AoC Hardware and Preformance
Posted: April 13th, 2008, 8:54 pm
Just a run down of diferent preformance disscussions about the specific parts of the PC and how it all relates to Age of Conan. Its a good start if you are wanting to upgrade to play AoC or if you were thinking of upgrading for this game. The two biggest things are that AoC is not using DX10 as of right now and it is a 32 bit application. they havent (and probably wont) make a 64 version of the game. So, have some info...
List of impact per hardware pc component:
1. Central processing unit (CPU)
High impact, depending on which video card you use you will need a stronger processor. Nvidia cards draw their power greatly on the processor and thus generate extra load. ATI cards operate at maximum speed pretty much independent of the processor. In both cases the game itself requires a great deal of continuous processing. I've been able to test dual core and 4-core and even in the case of 4core, all 4 cores were effectively being used. Therefore it's recommended to have a Q6600 (quadcore) or higher processor. If not possible, go for at least a latest gen dualcore processor. The game performs very poorly on a single processor. Don't go for that option under any circumstance.
Note: on a Q6600 used with 2 8800GT cards in SLI (most stress on cpu from graph cards) during grouped gameplay in conarch valley (large scene with far sight) at least 2 cores were loaded up to 70% most of the time, they never reached above 90%. That was max stress. Most of the time however I noticed 2 cores at 50-70% and the other 2 at 10-20%
Note: keep in mind that in the future we will be having largescale battles with 40+ people on your screen while we now only test with 1-10 on our screen, npc's calculated in. This means that the load could be much higher at that time.
2. Random access Memory (RAM)
The amount of memory in your computer is critical to running this game smooth. The game itself has been developped as a 32-bit executable with LA (large address awareness) enabled. What does this mean? 32-bit executables are by design restricted to 2GB per running process on a 32bit OS. (ageofconan32.exe = 1 process = the whole game) As you zone to the inn or other zones, the executable size in memory will try to cache all this information (= keep it loaded in memory under the form of ageofconan32.exe growing in memory usage size) to give you a smoother gaming experience. I have noticed that the "working set" of the executable grows to as large as 1980MB, this is how much of your physically present RAM is being used by the game. If you don't have that amount of free ram BEFORE starting up the game, your game will slow down after zoning a few times and slow down even further over time until you restart it to make the game use less memory again. For this reason you need under XP at least 2.5GB in your computer to run this game smooth and under Vista at least 3GB. Aside from the physcial usage there's also the virtual size (the actual size of the process) which I have seen to grow as large as about 2.9GB after long gameplay.
note: on a default 32-bit windows XP or Vista for that matter, no processes are allowed to grow over 2GB. The game will simply crash when it reaches that size. (you may be experiencing this right now). If and let me stress that only IF you have 3GB or more (4GB preferably) you can configure your Vista or windows XP installation to allow processes to grow over 2GB so they don't crash and run as smooth as possible. Under XP this is done by adding "/3GB" in the boot.ini file and under Vista 32-bit by use of the BCEDIT command with extra parameters. Do this at your own risk and NEVER if you don't have 3GB of memory in your computer. Windows XP 64-bit and Vista 64-bit are by default enabled to do this so they do not require changes and your executable will not crash when it reaches 2GB on such an OS. Just make sure you have 3GB or more in your computer.
note: 4GB is the ideal amount needed to run this smooth along with whatever other stuff you run on your OS (services, background apps, the OS memory itself) Vista will even use the extra memory to help cache other stuff. I have 8 and beyond 4GB you do not notice any more improvement in speed and smoothness so it is NOT necessary for running ONLY this game while having all other apps closed. However having 8GB will help cache other stuff under Vista as well as allow you to simultaneously run a bunch of other windows programs. This is luxury however, not a must have. 3GB is must have minimum for smooth AOC gaming and 2GB means running the game at decreased performance. This is inevitable
note: the speed of the memory is completely trivial when compared to the actual amount of memory.Having e.g 1066 Mhz mem instead of 667Mhz will only yield a 1-3% memory read speed increase which is not worth it imho to invest in.
note: although increasing your RAM from 2GB to 3GB is in essence not a direct increase in fps but instead makes the game play and loading/zoning feel alot smoother, it should be noted however that if you lack alot of RAM your FPS will be affected through stuttering etc. Running the game with 1GB will give such problematic play (enough to feel 'unplayable') Having 2GB is therefore a bare minimum for running at all while 3GB is the minimum for running smooth. 4GB is a good standard.
note: although the client currently is 32-bit it will run on a 64-bit OS through WoW (windows in windows) technology. Important to know is that to reach true 64 performance we need a native compiled executable (that would be e.g ageofconan64.exe) There is no such executable available right now. It is not certain or confirmed at this point that there will ever be such a native 64-bit version of the game. It is also my personal guess that the game devs have deliberately programmed the executable to never use over 19XX MB of memory to avoid problems. In an ideal situation they would compile a native 64-bit client with no immediate restriction so that the executable could easily grow up to let's say 5-7GB in running size for power users with let's say 6-8GB memory onboard. All recently/most accessed zones would then be pretty much always loaded in memory which would require less disk acces and pretty much instant zoning. This is not possible today since the 32-bit executable is limited to a max of 2GB physical memory usage.
3. Graphics processing unit (GPU)
This game uses pretty advanced graphics that are at or a bit ahead of it's time. This allows for a visually stunning game under ideal circumstances with future hardware.I have been able to run at 1900*1200 at high graphic settings in a quite smooth way using 2*8800GT in SLI. A test without SLI showed a noticeable drop in fps which means SLI is well being used and does make a difference in this game. Recommended is the latest gen of graph cards and up for smoothest possible play (nvidia 8800series or ati 3XXX series and up) The graphics card therefore is well worth your money for this game, more than buying the latest processor in any case.
note: as of today the game still has some techical issues that cause extreme drops in fps, some of the worst known in the history of pc gaming tbh. All players are subject to this regardless their vid card (I talked to many ingame) Even with 2*8800 in sli running at low settings in the lowest resolution you still have this so it's not solvable by hardware. patience and debugging by the game devs will hopefully solve this annoying problem. Let's leave it up to them and hope they fix alot at RTM time. How bad is it ? Well it's like this: you stand still in a high graphs environment and notice 25-65 fps in most spots while running 2*8800GT in SLI at 1900*1200 with no AA (AntiAliasing= a GPU hungry technique to improve the visual quality of a game even further), 16*Anisotropic filtering, high graphics settings and no bloom. This is when standing stil. As soon as you start sprinting or doing a 360* mouselook you may experience insane drops to below 5fps even up to stuttering for a moment due to new heavy textures being forced into the GPU. This can only be avoided by more efficient tuning of the graphics engine or better Video card drivers imho. Update 30-03-08: I now have great & smooth results with Vista 64 bit SP1 and Nvidia 174.74 drivers on 8800GT SLI so far !
4. The disc subsystem (HD or a RAID of HD's)
Extremely important and severly underestimated. This component does not increase your fps in any way (at least not to a noticeable degree) but DOES effect exclusively ALL ZONING experiences which is pretty much from launching the game to going in and out of zones nonstop (in tortage e.g) The sky is the limit here since the game dir is over 24GB as it is today and parts of that are being loaded into memory as you zone. I have tested the game while running it off a latest generation 7200RPM harddrive (samsung 400GB) and later on a RAID 0 of two WD Raptor 10000RPM disks. My god the difference is day and night. With the single 7200RPM disk the loading screens take double the time and I can listen to up to an entire song while zoning into the game. On the raid system I could only hear the part of the women with the high voice and I never hear the rest of that song because I'm already ingame. This feels so good. If I had the money I would be buying a 32GB HyperOS hyperdrive to run the game on because it would be blazing fast then no doubt. I can only imagine how good that must feel but I'm already very happy with the raid0 system. Adding more than 2 drives to the raid0 made a further improvement in loading times but only marginal like 10% (not worth it imho) For smooth experience ofc you have no data or anything else running off your game disk or raid system except the game and maybe the OS (peferably even only the game itself and nothingelse)
List of noteworthy software tweaks and tips to make the game run smoother
1. Turn off "bloom" in advanced graphics options. This may almost double your fps if it was enabled before
2. (optionally) turn of AA (4-10 fps gain on average). See and decide for yourself if you find the extra visual quality gain from AA worth the loss in fps or not. (AntiAliasing= a GPU hungry technique to improve the visual quality of a game even further).
3. Run the game off a seperate disk or raid system (where you only install the game and put no other data or programs) This noticeably helps the loading times during zoning and launching the game
4. close all other running programs before playing AOC including background programs such as antivirus, defragmenters, etc. This counters in-game stuttering partially
5. keep your system disk (where windows is installed) and your game disk defragmented on a regular basis
6. Run the game fullscreen. Especially under Vista this is important because Vista then disables the rendering of the Aero windows interface (which sucks up GPU power even when doing nothing)
7. try moving your windows swap file from your system disk to your AOC gamedisk or raid system or even to another seperate disk that is dedicated for this. Since this game is a memoryhog windows swapping can be extensive and taking the load off a certain disk is well worth it I have noticed. this improves loading/zoning times by reducing them further.
8. Possible corruption of the game due to patching errors is very possible. Best practise is backup your entire funcom directory (under the program files dir) on a regularely basis. If a corruption happens, reinstall the game first with your original installer and then replace the newly funcom directory by the one from your backup and you're rdy to play without repatching 2-3GB
List of impact per hardware pc component:
1. Central processing unit (CPU)
High impact, depending on which video card you use you will need a stronger processor. Nvidia cards draw their power greatly on the processor and thus generate extra load. ATI cards operate at maximum speed pretty much independent of the processor. In both cases the game itself requires a great deal of continuous processing. I've been able to test dual core and 4-core and even in the case of 4core, all 4 cores were effectively being used. Therefore it's recommended to have a Q6600 (quadcore) or higher processor. If not possible, go for at least a latest gen dualcore processor. The game performs very poorly on a single processor. Don't go for that option under any circumstance.
Note: on a Q6600 used with 2 8800GT cards in SLI (most stress on cpu from graph cards) during grouped gameplay in conarch valley (large scene with far sight) at least 2 cores were loaded up to 70% most of the time, they never reached above 90%. That was max stress. Most of the time however I noticed 2 cores at 50-70% and the other 2 at 10-20%
Note: keep in mind that in the future we will be having largescale battles with 40+ people on your screen while we now only test with 1-10 on our screen, npc's calculated in. This means that the load could be much higher at that time.
2. Random access Memory (RAM)
The amount of memory in your computer is critical to running this game smooth. The game itself has been developped as a 32-bit executable with LA (large address awareness) enabled. What does this mean? 32-bit executables are by design restricted to 2GB per running process on a 32bit OS. (ageofconan32.exe = 1 process = the whole game) As you zone to the inn or other zones, the executable size in memory will try to cache all this information (= keep it loaded in memory under the form of ageofconan32.exe growing in memory usage size) to give you a smoother gaming experience. I have noticed that the "working set" of the executable grows to as large as 1980MB, this is how much of your physically present RAM is being used by the game. If you don't have that amount of free ram BEFORE starting up the game, your game will slow down after zoning a few times and slow down even further over time until you restart it to make the game use less memory again. For this reason you need under XP at least 2.5GB in your computer to run this game smooth and under Vista at least 3GB. Aside from the physcial usage there's also the virtual size (the actual size of the process) which I have seen to grow as large as about 2.9GB after long gameplay.
note: on a default 32-bit windows XP or Vista for that matter, no processes are allowed to grow over 2GB. The game will simply crash when it reaches that size. (you may be experiencing this right now). If and let me stress that only IF you have 3GB or more (4GB preferably) you can configure your Vista or windows XP installation to allow processes to grow over 2GB so they don't crash and run as smooth as possible. Under XP this is done by adding "/3GB" in the boot.ini file and under Vista 32-bit by use of the BCEDIT command with extra parameters. Do this at your own risk and NEVER if you don't have 3GB of memory in your computer. Windows XP 64-bit and Vista 64-bit are by default enabled to do this so they do not require changes and your executable will not crash when it reaches 2GB on such an OS. Just make sure you have 3GB or more in your computer.
note: 4GB is the ideal amount needed to run this smooth along with whatever other stuff you run on your OS (services, background apps, the OS memory itself) Vista will even use the extra memory to help cache other stuff. I have 8 and beyond 4GB you do not notice any more improvement in speed and smoothness so it is NOT necessary for running ONLY this game while having all other apps closed. However having 8GB will help cache other stuff under Vista as well as allow you to simultaneously run a bunch of other windows programs. This is luxury however, not a must have. 3GB is must have minimum for smooth AOC gaming and 2GB means running the game at decreased performance. This is inevitable
note: the speed of the memory is completely trivial when compared to the actual amount of memory.Having e.g 1066 Mhz mem instead of 667Mhz will only yield a 1-3% memory read speed increase which is not worth it imho to invest in.
note: although increasing your RAM from 2GB to 3GB is in essence not a direct increase in fps but instead makes the game play and loading/zoning feel alot smoother, it should be noted however that if you lack alot of RAM your FPS will be affected through stuttering etc. Running the game with 1GB will give such problematic play (enough to feel 'unplayable') Having 2GB is therefore a bare minimum for running at all while 3GB is the minimum for running smooth. 4GB is a good standard.
note: although the client currently is 32-bit it will run on a 64-bit OS through WoW (windows in windows) technology. Important to know is that to reach true 64 performance we need a native compiled executable (that would be e.g ageofconan64.exe) There is no such executable available right now. It is not certain or confirmed at this point that there will ever be such a native 64-bit version of the game. It is also my personal guess that the game devs have deliberately programmed the executable to never use over 19XX MB of memory to avoid problems. In an ideal situation they would compile a native 64-bit client with no immediate restriction so that the executable could easily grow up to let's say 5-7GB in running size for power users with let's say 6-8GB memory onboard. All recently/most accessed zones would then be pretty much always loaded in memory which would require less disk acces and pretty much instant zoning. This is not possible today since the 32-bit executable is limited to a max of 2GB physical memory usage.
3. Graphics processing unit (GPU)
This game uses pretty advanced graphics that are at or a bit ahead of it's time. This allows for a visually stunning game under ideal circumstances with future hardware.I have been able to run at 1900*1200 at high graphic settings in a quite smooth way using 2*8800GT in SLI. A test without SLI showed a noticeable drop in fps which means SLI is well being used and does make a difference in this game. Recommended is the latest gen of graph cards and up for smoothest possible play (nvidia 8800series or ati 3XXX series and up) The graphics card therefore is well worth your money for this game, more than buying the latest processor in any case.
note: as of today the game still has some techical issues that cause extreme drops in fps, some of the worst known in the history of pc gaming tbh. All players are subject to this regardless their vid card (I talked to many ingame) Even with 2*8800 in sli running at low settings in the lowest resolution you still have this so it's not solvable by hardware. patience and debugging by the game devs will hopefully solve this annoying problem. Let's leave it up to them and hope they fix alot at RTM time. How bad is it ? Well it's like this: you stand still in a high graphs environment and notice 25-65 fps in most spots while running 2*8800GT in SLI at 1900*1200 with no AA (AntiAliasing= a GPU hungry technique to improve the visual quality of a game even further), 16*Anisotropic filtering, high graphics settings and no bloom. This is when standing stil. As soon as you start sprinting or doing a 360* mouselook you may experience insane drops to below 5fps even up to stuttering for a moment due to new heavy textures being forced into the GPU. This can only be avoided by more efficient tuning of the graphics engine or better Video card drivers imho. Update 30-03-08: I now have great & smooth results with Vista 64 bit SP1 and Nvidia 174.74 drivers on 8800GT SLI so far !
4. The disc subsystem (HD or a RAID of HD's)
Extremely important and severly underestimated. This component does not increase your fps in any way (at least not to a noticeable degree) but DOES effect exclusively ALL ZONING experiences which is pretty much from launching the game to going in and out of zones nonstop (in tortage e.g) The sky is the limit here since the game dir is over 24GB as it is today and parts of that are being loaded into memory as you zone. I have tested the game while running it off a latest generation 7200RPM harddrive (samsung 400GB) and later on a RAID 0 of two WD Raptor 10000RPM disks. My god the difference is day and night. With the single 7200RPM disk the loading screens take double the time and I can listen to up to an entire song while zoning into the game. On the raid system I could only hear the part of the women with the high voice and I never hear the rest of that song because I'm already ingame. This feels so good. If I had the money I would be buying a 32GB HyperOS hyperdrive to run the game on because it would be blazing fast then no doubt. I can only imagine how good that must feel but I'm already very happy with the raid0 system. Adding more than 2 drives to the raid0 made a further improvement in loading times but only marginal like 10% (not worth it imho) For smooth experience ofc you have no data or anything else running off your game disk or raid system except the game and maybe the OS (peferably even only the game itself and nothingelse)
List of noteworthy software tweaks and tips to make the game run smoother
1. Turn off "bloom" in advanced graphics options. This may almost double your fps if it was enabled before
2. (optionally) turn of AA (4-10 fps gain on average). See and decide for yourself if you find the extra visual quality gain from AA worth the loss in fps or not. (AntiAliasing= a GPU hungry technique to improve the visual quality of a game even further).
3. Run the game off a seperate disk or raid system (where you only install the game and put no other data or programs) This noticeably helps the loading times during zoning and launching the game
4. close all other running programs before playing AOC including background programs such as antivirus, defragmenters, etc. This counters in-game stuttering partially
5. keep your system disk (where windows is installed) and your game disk defragmented on a regular basis
6. Run the game fullscreen. Especially under Vista this is important because Vista then disables the rendering of the Aero windows interface (which sucks up GPU power even when doing nothing)
7. try moving your windows swap file from your system disk to your AOC gamedisk or raid system or even to another seperate disk that is dedicated for this. Since this game is a memoryhog windows swapping can be extensive and taking the load off a certain disk is well worth it I have noticed. this improves loading/zoning times by reducing them further.
8. Possible corruption of the game due to patching errors is very possible. Best practise is backup your entire funcom directory (under the program files dir) on a regularely basis. If a corruption happens, reinstall the game first with your original installer and then replace the newly funcom directory by the one from your backup and you're rdy to play without repatching 2-3GB
.