Do I Need Better CPU or GPU?

[goatt]

This game is fun. I'm using Mac, Intel core i5, Intel HD Graphic Card 4000 which is an integrated card. I'm using low graphic settings.

Games always started out very smoothly, but as more area is explored, it became very laggy.

So today I observed system activities, when I'm playing a 365 cycle file, in which there is no debugging mode, surface is breached, about 50% of the fog is cleared if magma is included. 

• At x1 speed, frame rate was dropped, fan was running loudly.
• At x2 it was still playable, but moving screen became very difficult,
• At x3 besides above, some dupes started to idle, it seems that the game was overwhelmed that it forgot to assign tasks to these dupes. When i turned the speed back to x2, those dupes started to work again.

But i don't understand, from system activity readings, CPU is only used up to around 60%(60% is from ONI, and other stuff also uses some resources) and GPU isn't fully utilized too? My understanding is that the game shouldn't lag. Can someone pro help me understand it? Which piece of hardware need improvement?

CPU(4 cores)

:

GPU

[babba]

...The game is running on one of your core`s. Have a look at how much GHz the core is its clocking. If its a notebook, probably thermal throttling is active - Best is to remove the notebook case

What i5 cpu model is it exactly ? Is it a proper desktop case or a laptop ? Apple products are built to be thrown away, they often also solder cpus on to boards. The game runs ok on i7 pc notebooks @ $2000 - $3000 ( msi gt70 etc. ), blowing 100 watts heat out of the side, playing via grid connection. ONI may look like a casual game, but like City Skylines its very CPU straining. So playing in the game with hydrogen...Its good if you put your cpu also in to hydrogen ice age in the real world to run the game well in all conditions. Graphic card doesnt matter much with oni, the cpu and +8 gb ram is the backbone of the game.

https://everymac.com/systems/by_processor/intel-core-i5-macs.html

P.S. I really believed you posted audio equalizer screenhots haha !

[Cipupec2]

CPU, always CPU, is the limiting factor in any simulation game late game, while GPUs can handle pretty much anything. And its really annoying when people complain about game slowdowns when they have mega bases with hundreds of critters and or dupes.

Though in your case specifically, intel HD graphics isn't a dedicated GPU its onboard variant which also use onboard RAM, so i am not sure if its up to specs. I suppose you could try pause the game and try move the camera zoom in out and move the camera around, but I am still going to bet on CPU!!!

[rnjacobs]

My computer is a desktop Haswell i3 with only integrated graphics (HD4600). I found that there was a subtle but noticeable performance improvement between the Cosmic and Expressive Upgrades—in Expressive Upgrade at the beginning of the game I was able to pick a video mode with 133% the pixels and had it feel equally smooth.

In late game, I also notice a subtle performance improvement by switching to video modes with fewer pixels, but the vast majority of the computational load is still the simulation. I'd say I'd hit a stage where my experience is comparable to what you're describing maybe 200-400 cycles later.

[babba]

The i3 Haswell cpu generation has a narrow spec variation, which is good to describe the system power you have at your hands - Especially as you have mentioned that you have a desktop system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i3_microprocessors#"Haswell-DT"_(22_nm)

For pc notebook players this game is a cpu challenge, if people are not playing on a $1500 - $3000 dedicated pc gaming notebook ( 3-5 year old high end pc notebook is fine, playing the game connected to the main power grid ). Apple builds idiotic notebooks running on full cpu load at 80 - 100 celsius on your genitals, with insufficient heat removal, so playing this game, games in general and having the cpu do heavy work in any situation on a mac notebook is ***** as either extreme thermal throttling kicks in, the board melts away over time or both.

Enjoy ONI 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

13 hours ago, goatt said:

CPU(4 cores)

I guess your cpu is 2 core 4 threads. not 4 cores. 

https://ark.intel.com/products/64895/Intel-Core-i5-3360M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

 

The performance of ONI is almost only affected by CPU, but if you want to buy a laptop, I still suggest you should choose a laptop with discrete graphics card. Integrated graphics card will share power supply and cooling capability with your CPU, and might influences the CPU's performance. Even the worst discrete graphics card is better than none.

However, if you want to buy a desktop, integrated graphics card is enough.

[llunak]

I had to buy a new graphics card to run ONI, even though the CPU was (and is) perfectly fine.

The game requires both to have certain performance. IIRC I used https://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=23973&game=Oxygen Not Included to check what I needed to buy.

 

[Lyonloi]

Idk if you guys notice, the most recent update increased the performance by a lot! My FPS (Cycle 1800) was noticeably a lot lower than early game, but it looks a lot smoother now. I hope that they can fix the lag spike for the beginning of every cycle, and the game will be golden.

[dunny]

On 7.9.2018 at 3:03 AM, goatt said:

My understanding is that the game shouldn't lag

You do not seem to grasp what simulation games need in terms of CPU power and how those needs just increase with every tick? It's the same for any simulation game with 'open ended' complexity, no CPU currently devised is capable of running them indefinitely at arbitrary fluid speeds without some kind of lag. Sure some could be mitigated by using more cores but it would also make debugging a lot harder, there are also only seem to be one studio capable of creating somewhat CPU core scaling games and they belong so hard to EA and are successfully protecting their state secret for years now.

If you like simulation games like this, Rimworld, Factorio, anything on the Clausewitz engine, Kerbal Space Program you will want to focus on raw CPU power in the future, acquiring the strongest intel single core performant CPUs that you can easily overclock, because most enthusiasts that do play these games tend to overclock their already really powerful single core perfomant CPUs by 30-60% just so they can play Factorio a few hours longer or bigger.

You really need to look into why simulation games have these restrictions and what the issue with ever increasing complexity per tick is, if you get annoyed by "The game shouldn't lag" that would remove the only 'legit' reason and give you extended options and knowledge to tackle any such problems with any sim game in the future.

There are really good tips on the Forum on how to keep bases performant, for example the more possible ways to places the higher the load for plain path calculation (which is already seems to be extremely low priority and heavily optimized leading to quite a few quirks, irks and deaths)

Removing work priorities also reduces that load, keeping homogenous gas and liquid mixtures with low volatility/mobility also seems to help a little.

Tl;dr sim games tend to be CPU bottlenecked, I'm pretty sure I would get the newest Core I series from Intel to lag even if it was overclocked to 20ghz.

Also any mobile cpu version has far inferior performance than a desktop cpu even if they have basically the same designation and name, only if a desktop version was used the performance can be comparable but most likely will be considerably inferior still (heat and bandwidth issues mostly)

Despite having the same designation those cpus often have a difference of 60 watt TDP (15 vs 75 or more) there is a good reason they are slower and less performant.

[Cipupec2]

23 hours ago, R9MX4 said:

The performance of ONI is almost only affected by CPU, but if you want to buy a laptop, I still suggest you should choose a laptop with discrete graphics card. Integrated graphics card will share power supply and cooling capability with your CPU, and might influences the CPU's performance. Even the worst discrete graphics card is better than none.

This wrong, however, Integrated cards does share system RAM, which can be an issue on low RAM systems. Also in my experience with laptop overheating is the performance (and your fertility if you keep them in your lap) killer, which was a big issue for me with dedicated GPU in a laptop.

Overall you are correct better (costlier) system -> better performance, though if you want to get a bang for your buck I'd suggest focusing on CPU Clock speed (and probably better RAM latency)

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

1 hour ago, Cipupec2 said:

Integrated cards

I'm not talking about on-board graphics card. I mean Intel HD Graphics / Vega Mobile, which is integrated in CPU.

[babba]

I`ll never forget playing Company of Heroes 2 ( two years after release ) with a friend on two expensive gaming notebooks via power grid, lan, and 6 AI` players and some mods. With 8 parties we had something like a thousand units on the map.

My notebook battery ( as mentioned, playing connect to the mains ) started to smell, I took it out and it was possible to flex it 30 degrees...It was like jelly. My friend had a fried motherboard after a month - We played CoH2 for a few session together, a few times something like 4 hours in a row. If you give a hardcore game a $3000 dollar pc notebook, the gamer will know how to melt it just by using it for a week via main grid. Something like 4 years ago my MSI GT70 notebooks board resistor melted through all mainboard layers after using the thing for 6 months. I found notebooks to be always crap, its a short term showoff thing which then goes to the bin if one uses it to the max. BTW App*e notebooks are thermal and durability crap by design.

Putting processing power in a case is always a compromise. If someone plays on a notebook, the bigger and heavier the better. A notebook below 4 kilos, with a power supply below 100 watts ( to play properly at max system speed on the main grid ) and with less than 3 centimters height just melts away on cpu and/or gpu straining games. Once I was running a game server for World in Conflict, at some point 20 condensators popped and a lot of paper was laying in the server rack. Haha !

ONI is one of these games where its fun to get the very last out of existing hardware, out of a single cpu core.

 

[greggbert]

I read carefully and think you might have a RAM problem actually.  

[babba]

As people post limited specs about their system, on a standard win10 the system and oni tends to consume 8gb ram...