Anyone write a tuning guide for SOW?

[MeiguoJinjang]

I bought it about 3-4 years ago, but just installed. (my last machine was just too old)

I now have an i7-5930K at 3.5GHz (I have yet over clock) with an NVidia Titan X.

However, I am only see FPS 20-40s at 1024x768.

I worry once the battle gets big and forces large, things are going to come to a crawl. So, what are the best things to tweak to up the FPS?

Also, is the game multi-threaded? I haven't seen any improvement by adding cores through affinity assignment.

Thanks.

[Jim]

That is screaming for this game. No need to tweak anything. But if you want to play, the % trees and drawing distances seem to have the biggest effects.

Waterloo has limited multi-threading which helps some but too much destabilizes multiplayer.

-Jim

[Saddletank]

Waterloo has limited multi-threading which helps some but too much destabilizes multiplayer.

MP is where my interest lies with the new game. Can you elaborate on the above remark please, perhaps give some guidelines of what not to do in game optimisation that would negatively impact MP?

I presume you are talking about packet stability and keeping computers in synch?

[SJDI]

Trying to get more FPS is not all about the over clocking the CPU.

There are other computer factors to consider that will affect FPS:
Mother board.
Memory.
Graphics card.

I have done some tweaks that have yielded small FPS improvements.
I might add that doing "tweaks" is a risky business.


In MP games, FPS is further affected by other player's computers and internet connections.

[MeiguoJinjang]

Thanks. I think I will not be playing MP.

I think this game is CPU bound more than anything. (Of course, load times are determined by disk. I have 1Tb SSD, 32Gb RAM, and 8Gb Disk Cache.)

Yesterday, I went into open play and forced two corps into contact on the GB map. I was able to sustain 15 FPS. Normally, people will be whining about such a number, but the game was smooth and responsive. Good enough.

My CPU chip is unlocked. I have an ASUS Rampage MOBO V Extreme. The machine is built for OCing. Large case, large fans, liquid cooling ... With ASUS AI Suite 3, I can auto overclocking. I can also limit the OC to specific cores (like just one or two running games). Thus, I should be able to push a single core or two well beyond 30%, because of the greater heat dissipation. I am expecting something in the area of 40-50%; especially for just a single core. But remember the i7 is HT. Thus, you'll get another 25% out of a single core if the process is multi-threaded. This may be the better bet for SOW which does not seem to be heavily multi-threaded. Finally, ASUS can recognize if an image is running. So, this need not be a permanent OC profile. It will only kick in when it sees SOW's image loaded. (I already have software which gives me total control over all affinity assignments.)

The shop from which I had this built wrote on bill of sale that the warranty is valid as long as I use the utilities to OC; not by hand. So, I do plan to push this PC when I have the time. I've already played around with: Crystal Disk Mark, Furmark, and IntelBurn to bench/stress the SSD/cache, GPU, Cores and make sure the cooling system has headroom.

So far, I've only seen one game able to max out all 12 logical processors. That is Deep Fritz Chess calculating board positions. Nothing else comes close to benefiting from this architecture in terms of games. I expect that SOWs FPS will increase in direct proportion to CPU cycles available on a single HT core; especially given the Nvidia Titan X.

[SJDI]

Cool, you know it.

Been awhile since I used a multi treading chess program Rybka.

Yes the current SOW only uses 1 core.

As I understand the new Napoleon SOW uses one core for calculations and one core for Graphics.

I did find tweaking the memory timings helped a little.

I used the general speed up my computer tweaks from some videos on youTube.

Also I found some registry tweaks helped give me a few more FPS.

This thread I wrote a while ago could help you.

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/techni ... to-run-sow

[MeiguoJinjang]

Excellent thread; mainly for me the impact of various SOW settings.

Years ago I had TCM2 launched by a scripting language. The language was capable of reading and setting INI values. So, I had the script prompt when launching "Big/Small Battles?". Thus, the script would automatically run through the INI and apply the FPS tweaks needed. I got to keep my cake and eat it too. For small scenarios/open play, I had the eye candy. For big scenarios/open play, I got the FPS I need. I may consider doing something like that again. But first, I will we see what I can accomplish with OCing a single core.

From what I can see, GPU settings are pointless. My card is not the bottleneck.

[Jim]

Waterloo has limited multi-threading which helps some but too much destabilizes multiplayer.

MP is where my interest lies with the new game. Can you elaborate on the above remark please, perhaps give some guidelines of what not to do in game optimisation that would negatively impact MP?

I presume you are talking about packet stability and keeping computers in synch?

There is nothing at the player level to do. The multi-threading is all in the main in-game code. Some of the items Norb tried to multi-thread resulted in 'out of synch' errors, after those changes were reverted, the MP stability has been good.

-Jim

[MeiguoJinjang]

I finally overclocked tonight. It made a huge different in the largest battles. A 40% increase in FPS with everything maxed out.

[RebBugler]

I finally overclocked tonight. It made a huge different in the largest battles. A 40% increase in FPS with everything maxed out.

Needed to make that BIGGER! :laugh: