DS: Intel or AMD - Answered.

[Chip Patton]

My coisin is an engineer for AMD, now he doesn't engineer the CPU but he is an engineer for the turbo technology in AMD's. Strangely, it may sound as if this conversation is already biased, but this isn't going to go the way you think. I wanted this stated first so you can see where the advice he gives comes from and how this is not an uninformed experiment.

I have 2 systems I used for testing various applications in my home, one is a Xeon 8 core 2.8Ghz server with 32 GB of ram (this is not the server I generally play with), the other is an Opteron 8 core 3.7Ghz server with 32 GB of ram. The AMD server is by all rights faster, and can handle nearly 2x the load. So naturally I start testing on the weaker machine to guage a hypthesized "improvement".

In this case, I had 4 friends and myself get our ships from our DS (which is a 32 core, 2 cpu Xeon 64GB ram server) and import them into a test save where we would give both of these servers a run for their money.

The Intel Xeon machine held the server's sim speed at a solid 1.00 sim, no matter what -- with the exception of 2 ships ramming each other and moving those large ships, the sim remained at 1.00 and the lowest was 0.80. After an hour, we switched to the other server which had the exact same save loaded (before the experiment started).

The AMD, first started up and I noticed something strange, it seemed to use more cores, about 4 actually, where the Intel seemed to only use 2. This is promising. Then I notice something else strange, all 4 cores max out between 70% and 100% usage. Now these are test servers with just windows 10 enterprise running and everything turned off (no http server, no antivirus, no nothing). It was SE that was utilizing the CPU. The Intel system only used 2 cores, but it wouldn't ever use more than 30% of a core unless there was a quick spike during collisions.

Anyways, we jump in and test it out. After I jump in, I take immediate notice that the sim speed is bouncing between 0.8 and 1.00, this server is not holding the sim at 1.00 very well. Friend 1 joins, the sim now stablizes at 0.8, friend 2 joins, 0.5, friend 3 joins at 0.3. We wait approximately 5 minuites letting the server catch up while all 4 cores are now maxed at 100% usage. We stop the experiment and assume a failure for AMD.

I then call my cousin, and have a chat about this, obviously this is something that could affect his carreer as an engineer if he can't produce a product that can compete with Intel, right? Well he explained to me what was going on, which is the point of this post and something everyone should take note of:

Space Engineers, recalling correctly, is still an alpha game and his horribly optimized for threading. Intel has us on threading becuase of their hyper-threading technology, which means that the multithreading is forced through the hardware layer of the CPU and not the software layer which is what AMD relies on and in which is also dependant on a game being optimized for it. Your experiment was spot on and is exactly what us engineers from AMD and Intel would expect from the game you're testing. Feel free to relay this to the game developers, they need to know, becuase there are a lot of folks out there that run AMD servers and this is crippling for them.

This then brought be me back to an older forum post about 2 years ago now about how this game wasn't focused on making the game playable for AMD folks. Funny enough I was viciously attacked by the fanbois and told I didn't have evidence and my facts were ancedotal. I'm only saying this because I now feel vendicated and hope people can see now after 2 years what damage a fanboi can do -- we still have a server that cannot properly multi-thread.

So, the answer, and summary is (the TL;DR) until SE is optimized for multi-threading, Intel machines with hyperthreading will outpase a MUCH stronger AMD machine becuase of hyperthreading technology which requires no software optimization to utilize multi-threading. So if you have a choice of what to run SE on, AMD or Intel, for now, no matter how much of a fan you are of either system, run it on an Intel.

[Tator_puff]

develpers already know this

[=AJSA= ddog]

Well that's assuming you are using hyperthreaded rendering for AMD cpu/apu. Personally I'm using a full quad core AMD cpu with no hyperthreading and so am not affected by this. So Intel isn't ALWAYS better than AMD for this game, but is so when two cpu's that use hyperthreading is concerned. There's a long list of performance issues for this game, this will likely be over looked along with the rest of them. Although the game is aparently in a state of performance building at the moment, SE's progress in this matter so far hasn't given me much faith that they'll polish the game all that much.

[Chip Patton]

Originally posted by =AJSA= Ultra Mortis:

Well that's assuming you are using hyperthreaded rendering for AMD cpu/apu. Personally I'm using a full quad core AMD cpu with no hyperthreading and so am not affected by this. So Intel isn't ALWAYS better than AMD for this game, but is so when two cpu's that use hyperthreading is concerned. There's a long list of performance issues for this game, this will likely be over looked along with the rest of them. Although the game is aparently in a state of performance building at the moment, SE's progress in this matter so far hasn't given me much faith that they'll polish the game all that much.

I have been unable to get any DS to stay above 0.5 sim when there is more than 4 people online even if the DS is idle with no physics calcuations (all that needs to happen is to have 4 30,000,000kg ships in the world) while running it on any AMD box. I have 12 boxes in my house, 4 of them are intel the rest AMD (this speaks to my CPU of choice) -- and AMD currently has no hyperthreading technology unless you're refering to the AMD hyper-transport which has nothing to do with threading but devices talking to the CPU on the board, or unless you're refering to the virtual cores on some of the FX cpu's which aren't virtual at all -- they are floating point hardware cores, not virtual like a hyperthreading core.

[TwinChops]

I wanted to say its a bit unfair that the amd has ~1ghz more, but its look like intel beats the ♥♥♥♥ out of amd ... again.

But as your Cousin says, its an early alpha game, so anything can happend.

[Chip Patton]

Originally posted by Metylan:

I wanted to say its a bit unfair that the amd has ~1ghz more, but its look like intel beats the ♥♥♥♥ out of amd ... again.

But as your Cousin says, its an early alpha game, so anything can happend.

Most of the time, AMD server chips have a clear advantage over Intel server chips -- in fact most network and sys admins prefer AMD in their data centers. In short, AMD's have a very strong server chip, and have maintained a very strong server chip for years now. However, Intel usually wins on the homefront though as they are designed more for home computing, ie games, applications, etc. Having two servers setups and having AMD being smoked by the intel chip like the AMD was 5 years older (when it is 1 year newer) speaks ill of the game.

[lPaladinl]

This is one of the only reasons Intel outperforms AMD in most applications, is because of poor multi-core support, and lack of hyperthreading on AMD's side.

It's the same for both server CPUs and PC CPUs.

In multi-threaded gaming, AMD is almost always clearly ahead of Intel, and has been since the Thuban models, Phenom II's. An FX 6300 or higher always outperforms a 4770k or 5820k in games like Battlefield 3/4 where multi-core rendering is present, even older Phenom II's will crush a 4770k.

Fortunately for work applications, multi-core rendering is often available. Unfortunately for Gaming applications, multi-core rendering is largely unavailable, greatly limiting what people can do.

At least AMD's next PC CPU series is promising, the Zen series, as they have patented their own type of hyperthreading that will probably give Intel a run for their money again.

Originally posted by Metylan:

I wanted to say its a bit unfair that the amd has ~1ghz more, but its look like intel beats the ♥♥♥♥ out of amd ... again.

But as your Cousin says, its an early alpha game, so anything can happend.

You probably shouldn't post about things you don't understand, and just have an uneducated bias for.

[Knifey (Shooty)]

Originally posted by =AJSA= Ultra Mortis:

Personally I'm using a full quad core AMD cpu with no hyperthreading and so am not affected by this

LOL, this made my day. laughing so hard I'm crying.