SupCom & Intel Core 2 Quad Gameplay Advantages

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SupCom & Intel Core 2 Quad Gameplay Advantages - Supreme Commander is one of the first games to feature out-of-the-box multi-core processor support. Will a quad-core CPU really show better gameplay? Real world gameplay results plus Vista versus XP performance findings with SupCom.


Supreme Commander is the first game we have experienced that very much exposes the power of Intel’s new Core 2 Quad line of processors. If you are thinking of playing Supreme Commander the more processor cores your computer has the better. Enthusiasts have been searching for a game to truly show of the power of multi-core gaming and that game is finally here.
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This is really making me question my next CPU purchase -- might just have to purchase a quad-core processor after all.

...and here I thought it would still be another year or so before quad core would be needed.
 
I think Real Time Strategy games are perfect genre to exploit multi-core, but I don't think advantages are going to be as easily seen in other genres beyond the implementation of complex physics engines. Still, devs will find a way to exploit that horsepower and do cool stuff. :cool:
 
Amazing review.
Now if you could only do the same test when AMD's quad core comes out and compare them to the Intel review.
 
I'm sure they will since this is one of the first games of this with this feature.
 
GuruX said:
...and here I thought it would still be another year or so before quad core would be needed.
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it's only "needed" if you "need" to play this particular game (and maybe some of those others) at the high settings)
 
Very fun game, and nice review. After looking at those numbers I had to go into the game and check what kind of FPS I was getting since I play at 1600x1200 with a second monitor and all settings except shadows at high( I am running a C2D @ 3.15ghz although only a 7900gt vid card) Lo and behold at was sitting at 20FPS without a whole lot on the screen(according to the in game command -- Alt-F11 ) I guess I just have never noticed:D

I don't think the graphics or FPS are the main concern of this game so much as the "slowdown" experienced particularly late game with weaker computers. By slowdown I am referring to the fact that if your rig isn't up to par you can spend 2 hours playing a 1 hour game-time game. I don't really experience this much on this rig despite the low FPS although on my other computer the game would become outright unplayable.

If you still have the save points from where the tests were taken it would be awesome to see how real-time compared with game-time (the clock located in game...) in quad core vs. dual core vs. single core. I think this will probably be much more of a game play limiting experience than FPS for most people.
 
Very cool. Now if the next UT would come out and scale as well / better, I'll be very happy.
 
I built my new PC with SupCom in mind, QX6700 and 8800GTX. I'm running on Vista Ultimate x64 and I'm completely happy with the performance, running dual screens at 1680x1050 with all settings maxed out.

As for the crashing you experienced, I saw that too, but only when the SupCom exe would try to use more than 1.5GB of RAM. Apparently it is not able to address memory space above 2GB, and crashes when it tries to. This thread on the GPG Forums shows a simple way to mod the exe so that it can address memory higher than 2GB.

I've used it on my system and have had zero crashes since. It also doesn't interfere with Multiplayer play, since they aren't doing any sort of CRC check on the exe at connection.

Now I just need to get more than 2GB of RAM, since with this mod in place I've seen SupCom use as much as 2.9GB of RAM, which means it's paging like crazy, though it's only noticable when I zoom in and out rapily from one place on the map to another.
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
Also what about the secondary monitor aspect? Any future plans on testing in depth?
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Im interested too, what sort of performance impact does the secondary monitor have? What sort of settings can you have the game set to when running at 2x 1280x1024(standard ratio for those with dual monitors) etc with the new cards.
 
Nice start of a review but it just opened a whole can of worm in my head. The game got a boost in performance with extra cores but what about extra clock? I know the article was about if extra cores will bring more to our gaming experience but this particular game max out only a single core while the other were partially loaded. I'm guessing a higher clocked dual core will beat a quad core. As for Vista vs XP, it appeared that Vista was loading the cores more efficiently but I think that the higher CPU usage has more to do with Vista over head. Maybe next time 3 core could be tested as well.
Nice to see this style of review though ;)
 
odd choices of settings. my 3800+ with a single 8800 GTS is getting similar settings as the xp single core test at 1600x1200. also i've found setting priority to above normal helps IMMENSLY.
 
HyperBlade said:
Im interested too, what sort of performance impact does the secondary monitor have? What sort of settings can you have the game set to when running at 2x 1280x1024(standard ratio for those with dual monitors) etc with the new cards.
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dual monitor mostly rapes your video card, and rapes it good. i've got a friend who ahs it setup and he jsut uses the second for a GIANT minimap as he can't use it for much else without getting 2 frames a second.
 
i think that was one of the best articles i've read here! great stuff. i can't wait to see stalker and allan wake (when it releases) tested like this and every other multi-threaded game for that matter.

i just started playing stalker, seems to run quite well on my system but i'm still using a 17" CRT @1024x768 so i can't really push it.

i can, however, say that my friend with a P4 @ 2.8Ghz and a 7800 GS AGP is having a tough time playing it even on lower settings. sure, its a far cry from my rig but its the difference of smooth as butter at full detail levels and barely running at low.
 
Recently STALKER has arrived and it claims the same support. I wonder how it would manage on these tests?

I must say these benchmarks are scary.. The game is far better with more cores... I might have to change what I get also...
 
Well I now know why my comp gets spanked...... sigh
<pulls up newegg and looks for X2's>
 
This is a very exciting article. We all know that Vista isn't nearly the performance OS as XP is, but when you look at these Apples-to-Apples numbers shown here, it is so transparent which OS you should be using. Well, at least for today and the near future.

The utilization of the cores was more efficient under Vista, and it STILL couldn't perform. Makes one wonder if it is a driver issue or not. Looking at the memory numbers in those shots, it really points to the fact that Vista is SO much "bigger" (bloated?) than XP and the overhead just for the OS is much, much higher.
 
Very nice review. I play on my rig at low/medium settings, which is fine for 1v1 but my friends and I all suffered during a LAN party where only one person had a dual-core. In the end I am just happy to see a game like this make full use of multiple cores, though it will be a bit before I get one. :rolleyes:
 
Now if you will excuse me, while I laugh my ass off at the people who still say there's no need to waste money on more than one core. :p :D

As usual, excellent review! I think that we may still be a little early in Vista's lifespan for something like this, given how badly NVIDIA's drivers are, but still a great indication of the future nontheless.

On a side note, you guys didn't try anything with dual X1950XTs, did you? It is a well-known fact that ATI's Vista drivers are a million times better than NVIDIA's, and I'm wondering if the performance issues under Vista that you experienced were due to NVIDIA's sucky drivers, and not a fault of the operating system. I'm wondering if the same performance delta exists on the red side as well...
 
Excellent review. Dugg! The review answers almost all my wonders about how multi core the game really was. Especially the task manager bit!

A note about the task manager bit. According to ExtremeTech "Supreme Commander uses two main threads, one for the "simulation" and one for rendering. If a quad-core CPU or equivalent is detected, it will also spawn threads for audio and graphics driver management."

I myself was hoping it would split multi-cpu enemies (the "Simulation thread") across the cores, i guess we are not quite there yet in RTS games.




If anyone is interested in running their own canned benchmark, you can complete the following steps.

Change the shortcut to add /perf
"C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander\bin\SupremeCommander.exe" /perf

then it'll run through a 4 cpu scrim.

then when its complete check your /bin folder in the SC dir.
 
InorganicMatter said:
As usual, excellent review! I think that we may still be a little early in Vista's lifespan for something like this, given how badly NVIDIA's drivers are, but still a great indication of the future nontheless.

.
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Good point. When Nvidia's graphic drivers get better we may see Vista equal or surpass the numbers in XP.
 
Thank You!!

I have been waiting for solid performance numbers within SupCom to help answer the debate of Quad vs Dual for some time.

As thorough as your benching was, I would make one recommendation.
Most SupCom players such as myself only play multiplayer, and we are the community seeking these benchmarks more then anyone. However, in multiplayer games, there is no 'Computer Player AI' being crunched on other cores.

I state this due to the explanation of how SupCom supports multiple cores; it is not due to it being 100&#37; fully mutlithreaded, but that it uses multiple sub engines, each of which which can be moved onto any core as a whole:

SupCom Talk Website said:
While SupCom is written to take advantage of two cores, it just does not scale well beyond that. The reason for this is that the vast majority of processing in SupCom is separated into just 2 threads - one for rendering, and one for physics, AI, and the like. There are additional threads, such as one for sound, but these require only a tiny fraction of any one core&#8217;s processing power. Basically, this means that the first 2 cores in any given setup will be fully or nearly fully utilized, but any additional cores will be mostly unused.
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I would like to have seen some benchmarks of a multiplayer game where 'Computer Player AI' is never being added into the equation. Not many people are playing 6 player games with the AI; the AI is not very good in SupCom, and all but new players to the game could beat all of them single handedly.

This might make the Quad vs Dual core difference even more negligible for us in the SupCom multiplayer community.

Thanks again,
 
JethroXP said:
I built my new PC with SupCom in mind, QX6700 and 8800GTX. I'm running on Vista Ultimate x64 and I'm completely happy with the performance, running dual screens at 1680x1050 with all settings maxed out.

As for the crashing you experienced, I saw that too, but only when the SupCom exe would try to use more than 1.5GB of RAM. Apparently it is not able to address memory space above 2GB, and crashes when it tries to. This thread on the GPG Forums shows a simple way to mod the exe so that it can address memory higher than 2GB.

I've used it on my system and have had zero crashes since. It also doesn't interfere with Multiplayer play, since they aren't doing any sort of CRC check on the exe at connection.

Now I just need to get more than 2GB of RAM, since with this mod in place I've seen SupCom use as much as 2.9GB of RAM, which means it's paging like crazy, though it's only noticable when I zoom in and out rapily from one place on the map to another.
Click to expand...

WOW ,awesome, I've been wondering why obscenely long games crash!
 
Terrific article! One thing that made me go "Huh?"--I noticed that at 1600x1200 with quad cores under XP you had TR MSAA enabled. At 2560x1600, you were using TR SSAA. How were you able to run a higher-quality transparency AA at a higher resolution? That's weird! Wonder if something in the latest drivers favors widescreen?
 
Wow. That article looked like it took a very long time to write. There was lots of testing going on
there. You guys did great! I am glad that my new Quad Core rig will be finished in April. I can't
wait to ditch my crappy AMD 64 3500+ 6800 GT AGP rig.
 
whrswoldo said:
If you still have the save points from where the tests were taken it would be awesome to see how real-time compared with game-time (the clock located in game...) in quad core vs. dual core vs. single core. I think this will probably be much more of a game play limiting experience than FPS for most people.
Click to expand...

Given the fact that in SupCom multiplayer you are limited in game engine performance due to slower computers on the P2P network, testing with slower computers would sort of be like attaching a 6000 pound trailer to your 1/4 mile car. I do understand your concern, but hobbling a higher end system with outside factors would not be a responsible way to evaluate IMO.
 
InorganicMatter said:
Now if you will excuse me, while I laugh my ass off at the people who still say there's no need to waste money on more than one core. :p :D
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Well, don't laugh too hard. The money these people saved by not prematurely paying a premium for dual-core can soon be used to buy a mainstream quad-core system.

Great article.
 
n3g471v3 d3c1b3l said:
You hit the nail right on the head, Kyle.

Did you test/notice any performance difference between 1 human vs, 1 computer or 1 human vs. 7 computers???... (with a thousand units each of course...)

Also what about the secondary monitor aspect? Any future plans on testing in depth?
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Yes, single player against more forces is more intensive. We spent a lot of time building up units as well so it would stress our system, but we have talked to other SupCom players that have seen much greater armies amassed.

I have a buddy (Duck here on the forums) that I gave my SupCom beta account to so he has been playing for a good while and he was using a very solid 8800 GTX SLI system with a 4800+ dual core AMD processor. I had the AMD 4x4 system sitting in my living room collecting dust and after a few beers I helped him load it in his truck so that he could take it home and play some SupCom. So that is 4 cores at 3GHz. He used a single 7900 GTX that was in the system and explained that the performance different was like night and day. The 4 core 7900 system smoked the dual core 8800 SLI system. So we had some very solid validation of our findings outside of our own experiences.

On the secondary monitor aspect, yes, I think it would be fun to go back and test this, but I think we will let NVIDIA get some solid Vista drivers out first.
 
ecktt said:
Nice start of a review but it just opened a whole can of worm in my head. The game got a boost in performance with extra cores but what about extra clock? I know the article was about if extra cores will bring more to our gaming experience but this particular game max out only a single core while the other were partially loaded. I'm guessing a higher clocked dual core will beat a quad core. As for Vista vs XP, it appeared that Vista was loading the cores more efficiently but I think that the higher CPU usage has more to do with Vista over head. Maybe next time 3 core could be tested as well.
Nice to see this style of review though ;)
Click to expand...

Rome was not built in a day. ;)

I am positive that extra CPU clock cycles will give better performance given this is a CPU limited game. While we did not test, I think there would have to be a fairly significant clock Delta between a dual and quad core processor before we might see the dual overtake the quad. Just a guess on my part. 3 cores was not tested since it would not represent a real product. And again it comes down to us having to limit ourselves in scope otherwise we would never get done testing and writing. This article took 2.5X as many days to complete as was scheduled originally.
 
Mazgazine1 said:
Recently STALKER has arrived and it claims the same support. I wonder how it would manage on these tests?

I must say these benchmarks are scary.. The game is far better with more cores... I might have to change what I get also...
Click to expand...

STALKER doesn't need Quad Core support though. It runs awesome on my machine. I can't see what Quad Core could possibly do for me in that game.
 
Mark Warner said:
I am glad that a new high-end game doesn’t require that I spend obscene amounts of money on my video card or SLI rig, but I am disappointed that the game is so ferociously hungry for CPU horsepower and doesn’t seem to be as interested in GPU power.
Click to expand...

Why disappointed? Rather, shouldn't we all celebrate a game that might stress the CPU with more calculations of ballistics or AI instead of stressing the GPU with graphics embellishments that add no gameplay value? When Doom III: Dark Simulator came out, much was made of the statement that no video card existed that could handle the game at max quality. Something similar seems to be happening with SupCom, but with CPU power instead, and I love it.

Other than that, good article. Clearly the guys who wrote this game were looking to the future, and I hope that other developers see the benefits of dual- or quad-core and code accordingly. Imagine the AI Oblivion could have if it was developed today, with multicore systems in mind.
 
Torsten said:
That's why you benchmark the replay.

Every game in SupCom is recorded for playback, and GPG even includes the 'replay vault' where you can watch some of the best players duke it out. Recent 6-way FFA's between the top 20 ranked players have had hundreds of downloads each and have become quite popular to watch.

GPG even includes one such multiplayer replay within the retail game - with a built in performance test! You must run the executable with the extension /map perftest, and this will benchmark your system and spit out an overall score similar to 3D mark. This single-number result is not nearly as thorough as the results you produce however - and I would love to see that.

Again, I'm very appreciative of the existing benchmarks you've produced thus far.
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Yes, again, may buddy Brian ran some tests using the SupCom Replay feature and in 8 player replay scenarios the quad core CRUSHED the dual core system even though the dual core system was 7900 Vs. 8800 in the dual core box. Again, this was not testing done here, just more experiences from someone I very much trust. His SupCom Replay experience was simply tremendously better on the quad core than the dual core. There were also clock differences in the systems compared as well so this is not apples to apples I am referring to here.

As we have been doing for a while now we wanted to focus on real world gameplay without "canned" benchmarks, but yes we did look at it and those canned replays did support our conclusions shown in the article.
 
AbsintheCommando said:
Why disappointed? Rather, shouldn't we all celebrate a game that might stress the CPU with more calculations of ballistics or AI instead of stressing the GPU with graphics embellishments that add no gameplay value? When Doom III: Dark Simulator came out, much was made of the statement that no video card existed that could handle the game at max quality. Something similar seems to be happening with SupCom, but with CPU power instead, and I love it.

Other than that, good article. Clearly the guys who wrote this game were looking to the future, and I hope that other developers see the benefits of dual- or quad-core and code accordingly. Imagine the AI Oblivion could have if it was developed today, with multicore systems in mind.
Click to expand...

I have to fully agree with you here, but I need to let our authors have their own opinions. That said, we did share more than one viewpoint.

Cheers to the SupCom developers for utilizing the hardware available to them! I have yet to hear from an RTS gaming fan that did not have high praise for SupCom. So apparently they are doing something right. :)
 
theoretically speaking, does replaying a saved game take cpu calculations for AI out of the equation?
 
warmace said:
theoretically speaking, does replaying a saved game take cpu calculations for AI out of the equation?
Click to expand...

In my opinion I would think so, but only a game dev could truely answer that, and I do not personally recall it ever being asked before.
 
Incidentally, you might want to test with an ATi card despite the lack of a rival to the 8800. There's some visual issues with Nvidia cards at the moment (like Aeon shields not properly rendering at a distance) as well as some peculiar performance issues with the 8800's
 
warmace said:
theoretically speaking, does replaying a saved game take cpu calculations for AI out of the equation?
Click to expand...


Yes, I think so as well. Given that and our replay results it still shows just how CPU bound this game is.
 
"Now if you will excuse me, while I laugh my ass off at the people who still say there's no need to waste money on more than one core. "

I used to think the same about 'clock multipliers' when the 486DX2-66 came out, but i saw the error of my ways.

Didn't anybody notice the memory usage difference between Vista an XP? I suspect Vista needs 4gig to be efficient.
 
weebling1 said:
Didn't anybody notice the memory usage difference between Vista an XP? I suspect Vista needs 4gig to be efficient.
Click to expand...

I have Vista, and I have 3 GB installed. I've seen it climb REALLY close (~1911 MB) to using 2 GB of memory, even playing games like Oblivion, R6 Vegas, and STALKER. But I've never seen it use more up to or over 2048 MB.
 
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