imo. Hi-end Nvidia or ATi will be required for that type of setup, so dump your existing and go for something like this
-------
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Farseer Fehanna
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Posted - 2011.05.18 12:21:00 -
[8]
Thanks for all your responses!
I've turned off HDR, shadows and drone models and all that fancy stuff, but the rest is on high.
I will try the following:
-Set CPU to 3.6GHz again
-Turn off uneeded services, AERO and more
.. and see how far that gets me.
If that doesn't make me happy I will upgrade my GPU to 560GTX or cheaper and see how that goes.
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Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
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Posted - 2011.05.18 12:45:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Akita T on 18/05/2011 12:55:56
_
Whoever tells you that the game is CPU-limited nowadays is shoveling a lot of manure with their tongue.
The game USED to be once upon a time CPU-limited, but that is hardly the case anymore.
*MY* bottleneck is by far the GPU, not the CPU (single client interval immediate, all settings on highest except AA which is off, 1600x1024 windowed mode), I get around 200 FPS on the login screen while the overall CPU load is only around 30% (with mostly just 2 of the 4 cores showing loads, and a smidge on a third, but almost not at all on the 4th).
A Q6600 rates at around 3k on PassMark, while an i5 760 (what I have) around 4.5k - yours is only about 30% weaker, not that much of a big deal ESPECIALLY since I'm barely using about the equivalent of a third of mine anyway.
As far as video card goes, you have a 8800GTS (I assume 512MB), which is rated at around 1k on PassMark, while I have a 460 GTX rated around 2.4k - yours is around 60% weaker. If you have another 8800GTS, it could be even weaker in comparison.
YOUR bottleneck should be the GPU by an even wider margin than it is for me. Get a better video card ASAFP.
The 560 GTX you are looking at possibly buying (rated around 3k on PassMark) should make your FPS basically explode to roughly triple your current values.
_
You should have no CPU problems with your current one even after you upgrade to a 560. Heck, it would probably barely be much of a bottleneck for EVE even in a 2x 560 SLI configuration.
Any RAM/HDD improvements will merely help with "system lag" while loading additional assets, but once those assets are loaded, it will do basically next to nothing for your system's responsiveness and FPS.
So, if you're finding yourself traveling a lot in EVE and engaged in fights against massive fleets, then yeah, some RAM/HDD upgrades will help, but otherwise, don't bother. And 2 GB per client and 3 GB for OS is overkill. 4 GB of RAM should be generally enough for win7 plus 3 clients.
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Make ISK||Build||React||1k papercuts
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Farseer Fehanna
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Posted - 2011.05.18 12:53:00 -
[10]
Originally by: Akita T
The game USED to be once upon a time CPU-limited, but that is hardly the case anymore.
lly explode to roughly triple your current values.
This is my consern as well. I experience the same as yourself; the cpu load is not significant, but the performance is poor.
I'll look into buying the GFX card soon! :)
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:23:00 -
[11]
Edited by: Ehrys Marakai on 18/05/2011 13:25:22
Originally by: Akita T
Edited by: Akita T on 18/05/2011 13:00:02
_
Whoever tells you that the game is CPU-limited nowadays is shoveling a lot of manure with their tongue.
The game USED to be once upon a time CPU-limited, but that is hardly the case anymore.
*MY* bottleneck is by far the GPU, not the CPU (single client interval immediate, all settings on highest except AA which is off, 1600x1024 windowed mode), I get around 200 FPS on the login screen while the overall CPU load is only around 30% (with mostly just 2 of the 4 cores showing loads, and a smidge on a third, but almost not at all on the 4th).
A Q6600 rates at around 3k on PassMark, while an i5 760 (what I have) around 4.5k - yours is only about 30% weaker, not that much of a big deal ESPECIALLY since I'm barely using about the equivalent of a third of mine anyway.
As far as video card goes, you have a 8800GTS (I assume 512MB), which is rated at around 1k on PassMark, while I have a 460 GTX rated around 2.4k - yours is around 60% weaker. If you have another 8800GTS, it could be even weaker in comparison.
YOUR bottleneck should be the GPU by an even wider margin than it is for me. Get a better video card ASAFP.
The GTX 560 Ti you are looking at possibly buying (rated around 3k on PassMark) should make your FPS basically explode to roughly triple your current values.
_
You should have no CPU problems with your current one even after you upgrade to a 560. Heck, it would probably barely be much of a bottleneck for EVE even in a 2x 560 SLI configuration if you also ramp up the AA to the max and use a multi-monitor setup.
Any RAM/HDD improvements will merely help with "system lag" while loading additional assets, but once those assets are loaded, it will do basically next to nothing for your system's responsiveness and FPS.
So, if you're finding yourself traveling a lot in EVE and engaged in fights against massive fleets, then yeah, some RAM/HDD upgrades will help, but otherwise, don't bother. And 2 GB per client and 3 GB for OS is overkill. 4 GB of RAM should be generally enough for win7 plus 2 clients (or even 3 clients in non-heavy-duty fleet fighting situations).
This.
Most applications nowadays are limited by:
1. HDD Access Times
2. GPU Performance <-- Biggest hitter.
3. RAM When having less than 3Gb
(Eve online is a 32Bit game and therefore can only access 4Gb of memory total anyway. Usuage for me is usually in the region of 1Gb-1.5Gb but I set for a massive resource cache, this will not help FPS, but will decrease session changing load times (ie. Jumping/Dock/Undock))
EDIT: 1 and 3 are linked. Low RAM = more HDD access, More RAM = Less HDD Access. So improving one negates the other to a degree. (And the only real HDD improvement here is SSD with low seek time (not high throughput))
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RaTTuS
BIG
Gentlemen's Agreement
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:32:00 -
[12]
re-reading...
your GPU is underpowered,
if your running more than one client [which you are]
then bank on up to 1.2Gb RAM per client to stop swapping , [now this will change on what your doing with the clients and what settings you have] - your CPU is fine [leave it at 3GHz]
more ram always helps - no need to spend lots on mega ram - ram is 1000x faster than your HD [ignore SSD really - very nice but ..... expensive]
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Ayah Taron
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:35:00 -
[13]
The best upgrade you can make is to run Eve from an SSD, the performance boost from that will be far more noticable than a new CPU or graphics card considering your current system.
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:37:00 -
[14]
Originally by: RaTTuS
re-reading...
your GPU is underpowered,
if your running more than one client [which you are]
then bank on up to 1.2Gb RAM per client to stop swapping , [now this will change on what your doing with the clients and what settings you have] - your CPU is fine [leave it at 3GHz]
more ram always helps - no need to spend lots on mega ram - ram is 1000x faster than your HD [ignore SSD really - very nice but ..... expensive]
Indeed, if asked directly you should upgrade everything *else* first before you move to SSD.
SSD should be used to decrease initial load times and on the rare occasion you *do* have to swap the low seek high bandwidth does make a noticeable difference.
I use SSD for my OS drive, which also contains my development tools. The speed improvement is tremendous. PC feels 100x quicker. However, it made little to no difference to games.
But yeah, to re-iterate, upgrade your GPU. Even with a GTX260 I push 250fps out of the client on highest settings (except for AA which is disabled due to the FPS crash it causes on multiple render targets)
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Teh Scout
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:41:00 -
[15]
Originally by: Noemie
Eve client is single threaded so a CPU can run a client nicely, but if you can assign cores to clients, that would mean you could get a quad core and comfortably run 4 clients PROVIDED ...
Your RAM base per client should be in the region of 1.5GB (2GB for safety). With 3GB for Windows (if thats ur poison of choice) that means around 10-12GB RAM and of course a 64bit OS to address all that RAM.
With 4GB, I have no issues running 4 clients.
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Jose Black
Amarr
Royal Amarr Institute
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:46:00 -
[16]
You can tell if your CPU or RAM are the limiting factors just by having a closer look at the task manager.
Also how many are multiple clients in your case?
In my experience a client takes 1 GB of RAM at most.
Windows w/o any additional applications should barely take more than 1 GB.
I agree with others that very likely the GFX card is the limiting factor in your case unless you run more than 4 clients at once.
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 13:53:00 -
[17]
Having MORE RAM (OMGLOLOL11) is a common misconception on how to improve performance.
If you use less than 70% of your RAM you have TOO MUCH. Ideally your RAM should be as full as possible when you have everything you want running.
This doesn't make sense to a lot of people so allow me to explain.
When you execute an application, everything that program immediately requires is loaded into RAM (including itself). The program is then executed from RAM. When the program needs to access more resources (a resource in this case is a texture or a 3D model or a word document etc) this is also loaded into RAM. When something executes from RAM it gets to the CPU *very fast* (approximately 20Gb/s on decent DDR3). So the idea is, you want your RAM to be as full as possible of all the resources you need.
So this is where the need for RAM capacity comes in. If the OS cannot find an addressable region of RAM large enough for the resource, it "pages" it to the HDD and is given a virtual address (enter Virtual Memory ;)). Generally, anything that hasn't been access for a while is paged first, but this is all dependant on the OS for the most part. Unofficially speaking, Windows tries to keep 10%-20% of your RAM free "just-in-case".
When a resource is paged to disk (and it must be the entire resource) it moves over so your program thinks it has more memory than is truly available. But when this resource needs to be accessed again, it needs to re-load this data from the disk, back into RAM (and page something else back to the disk). Although paging is slightly quicker than the initial load, it is still much much slower (a good modern HDD can transfer at about 120Mb/sec...compared to 20Gb/sec ;))
How does this relate to my original point? Well if you're using less than 70% of your RAM, Windows won't page anything to the disk and so you don't need to upgrade your memory capacity.
Bus speed and timings are a different matter completely, however ;)
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Jose Black
Amarr
Royal Amarr Institute
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Posted - 2011.05.18 14:02:00 -
[18]
Originally by: Ehrys Marakai
detailed explanation
You somewhat overdid it, don't you think.
Anyways you missed the part about caching and buffering disk access using RAM.
The claim that just adding tons of RAM doesn't necessarily change anything is right tho.
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 14:04:00 -
[19]
Originally by: Jose Black
Originally by: Ehrys Marakai
detailed explanation
You somewhat overdid it, don't you think.
Anyways you missed the part about caching and buffering disk access using RAM.
The claim that just adding tons of RAM doesn't necessarily change anything is right tho.
True, I thought I'd give a more focussed explanation without...uh...complicating...yeah ;)
Also I'm so incredibly bored and can't log in so it wasted a good 10 minutes =)
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Opertone
Caldari
World - of - Empire
Cassiopeia.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:14:00 -
[20]
SSD and fast 15000 rpm HDDs are used to boost performance in video games when everything else is covered.
People can also choose 'faster' ram with lower latency, bigger CPU L1 L2 L3 cache, better FSB speed.
But video card is very important - get the better ones. Latest generation, single processor card. Dual cards, sandwiched or crosslinked - ****ty idea, as nice as sitting on two hard chairs instead of one quality throne.
I prefer Ati... Nvidia, not so much...
Dude, noone mentioned it, but without dedicated PCI/PCIe sound card you will be overloading your system. I remember that when I added a creative X-fi to my system in Battlefield 2, my gaming performance improved dramatically.
Most important is to optimize windows for gaming - cut anything else. Optimize client, defragrment HHD, get rid of unnecessary stuff.
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Blacksquirrel
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:24:00 -
[21]
Neither its RAM.
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Concubinia Scarlett
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:29:00 -
[22]
No idea on the CPU / GPU front, but I can tell you for sure that when I'm running 3 clients on 3 monitors it stutters like mad.... unless I switch Windows 7 aero effects off and use the Windows 7 basic colour scheme, then it's sweet as a nut
I don't know why it affects it so much, but it does.
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:38:00 -
[23]
Originally by: Opertone
SSD and fast 15000 rpm HDDs are used to boost performance in video games when everything else is covered.
People can also choose 'faster' ram with lower latency, bigger CPU L1 L2 L3 cache, better FSB speed.
But video card is very important - get the better ones. Latest generation, single processor card. Dual cards, sandwiched or crosslinked - ****ty idea, as nice as sitting on two hard chairs instead of one quality throne.
I prefer Ati... Nvidia, not so much...
Dude, noone mentioned it, but without dedicated PCI/PCIe sound card you will be overloading your system. I remember that when I added a creative X-fi to my system in Battlefield 2, my gaming performance improved dramatically.
Most important is to optimize windows for gaming - cut anything else. Optimize client, defragrment HHD, get rid of unnecessary stuff.
Most of this is redundant with the power of computers as they are nowadays.
Sure, do all that if you're running a low end spec. machine, but a Q6600 and an 8800gts isn't "low spec" ;)
On board sound chips use the same bus that a PCI sound card would. There is no performance improvement to be gained from adding a sound card unless you have a particularly low end motherboard and a terrible on board sound chip. Getting a sound card will make it sound much better though ;)
(There used to be a problem with the old AC'97 onboard cards causing severe performance degradation and audio jitter. This was fixed years ago though.)
As my explanation above, a faster HDD will only improve loading times, not FPS, unless you're severely paging. At which point you should consider RAM over HDD.
Dual video cards do not work as you described. Graphics cards are highly parallel devices and are designed to spread the load over their large amount of cores. The graphics cards can calculate what load can be shared between two (or more) cards and distribute the workload accordingly. This is most commonly seen in things like Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic filtering. Straight rendering doesn't see much improvement but manufacturers are getting more intelligent with their algorithms.
I think what you are referring to is the drop in bus speed caused by sharing a 16x PCIe lane. Which is not a problem if you have 2*16x lanes ;)
It isn't a massive performance hit halfing the lane bandwidth, because in most circumstances the performance increase of the extra card outweighs the loss. However, you will never see 2x the improvement by having a second gfx card.
Secondly, cache size does not impact greatly on gaming performance. (Maybe an extra 5-10fps?) Games are massive number crunchers, they do not rely heavily on fetching constant data from RAM to the CPU, which is where cache comes in. Notice I highlighted constant. This is because if any of the data changes, it must be re-cached anyway. As most of the resource memory is allocated to your graphical assets, the cache doesn't play a huge part because;
1. The data is too big to fit in the cache,
2. The data is stored in VRAM on the card itself while it's being used.
Also, please see above posts for reasons why not to get an SSD to boost gaming performance ;)
Originally by: Concubinia Scarlett
No idea on the CPU / GPU front, but I can tell you for sure that when I'm running 3 clients on 3 monitors it stutters like mad.... unless I switch Windows 7 aero effects off and use the Windows 7 basic colour scheme, then it's sweet as a nut
I don't know why it affects it so much, but it does.
With the advent of Windows 7, the desktop now uses your graphical hardware to display (DirectX), rather than the old software renderer (GDI)
This means your graphics card has more context switching and possible anti-aliasing. Transparency effects between render contexts are rather GPU intensive.
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Blacksquirrel
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:47:00 -
[24]
People just open up a hardware monitor, and run a few things... You'll have your answer.
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Ehrys Marakai
Caldari
Evolution
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:48:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Blacksquirrel
People just open up a hardware monitor, and run a few things... You'll have your answer.
But then you'll take away my precious entertainment :'(
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Blacksquirrel
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Posted - 2011.05.18 15:59:00 -
[26]
You could then explain hardware monitoring...
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Teh Scout
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Posted - 2011.05.18 16:34:00 -
[27]
Originally by: Opertone
Dude, noone mentioned it, but without dedicated PCI/PCIe sound card you will be overloading your system. I remember that when I added a creative X-fi to my system in Battlefield 2, my gaming performance improved dramatically.
I hate to think what my system would sound like with sound enabled on 4 clients. Even when logged in with 1 account I have sound off.
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Mashie Saldana
Minmatar
Veto Corp
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Posted - 2011.05.18 17:20:00 -
[28]
The bottle neck for multiclient is one thing and one thing only, the effective amount of video memory.
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Jose Black
Amarr
Royal Amarr Institute
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Posted - 2011.05.18 19:19:00 -
[29]
Originally by: Mashie Saldana
The bottle neck for multiclient is one thing and one thing only, the effective amount of video memory.
Are you sure about that? At least running two clients at Full HD with just 512 MB doesn't raise any issues for me.
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Tonto Auri
Vhero' Multipurpose Corp
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Posted - 2011.05.18 19:31:00 -
[30]
Originally by: Ehrys Marakai
I push 250fps out of the client on highest settings
250 virtual FPS that noone can see... does it matter even for a second?
Put interval one, enable VSync, you will see better responsibility from all your clients.
--
Thanks CCP for cu |
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