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SB Pro PE 4.0 Hardware Discussion


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so your saying these issues are becasue 4.0 ghx are not fully optimized yet, but eventually will work better?

 

 but as  general observation has happened with some other games or sims, its sometimes a case of DX9 rendering being older and simply just bottlenecking newer generation hardware. ( even high  end CPUS & GPU)

 

Either way with this keep up the good work, IL still be happy if we get a  summer 4.0 debut with only  the updated 3d tank models.

Edited by Kev2go
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21 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Surprisingly, this is less disastrous than it may sound. At least on both of my machines the "feel" of the benchmark scenario wasn't that bad. The particle system doesn't kill performance per se, the new terrain (once made available to you) won't either. But of course nobody likes low frame rates. Here are some ideas:

 

Can you please clarify?

 

What does 'wasn't that bad' mean, in terms of a FPS #?

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His two machines gave results that fall into the region with minimum FPS at 24-30fps.

This would be too poor for counterstrike or battlefield twitch fests. In the context of SB Pro, this is actually usable, thus "not too bad".

This is what I personally took from his posts. YMMV.

When I had a ti420 frame rates were around that level, or a bit below and were quite acceptable. With a GTX970 they are quite a bit higher, but the overall behaviour is not enormously different.

 

Edited by GSprocket
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Im not expert, but.. isnt part of a problem sticking to DX9 old architecture?

If you upgrade engine to dx11 or dx12 it should gain HUGE fps if for nothing else then for pure fact that hardware supported tessalation and multi gfx CPUs of different type can be used to render scene together?

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1 hour ago, BigBadVuk said:

Im not expert, but.. isnt part of a problem sticking to DX9 old architecture?

If you upgrade engine to dx11 or dx12 it should gain HUGE fps if for nothing else then for pure fact that hardware supported tessalation and multi gfx CPUs of different type can be used to render scene together?

 

DX12 is Windows 10 and up only, so that would probably not go over very well, and would also likely be far more work than using properly utilizing DX9.

 

SB 3 renders graphics very inefficiently, often sending many thousands of draw calls per frame. There's a fixed amount of overhead per draw call so you can end up wasting lots of CPU time just grinding away at drawing each individual cluster of grass, each segment of fence, each lamp post, and each copy of a particular building over and over instead of using instancing which, simply put, tells the GPU "Here's an object, draw it at all the locations in this list," which is far more efficient.

 

1 hour ago, daskal said:

Shocking news. So the performance is bad in general - but as the thread title suggest, do you have any hardware recommendations?

 

He didn't say the performance was bad, just worse.

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....The question is, shall we not release anything until we improved the performance, or should we at least give everybody the choice to decide for himself....

 

Thanks Ssnake for the detailed situation report B|After reading all the performance status I'm still think I'm ready for 4.0 and will happily wait for upgrades that sure will give better performance in the future. The ones that want to wait can wait for the patches and keep playing 3.028. And all happy ^_^

 

After reading all that also give me a grim expectation for a July release, even if the decision is to release now/upgrade later.  Please what are the chances that we still have for a July release? The next chance if we miss this shoot is december directly? I think that the better performance+new terrain maybe it can be achieved next year (deep in the year). Just speculating. After reading the engine problems (thanks for sincerity, really appreciate it) I start to think that will be a long road for have a full 4.0 working at 100% power. Patience. Love the sim (like all here) that is why each day is getting longer and longer more after the 4.0 preview videos. Thanks!! ps: like always, sorry for my english.

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6 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

 

Famous last words.

 

Maybe the guys eSim are paying to look into the problem have already thought of that?

Maybe :)

 

But i dont see a reason not to switch to something which will speed you up. IT will have to happen eventually sooner or later.

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  1. "July release" could still happen in the first week of August. But by July 31st we will at least know whether the important issues that we're still fighting with have been addressed. If not, I'll call it off. And yes, the next chance would be in the range December '16 ... February '17.
  2. The team knows quite well what must be done in order to make a transition to DirectX 11 or higher. Unfortunately that's not a small task (actually, it an effin' big one!) and 2013 I made the fundamental decision to go for the high resolution terrain first. So, my fault entirely. On the other hand, what good would be a DirectX 11 powered Steel Beasts that looks exactly like 3.0; you would have burned me at the stake just as well for a decision to boost reasonably good frame rates to much higher ones without any practical benefit, but stalling development in other areas for it. Also, at the time our .mil customers didn't know what kind of computers and operating system they would have in 2015/16. So, in the light of this uncertainty, I chose work on the terrain to improve the looks.

We're a bit behind with that work, admittedly, but if you look at the Marder Youtube video you'll admit that high res terrain looks much better and allows for more interesting tactical combat. So I still think that I made the right choice.

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I am left scratching my head a bit.

I considered to get an extreme wide monitor for my Assetto Corsa needs, a 29" thing. For that, I considered to upgrade my graphics card from a 660GTX to one of these new 1060 that are com ing out this month. Something in that range. My rig is a proven and reliable i5 2500K with 8GB RAM and W7.

Now what would SBP benefit more from, an updated CPU or GPU? I mean is the sim more CPU-dependent due to the physics and LOS calculations, or more GPU-dependent? I assume it is the first...!? I probably would not gain much in SBP by a newer GPU, maybe even lose in frames due to the wider screen and more pixels?

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Wow, these forums have heated up some what in the last few days.  IMO eSim, please wait until the upgrade project has reached all of it's goals before you release.  If this means that the civilian fan base waits till 2017 then so be it.  I mean look at the Division, lots of delays there.  I don't use PE for what it's real reason is intended to be, I just enjoy pretending - I can't jump into the real thing and do a company level exercise with 100's of others but I wish.  I think I saw a posting of a picture around here once that showed a Leopard 1 of some type all tied into Steelbeasts Pro, wow.  Release when fully ready please, not before. 

Edited by CalAB
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17 hours ago, Rotareneg said:

 

DX12 is Windows 10 and up only, so that would probably not go over very well, and would also likely be far more work than using properly utilizing DX9.

 

SB 3 renders graphics very inefficiently, often sending many thousands of draw calls per frame. There's a fixed amount of overhead per draw call so you can end up wasting lots of CPU time just grinding away at drawing each individual cluster of grass, each segment of fence, each lamp post, and each copy of a particular building over and over instead of using instancing which, simply put, tells the GPU "Here's an object, draw it at all the locations in this list," which is far more efficient.

 

 

He didn't say the performance was bad, just worse.

 

so for any future developmets or upgrades to 4.0 making a compromise to settle for Dx11, since that does not require win 10.  and is compatible with Windows 7/8 systems.

Edited by Kev2go
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12 hours ago, Ssnake said:
  1. "July release" could still happen in the first week of August. But by July 31st we will at least know whether the important issues that we're still fighting with have been addressed. If not, I'll call it off. And yes, the next chance would be in the range December '16 ... February '17.
  2. The team knows quite well what must be done in order to make a transition to DirectX 11 or higher. Unfortunately that's not a small task (actually, it an effin' big one!) and 2013 I made the fundamental decision to go for the high resolution terrain first. So, my fault entirely. On the other hand, what good would be a DirectX 11 powered Steel Beasts that looks exactly like 3.0; you would have burned me at the stake just as well for a decision to boost reasonably good frame rates to much higher ones without any practical benefit, but stalling development in other areas for it. Also, at the time our .mil customers didn't know what kind of computers and operating system they would have in 2015/16. So, in the light of this uncertainty, I chose work on the terrain to improve the looks.

We're a bit behind with that work, admittedly, but if you look at the Marder Youtube video you'll admit that high res terrain looks much better and allows for more interesting tactical combat. So I still think that I made the right choice.

I think Matt "Wags" Wagner can take some well constructive criticism, on how to handle customer service from you sir. You are what all "Devs" should aspire to; on handling of customer relations.  I salute you! ~ 

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5 hours ago, Skybird03 said:

I am left scratching my head a bit.

 

Yeah, I can relate to that. :o

 

Quote

What would SBP benefit more from, an updated CPU or GPU?

 

Instinctively I would have said that a CPU upgrade would be more benficial. But then again, looking at the comparison between my notebook's i5 at 2.9 GHz and the desktop PC's i7 at 3.5GHz, the frame rate differences aren't that dramatic. If your other games will profit from the GTX1060, go for it. Assuming that we succeed in improving the overall efficiency of our render engine in the coming months, the performance gains would then be biggest for people with faster graphics cards as the CPU bottleneck is gradually being widened.

 

Like with all predictions about the future, this one comes with a bit of uncertainty as well. But the way I see it, we don't really have much of a choice. I don't see CPUs becoming significantly faster in their single thread performance. We've had a CPU clock stagnation for five years now, which is in pretty remarkable contrast to the past 50 years of microprocessor development. Growth seems to come mostly from getting done more instructions per cycle, and from parallelization; parallelization however has its limits, at least when we're looking at the two...12 CPU cores realm (note that I'm not alone in this. One of the Intel big wigs said in a 2014/15 interview that "parallelization was a failure" (in the sense that it turns out to be almost impossible for all practical matters to actually double or quadruple performance of code by rewriting it from single threaded mode to parallelization)).

 

Now, some processors are looming on the horizon that promise to bring 32 cores within the next one or two years. Maybe this more substantial step up will increase chances to boost performance. But right now turning legacy code into parallelized code in a non-destructive way is a very difficult job if you're expected to continue developing on the feature side of the application at the same time. But what good, for example, is a factor two or four when we increased the line of sight calculation requirements by (potentially) a factor of twelve when we introduced multi-party capability?

 

Anyways, in your situation I would go for the 1060 right now. Even if SB Pro PE 4.0 may not immediately profit from it, other games will. While your other games would ALSO benefit from a CPU upgrade, the overall gain will probably not be dramatic.

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13 hours ago, Ssnake said:

Like with all predictions about the future, this one comes with a bit of uncertainty as well.

I understand that. Thanks for taking the time nevertheless!

 

I'm in no urgent hurry to get a new gfx board and monitor, I just see that the cockpit experience in Assetto Corsa would benefit from a wider perspective (the mirrors, and looking at apex in corners...), thats all. My system is stable and reliable since many years and gets everything done I throw at it. Plus I want to stick with my "locked up" Windows 7 (no longer updated due to Microsoft's fantastic GWX bullying campaign which indeed made me upgrading my operation system: I now do all and everything under Linux Mint , and just launch some games under Windows); I have no plan to move to Windows 10 any time soon. If ever. If I would: then just as a game launching platform, nothing else. - The new times of "digitalness" are here. Something tells me they are not as good and well-meaning as expected.

 

If you ever consider to push SBP to higher DirX, please leave people the choice: do not go for Win10-only DirX12, but stick with DirX11. I am far from being alone with my anger and scepticism about Microsoft.

Edited by Skybird03
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1 hour ago, Skybird03 said:

If you ever consider to push SBP to higher DirX, please leave people the choice: do not go for Win10-only DirX12, but stick with DirX11. I am far from being alone with my anger and scepticism about Microsoft.

 

Now the alternative is Vulkan API .Better distribute work amongst multiple CPU cores. Supported old MS system like Windows 7, 8.1 and other Linux distros. Graphic cards GTX6XXX and up or Radeon 7XXXX series and up.

It may be in the future worthy of consideration.  Just a lot of work and time to translate from DirectX to another API.

 
 

 

Sorry for offtop.

 

Edited by Andres87
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