FPS Responsiveness to Overclocking
Hugh
CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
CameramanSan Francisco, CA Join Date: 2010-04-18 Member: 71444NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
<div class="IPBDescription">Some pleasant results</div>Hi everyone,
In my eternal quest to squeeze more fps out of NS2 for my videos, I discovered something quite nice. It's Autumn here in Oz, so now that the temperatures are dropping I thought it safe to start some overclocking. I took my AMD 1090T from 3.2Ghz to 3.8Ghz, an 18% clockspeed increase, and found that my fps increased by almost exactly 18%. For example, at the menu screen I used to get 100fps, I now get 118. In a certain part of a Tram I use as a FRAPs stress test, I used to get 25fps, I now get 29. In the same spot with FRAPs engaged, I used to get 18fps, and now get 20.
These results are in some ways not surprising. They seem to corroborate the well established fact that NS2 is almost completely CPU bound (evident if you look at the frame-times in the profiler), and my earlier testing that revealed almost no difference between fps with a Nvidia GTS 450 and an AMD 5870.
I wouldn't advocate overclocking to anyone solely for the sake of NS2 fps, but I thought this information might be useful to someone.
In my eternal quest to squeeze more fps out of NS2 for my videos, I discovered something quite nice. It's Autumn here in Oz, so now that the temperatures are dropping I thought it safe to start some overclocking. I took my AMD 1090T from 3.2Ghz to 3.8Ghz, an 18% clockspeed increase, and found that my fps increased by almost exactly 18%. For example, at the menu screen I used to get 100fps, I now get 118. In a certain part of a Tram I use as a FRAPs stress test, I used to get 25fps, I now get 29. In the same spot with FRAPs engaged, I used to get 18fps, and now get 20.
These results are in some ways not surprising. They seem to corroborate the well established fact that NS2 is almost completely CPU bound (evident if you look at the frame-times in the profiler), and my earlier testing that revealed almost no difference between fps with a Nvidia GTS 450 and an AMD 5870.
I wouldn't advocate overclocking to anyone solely for the sake of NS2 fps, but I thought this information might be useful to someone.
Comments
Thanks for that info, very helpful. I watch all the video you upload to youtube. Although I can't play the game with my 5 year old system (with integrated graphics) giving me 10 fps, I already know my way around Tram and even a couple of vents thanks to watching you play :)
A polite suggestion on what I would like to know more about:
Alien armor upgrades: maybe testing with various weapons to see how much difference they make
The vent network: where they go in and where they come out on the map
Keep up the good work, I really enjoy them.
NS2 is pretty much the only game right now that won't run properly on standard commercially available CPUs, so you _would_ be doing it just for NS2 (unless you're into distributed computing or similarly number-crunching stuff). I'm not sure if overclocking your CPU is a good idea at this point, as there are bound to be people who can't do it properly and credit NS2 with the oddities of their botched up overclock (which there already have been if I'm not mistaken). Unless you're stuck with a pretty old CPU, in which case you don't have all that much to lose.
Funny you ask SN.Wolf! Rock solid so far at 1.375, but it actually crashed while recording NS2HD[164] at 1.3! <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/NaturalSelection2HD#p/u/2/Abd-P-VMPH8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/user/NaturalSelecti...u/2/Abd-P-VMPH8</a>. Worth it for the fps and decreased encode times...
@Player
You are very correct, I wouldn't recommend anyone attempt this. The only reason I am interested is that I have had many successful overclocks in the past and I like to tie into my work security feeds on my other monitor amongst the occasional daily tasks while i shoot stuff in a virtual world but at the moment i am happy with the performance of my 1090T B.E. processor and would never overclock it for a single program that will eventually be optimized to run much better in the coming months.
I think you mean VERY wrong. I've never seen it happen, for example.
Actually I didn't mean "VERY wrong", I meant what player said <img src="http://members.home.nl/m.borgman/ns-forum/smileys/wink.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I'm not an Intel fanboy (had many AMD systems in the past), but if you are serious gamer nothing on the market comes close to matching the power and value of sandy bridge CPUs right now. It's a no-brainer.
Nice. I'm planning to get one of these in the next couple of months. Was overclocking to 4.5 GHz easy or were you trying to push it as far as you could? What max fps do you get?
*Edit*
Oh jeez, I actually found my old post, it was for build 152. I overclocked my CPU 26% and saw 14-20% increase in FPS. I also tried overclocking my GPU 11%, and saw an increase of 3-5%. The CPU, at least back then, was more bound.
I'm not an Intel fanboy (had many AMD systems in the past), but if you are serious gamer nothing on the market comes close to matching the power and value of sandy bridge CPUs right now. It's a no-brainer.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I've considered switching over to the sandy bridge, but frankly when you're sitting on a 4GHz i7 (the 1366 one) no game on the market today is able to use it fully anyway. Again you'd only be doing it for NS2, and buying a CPU (and new motherboard, gg socket-switch Intel) for a single game that is being a little ###### when it comes to CPU-cycles, is just a bit too daft for my taste.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's Autumn here in Oz, so now that the temperatures are dropping I thought it safe to start some overclocking<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I always do 24/7/365-overclocks. When I overclock I make sure the room-temperature is about as high as it will ever be (or close to anyway), as I really don't want to have to mind the season and adjust my CPU-clock accordingly.
Protip: Arctic silver is no longer tops. It gets beat out by OCZ Freeze Extreme, Coollaboratory Liquid Pro, IC Diamond 7, Arctic Cooling MX-3, and Thermalright Chill Factor 2.
:)
:)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Splitting hairs at the molecular level here.
Nice. I'm planning to get one of these in the next couple of months. Was overclocking to 4.5 GHz easy or were you trying to push it as far as you could? What max fps do you get?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As simple as changing one value in the bios, and the 1155 motherboards have a GUI and mouse control in the bios which is kinda cool. I do have an after-market cooler, but I've read of people OCing it to 5.0 GHz on air with additional voltage. Max FPS is around 150 or so.
The worst thing about SB is the ###### stock cooler, I haven't bothered to overclock yet but when I do I will definitely get a coolermaster 212 or something else for it. The stock cooler for my C2D was much better.
SB is a lottery when it comes to overclocking I hear. Some cant even go to 4.5ghz without insane vcore. Most seem to go to about 4.8 without too much effort or extra voltage though, on air
Min Max Avg Menu @ 3,3Ghz: 41 72 60 110
Min Max Avg Menu @ 4,2Ghz: 48 86 70 130
Min Max Avg Menu @ 4,5Ghz: 43 90 70 135
Seems like it starts to cap somewhere after 4,2Ghz. Maybe the GPU becomes the bottleneck again? I could hear the beastly GTX 570's fans whirring quite fast.
Pretty nice jump from 3,3 to 4,2 though.
I recommend getting a proper cooler unless you have one already (like Noctua, <a href="http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=start)" target="_blank">http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=start)</a>.
i7 920 3.8ghz and 5970.