CloD and overclocking

[III/JG53_Don]

I was wondering if CloD actually benefits from extense overclocking of allready decent CPU, like the famous 2500/2600k, since I am struggling if I should wait for the Ivy Bridge in March/April or better give the Sandy Bridge a shot.

What I heard is that the game uses barely 60% of the first and 15-20% of the other 3 cores, so my conclusion would be that overclocking wouldn't do the game any performance profits in this present build?! Having this in mind, these CPU and its overclocking possibilities should do the job perfectly for this game and its future enhancements (dynamic weather, damage model for trees etc). without a need to upgrade for the next 2-3 years in terms of a new CPU.
Just an assumption by myself.
Would be nice to hear some enlightments on this topic from an owner of these (or equivalent) CPUS

[CWMV]

I run my 2600k at 4.4ghz. It's really an amazing difference. Totally worth it.

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by III/JG53_Don

I was wondering if CloD actually benefits from extense overclocking of allready decent CPU, like the famous 2500/2600k, since I am struggling if I should wait for the Ivy Bridge in March/April or better give the Sandy Bridge a shot.

What I heard is that the game uses barely 60% of the first and 15-20% of the other 3 cores, so my conclusion would be that overclocking wouldn't do the game any performance profits in this present build?! Having this in mind, these CPU and its overclocking possibilities should do the job perfectly for this game and its future enhancements (dynamic weather, damage model for trees etc). without a need to upgrade for the next 2-3 years in terms of a new CPU.
Just an assumption by myself.
Would be nice to hear some enlightments on this topic from an owner of these (or equivalent) CPUS

I think the issue you are talking about may be that the 2600k does hyperthreading (the 2500k doesn't), which means that half of the cores are virtual, and running in shared time on the real cores, which means that Windows Task Manager, which thinks that the hyperthreaded cores are really capable of the full speed of the real cores, will only show the cores at 50% utilisation when the cores are actually fully utilised.

[Qpassa]

I have my 920 at 3.8 Ghz

[III/JG53_Don]

Taking this into consideration it seems to be more like a problem of the ineffective utilisation of multi cores..... so the game benefits mainly from the oc of the first core and minor from the other 3 i guess.

further enhancements of the multi core utilisation would equilize the benfits of overclocking i suppose... as soon as dynamic weather and maybe AI are transfered to the other cores.

[AKA_Tenn]

i think how this game works is more like... it uses 1 core as the main one, and offloads smaller tasks to the other cores, that way if you only have a two cores, it can offload multiple tasks to the second core without bogging it down... games are still not truly multi-threaded yet

[l3uLLDoZeR]

To answer your question, YES overclocking your cpu makes a huge difference in this game. I don't think the number of cores matters as much as speed, so overclocking is the way to go.

I had an e8400 overclocked to 3.6ghz and it ran the game pretty well.
Now I have a i2500K @ 4.5 ghz ....so 2 extra cores and a higher overclock. I gained about 15fps and got to turn a few setting from medium to high, but nothing drastic.

Whatever cpu you have it's worth overclocking as long as you have good cooling in your case and for the cpu. Don't crank anything with a stock cooler!

[ATAG_Septic]

Originally Posted by Qpassa

I have my 920 at 3.8 Ghz

I run my 930 at 4.2 stable and cool, water-cooled. I might not be quite so adventurous with different motherboard etc.

Thanks very much for sharing your results Cheesehawk, I've often wondered whether it's a benefit to Clod but don't have the patience to do scientific tests (I always seem to end up changing more than one setting between tests!)

[III/JG53_Don]

Are some technical details of the new Ivy Bridges allready known? Like how many cores and with which initial ghz they run? Any Price speculations?
I just found very general informations about it, but nothing more...

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by cheesehawk

Building a new rig over the last two weeks, these were my experiences.

......................................

New:
i7 920
6Gb DDR3
GTX 560ti w/2Gb

CPU@stock 2.6
same textures as above
FPS: 25-60 (Vsync'd) ave:36
.................................................

.................................................
CPU @ 4.2Ghz
increased Buildings to high, Land shading to high, forests to High
FPS 35-60 Ave:44-46

Cheesehawk, how did you go from 3.1 to 4.2GHz?
I have mine overclocked from 2.9 to 3.6GHz but any higher seemed too complicated (i7-940 with DFI LANPARTY UTX58 T3eH8 and Corsair DDR3-1600 probably my 1600MHz, 8-8-8-24, 1.65V is too slow....)

~S~