Supreme Commander performance nowadays

K

Korialstrasza

Gawd
Joined
Jan 21, 2004
Messages
561
My game is slowing down with 5 bots and myself set to 750 max units on 10x10 km maps
The FPS is great, so I can tell it's the cpu or something other than the graphics card.

I have graphics settings on medium with 2x AA.

My Vista x64 is on a 150gb raptor and my game is installed on a seagate 500gb sata2 drive. Could either of those be slowing it down?

I installed the core maximizer and core 0 gets 100% while the others get about 25%.

Is it simply still the CPU? I wish the game would max all cores of my cpu, not just the first core.
 
It is likely your CPU. You can try a lower max units such as 250 and see how that goes. I would think the game would utilize all four cores, however. On my C2D both cores max out, IIRC.

Also, is this slow down like slow motion or choppy game play? Slow motion is due to a CPU bottleneck.
 
The AI in SupCom is drastically flawed by default and creates huge slow downs in long games due to some serious error in coding.

IT IS NOT YOUR CPU!

Go get the latest Sorien AI (1.9.9b at time of writing) and witness how your games can magically run literally 10 times faster during multi hour sessions.

http://code.google.com/p/sorian-ai-mod/


Get the main AI:
http://sorian-ai-mod.googlecode.com/files/sorian_ai_pack_1.9.9b.zip

And the AI cheat options which lets you modify cheat multipliers etc in the lobby:
http://sorian-ai-mod.googlecode.com/files/cheatoptions0.9.zip


I'm not a programmer so I couldn't tell you precisely what's going on, but from what I can gather, the AI just gets stuck hundreds on infinite logic loops or something and the game grinds down massively. I've had games where we've beaten back the AI to just a few units and it's still going at a snail's pace, then we finally finish off the last mass extractor or whatever and suddenly the game kicks into full speed.

People have been lead into a false belief that supcom can't be handled by modern hardware, and it's not true at all. A Q6600 can easily deal with it. A fast dualcore will run it pretty damn well in all but extreme cases.
 
isnt the point of having a raptor is to install your games on it for faster load times??
 
I still play this quite a bit, as long as the I stay under 4 AIs and 500 unit caps, it runs great.
6 AIs or more, and it still start to slow down.

Sorian AI FTW
 
spine said:
The AI in SupCom is drastically flawed by default and creates huge slow downs in long games due to some serious error in coding.

IT IS NOT YOUR CPU!

Go get the latest Sorien AI (1.9.9b at time of writing) and witness how your games can magically run literally 10 times faster during multi hour sessions.

http://code.google.com/p/sorian-ai-mod/


Get the main AI:
http://sorian-ai-mod.googlecode.com/files/sorian_ai_pack_1.9.9b.zip

And the AI cheat options which lets you modify cheat multipliers etc in the lobby:
http://sorian-ai-mod.googlecode.com/files/cheatoptions0.9.zip


I'm not a programmer so I couldn't tell you precisely what's going on, but from what I can gather, the AI just gets stuck hundreds on infinite logic loops or something and the game grinds down massively. I've had games where we've beaten back the AI to just a few units and it's still going at a snail's pace, then we finally finish off the last mass extractor or whatever and suddenly the game kicks into full speed.

People have been lead into a false belief that supcom can't be handled by modern hardware, and it's not true at all. A Q6600 can easily deal with it. A fast dualcore will run it pretty damn well in all but extreme cases.
Click to expand...

I seem to be wrong then. I always thought it was the CPU's fault since both my cores get maxed out. Here is a thread with a discussion about sim speed: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=25042
 
dj_2004 said:
I seem to be wrong then. I always thought it was the CPU's fault since both my cores get maxed out. Here is a thread with a discussion about sim speed: http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?t=25042
Click to expand...

Interesting thread. But you can see what I mean by people in it commenting about the sim speed just dropping over time not matter what your hardware.

The SorianAI helps alot, but it doesn't it completely unfortunately.

With my Q6700 @ 3.6 it'll use roughly 30-40% of each core reasonably evenly compared to the others. Never maxes out. This is with core maximiser running.
 
spine said:
Interesting thread. But you can see what I mean by people in it commenting about the sim speed just dropping over time not matter what your hardware.

The SorianAI helps alot, but it doesn't it completely unfortunately.

With my Q6700 @ 3.6 it'll use roughly 30-40% of each core reasonably evenly compared to the others. Never maxes out. This is with core maximiser running.
Click to expand...

My E6400 at 3Ghz can't even do three bots + me at a 250 unit cap without going very slow (at least -5 speed) mid-way through. Yes, this is with Sorian's AI and core maximizer. Too bad as I really like playing the game and don't like playing RTS games online.
 
^^I've run 5 bots with 500 unit cap, sorian + core maximizer on a system virtually identical to yours and it doesn't get worse than -1 or 2. better cpu (e6600 @ 3.2) but half the ram and video memory. could be the extra cache in the proc making such a difference but I doubt it, or maybe just the buggy engine.

agree about core maximzier, this is key. the bigger your games get the more benefit you will see from using this, gpg's default thread affinity sucks. if you run it without this the game will just pin your first core and increase lag the more units get built. op's q6600 should be able to handle 5 bots @ 750 no prob, either you're not running coremax or something else eating up cpu time.

this is probably why mp is such a headache, all kinds of people either using the mod or not. and since it's not a managed mod you can't tell who is and who isn't, making desyncs all the time. gpg should have just bought this guy's code and put it in the damn game already.
 
mas said:
^^I've run 5 bots with 500 unit cap, sorian + core maximizer on a system virtually identical to yours and it doesn't get worse than -1 or 2. better cpu (e6600 @ 3.2) but half the ram and video memory. could be the extra cache in the proc making such a difference but I doubt it, or maybe just the buggy engine.
Click to expand...

I should note that my skirmishes usually go for at least one hour. I like to turtle. :) How long are you playing for on your skirmishes?
 
i can run 3 AI's on AIx: adaptive in supreme commander: FA.. well.. i can until my game locks up when it hits 1.3gigs of ram usage.. i still cant figure out why its doing it.. game runs butter smooth up until i hit that barrier.. no matter what i do i cant get it to exceed 1.3gigs.. im using the most recent update as well..

im going to give that sorian AI thing a try though..
 
The problem is that you only have 2gigs ram and combined with system usage you are clearly running out.

One thing that can be done if you have 4gigs plus is use the 3GB+ enabler by the same guy that done the core maximiser that will allow the program to exceed the standard 2gigs memory limit window uses.
 
I tried sorian in a bunch of different scenarios and ai teams. I did 3vs3 with mixed intelligence settings and long games too.

yeah monkey your problem is you have to enable the 3gb+ userva settings at boot time. you don't have to have 4gb+ ram in your system, this setting has nothing to do with physical ram. it handles system+virtual memory pool for windows, to the os it's a total not limited by your physical memory.

for the original supcom, 2 things have to be edited in order for you not to crash in large games:

boot.ini in root of os drive needs options added /3GB /userva=2900
so ie. your boot.ini should look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=optin /3GB /Userva=2900

and you have to run a self contained hex editor also made by madboris iirc, in order to change a header in the main game executable to address more than 2gb of memory. do a search in the forums for "3gb_enabler2.zip".

vista/win7 should not have this problem in boot.ini afaik, so you can skip the first part if you have those, and iirc in the expansion they fixed their own exe. but supcom was written for xp originally so it's pretty damn ridiculous gpg made a game that uses more ram than it could handle by it's own executable and the os.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
i can run 3 AI's on AIx: adaptive in supreme commander: FA.. well.. i can until my game locks up when it hits 1.3gigs of ram usage.. i still cant figure out why its doing it.. game runs butter smooth up until i hit that barrier.. no matter what i do i cant get it to exceed 1.3gigs.. im using the most recent update as well..

im going to give that sorian AI thing a try though..
Click to expand...

As noted, the /3GB switch will help. Forged Alliance is large memory address aware and will use up to 3GB with this switch (tested it myself).

But you need to be sure you have enough virtual memory. Make sure your pagefile is large enough to allow for all the address space you'll need.


What me and my mates have found what makes the biggest difference in game speed is your ISPs and your connection to each other on that particular day.
 
For more info about the /3GB switch, see Mark Russinovich's article about virtual memory:

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

He also goes into detail about the subject "How big should I make the paging file?", a subject which has an awful tendency to result in name-calling and flame wars by those who don't understand it, which is just about everybody. (Hint: multiplying the physical RAM size by 1.5 is a useless formula.)
 
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