The mistery of bad performance revealed

[Øuantum3]

CPUs recommended by Paradox:

The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i5-12600K is 3.70 GHz
The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i7-6700K is 4.00 GHz

Ultra modern CPU base clock frequency speed.

i9-14900K is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
i7-14700K is 3.4 GHz. (20 cores/24 threads).
i5-14600K is 3.5 GHz. (14 cores/20 threads).
i9-13900KS is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
--
Now my CPU, an i7-4790 is 3.6GHz (4 cores/4threads). None of the above CPUs is faster, except for the i7-6700K.

Then the question araise: It's worth spending so much money in modern CPUs? Well... no.

I have a GTX 1080 8GB of VRAM; 32 GB System RAM and a 2 TB Stick SSD drive.
The game performs at 24 FPS.
Most games will perform better in any of the other CPUs, but this one in particular will not due the Engine, which is Unity. Unity isn't fully multithread compatible, as Unreal Engine is.

That's all the mistery behind the performance issue vs "why my super modern computer don't run the game so fluently". Must save this info for me.

Drop your PC Specs and FPS in the comments.

[Øuantum3]

Originally posted by Gauge:

Google IPC (instructions per cycle). I see you are the target consumer for most CPU marketing. Bigger number good hurr. 4790 was a legendary CPU, and lasted much longer than intel probably wanted it to. However, it is VERY slow compared to modern CPUs due to IPC uplift since the time of your CPU.

This isn't even mentioning the blatantly obvious benefit of more cores and therefore more threads.

Already saw a test with many PCs on CS1, and surprise: the best CPU wasn't the one with more cores and threads.

[Carn]

Originally posted by Øuantum3:

CPUs recommended by Paradox:

The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i5-12600K is 3.70 GHz
The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i7-6700K is 4.00 GHz

Ultra modern CPU base clock frequency speed.

i9-14900K is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
i7-14700K is 3.4 GHz. (20 cores/24 threads).
i5-14600K is 3.5 GHz. (14 cores/20 threads).
i9-13900KS is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
--
Now my CPU, an i7-4790 is 3.6GHz (4 cores/4threads). None of the above CPUs is faster, except for the i7-6700K.

Then the question araise: It's worth spending so much money in modern CPUs? Well... no.

I have a GTX 1080 8GB of VRAM; 32 GB System RAM and a 2 TB Stick SSD drive.
The game performs at 24 FPS.
Most games will perform better in any of the other CPUs, but this one in particular will not due the Engine, which is Unity. Unity isn't fully multithread compatible, as Unreal Engine is.

That's all the mistery behind the performance issue vs "why my super modern computer don't run the game so fluently". Must save this info for me.

Drop your PC Specs and FPS in the comments.

Pretty safe to disregard everythign this guy has said.

[Operation40]

mystery*

and OP didn't really say anything at all.

[Øuantum3]

Originally posted by Carn:

Originally posted by Øuantum3:

CPUs recommended by Paradox:

The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i5-12600K is 3.70 GHz
The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i7-6700K is 4.00 GHz

Ultra modern CPU base clock frequency speed.

i9-14900K is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
i7-14700K is 3.4 GHz. (20 cores/24 threads).
i5-14600K is 3.5 GHz. (14 cores/20 threads).
i9-13900KS is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
--
Now my CPU, an i7-4790 is 3.6GHz (4 cores/4threads). None of the above CPUs is faster, except for the i7-6700K.

Then the question araise: It's worth spending so much money in modern CPUs? Well... no.

I have a GTX 1080 8GB of VRAM; 32 GB System RAM and a 2 TB Stick SSD drive.
The game performs at 24 FPS.
Most games will perform better in any of the other CPUs, but this one in particular will not due the Engine, which is Unity. Unity isn't fully multithread compatible, as Unreal Engine is.

That's all the mistery behind the performance issue vs "why my super modern computer don't run the game so fluently". Must save this info for me.

Drop your PC Specs and FPS in the comments.

Pretty safe to disregard everythign this guy has said.

Drop your specs and FPS count, please.

[Øuantum3]

Originally posted by Operation40:

mystery*

and OP didn't really say anything at all.

Drop your specs and FPS count, please.

[lnomsim]

Originally posted by Øuantum3:

CPUs recommended by Paradox:

The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i5-12600K is 3.70 GHz
The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i7-6700K is 4.00 GHz

Ultra modern CPU base clock frequency speed.

i9-14900K is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
i7-14700K is 3.4 GHz. (20 cores/24 threads).
i5-14600K is 3.5 GHz. (14 cores/20 threads).
i9-13900KS is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
--
Now my CPU, an i7-4790 is 3.6GHz (4 cores/4threads). None of the above CPUs is faster, except for the i7-6700K.

Then the question araise: It's worth spending so much money in modern CPUs? Well... no.

I have a GTX 1080 8GB of VRAM; 32 GB System RAM and a 2 TB Stick SSD drive.
The game performs at 24 FPS.
Most games will perform better in any of the other CPUs, but this one in particular will not due the Engine, which is Unity. Unity isn't fully multithread compatible, as Unreal Engine is.

That's all the mistery behind the performance issue vs "why my super modern computer don't run the game so fluently". Must save this info for me.

Drop your PC Specs and FPS in the comments.

You have a PC that is more than 8 years old.....

And you have components that are two generations behind....

It's already a miracle you can launch the game. The secret is not bad optimization in your case, it's the fact that your potato needs a new life.

I had an i7-7700 on my previous computer, and it had a hard time running games released 3 to 4 years ago.

[KamikazeJo]

You are mistaking clock frequency with actual CPU speed, which is understandable as this was historically the case years ago, but not so much today. These CPUs are light years ahead of yours, no offense meant.

I'm currently on my second city at 11k population, currently hovering around 78-85FPS (103FPS if I look at an empty patch of land). My first city was on barrier island and reached 317k pop. This one was hovering between 30-55fps depending on where I was looking (downtown vs suburbs).

AMD 7950X
RTX4090
64GB Ram
2TB NVMe
Playing at everything maxed 1080p (I don`t own a 4K monitor)
The game maxed out around 75% on all 16 cores/32 threads on my 300k pop city. GPU usage then went down to 60%, telling me I was CPU bottlenecked.

[Freakonomicon]

13700k
RTX2070 8GB
32GB 6GHz DDR5

After the patch, the game now runs on 60fps with rare stutters, as long as I don't put the camera into a very flat angle

I also had a haswell cpu (i4700) allbeit on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mainboard, it was really good for a long time, however the new ones are still better. you could say they have much better "optimization"...
The problem and the reason why CPUs with more threads don't get better better performance in these benchmarks is that very few games can actually make use of hyperthreading and that's also not the point of it to begin with. The reason that core frequency goes down on higher core and thread counts is heat dissipation, because it is very hard to impossible to cool down CPUs once they go above a certain frequency. Heat dissipation is a function of surface area, that's why heat sinks have fins, the issue is that the heat spreader (chip cover) on the CPU does not have enough surface area to reliably transfer the heat to the heat sink above a certain power dissipation of the chip, therefore the higher the number of cores and the amount of work each core has to perform, the lower the frequency has to be in order to reliably cool the chip. The ultrathin macbooks actually have that issue all the time. Passively cooling a laptop CPU in this day and age is a bad idea at best, unless someone doesn't mind that their 1.6GHz CPU starts throttling to 400MHz as soon as they open any program.
The same goes for GPUs btw. That's why I don't see the point in getting a card like the 4090, when a 4070 can run the same games for a third of the price

[Cookie]

There is a thing called IPC (instructions per cycle). That's the indication of how fast a CPU is nowadays, less so the frequency or cores.

[Streeto]

CPU is barely involved. If you've played and seen all the posts about performance you will know it is heavily GPU-based which is the polar opposite of CS1. I have a 6-core/12-thread CPU and it doesn't go above 10% while playing. My GPU (and everybody elses it seems) is running at 80-90% and in some cases up to 100%, while the CPU is taking a vacation.

Honestly, not sure what they're doing but this game is all types of confusing from a hardware perspective. It's almost like the GPU is doing all the AI calculations as well as it's main job as chief renderer, which is bizarre for a PC game, right?

Edit: Also, I'll echo what Versale said above, clock frequency is a false idea of performance, and is more of a marketing number if anything.

I will say though, applications that can utilize multi-core workloads will always benefit from a CPU with more cores. One of those applications is CS2, according to Paradox' marketing.

[Maximum Effort]

I9 13900KF and a 4080, 32GB ram. I get about 80 fps @ 3440x1440 with some settings turned down. Not the greatest but playable for me.

[Sir 5w30]

5900x / 4090 / 32gb RAM. 4K resolution everything high except DOF, Clouds, Blur etc.
Population = close to 200K
CPU Usage is 70% - 85% ( i am cpu limited)
GPU Usage is 60% - 95% based on where i am looking at.
My FPS is Min 30 - Max 50. Game is butter smooth.

[NameInvalid]

Same as CSL1, performance per core is important. The ghz is mostly irrelevant due to generational efficiency improvements. You can just go read Passmark CPU per single core performance benchmark, and you will see how much better todays cpu compared to ten years ago despite similar ghz.

Now, csl2 also support running all cores, unlike csl1. So, a monster cpu will allow you to grow far larger city without the simulation speeed slowing down.

I am on an ancient quad core Sandy Bridge cpu, the limit is around 40k cims, the speed adjustment dont do anything anymore.

[☻]

As others have pointed out, the clock frequency can boost steady way above the base frequency and modern CPU's have much more fluctuation between base and max frequency. IPC or instructions per clock are increased substantially each generation and game consoles have 8 cores so core counts won't generally matter beyond 8 physical cores on most games these days. Intel's E cores don't run on games and AMD's dual CCD approach causes a 10% loss of performance so a game would need to use the second CCD substantially in order to get any gains. CPU cache is also increasing and that bypasses some CPU bottlenecks as well. This game appears to be GPU bound more than anything though. So upgrading your CPU won't do much if your frame rate is limited by something else in your system to begin with.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Øuantum3:

CPUs recommended by Paradox:

The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i5-12600K is 3.70 GHz
The base clock frequency speed of the Intel Core i7-6700K is 4.00 GHz

Ultra modern CPU base clock frequency speed.

i9-14900K is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
i7-14700K is 3.4 GHz. (20 cores/24 threads).
i5-14600K is 3.5 GHz. (14 cores/20 threads).
i9-13900KS is 3.2 GHz (24 cores/32 threads).
--
Now my CPU, an i7-4790 is 3.6GHz (4 cores/4threads). None of the above CPUs is faster, except for the i7-6700K.

Then the question araise: It's worth spending so much money in modern CPUs? Well... no.

I have a GTX 1080 8GB of VRAM; 32 GB System RAM and a 2 TB Stick SSD drive.
The game performs at 24 FPS.
Most games will perform better in any of the other CPUs, but this one in particular will not due the Engine, which is Unity. Unity isn't fully multithread compatible, as Unreal Engine is.

That's all the mistery behind the performance issue vs "why my super modern computer don't run the game so fluently". Must save this info for me.

Drop your PC Specs and FPS in the comments.

Clock speed is just one of the factors in CPU performance.

As an example, i've upgraded from an i7 8700k to an I9 13900k last year and the difference on certain poorly optimized games, like victoria 3, was going from half an FPS in the late game (no joke, I couldn't even click things or move the camera anymore) to almost 60fps and slight hicups here and there, I could even fastforward through time even in the very late game.

If you were to simply look at clock speed you wouldn't think that one CPU has 2x the single core performance of the other.

Also, check out the list, mine used to be the 3rd best CPU for single thread performance back when I bought it, now it's further down: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html