S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Gameplay Perf and IQ @ [H]

FYI, that isn't irony. Also, if you truly believe your claim, why don't you take a SS from the same time of day as the first GTX 280 was taken? He has said the exact steps needed to replicate his SS twice now, and you have yet to match it.
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Because then his theory, which becomes weaker by the second, will be completely dead (as if it was alive at any point) and he wont be able to have more fun pretending he cant see what the rest of the world is able to see.
Post the pic as per my instructions...doesnt take any time at all or give it up....words are nothing...the proof is right here and you just keep trying to come up with some bogus non sense explanations.
Needless to say, the [H] was right on target on this one and you have been proven wrong even though you wont admit it in spite of everyone else telling you and the undeniable evidence. I mean, kllrnohj did a terrific job with those images and unless you are blind, have the worst monitor in the world, or just want to have fun pretending you cant see the difference, its just mind boggling that you continue to say they have the same detail!
So....post or give it up. :rolleyes:
 
DeadSkull said:
Hah, no one bothered to compare the rug on the ground and in both screenies they are of the same quality. Don't believe me, check for yourself. BTW how are the wells in the two screenies any different?
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the 280GTX looks more detailed to me then the 4870 shrug.

Maybe i am going blind, my Wife tells me I am all the time :/
 
I'm about to fire this up on my solo 8800GT and I predict it is just going to be depressing after seeing all of these amazing screens being upped.

In regards to the heated debate....

Cavry and Shaolin's screenshots have a "crispy" look to them with lots of fine, sharp details that are clearly visible. Dethred's screenshots just look dull/blurry in some major areas (well, trees, blanket, wood).

Those side by sides really say it all.
 
Hey all, I don't want to get into the picture quality argument going on here, but I did want to post some pictures which show that the game is running on both of my dual cores. I use RivaTuner 2.11 and have the GPU and CPU info displayed in the top left corner.



CPU0: 64%
CPU1: 64%



CPU0:60%
CPU1:45%

Now, i'm on an E6850 @ 3.2Ghz, which is just a dual core, not quad core. I"m on XP64 and when I start the game I alt-tab from the splash screen (menu) and set the xrEngine process priority to High with Task Manager. I also uncheck CPU0 affinity, hit ok, then re-check it. This seems to work and the game runs very smooth (hardly any jitters).

I read the Stalker:CS forums as well and this has been a topic of conversation. I've noted that many people who are on a Quad-Core have said they couldn't get this to work, or that like [H]'s review, the process stayed on CPU0. Then again most people with a quad-core also are running in DX10 mode with Vista, so two additional factors there that might cause the behavior.

Anyway, I thought some of you might find this useful, or if you wanna test it on your Quad, see if it works. Nobody at the Stalker:CS forums that i've seen uses RivaTuner, so maybe some of you guys here do.

btw, I have Sun on Medium, Sun Rays on High (both are quite beautiful shots).
 
g-money said:
Hey all, I don't want to get into the picture quality argument going on here, but I did want to post some pictures which show that the game is running on both of my dual cores. I use RivaTuner 2.11 and have the GPU and CPU info displayed in the top left corner.



CPU0: 64%
CPU1: 64%



CPU0:60%
CPU1:45%

Now, i'm on an E6850 @ 3.2Ghz, which is just a dual core, not quad core. I"m on XP64 and when I start the game I alt-tab from the splash screen (menu) and set the xrEngine process priority to High with Task Manager. I also uncheck CPU0 affinity, hit ok, then re-check it. This seems to work and the game runs very smooth (hardly any jitters).

I read the Stalker:CS forums as well and this has been a topic of conversation. I've noted that many people who are on a Quad-Core have said they couldn't get this to work, or that like [H]'s review, the process stayed on CPU0. Then again most people with a quad-core also are running in DX10 mode with Vista, so two additional factors there that might cause the behavior.

Anyway, I thought some of you might find this useful, or if you wanna test it on your Quad, see if it works. Nobody at the Stalker:CS forums that i've seen uses RivaTuner, so maybe some of you guys here do.

btw, I have Sun on Medium, Sun Rays on High (both are quite beautiful shots).
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That doesn't mean that the game is multithreaded, just that windows is jumping the single thread from one CPU to the other. A single thread can load one CPU core to 100%, or two cores to 50% each. Its still just one thread and its still doing the exact same amount of work. This "trick" will not make a single threaded game become multithreaded. It could, however, cause problems and issues. The game has to specifically set up the CPU affinity, and I am guessing that they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of doing that in the first place unless there was a reason.
 
kllrnohj said:
That doesn't mean that the game is multithreaded, just that windows is jumping the single thread from one CPU to the other. A single thread can load one CPU core to 100%, or two cores to 50% each. Its still just one thread and its still doing the exact same amount of work. This "trick" will not make a single threaded game become multithreaded. It could, however, cause problems and issues. The game has to specifically set up the CPU affinity, and I am guessing that they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of doing that in the first place unless there was a reason.
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well it does change the amount of cpu usage from just 50% for the game to over 60% so yes it actually is using more cpu power. I have never really understood all the dual/multi core cpu stuff when it comes to games. there are plenty of old games that do not have dual core support yet they will utilize both cores evenly and go well over 50% total cpu usage. at the same time some dual core games use the hell out of one core and barely even touch the second. :confused:
 
That doesn't mean that the game is multithreaded, just that windows is jumping the single thread from one CPU to the other. A single thread can load one CPU core to 100%, or two cores to 50% each. Its still just one thread and its still doing the exact same amount of work. This "trick" will not make a single threaded game become multithreaded. It could, however, cause problems and issues. The game has to specifically set up the CPU affinity, and I am guessing that they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of doing that in the first place unless there was a reason.
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You clearly misread the article and my post, I never said anything about being multi-threaded. Certainly you cannot "trick" a piece of software into being multi-threaded. However, making use of multiple cores to load balance a thread, or multiple threads for an application is very possible. This is exactly what the game claims and the article states:

Multi-Core CPU Optimization

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky readme file says this:

Dual Core and Performance

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky should utilize your dual and quad core processor natively and automatically. Running a dual or quad core processor is one of the best ways to improve performance.
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Like I said, this worked for me and i just wanted to share. The percentages add up to over 100% so the game is using multiple cores and benefiting from it.

Just for the sake of argument, even before I did the affinity "trick", both cores were being utilized but it was more like 70/30,80/20. I think that setting the process priority to "high" is probably what is allowing for the OS to better balance the cpu usage across cores.
 
cannondale06 said:
well it does change the amount of cpu usage from just 50% for the game to over 60% so yes it actually is using more cpu power. I have never really understood all the dual/multi core cpu stuff when it comes to games. there are plenty of old games that do not have dual core support yet they will utilize both cores evenly and go well over 50% total cpu usage. at the same time some dual core games use the hell out of one core and barely even touch the second. :confused:
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No, they aren't exceeding 50% total CPU usage on a dual core, there are just other processes using the CPU also. Right now my computer is basically idle and CPU usage is bouncing between 5% and 20% (hell, the task manager itself is using 3-4%)

Utilizing both cores "evenly" isn't more efficient in any way - it is exactly the same as just using one core. The OS is simply bouncing the thread/process from one core to the other as per its default scheduling rules - nothing more.

g-money said:
You clearly misread the article and my post, I never said anything about being multi-threaded. Certainly you cannot "trick" a piece of software into being multi-threaded. However, making use of multiple cores to load balance a thread, or multiple threads for an application is very possible. This is exactly what the game claims and the article states:
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Sure, its possible, but there is ZERO GAIN. There is absolutely NO REASON to want to split the thread's execution over multiple cores. Heck, in some games that causes problems. For some CPU architectures (like I believe the Phenom) which can set the clock of each core individually, that would result in higher power usage from the chip (as it can't just downclock 3 of the 4 cores, since all 4 are now being used)

Just for the sake of argument, even before I did the affinity "trick", both cores were being utilized but it was more like 70/30,80/20. I think that setting the process priority to "high" is probably what is allowing for the OS to better balance the cpu usage across cores.
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Setting the priority to "high" just means that the thread/process is allowed to run for a little bit longer. That will only matter if you have background processes that are sucking away its CPU, and really only then if you are at complete 100% utilization on both cores.
 
No, they aren't exceeding 50% total CPU usage on a dual core, there are just other processes using the CPU also. Right now my computer is basically idle and CPU usage is bouncing between 5% and 20% (hell, the task manager itself is using 3-4%)

Utilizing both cores "evenly" isn't more efficient in any way - it is exactly the same as just using one core. The OS is simply bouncing the thread/process from one core to the other as per its default scheduling rules - nothing more.

Sure, its possible, but there is ZERO GAIN. There is absolutely NO REASON to want to split the thread's execution over multiple cores. Heck, in some games that causes problems. For some CPU architectures (like I believe the Phenom) which can set the clock of each core individually, that would result in higher power usage from the chip (as it can't just downclock 3 of the 4 cores, since all 4 are now being used)
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While the scenario you present may be true sometimes, it certainly is not so in the case I presented. My CPU does not bounce between 5% and 20%. If its using anything at idle its 2-3% and only if Diskeeper is utilizing the idle CPU. I don't have other processes doing anything else. Therefore when the CPU is utilizing as high as 65% on both cores, even if you would attribute 10% of that just to other processes and the OS, STALKER:CS would still be using 110%. Therefore is is a gain. It runs smoother, you can feel it.

Setting the priority to "high" just means that the thread/process is allowed to run for a little bit longer. That will only matter if you have background processes that are sucking away its CPU, and really only then if you are at complete 100% utilization on both cores.
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Run a bit longer? no, its a priority system meaning that the process has access to the resources it needs before other process can get to them. It means that the process will get its requests processed almost immediately while others need to wait. If you'd run a process in "realtime" priority, then it is immediate and everything else will lag (try running some music in the background, it will skip). If your process is using 100% that simply means that no other process will be able to run until yours drops (which it does, due to fluctuation).

I'm not saying you're wrong on all this stuff, you're just not right. :p

And after further research I admit, it is not actually the "high" priority that distributes the load, it is the CPU affinity untick/tick trick (which you shouldn't have to do by all rights.).
 
g-money said:
While the scenario you present may be true sometimes, it certainly is not so in the case I presented. My CPU does not bounce between 5% and 20%. If its using anything at idle its 2-3% and only if Diskeeper is utilizing the idle CPU. I don't have other processes doing anything else. Therefore when the CPU is utilizing as high as 65% on both cores, even if you would attribute 10% of that just to other processes and the OS, STALKER:CS would still be using 110%. Therefore is is a gain. It runs smoother, you can feel it.
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It is well within the margin of error. So rather than make claims based on iffy CPU usage, why don't you do a run through with Fraps so we can get some hard numbers?

Run a bit longer? no, its a priority system meaning that the process has access to the resources it needs before other process can get to them. It means that the process will get its requests processed almost immediately while others need to wait. If you'd run a process in "realtime" priority, then it is immediate and everything else will lag (try running some music in the background, it will skip). If your process is using 100% that simply means that no other process will be able to run until yours drops (which it does, due to fluctuation).
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No. Priority has nothing to do with time to access hardware, nor does it have anything to do with hardware requests (which are handled at the driver level anyway, outside of the process and its priority). What it does is when the scheduler decides to swap processes, a process that is flagged high priority will be selected to be next more often. If it is the only active process, then setting it to high isn't going to do shit since its always going to be the next process the scheduler picks anyway, since it is the only one active.

In fact, hardware I/O almost always results in a SUSPENSION of the process that made the I/O call, since I/O calls are very slow and the CPU could be doing other things than twiddling its thumbs waiting for an I/O call

The reason music skips is because it isn't getting enough CPU time to decode the audio to fill the buffer (a good scheduler would actually allow for the smooth playback of audio anyway, since audio playback spends much of its time waiting for an empty audio buffer to fill)

Even if you have a process that is 100% and set to realtime, it still doesn't run exclusively (you can, after all, still move the mouse ;) ).

Here, let me break it down.

Lets say you have two process. Process A and B. Both use 100% CPU on their own. If both are set to the same priority level, then they will get 50% CPU time. It doesn't matter if both are flagged normal, low, high, or realtime - if they are equal in priority they get the same amount of CPU time. If, however, A is high and B is normal, then A will get, say, twice as much CPU time as B. If A is realtime and B is normal, then it could be four times as much CPU time. (I don't know exactly by how much the windows scheduler decides to divide up the CPU time, but you get the idea)

The exception would be when things are flagged at less than normal, in which case the scheduler will ignore them if something else is using the CPU. For example, process A is normal, process B is low - A will get 100% of the CPU time and B will get 0%

These slices of CPU time are very very short (10-15ms). Also, the priority you specify in the task manager is just one of the 32 possible priorities in the NT kernel, and the scheduler can override that priority anyway if it thinks it should.

I'm not saying you're wrong on all this stuff, you're just not right. :p
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I am right :p

Here, give it a read: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc162494.aspx

And after further research I admit, it is not actually the "high" priority that distributes the load, it is the CPU affinity untick/tick trick (which you shouldn't have to do by all rights.).
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Again, the affinity had to be set by the process. Windows defaults to no CPU affinity, so the developers are specifically setting it, which makes me wonder why.
 
No luck so far

Did not work.
Going back to 178.15 drivers from newest and try
 
OK I got it

Tunebite was listed in sound device properties on Playback and Recording
It was listed 9 times in each.
Uninstalled Tunebite and it went into the fricking game..

Thanks RainChaser
 
No love for me for CS 1.5.05 on my new build, Vista 64. Running Crossfired 4870's with Asus Top bios, 8.10 official on a pretty fresh build. I crash very quickly, display driver temporarily not working, CTD's, even got a memory dump once. The Stalker series has great gameplay, but the engines are buggier than hell. Any ideas?

Edit: Crossfire. The game apparently doesn't like it, at least on my system. Took 1 4870 out, and all is well. Somewhat disappointing, but hey, at least I can play now-- hopefully! ;)
 
Manged to run through the entire game with latest patch 1.5.05, on a 8800gt 1920*1200 on the enhanced full dynamic lighting, fps was reasonably good except in the clear sky camp and end game area. Bugs with some quests had me reloading now and then, shooting friendly NPC wasn't a good idea on one certain quest. Overall not a bad game, looks pretty but enemies seem way to tough, they died far easier in initial stalker game. Nice review guys, i definitely need a faster GPU to go with my 8500@ 3.8ghz.
 
I bought this game and can't stand it.

The interface is slow and sluggish. The game play feels like one is driving a Yugo.

The plastic case is worth more than the code on the disc.
 
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