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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?  (Read 6416 times)

Cyan Leader

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I like having large, 50vs50 ships battles which I know the game is not designed for, but are quite fun for me. The problem is that my FPS drops to like 10 when that happens. Which aspect of the computer does Starsector rely on the most in those scenarios? Is it the CPU or is it the GPU?
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Alex

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2020, 07:05:26 PM »

It depends in part on your zoom level. Very roughly the game is about 50/50, but the more ships you have and the more of them are off-screen, it'll stress the CPU comparatively more than the GPU. So unless you're super zoomed out, I'd say it's probably the CPU in the scenario you describe. Single-core speed is most important as the most intensive work is done on a single thread.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2020, 08:15:50 PM »

Yeah, it's immediately noticeable when both support fleets deploy their ships and they are all off-screen. Station battles are the worst actually in that regard.

I'll do my own research on CPUs with good single threaded performance but is there anything in the pipeline to make the game more multi-threaded? Not that the performance at the moment is bad, I realize this is a fringe case.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2020, 08:18:07 PM by Cyan Leader »
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MesoTroniK

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2020, 08:38:03 PM »

Also keep in mind performance will be appalling with AMD video cards on Windows, but less so on Linux...

Alex

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2020, 08:42:52 PM »

... but is there anything in the pipeline to make the game more multi-threaded? Not that the performance at the moment is bad, I realize this is a fringe case.

There isn't, sorry! Basically trying to make it multithreaded - in a correct way, not a "kinda works but actually crashes in like 0.1% of the cases" way - would make the code *significantly* more complex, both for vanilla and for modding. This inevitably means more obscure bugs, crashes, and time spent trying to sort it all out. It's... not something I can realistically do. Even if I had the sort of time needed and screwing up much of the code in the modiverse wasn't a concern, it'd probably be more beneficial to try to do more things to improve single-thread performance instead.

(Nothing against multithreading in general, btw! It's great for some things, and the game uses it e.g. to play music, and to start up more quickly. But for some tasks, it's just not the best fit. Which doesn't mean it couldn't be done, but there are consequences to making that choice.)
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2020, 08:57:40 PM »

Alright that's fair, thanks. I'm eyeballing the Ryzen 7 3800X at the moment.
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Nick XR

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2020, 10:30:58 PM »

The part where it is an Nvidia graphics card.  The number of posts where people have top of the line AMD cards and perf issues is real.

Flix

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #7 on: August 16, 2020, 02:11:04 AM »

The part where it is an Nvidia graphics card.  The number of posts where people have top of the line AMD cards and perf issues is real.

I was always surprised by this. I have an R9 390 (5 year old AMD card) on a Ryzen 2700x and the game runs pretty damn well, very heavily modded too. It would be nice to have some real data from tests done properly with different cards instead of always anecdotal information.
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cvan424

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2020, 09:08:25 AM »

Also keep in mind performance will be appalling with AMD video cards on Windows, but less so on Linux...
I was thinking of upgrading GTX 980 to RX 5700 XT recently and I would have ordered the card already if i didn't run into posts like these. I am in a really big dilemma because funny enough starsector is that good of a game that I'm thinking of going for 2070 SUPER instead, but I'd rather have a dualboot with linux if that would gurantee me at least similar performance to my GTX 980. If anyone tech-savvy could confirm this for me I'd greatly appreciate it.
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outdated

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2020, 11:47:08 AM »

I was thinking of upgrading GTX 980 to RX 5700 XT recently and I would have ordered the card already if i didn't run into posts like these.
You probably should wait a bit for RTX30xx release. Not the best idea to upgrade just before fresh releases.
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Modo44

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2020, 02:19:49 AM »

Starsector and about 99% of all games run mostly on one core. For top of the line single core performance, Intel -- not AMD -- is still your best bet. If you google gaming benchmarks instead of some multimedia or advanced computing stuff, the picture is very clear.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2020, 02:54:23 AM »

From the benchmarks I've seen, the performance gap wasn't that big while the cost gap was.
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Modo44

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2020, 03:38:19 AM »

A couple percent in most games, more than 10% in others at the same price is not a clear performance gap? OK, you do you.
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DubTre6

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2020, 07:41:42 AM »

A couple percent in most games, more than 10% in others at the same price is not a clear performance gap? OK, you do you.

I'm not exactly sure thats what Cyan meant. It seems to me they were implying the performance boost wasn't cost efficient.
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Which aspect of a computer is the most important for Starsector?
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2020, 08:56:30 AM »

Yup but I wouldn't mind been proven wrong actually. Could you link the benchmark you were thinking of, Modo44? Preferably using the Ryzen 3800 or 3700 as base.
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