Re: Need help with new CPU/MB (and any other advice you'd be willing to share.)

[Paul]

Demhi Moss wrote:
> My computer system is a DELL XPS 8500.
> PROCESSOR: Intel i5-3450 CPU @3.10Ghz
> 8 Megs of RAG
> 64 Bit Win 7 OS.
> Vid Card: AMD Radeon HD 7570 1 GB GDDR5 SDRAM
> 2 or 3 TB HD.
>
> I bought my computer 4-2012 to play SKYRIM.
> The game ran with no problems and I played the game for a long long
> time exclusively. Then I got into Fall Out and I wanted to play
> Fallout 4 but needed a better video card. I thought mine was great
> till then.
> I upgraded to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 and it rocks with FO4. But I
> also bought Witcher 3 when it came out and I can't play it because of
> my CPU.
> My system is great in everything else, I really can't complain. But
> now it is about 5 years old, longer then I have ever had a system
> without massive upgrades and I want to build a new system.
> I was wondering how much faster I could make a new rig for about
> $300-$500 for a new MB/CPU or am I going to have to spend a lot more
> to make a new system that will blow the wheels off of what I have. I
> mean I'll happily keep this system rather then spend $500 or more on a
> system that is maybe a little faster. I'd prefer an Intel CPU but
> wouldn't turn down AMD, but how much faster can I realistically expect
> for this $$. It is not that I cannot spend more, more that I
> shouldn't have to spend more because of Moore.
>
> I use to be able to tell the faster chips but they make it so hard
> now. And just because it is an i7 doesn't mean it is faster.
>
> A bit rambling but if you have read this far and can offer any advice
> or suggestions, then please do and thank you.
> Demhi

Your processor is already pretty good.

http://ark.intel.com/products/65511/Intel-Core-i5-3450-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz

Number of Cores 4
Number of Threads 4
Processor Base Frequency 3.10 GHz
Max Turbo Frequency 3.50 GHz
Cache 6 MB SmartCache

Someone with slightly more CPU than you, has the same problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/36t7u6/extremely_high_cpu_usage_in_the_witcher_3/

"I've been having similar problems once in a while.
Sometimes when I exit the game my CPU usage stays
at 100%. Also the music was still playing even though
I exited the game. Very odd problem."

The game is obviously "a pig" :-) It uses the CPU
like it was playing "Fritz Chess" :-) Normally one
thread is the Boss Thread, and any multiprocessing
being done, doesn't manage to drive other cores
nearly as hard. Only a few games have symmetric
CPU consumption. There was one strategy game that
drove four cores equally hard, and Fritz Chess
move generator would be the other style of application
that can do it.

http://i.imgur.com/acj1e0i.jpg

It could be doing aggressive garbage collection. With
a memory footprint of 2.7GB, it should go on a diet :-)

Here's another thread.

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/441346-witcher-3-cpu-usage/

And here's a CPU load diagram on a 6C 12T processor for it.

https://linustechtips.com/main/uploads/monthly_08_2015/post-58740-0-76447600-1441038311_thumb.jpg

Now, what I see there, is some cores with identical loading.
At a guess, that loading is caused by interrupt servicing
(to the video card).

What version of DirectX does the game use ? Remember
that one of the DirectX transitions, moved from
individual graphical object management (huge I/O load),
to having the games create display lists directly
(much better). You really want the latest DirectX
subsystem - but that only works if the game was
coded for such a subsystem.

Sure. You can throw more cores at it. But not
for $300-$500. It's probably going to cost more
than that, to put more muscle on it.

Someone here with a 4790K finds it slow. I don't
know if I'd throw money at it. Better to spend a few hours
tracking down the root cause. A suggestion here, is the
activity I'm seeing is PhysX.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/292030/discussions/0/615085406673485559/

"Probably PhysX simulating some objects in the scene.
It will schedule some of the process on your CPU if
the task isn't computationally intensive enough to
warrant using the video card."

I might believe that for explosions, tracking particulate
moving on the screen or something. I would be checking the
game preferences screen, to see what subsystems receive
mention. If the CPU was asked to calculate the x-y-z
trajectory of thousands of clods of dirt, yes, that
could cause bursty saturation of the CPU. And maybe a
bit of stuttering.

Some games have poor handling of open spaces. And they're
attempting to render things that are an infinite distance
away. No culling. That sort of thing. But then the game
would have issues, in every open space. And only walking
down a hallway would perform well. When stuff like that
happens, it's a game engine issue.

Paul

[Paul]

And here's a reason why it's a pig.

http://physxinfo.com/news/11558/the-witcher-3-will-support-gpu-physx-now-officially/

"we will see simulated fur "all over the place",
applied not only to creatures, but also to character
clothing elements, such as "pelts and cloaks".
"

So it's not clods of dirt after all. They're modeling
the outside of characters (their cladding), using PhysX.
That's what happens when a game developer falls for some
bilge created in a lab at NVidia :-)

My guess is, that somehow the physx is leaking into the CPU
space as well. Maybe the sheer loading of data for physx
on the GPU, is causing a background I/O load ?

With the IOAPIC in hardware, it's possible for I/O load to
be "spread in time", over multiple CPUs. At least, I've done
experiments here before, where I see a "smooth and flat" background
load on all CPU cores. And my conclusion was, that was the servicing
of interrupts for interaction with hardware.

Maybe even if the PhysX is done in hardware (on the 970),
the simulations still have to be loaded up for it. It seems
like an awful lot of load though, if that's what is happening.
The load is probably approaching the OS cap limit for interrupt
rate.

*******

If you skim through the chart here, the Ryzen does pretty
well on price. Note that some of the prices on this
chart, are just "dead wrong". Like one of the Xeons for $600
which is actually $2000 a pop. Certainly some used Xeons
can be dirt cheap, but that's not an "official" price by
any means.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 15,385 $499.99

Now, one of the problems with Ryzen, is it's a SOC (some of the
SATA ports are on the CPU). For such a high end processor
(8C 16T), it doesn't really have an excess of PCI Express lanes,
and cannot be considered "true gamer material". It just
happens to be something that might be good in a server.
Whereas Intel processors of this class use quad channel
memory, while AMD is running 8C 16T off dual channel memory.
On the plus side, it uses HyperTransport or similar on
the inside (shortest multi-hop route for core to core traffic).
Whereas the larger Intel CPUs use ring busses of some sort (makes
a 6C processor compute at a 5C rate, that's the potential loss).

I found a lack of consistent results in the reviews
on Ryzen, so you'll definitely want to spend a whole
afternoon comparing articles and comments, before even
considering spending $500 on it. It's not a "slamdunk".
Generally, the pricing you see on these things is
"rational", meaning a lot of thought went into
benchmarking at the factory, and they really think it's
only the equivalent of a $500 processor from the
competition. Some people think this price is an attempt
to "undercut" the competition, but that's not it at all.
I've found over the years, that there is a good deal
of rational thought, before a price is set. It's
not as predatory a pricing model as first thought.

The reason for that, is no company can afford to "give away"
profits. The price must be raised as high as physically
possible. However, if they charge $600 for it, and a
competing $500 product beats it consistently, they're
going to look pretty dumb. The price can neither be too high
nor too low. And right now, the uncertainty about how it really
performance, plus the $500 price, means I cannot
consider that for an "impulse buy". The fact it's
a SOC and a bit starved on I/O, is one of my concerns.
It's like a cheesy desktop design, with a whole
lot of cores whacked onto the side. It's not
"scaled in all dimensions". Think of it as a
weight lifter, who only worked on one muscle,
and now that muscle is all out of proportion
to the rest of his body.

AMD is coming out with a server product, which
will kick ass (it's a CPU/GPU complex, not just
a CPU style server). Up to 128 lanes of PCI Express. Maybe
8 channels of memory (dual socket, the equivalent of
two Ryzen inside each CPU package, for eight channels
of memory total). Now that one won't be starved,
but you can be assured that both you and I cannot
afford one. The pricing will be "astronomy class".
My guess is, maybe an outboard chip will do the
PCI Express or something (they are using yet another
bus standard on those CPUs, and they might be using
that to get to a "Northbridge" or something). Because
I don't see it being all that practical to put that
much PCI Express on one chip (like, 64 lanes per socket
is a lot).

*******

And if we're talking Intel products, I cannot give you
a real solution for your price range. I cannot give you
a "giant CPU" and even get remotely close to the
price you have in mind. The LGA2011 CPUs from Intel
now, are 8C 16T, but they're expensive.

6900K 8C 16T $1050 "on sale", needs $100 cooler, $300 mobo
And decent case cooling.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117645

The INTC pricelist is here, if you want a copy for comparison.
It's a PDF. This is how you can check the MSRP on Intel.

https://www.intc.com/investor-relations/investor-education-and-news/cpu-price-list/default.aspx

https://s21.q4cdn.com/600692695/files/doc_downloads/cpu_price/Mar_28_17_Recommended_Customer_Price_List.pdf

In the section with the 6900K, they've chosen to mix other sockets.
Only some of those are LGA2011 V3. And one of the "tricks"
with the LGA 2011 ones, is the "lowest" one in the group,
usually has fewer PCI Express lanes on it (only important
if you use more than one video card, or happen to have
other uses for the computer than gaming perhaps).

Paul

[Paul]

I found one more ref for you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2653528/witcher-physx-gpu.html

"The Witcher 3 uses CPU PhysX only. You're welcome, AMD fans."

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide?ClickID=b1vlfd1zvds6feegkydqqdns1zsnkqmfdgyg

And it's coded as DirectX 11. Which has a fixation on "objects".
Thousands and thousands of objects. Leading to losses managing the
video card.

This is the description for DirectX 12.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

"Developers are now able to implement their own command lists
and buffers to the GPU, allowing for more efficient resource
utilization through parallel computation."

Which should have been there in the first place. That's how we
were doing it, decades ago (on the custom GPU multi-board set at work).
This isn't exactly a new idea, but many of the details have changed.
DirectX11 was a mistake.

So for the money, a top-end Ryzen for $500, is about the best
you could do (at a reasonable price). And that still doesn't
meet your cost target.

So if we compare CPU benches...

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Intel Core i5-3450 @ 3.10GHz 6471 ~$200
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6Ghz 15385 $500

Note - clock rates are not directly comparable.
- Use this chart for an approximate IPC comparison

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Intel Core i5-3450 @ 3.10GHz 1854
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6Ghz 1952

One problem with a comparison like that, is both platforms
will "turbo", distorting things a bit depending on how much
each can turbo under single thread load. It suggests the
Ryzen "won't suck too much for ordinary usage" :-) Lots
of ordinary programs, depend on single thread performance.

HTH,
Paul