Help picking hardware

[Junksteel]

Hey,

it's another topic about good hardware and priorities to help ONI perform.

I have some questions and I don't know if they have objective answers or if they more a matter of taste.

01) Everyone agree that CPU>Ram>Cooling are the priorities for a good performance of ONI?

02) AMD or Intel?

03) SIngle core power or multithread/multiple cores? Which one should be prioritized?

04) How much ram is too much for the game to use? Otherwise, is it possible for the game to use all the ram available?

Any other advice is welcome! Thanks!

 

Ps.: Performance of ONI is nicer after the more recent updates but the currency of my country melted down this week relative to USD and I just need to buy the pieces needed before whatever is coming.

[Saturnus]

AMD 1600AF or 2600 if the former is not available in your country.

16GB DDR4 RAM, preferably 3000MHz or higher but depending on what your MB will support.

B450 Motherboard, MSI Tomahawk for full ATX size or ASrock Fatality ITX/AC for ITX size.

There is absolutely no serious hardware reviewers that currently would recommend any Intel CPU except the 9900K and then only if you're pairing it with a 2080 super or 2080ti. In all other cases AMD is the number 1 choice.

[Gurgel]

02) AMD still has much better task-switching than Intel, i.e. things will be smooth on much lower frame-rates than on Intel. This very much happens on ONI as well. Also, you simply get more power for the buck with AMD and I have yet to find any disadvantages. Caveat: I have used AMD CPUs for a long, long time now, only my work-laptop is Intel.

03) You do not get superior single-core performance these days. Marketing will call things like  20% more "superior" even if it basically matters very little. Multi-threading is bad for games, as the "additional" cores are significantly slower. A number from some older Haswell server CPUs I have is "40% of a real core". Linux/Windows should schedule on real cores first though. I would recommend getting the 6 or 8 core AMD CPU that fits your budget best.

04) Generally you want 16GB for gaming as 8GB are often too little. I have 32GB on my new Ryzen 3700X system, but the only time that fills up is when a preview is leaking memory like crazy and then no mount of memory will help. Now, software has generally no reliable way to tell how much physical memory is actually available in the presence virtual memory. Hence basically no software will "expand" to use all "available memory". Instead it is a good idea to keep the memory footprint down as you are less likely to run into the case where the memory becomes faked and caches are more effective with a smaller memory footprint anyways. Hence you can basically never have too much memory, but you can have too little.

 

P.S.: As to "what is coming": I have a nagging suspicion I already have that thing. Symptoms are common cold slowly getting better, but feeling is "virus infection" and time-frame is too (no fever though) and I have had the flu-shot this year so that should not be it. So either there is some other virus going round in addition (I love biological existence: There is always some new thing to screw you!), or there may be lots and lots of people that have the "mild form". There is no way to get tested here unless you are really sick so I cannot be sure. May be entirely in my head, I would not be the only one. Anyways, I am staying home and doing home-office (and playing ONI!) for the time being, fortunately my job allows that.

 

 

[SackMaggie]

1. Yes

2. AMD for now(They stomping intel currently)

3. Single for ONI and for now (Klei might optimize multi thread anytime, I would say multi for the future)

4. 16Gb is plenty for gaming, 32 Gb when you want to do a lot of video editing, more than that is just overkill for what you need to do.

5. Don't underestimate the speed of SSD,M.2 etc they are like riding a car compared to walking.

[Gurgel]

2 minutes ago, SackMaggie said:

5. Don't underestimate the speed of SSD,M.2 etc they are like riding a car compared to walking.

I second that one. Definitely get a nicely fast NVME SSD. Samsung is my personal preference, because they have yet to disappoint me. Their EVO Plus seems to the the best choice at this time.

[Saturnus]

9 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

I second that one. Definitely get a nicely fast NVME SSD. Samsung is my personal preference, because they have yet to disappoint me. Their EVO Plus seems to the the best choice at this time.

Although I too have Samsung PRO NVMe I'd say it's complete overkill for a budget system. For friends I've built system with the Intel 660P 1TB NVMe and have found it to be extremely good for every day use, not as good as a Samsung EVO but pretty much half the price, and certainly better than any SATA SSD. 

If you're a regular user that don't copy 100s of GB of video back and forth between drives every day I'd not consider the reliability concerns of a QLC drive relevant. Besides Intel gives a 5 year warranty on them so they must be fairly confident in their reliability.

[KittenIsAGeek]

11 hours ago, Junksteel said:

01) Everyone agree that CPU>Ram>Cooling are the priorities for a good performance of ONI?

I do not agree with this line.  Your CPU speed does have a relationship with ONI performance, but you'll see bigger gains by increasing the width of your memory bus.  I.e. upgrading from single-channel to dual-channel memory will give you a much greater performance boost than increasing your processor speed by a gigahertz.  My 7-year old i5 CPU with quad-channel DDR3-1600 RAM does very well with ONI, while my 2-year old i7 with single-channel DDR4-2133 RAM chokes on the game.  

My laptop, by all accounts, should run the game better.  The CPU is newer, faster, and has more cores. The RAM is faster and there's more of it.  However, the laptop has a bottle-neck when communicating between the CPU and RAM because it only has a single memory channel while my desktop has four.  Before anyone asks, no, overheating is not my laptop's problem.  The max internal CPU temperature when running ONI is well below the thermal throttling threshold of 90C.

 

**EDIT: To clarify, the i5 is a desktop, the i7 is a laptop.

[Gurgel]

1 hour ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I do not agree with this line.  Your CPU speed does have a relationship with ONI performance, but you'll see bigger games by increasing the width of your memory bus.  I.e. upgrading from single-channel to dual-channel memory will give you a much greater performance boost than increasing your processor speed by a gigahertz.  My 7-year old i5 CPU with quad-channel DDR3-1600 RAM does very well with ONI, while my 2-year old i7 with single-channel DDR4-2133 RAM chokes on the game.  

The Intel memory interface is not very good and never has been. Another one of these little details that are not widely known. For AMD, memory speed is king. For Intel, you want as many channels as possible.

[Junksteel]

Hello everyone,

updating this to thank you all that helped me to make this purchase.

I've got a computer with these:

 AMD Ryzen 9 3900 x Cache 64MB 3.8GHz

Motherboard Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite (I didn't find the MSI Tomahawk in my country)

SSD Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB, M.2 NVMe

2x Ram G Skill Trident Neo RGB, 32 GB (2x16), 3200MHz

 

Now my problem is, when I access bios it enables the memories with 2133 MHz as its standard even though my motherboard specifications says it accepts 3200 MHz without overclock. Is it normal? In the case it is, can I change that by myself?

Now I can game through the end of the world. I'm happy.

[psusi]

It's nice to see AMD is getting back on top.  I was a big fan of AMD back in the day when I built my dual Athlon MP system, and then an Athlon 64.  My last two rigs have been Intel though since they just had a commanding lead on AMD in lithography which gave them a huge advantage both in terms of clock speed and TDP.

[Derringer]

On 3/12/2020 at 7:22 PM, Gurgel said:

For AMD, memory speed is king. For Intel, you want as many channels as possible.

From what I recall, especially with AMD, latency (especially CAS latency) can make a bigger difference than memory clock.

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, Derringer said:

From what I recall, especially with AMD, latency (especially CAS latency) can make a bigger difference than memory clock.

Older AMD, probably. With Ryzen, the memory controller runs with the memory clock and apparently faster clock makes quite a bit of a difference. Of course that difference is lower if you pay with a higher latency, bit it still seems to be better to have a higher clock. 

Incidentally, "speed" here usually refers to the whole timing, so clock and latencies.

[SackMaggie]

6 hours ago, Junksteel said:

Now my problem is, when I access bios it enables the memories with 2133 MHz as its standard even though my motherboard specifications says it accepts 3200 MHz without overclock. Is it normal? In the case it is, can I change that by myself?

Yes, You can change by opening up in bios (IDK what key to press for each MB so look for that).
Just look up in each category and you will found where to change.
Also randomly enable every thing you see in the bios is not recommended, just make sure you know what you are doing.

Edit: Some MB don't save(It reset) your custom bios change If the booting is failure.
Edit 2: Virtualization is a good feature to enable, Its doesn't cause any harm but manufacturers decide to disable it by default.

[Gurgel]

9 hours ago, Junksteel said:

Now my problem is, when I access bios it enables the memories with 2133 MHz as its standard even though my motherboard specifications says it accepts 3200 MHz without overclock. Is it normal? In the case it is, can I change that by myself?

You may also check whether you have the latest BIOS. Memory compatibility usually needs a while to be fully optimized and before that the BIOS may default to values more conservative than needed. That said, a BIOS update is a bit of a risk. So unless you have performance issues, better not touch that.

[SharraShimada]

2133MHz is stock speed for DDR4. Thats pretty okay.

If you want to go higher, you have to 

a) enable XMP profile (either on or default, which should activate if possible)

Then take a look at the memory voltage. It should be 1.3V or 1.35V by default. If so. raise it to 1.4V. If you want your memory to run faster, you need to give it the power it needs. If the power target is set too low, it just goes down with the frequency, disabling XPM, and run at stock frequency.

If this wont help at all, check for a bios update, and follow the instructions to the letter.

Please do NOT raise the voltage above 1.45V. It may damage your RAM beyond repair and prayers. Yes it sounds like a small step from 1.45 > 1.5 but thats the small step from paradise to oblivion. 

Edit:

There is a small bug with this very board it seems. If its not working at all, try relocating the RAM to A2 and B2 instead of A1 and B1, when you use only 2 sticks.

[Gurgel]

37 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

2133MHz is stock speed for DDR4. Thats pretty okay.

If you want to go higher, you have to 

a) enable XMP profile (either on or default, which should activate if possible)

Then take a look at the memory voltage. It should be 1.3V or 1.35V by default. If so. raise it to 1.4V. If you want your memory to run faster, you need to give it the power it needs. If the power target is set too low, it just goes down with the frequency, disabling XPM, and run at stock frequency.

Actually, to run RAM in spec you should _not_ mess with memory voltage. The voltage for the modules to run at 3200MHz is in the SPD EEPROM on the RAMs and the BIOS should do raise voltages automatically if needed. 

39 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

There is a small bug with this very board it seems. If its not working at all, try relocating the RAM to A2 and B2 instead of A1 and B1, when you use only 2 sticks.

That is more likely the issue here.

[SharraShimada]

Yes,.it should raise the voltage if needed. But this board does not, for whatever reason. Thats, why i posted it here. 

[SVV]

13 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Then take a look at the memory voltage. It should be 1.3V or 1.35V by default. If so. raise it to 1.4V.

May I ask where did you get that recommendation to raise voltage above 1.35V? I have spent a lot of time upgrading my computer recently. Default voltage for 2133MHz is 1.2V. All 3200MHz modules, that I have seen, requires 1.35V. My new RAM is 3200MHz, 1.35V. All that Junksteel is need to do is enable XMP profile and check it after boot. If it will not work, he should return RAM or motherboard to the store, because it does not conform specification.

[SharraShimada]

After reading my statement again, i see its a bit misleading. I apologize for that. I meant, if its already at 1.35V, and it still not works, try 1.4V. If its 1.3V of course just raise it to 1.35V. It was late while writing. I´m sorry.

[Gurgel]

8 hours ago, SharraShimada said:

Yes,.it should raise the voltage if needed. But this board does not, for whatever reason. Thats, why i posted it here. 

Ah, yes. If the board does not do it, you can work around that in this way, I agree.

[SharraShimada]

29 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

Ah, yes. If the board does not do it, you can work around that in this way, I agree.

The Board seems to have an issue with raising the voltage according to the higher frequency. 

The problem is, if you raise frequency, but the voltage stays low, it cant maintain that, and falls back to default. Thats a good thing, because high frequency with too low voltage will result in instability. 

And i realized, i forgot to check for updates when looking for the board. It seems there where several issues related to memory compatibility and XMP support. This board got 6! Bios Updates since release, and 3 of them fix memory issues... So i would advice to get the lates bios, and try again.

[Gurgel]

16 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

It seems there where several issues related to memory compatibility and XMP support. This board got 6! Bios Updates since release, and 3 of them fix memory issues... So i would advice to get the lates bios, and try again.

That is not untypical. Memory comes with a lot of parameters these days and each new BIOS (via AGESA, via AMD) needs a while to be able to deal with all variants. On problems, the BIOS goes down to a save standard set of parameters and that is the 2133MHz. 

[Oozinator]

39 minutes ago, SharraShimada said:

The problem is, if you raise frequency, but the voltage stays low, it cant maintain that, and falls back to default. Thats a good thing, because high frequency with too low voltage will result in instability.

The problem with posting OC tipps in such a forum here, is that you have to make it fool proof.
Many "experiments" on that sector can end with permanent hardware failure.
It must be clear like beansoup to anyone who reads that, that those pimpings reduce lifespan of hardware, before he / she / x follows your "orders"
For specific OC questions i would suggest sites similar to https://www.overclock.net/
^^

[psusi]

5 hours ago, Gurgel said:

That is not untypical. Memory comes with a lot of parameters these days and each new BIOS (via AGESA, via AMD) needs a while to be able to deal with all variants. On problems, the BIOS goes down to a save standard set of parameters and that is the 2133MHz. 

Eh?  The memory module tells the bios what timing parameters should be used.  The problem is that they usually tell the bios a safe set of values that are slower because not all motherboards can handle the higher performance settings.  They usually have a second profile with the proper timings called "XMP" but your bios needs to be set to use that profile instead of the default.

 

[Gurgel]

10 hours ago, psusi said:

Eh?  The memory module tells the bios what timing parameters should be used.  The problem is that they usually tell the bios a safe set of values that are slower because not all motherboards can handle the higher performance settings.  They usually have a second profile with the proper timings called "XMP" but your bios needs to be set to use that profile instead of the default.

These parameters are not absolutes and they are not complete. For example, drive strength needs to be adjusted to the number and placement of modules. The information in the SPDs is not enough for that, mainboard manufacturer actually need to run test series with memory modules and when faced with something outside of those tests, the BIOS needs to make a decision. That decision will usually be to play it safe.