Hey

Does anyone know how well Supreme Commander (Forged Alliance) will scale with up coming CPU generations equipped with 6,8,10,12 cores?

It really annoys me how the "simulation speed" of the game slows down when playing large maps with multiple hard AI's, unit cap at 1000, and literally 1000's of units in game.

Current Hardware just cant handle the game at this scale

I run a Q6600 @ 3.6 which is pretty much up there in terms of current gen. CPU power available, so what im thinking is ill have to wait for Nehlem or AMD's equiv. before I can run Massive battles without the simulation speed crawling to about -2 ish.

Just to clear things up Simulation Speed is not related to the games Frame Rate. (which remains pretty good in these large battles using an 8800gt OC'ed. The Simulation Speed is the speed in which the game is being simulated at.

(Game engine allows in-game adjustment from -10 through to +10, 0 being normal speed)

I know the game is multi threaded and im assuming this gives my Q6600 the edge when its comes to 1000+ unit battles and keeping the simulation speed up, but i also have the feeling the game has been hard coded to run 4 main threads, which handles AI, Graphics, Simulation and Audio. (Don't quote me on that though)

If these 4 threads are the extent to which the game is "Multi threaded" then making more core available to the gain wouldn't effect performance as this would mean the game has been hard coded to be "Multi threaded" up to Quad Core support, and would not dynamically break down the work load any further that 4 cores. (Non-Dynamic Core scaling)

Perhaps a patch could ensure scaling with more than 4 core (unless it already does?)

I guess IF the game doesn't have core scaling above Quad Core then increased clock speed and per clock processing power is all that can help us in these LARGE scale battles with AI players. (A new core generation)

Would make an interesting Toms Article

An in depth look at Supreme Commander's (Forges Alliance) Simulation speed
- 2vs4 core....sim speed difference in large battles
- Sim Speed scaling with Core Clock Speeds
- Do ANY current gen. CPU's have the power to run 1500+ units at full Simulation Speed

BWHAHA ...or not....(id read it though lol)

Does anyone have ANY incite into this?
Any Comments?
How bout your own Sim Speed slow down frustrations?

Regards

Jasper

Looks like ill be upgrading to 4gigs then tomorrow then!

I know for me going from stock q6600 2.4 to 3.6 (water cooled) made a world of difference.

And i know exactly what you mean, 1 hour of game play taking up to 3 hours because of sim. slow down!

Bring on new gen CPU's ALREADY


....sorians ai????

Is that a mod or something?

please tell me where to get/activate it!!

...also...another expansion? ...that would be WICKED!

Doing an internet search is your firend as always

h**p://www.supcomuniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2923
(post number 8 has a link to the file i use currently although there may be better newer versions around)

here is another link to some interesting reading + mods/ai stuff:
h**p://www.supcomuniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?p=47762
i dont have time to read it all but its a start for ya anyway.

The ai can be a little bit funky also depending on some maps, so give any ai's your using a try on a couple of different maps and under different races/settings.

Any chance of a link to some information flakes? 32 cores?

Anyways just in case anyone is wondering supreme commander fa is one of the best games ever, and is the best rts yet released

Yeah after doing a little searching I found more interesting reading. To improve multicore performance, dual quad etc, in supcom there is a little tool to download. Check it out here:
h**p://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?p=203463#203463

Also yeah did a little digging about how many cores are supported and flakes maybe correct, didnt find a specific article, but a lot of mentions