Performance bottlenecks

So I have a Intel i5-3337u clocked at 1.8ghz and turbo up to 2.7 ghz, with two cores and 4 threads. I also have a nvidia geforce gt 740m with 2GB ddr3 vram. Plus 8GBs of ram. Which one of the components will be the bottleneck. So people on the forums say that planetary annihilation uses a lot of cpu, while others say that pa uses relatively little amount of cpu because a majority of the calculations are done on uber's server. Also, do visual mods, such as PA-FX, use more system resources. And finally, what settings best fit the specs I have (yes, I do realize my specs are bad, but I'm on a laptop, so it is not easy for me to upgrade and such.)

Cpu. Your amount of cores and threads is not enough

Yeah your CPU looks like the limiting factor here. Graphical mods like PA-FX should not have a noticeable impact on performance. Well at least they don't for me. Only way to find out is to give it a try for yourself really.

So moar threads or moar clock rate

Both?

But as they say, the game is a lot less CPU heavy compared to what the CPU had to do in supcom, in supcom the server also had to be run when the game is played. PA moves the server work to another computer, but PA allows a lot more units and features (trees etc) than supcom which then limit the game to you CPU again. So yes, for simulation the CPU has to do less in PA, but for rendering more so the game is still CPU limited.

Here a quote from a dev on Open GL:

Your CPU is very low-end. Upgrade that to something quad-core at least

Uhm I think your specs are fine for online play. May be a little low for offline (as that hosts server on your machine as well). The gt 740m will be your bottleneck imo (its a pretty weak card). That will limit you to low settings at 1366 x 768 resolution (as its basically same gpu I've got in my laptop).

That i5 may have a low base clock but turbo should kick in to keep cpu main thread going fine, just make sure your machine is plugged in (not on battery) and Windows is set to high performance.

Edit: just checked specs of 740m its better than I thought... The ddr3 ram might hold it back so try and keep memory intensive things off. Imo you want low or medium textures, lights, shadows on, leave hdr, ao and anti aliasing off. Set resolution to native and see what you get. I'm fairly sure your cpu is ok for online, as the client needs 4 threads (which you've got thanks to ht), and its a modern i5 so per clock perf is good. for context my first gen i5 laptop with 2.8 ghz turbo handles pa surprisingly well.

Its a laptop....? You can't upgrade the cpu.

*ahem* I admit at this point to not actually reading to the end of the original post and missed the part where he/she clearly mentioned the laptop

Yeah, it's the CPU, if you can't upgrade then erm... new laptop time?

@andrehsu can you give details of problems your having? Your laptop should be fine on low settings, given my Old laptop handles it ok... Map size can have a significant effect on performance, so ensure to keep maps sensible (1 large planet or a few medium ones is ok, 10+ planet systems will lag any machine..)?

I'm pretty sure PA, like most games, aren't really optimized for multithreading.

Higher clock rate is almost always better than more cores. I have an i5(dual core) in my laptop myself, but it runs from 2,6 GHz ro 3,2 GHz. PA runs flawlessly for me on high settings.

This is why I recommend to friends never try pc gaming on a laptop. You can't upgrade em, they are expensive, and die in 3 years or so usually to heat related issues.

That being said I think your specs should be fine to play as long as you are willing to reduce settings.

Settings? Depend what framerate you do preferr!
Anyways, Textures should be at least on medium and AA should be FXAA (although a little blurry it´s still better than no AA by far.) I do know that PA is even playable on LowEnd-PCs (in SOME way) as long as they feature up to date drivers! (but running it offline won´t be so nice on your system!)

The client is actually rather good optimized to use multithreading.

Just yesterday, on a four medium planet system, when the game was reaching the end (after 70 min), I was lagging to single digit frames. Although do note there was tons of aircraft orbiting my planet, and also quite a clump of units.
I was playing on medium with FXAA on, and yes, my drivers are up to date.

Exactly why I think the game needs a optional unit cap.

I think those conditions will lag most machines.... A more powerful rig would help of course.

Regarding performance and stuff, is it be possible to set the UI the high priority, while other stuff to a lower priority. I don't mind that my army is jumping all over the place, but I need to be able to select them and control them reliably

I would think the issue with that is that any interactions you make with units is tied to the simulation performance... so you could have it so the menu's were silky smooth, but issuing the commands would still lag which probably isn't much better?

I would think otherwise. For example, when the game is in the beginnings, when you press the "select all unit of this type hotkey", the ui will respond by selecting them all, but later on when the game is lagging, ctrl+z never works as reliable. Also, does changing the priority of coherent ui in the task manager do anything to improve ui performance?