Albion Prelude: Multi Core support?

[Sehnsucht1985]

Hi Sehnsucht1985,
Yes what you have to understand is, RB. is a totally new game engine so has been designed around modern CPUs. The X3 game engine was designed a decade ago before multi cores were common.
*snip*

Aye, I know Rebirth uses a new engine. But I wanted to make sure. As for the X3 engine; well one can always hope. I do expect some optimization tweaks though, that's the least they can do considering you need a NASA computer to operate in sectors with 150+ factories (without the tubeless mod).....

Seeing as the game is entirely open-ended in this regard, if they did manage to 'tweak' it enough to allow 150+ factories in a sector with a decent framerate, you can be sure that someone would then add even more factories, to the point where they again start complaining about framerates. So where does it all end?

I think the issue is the lack of self-control on the part of some players, overbuilding in some sectors just because they can. There's no game limit to the number of factories a player can add, but there is a limit on computer power. Players simply need to recognize this fact and quit expecting more and more optimization tweaks just because they've reached the limit of their computer's power.

And all that would be fine if that was the end of it. It's not. With a highly overclocked cpu I still get lag in sectors I have built nothing in, while in other sectors the fps will be three times higher. This kind of inconcistency is what pisses me off the most, because you never know what to expect.

You should not have to even overclock a powerful modern processor to be able to somewhat run a relatively old game, that is simply ludicrous.

Simply put, they should have simplified the AI or built in multi-core support when they wrote the engine.

[Spectre01]

btw, is it me? Or the whole X3 engine doesn't use gfx card that much? I just started using ATT and its ingame overlay. I've noticed that most of the time, my GPU load sits at 0%, or no more than 25%. And there's not much FPS improvement when I upgraded my card from 4770 to 6870.

Just hope they won't make XR be a CPU only engine.

the reason the X games use more CPU is because it has a whole universe to process continously.

having high cpu load is unavoidable with this type of game.

most games simply only process the information that is in view of the player

I know x3 is CPU intensive. But there IS something wrong when your GPU load is at 0% either you are looking at empty space, or looking at those high poly terran stations.

[aka1nas]

btw, is it me? Or the whole X3 engine doesn't use gfx card that much? I just started using ATT and its ingame overlay. I've noticed that most of the time, my GPU load sits at 0%, or no more than 25%. And there's not much FPS improvement when I upgraded my card from 4770 to 6870.

Just hope they won't make XR be a CPU only engine.

the reason the X games use more CPU is because it has a whole universe to process continously.

having high cpu load is unavoidable with this type of game.

most games simply only process the information that is in view of the player

I know x3 is CPU intensive. But there IS something wrong when your GPU load is at 0% either you are looking at empty space, or looking at those high poly terran stations.

Your GPU load isn't at 0%, those monitors aren't terribly accurate.

The game is massively cpu-bound, with a developed universe it is still basically impossible(even a 4Ghz+ i7 can only get you so far) to feed the game with enough cpu cycles to get it to the point that it's no longer the framerate bottleneck.

[Dank7430]

Im not sure, but im sure I read somewhere on here that it's easier on the cpu to have 150+ factories in one sector than 150+ spread out in individual sectors. Again this isnt reliable as its "me" haha but I am curious since we are on that topic?

[Sehnsucht1985]

Im not sure, but im sure I read somewhere on here that it's easier on the cpu to have 150+ factories in one sector than 150+ spread out in individual sectors. Again this isnt reliable as its "me" haha but I am curious since we are on that topic?

Sounds logical to me.

I think I'm gonna refrain from building huge complexes in Albion Prelude, to maximise my enjoyment. Just use kill missions for cash instead, and maybe just build a missile complex.

[Sehnsucht1985]

@nanook

I couldn't have put it better!

What always bothers me is that I never see complaints on forums for other games like Battlefield 3 or similar modern graphics intense games. Those people just do what's normal and go get a decent computer.

I know I've said this before, but if you can't afford $1k for gaming computer then maybe you should save / look into a cheaper hobby, like an xbox, or tennis. lol

Sorry for the small rant.

Can't believe I missed this post before. The whole point of this thread is that you simply cannot get a good enough computer (read: fast enough cpu) to really run X3 perfectly, at least when you're several hundred hours in the game and have built 100+ factories, have dozens of auto traders etc). My computer is worth around $2,5k and there isn't a whole lot more I can do to it; it has liquid cooling for maximum overclock potential, one of the best gaming cases out there for optimal cooling and gigantic custom GFX cooling to lower the case temps even further.

If there was something concrete I could do to really boost my X3 fps, I'd do it a long time ago.

Have you even played the game?

[TemporalAnomaly]

My GPU Utilisation was stuck in the 20%-30% until I set all the AA AF settings at the driver level rather than the games graphic settings then it went to 70%-95% (marked improvement in frame-rate and appearance)

So only 2-3 of 8 available 4.5ghz cores get used, on a game engine from the 90's - that's OK

I think despite the few unavoidable technical issues, these games; work well, are fun, are superbly supported and represent excellent value for money

[Dank7430]

I actually rather hate all the posts about how a computer that is $thousands worth struggles to run TC in very late game. It's not that I am having a dig at anyone but personally I have only spent around £200-300 on my pc I currently have a AMD Phenom II at 3.9ghz 6gb ddr3 ram and a ATI 4890. It seems to handle things pretty well, though honestly I play most newer games on my console.

The point I am trying to make is, all these posts is very off putting to people who may wish to buy the game, and reading them without prior knowledge of the game makes it sound rather bug ridden and unplayable. Where as we all know careful control of assets can drastically reduce the cpu load. Honestly who actually needs 50+ UT or other trade ships? Also who really needs 150+ stations crammed into one sector or hundreds spread throughout the galaxy?

Though what I fail to see anywhere and I may be completely wrong on this subject, is a very clearly stickied topic about recommended amounts of ships/stations. I know it is impossible to predict what effect the game will have on each and every pc. At least have a list for minimum system requirements runs best with x number of stations and z number of ships, and do the same for recommended. That way people cant complain that just because they can do something that can break the game doesn't mean they actually should as they have had a fair Idea of what was actually possible before they tried.

Sorry if I haven't got my point across the right way, in no way is this a personal attack on ego or any players in paticular.

[Flaming Blastclaw]

The game is massively cpu-bound, with a developed universe it is still basically impossible(even a 4Ghz+ i7 can only get you so far) to feed the game with enough cpu cycles to get it to the point that it's no longer the framerate bottleneck.

The game is not CPU-bound, it is engine-bound. Dual-core CPUs have been around since 2005 starting with AMD Athlon64 chips. The latest Intel CPUs' capabilities are barely used by the X3 engine.


The game should run pretty well on a Sandybridge-E @ 5Ghz with 8Gb and an SSD drive. Such a system could also simultaneously re-encode a blu-ray disk, run A/V scans and Battlefield 3 in the background without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately such a requirement would rule out 99% of your audience because most simply cannot afford such a cutting-edge computer. (sandbridge-E isn't even designed for home-users, it's aimed at servers)

It's not just multicore, remember, thats slowing the X3 engine down.

Roughly in order of importance:

-no multicore support
-legacy code from previous X's
-various bugged/inefficient scripts
-bad sound/video codec implementation
-unused (but loaded into memory) game content data e.g. videos, sound files, mission texts
-no 64-bit support meaning 4Gb RAM limit
-no support for latest instruction sets e.g. hardware encryption, matrix dot product, vector things, SSExxx

[Sehnsucht1985]

I actually rather hate all the posts about how a computer that is $thousands worth struggles to run TC in very late game. It's not that I am having a dig at anyone but personally I have only spent around £200-300 on my pc I currently have a AMD Phenom II at 3.9ghz 6gb ddr3 ram and a ATI 4890. It seems to handle things pretty well, though honestly I play most newer games on my console.

The point I am trying to make is, all these posts is very off putting to people who may wish to buy the game, and reading them without prior knowledge of the game makes it sound rather bug ridden and unplayable. Where as we all know careful control of assets can drastically reduce the cpu load. Honestly who actually needs 50+ UT or other trade ships? Also who really needs 150+ stations crammed into one sector or hundreds spread throughout the galaxy?

Though what I fail to see anywhere and I may be completely wrong on this subject, is a very clearly stickied topic about recommended amounts of ships/stations. I know it is impossible to predict what effect the game will have on each and every pc. At least have a list for minimum system requirements runs best with x number of stations and z number of ships, and do the same for recommended. That way people cant complain that just because they can do something that can break the game doesn't mean they actually should as they have had a fair Idea of what was actually possible before they tried.

Sorry if I haven't got my point across the right way, in no way is this a personal attack on ego or any players in paticular.

I agree with most of what you said but the beauty of the game is the freedom to do as you please; build as much as you want, have an unlimited amount of ships etc.

The game is not CPU-bound, it is engine-bound. Dual-core CPUs have been around since 2005 starting with AMD Athlon64 chips. The latest Intel CPUs' capabilities are barely used by the X3 engine.

Yeah, the engine could have been much better. I just hope the one used in Rebirth has fixed most of these problems.

[Jonas801]

has anyone tried to enable the 4gb flag via the cff explorer and running the shortcut with -fullproc? usually this is what i do with some of the older games from ancient times, like skyrim. never really had that much problem with x.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Jonas801: The LAA (Large Address Aware) flag is already set in late patch versions of X3TC.exe if that is what you are referring to. If not and you have found yet a further improvement above that in your use of CFF Explorer with a current X3TC.exe, would you care to explain further please? The recent Skyrim game was surprisingly released without LAA set.

[CBJ]

Just for reference, the LAA flag is also set in X3AP.

[AL'42]

And the hard drive is a VelociRaptor 600

Did anyone mention using a SSD (flash drive). Price has come down a huge amount recently.

I put one in my PC, 80Gb unit, 250Mb/s, made a huge difference, load times reduced by 60%, far less stuttering and screen freezing.

[Alucard291]

The game is not CPU-bound, it is engine-bound. Dual-core CPUs have been around since 2005 starting with AMD Athlon64 chips. The latest Intel CPUs' capabilities are barely used by the X3 engine.


The game should run pretty well on a Sandybridge-E @ 5Ghz with 8Gb and an SSD drive. Such a system could also simultaneously re-encode a blu-ray disk, run A/V scans and Battlefield 3 in the background without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately such a requirement would rule out 99% of your audience because most simply cannot afford such a cutting-edge computer. (sandbridge-E isn't even designed for home-users, it's aimed at servers)

It's not just multicore, remember, thats slowing the X3 engine down.

Roughly in order of importance:

-no multicore support
-legacy code from previous X's
-various bugged/inefficient scripts
-bad sound/video codec implementation
-unused (but loaded into memory) game content data e.g. videos, sound files, mission texts
-no 64-bit support meaning 4Gb RAM limit
-no support for latest instruction sets e.g. hardware encryption, matrix dot product, vector things, SSExxx

Pretty much this. And yet they release a new *Standalone-DLC* and does it have ANY improvement? Ofc not since all they want is just to get some cash quickly and easily. Preferably w/o doing much for it.

[AL'42]

And yet they release a new *Standalone-DLC* and does it have ANY improvement? Ofc not since all they want is just to get some cash quickly and easily. Preferably w/o doing much for it.

Yes, but what are they doing with this cash ! Your tone implies ‘take the money and run’

My reading of it… is they need cash to complete the next game, what do you think these guys are surviving on, I’ve often wondered myself, X3 is hardly a mass market game.

[Alucard291]

Yes, but what are they doing with this cash ! Your tone implies ‘take the money and run’

My reading of it… is they need cash to complete the next game, what do you think these guys are surviving on, I’ve often wondered myself, X3 is hardly a mass market game.

Yeah they're making a "new mmo" which is basically a reason not to come near it.

Seeing how many poo mmos there are around nowadays and each one is worse than the next one... Somehow I doubt this one will be any good either.

OH but it will be in X3 universe ./sigh

[Dank7430]

And yet they release a new *Standalone-DLC* and does it have ANY improvement? Ofc not since all they want is just to get some cash quickly and easily. Preferably w/o doing much for it.

Yes, but what are they doing with this cash ! Your tone implies ‘take the money and run’

My reading of it… is they need cash to complete the next game, what do you think these guys are surviving on, I’ve often wondered myself, X3 is hardly a mass market game.

Quite right egosoft has brung us some amazing games in it's time, and loads of extra content for free unlike some games *cough* horse armour *cough*

I feel that we owe them the support they have worked hard to create. I for one am glad I bought the superbox and paid a little extra to helping them create an even more interesting game.

[Killjaeden]

Yeah they're making a "new mmo" which is basically a reason not to come near it.

Seeing how many poo mmos there are around nowadays and each one is worse than the next one... Somehow I doubt this one will be any good either.

OH but it will be in X3 universe ./sigh

erm... no MMO was announced and they already said several times that they focus elsewhere atm (rebirth)

[Bothersome]

Am I just lucky?

I built a new rig about a month or so ago.

Asus Formula V Crosshair MB
AMD FX-6100 (6 Core) clocked at 3.8 Ghz (still room for more temps at 49C. in TC.
16 Gigs of 2133 Ram.
2 GTX-470 video cards in SLI

I run the AA and other stuff from the graphics driver, forced.

Settings in AP are max everything. But AA are still set to 4x. Not sure if graphics driver overrides that part or not.

Getting perfectly smooth frame rates in Terran and Argon Sectors. Did a little check on processor usage. Getting about 30% usage on all 6 processors.

One of the bigger slowdowns that were in TC was from the heavy use of CAGs. Their scripts causes lots of problems when you get to around 200 of them. Something about the way they search for the next deal.

On this rig, looking at a 150 factory complex in Ringo Moon gave about 5 frames per second. And having 150 CAGs running around.

No way I'd say it was unplayable.

The trick to getting better performance is to offload the work to other processors by using the graphics drivers settings set to use multi-processors and other tweaks. You want the game to say "draw this" and the drivers take it from there and do the work on other processors.