NWN2 and Dual Cores

[Pope]

I've heard performance complaints from every dual core owner I know.

 

What seems to be the problem Obsidian?

 

Have you programmed the game to take advantage of dual core CPU's? If not, it'll only run on one core, which would understandably be a lot slower. I really hope this gets fixed, as I would like to enjoy your seemingly enjoyable game to its fullest.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Most games cant use two processors or multi-core processors, and I doubt it could be "fixed" with a simple patch

[Pope]

So there's no use in buying a dual core processor then?

 

 

And considering all new pc's come with DC CPU's, that would mean no NWN2 for me.

Edited November 5, 2006 by Pope

[Kaftan Barlast]

Multi-core CPU's are primarily for multitasking programs and pure "crunch" power like when rendering or compiling. Thats the reason why AMD's gaming line FX used only one core while the X2 CPU used two

 

 

I wouldnt keep from switching to C2D though, it should still work to play on. And the CPU is always secondary to the GFX when it comes to gaming anyway.

[Plano Skywalker]

so there really should be no "downside" to gaming on a Dual Core system?

[Loof]

No there shouldn't be a downside to having two cores, only a potential upside. But computers as you probably knew are very complex machines, so it could be that they actualy run slower because the programmers wrote some code that is suboptimal on dual-cores but not on single-cores.

 

Also about the patching to utilize both cores, dream on... Splitting a piece of code into several calculation heavy parts is a non trivial problem (hard as hell according to some programmers). So since Bioware didn't code for multi-cores, obsidian probably didn't have time to do it during development, and I have never heard of such a large change being done in a patch.

 

@Kraftan:

Yeah almost all modern games are GPU limited and not CPU limited, but there really isn't any law that says it has to be that way. If someone made a game tomorrow with very advanced AI, physics and lots of procedural content it's possible/probable that such a game would be CPU bound. In other words its a design choice...

[Pope]

So how do I play the game then, with shadows and bloom enabled? There's no way my current machine will run it.

 

What (dual core) system would you recommend? More specifically, which graphics card?

Edited November 5, 2006 by Pope

[Diamond]

Multi-core CPU's are primarily for multitasking programs and pure "crunch" power like when rendering or compiling. Thats the reason why AMD's gaming line FX used only one core while the X2 CPU used two

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I somehow fail to see the logic behind that conclusion.

Why FX uses only one core and X2 uses two?

 

 

Anyway, yes, dual core CPU's main advantage is parallelism, however making a linear process (like rendering and compiling) to take advantage of multiple CPUs is not a trivial undertaking. If the program is not taking advantage of multi-threading, it will be scheduled on one core by the operating system.

 

 

For those who were running the pre-sale toolset: how does its performance differs from in-game performance?

 

Edit: by the way, the toolset uses two cores.

Edited November 5, 2006 by Diamond

[Ummi]

So how do I play the game then, with shadows and bloom enabled? There's no way my current machine will run it.

 

What (dual core) system would you recommend? More specifically, which graphics card?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Any Core 2 Duo CPU would be fine i'm sure. My C2D E6600 runs NWN2 fine for example. As for graphics i recommend a high end Nvidia graphics card like something from the Geforce 7900 line cause shadows are frelled with ATI cards

 

Add 2GB of RAM and NWN2 and almost every other game will run like a dream at high settings

[Volourn]

I have a dual core, and have no problems.

[Setzer]

So how do I play the game then, with shadows and bloom enabled? There's no way my current machine will run it.

 

What (dual core) system would you recommend? More specifically, which graphics card?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Any Core 2 Duo CPU would be fine i'm sure. My C2D E6600 runs NWN2 fine for example. As for graphics i recommend a high end Nvidia graphics card like something from the Geforce 7900 line cause shadows are frelled with ATI cards

 

Add 2GB of RAM and NWN2 and almost every other game will run like a dream at high settings

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hmmm...that's funny, NWN2 doesn't run "like a dream" at high settings for me. I get pretty good FPS indoors(50-60) and as soon as I step outside my FPS drops to 20 and lower. I stated my system specs over in the First Impressions thread but I'll list them again -- Intel C2D 6400, 2gb RAM, 7900GT 512mb, Soundblaster X-Fi, WD Raptor 74gb. I can run Oblivion just fine at high settings but not NWN2.

[legion]

I have a dual core, and have no problems.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Me too. The game runs beautifully at 1920x1080, in fact, as long as I turn off the water effects. With everything else maxed out, the game still runs really well on my dual core rig, so I'm more than happy.

 

Seems strange that water effects are the only thing that can bring my PC to its knees though. Maybe they were a late addition, and not optimized very well. Who knows.

[Setzer]

I have a dual core, and have no problems.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Me too. The game runs beautifully at 1920x1080, in fact, as long as I turn off the water effects. With everything else maxed out, the game still runs really well on my dual core rig, so I'm more than happy.

 

Seems strange that water effects are the only thing that can bring my PC to its knees though. Maybe they were a late addition, and not optimized very well. Who knows.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Are you using a CRT or LCD monitor?

[taks]

so it could be that they actualy run slower because the programmers wrote some code that is suboptimal on dual-cores but not on single-cores.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

this really is not possible. code that is explicitly written for threads will, or should, take advantage of multi-core. otherwise, it will not, and will simply run on a single core. in other words, the instructions issued by the CPU do not know, nor care, that there is another CPU available.

 

the issue, however, may be context switching. i do not know if winders will switch your process from one core to another, but that is a killer sometimes (linux will do that).

 

tas

[legion]

Are you using a CRT or LCD monitor?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

LCD (Westinghouse LVM-37w1)

[Setzer]

Are you using a CRT or LCD monitor?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

LCD (Westinghouse LVM-37w1)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ok I was curious because someone said my FPS problem was due to having a LCD monitor running at 1680x1050. I run all my other games(WoW, Oblivion, Dark Messiah) just fine at that resolution but only getting 20-25 FPS outdoors on NWN2. What FPS are you getting outdoors? I just tried disabling the water effects and it didn't improve.

[Lare Kikkeli]

i'm getting 15-25 FPS outdoors, but it drops down to 10-15 indoors. anyone know a reason for this? i've disabled basically everything to have it running smoothly, but for some reason indoor areas lag like hell.

[Pope]

Aight thx. I guess I'll go ahead and finally get that pc.

[Kaftan Barlast]

My problem is that with only 1gb of RAM, things slow down a bit when theres alot going on in the scene. Other than that an AMD 3200+ with a 7900GTX runs it at full blast@1280x1024 (which is my native res)

 

Yes, NWN2 only uses one core. If we wanted to take complete advantage of multi core systems we would need to architect for it from the ground up or do a refactoring of some of the core engine components, which we didn't do on this project because we licensed the technology from Bioware. Typically, the second core is used for physics simulations, which we don't have in NWN2.

 

The good news is that the game isn't CPU bound for most systems. The largest bottleneck is on the GPU or your video card, and in most situations we are pixel bound. So no matter how fast the CPU is chugging along, it's always going to be waiting for the GPU to render the frame.

 

We've made it pretty clear during the project that the toolset is the only part of NWN2 that takes advantage of multi core systems, since we wrote the toolset from the ground up. However, we are looking for simple ways of incorporating support for dual core systems in the game, so users with super machines can feel happy that their computer is being used to it's fullest potential. Don't get your hopes too high though, but it is something that is being considered for the future.

 

Thanks,

-Brennecke

Edited November 5, 2006 by Kaftan Barlast

[taks]

Ok I was curious because someone said my FPS problem was due to having a LCD monitor running at 1680x1050. I run all my other games(WoW, Oblivion, Dark Messiah) just fine at that resolution but only getting 20-25 FPS outdoors on NWN2. What FPS are you getting outdoors? I just tried disabling the water effects and it didn't improve.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

if you're referring to my comments, that's not really what i said. anyway, to both of you, what is your draw distance set to? given the nature of this game, there's no reason to have it at 300. i've cranked mine back to 150 and could probably go to 100 w/out any noticeable difference.

 

taks

[Loof]

so it could be that they actualy run slower because the programmers wrote some code that is suboptimal on dual-cores but not on single-cores.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

this really is not possible. code that is explicitly written for threads will, or should, take advantage of multi-core. otherwise, it will not, and will simply run on a single core. in other words, the instructions issued by the CPU do not know, nor care, that there is another CPU available.

 

the issue, however, may be context switching. i do not know if winders will switch your process from one core to another, but that is a killer sometimes (linux will do that).

 

tas

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well there should be a way for the programmer to tell the OS how to handle context switching, otherwise we have a scenario that can give bad performance on multi-cores with nothing we can do about it.

Assuming the option exists and it wasn't used (or was used badly) what we end up with is basically what I said. So I would call my statement a gross simplification and not incorrect =P

[Diamond]

Well there should be a way for the programmer to tell the OS how to handle context switching, otherwise we have a scenario that can give bad performance on multi-cores with nothing we can do about it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can't possibly do that.

[Loof]

You mean there is no windows api that grants you any control of how your threads are managed?

(Don't have much experience coding windows specific programs)

[Diamond]

You mean there is no windows api that grants you any control of how your threads are managed?

(Don't have much experience coding windows specific programs)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can set thread's priority, but you can't interfere with the way they are scheduled and the way context switch occurs. These are low-level tasks which are handled internally by the OS.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Diamond

[Loof]

Ok then context switching jumping from one core to the next shouldn't be whats causing dual-cores to run slower then single-cores (as all games would then behave that way).

You seem to be in the know of how lowlevel stuff works under windows. You don't happen to have educated guess as to what could cause such behavior?

(that is if the lower performance even is because of single/dual core thingy...)