I just want to know, as I recently bought a mid-high performance graphics card, and I'm curious as to whether or not it'll be able to handle it in the end. Requirements list the graphics as Shader 3.0 ready, but that's like requiring Ice Cream to be cold at this point. I'm expecting we'll get a 300-400% increase in performance after multi-core threading is supported, even more for people with those crazy 6 and 8 core builds. I'm also sure the rendering pipelines can be improved significantly, considering how much Uber has talked about optimization. And the reason I'm curious about this is because of the way the settings menu currently works. For anything less than a Geforce Titan/Geforce 780, you have to have shadows off. All the other settings don't really seem to impact performance significantly.
I'd like to know also, but I doubt they could give an estimate that would be precise enough to be of any use yet.
I don't know where you're getting that last bit. From my own experience, having a laptop with Intel 4000 integrated graphics, I can run it perfectly well on medium settings. Sure, the framerate is low, but it plays and it isn't too bad. And that was a few patches back. I run it on low currently just to try and get better performance out of it overall, but I haven't had to shut off shadows since the early v49000 patches.
I'm usually playing in games which have an average of 1000-2000 units by the time the last Commander taps out, so no shadows is a necessity for me. But aside from that, whether a setting is on Uber or Low doesn't matter, I get the same FPS; really low.
I tend to have worse frame rates with low settings, shadows arnt bad in the early game either Large armies are not going to be realistic for me, given my computer specs.
I would expect that when it comes release with some dedicated optimizations you will see PA running in a state where you won't need anywhere near a Titan. It is hard to say exactly what hardware it will need but I would guess the minimum would be something along the likes of at least a GeForce 500 series or equivalent. At least a quad-core, maybe even high end dual cores (maybe?, depends on how much performance gain they can get out of threading and how much work they put into that). My i7-920 at 2.6gHZ will probably be more than enough, but for better RAM speeds a more modern processor might be wanted. 4gbs RAM will probably be the min, but 8gb could be recommended. Now for PiP it will increase the requirements. I know I am upgrading my desktop, but that isn't solely for PA. I will be running a Core i7-3770k, 16gbs of DDR3-1600 RAM, with a GTX 680 4gb card. I am also eventually going to SLI with another 680 but that is really just because I can and not because anything will ever need that. That should max this game on release no problem, otherwise something is up.
Considering that my crappy and old NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 card can play the game without difficulties (good framerate even) i have a hard time seeing how a "mid-high" performance card would have any issues. Good old Supcom runs worse then this game currently (for me atleast).
It will surely be interesting to see how performance will change in this alpha if multi-planet gameplay hits. There will be some downs in performance. But I would not worry about the state in later development. There is so much they can do about optimizations.
Im very interested in this too, i recently bought a 7950 OC and i cant get above 15 fps by the end of a match...
Considering I get 10 - 40 FPS depending on planet size and unit count on a GeForce 250, I'm intrigued as to a) the rest of your setup, and b) what you consider a "good" framerate
i also have a geforce GT 220 and the game runs surprisingly well for being nearly 7 years old. with the last update i ran the game without doing any of the song and dance i usually do for big games like this to optimize performance and it was running 20 to 15 frames. i was able to get up to 40 frames steady by shutting down every program i possibly could, turning down the resolution to its bare minimum, and turning up the priority for the program. the number of units doesn't seem to affect frame rate nearly as much as how detailed the planet is. i could get a proto-planet or a ice planet and the game will run without problem, but on a earth like planet with a lot more foliage and other particles to get in they way army sizes start to make a real impact.
It will improve by approximately 1.17648% daily for at least another day or two. This is an impossible question to answer Continuing to improve performance, especially as we start working on it heavily in beta, will be a a significant focus throughout the project.
Realistically performance can increase a lot. It really is an effort in, results out kind of process. Also keep in mind that we continue to add features as well so things can get even slower before they get faster. Anyway there are a ton of things that can be done to make it faster. Manpower is always the issue.
If man power is the issue, sign me up to work there I think you said at one point that none of your meshes are batched yet, after you get batching down, shouldn't there be a massive performance increase? If i remember correctly, not batching means that the gpu has to fetch the same mesh every time it's rendered, so the lack of batching would be why moons have a much better framers than planets, where trees are everywhere. So how hard would it be to get batching down soon?
