Let's talk performance

[bryanb2007]

Am I the only one surprised by how poorly this game runs?

My specs:
Intel i7 2600k @ ~4GHz
16 GB RAM
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 670

I'm having major FPS issues at maxed settings.

I would not worry about your CPU. I am also running a i7-2600K and it is actually an amazing processor (despite being from 2011). For those hating on the 2600k remember that it is a Hexacore processor running at 4 GHz. In some applications the 2600k will actually perform better than the CPUs other ("experts") on this thread have been mentioning. Here is a nice comparison, of a 2600k, a 4790k, and a 6700.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-2600K

I have three PCs in my house (mine, and my two kids). I have the i7-2600K, my kids have a i7-4790 (devils canyon) and a i7-6700k (skylake). I can assure you that the i7-2600k performs quite well in the real world, even against the i7-6700k. Since my 2600k actually outperforms my kids PCs there is really no reason to upgrade.

My guess is the video card is your performance bottleneck.

My Specs:
Intel i7 2600k @ 4 GHz
32 GB of RAM
Geforce GTX 1070
1 TB Samsung 850 SSD
Windows 10 64 bit

 

[Xur]

Agreed - I have little reason to upgrade my 2600k. I'm not on max settings with my 780ti either, so dunno why OP expects max settings on a 5-year-old 670gtx.... it's ridiculous really...

 

[Victoria]

Often the cause is something else running. I would never recommend an upgrade without testing unless the specs are below what is recommended and I would never run with mimum spec.

I have no idea how well threaded CIV6 is and that could be some of the issue as can be rendering the invisible or a zillion other things.

CPU as a concept as opposed to a chip has increased significantly over the last few years with more offloading to GPU, more cache, more specialization, more cores and threads and better programmed code to utilize these features. To deny this means you do not do it for a living.

The funny thing is, I have never looked at Civ performance because by the end of the day I am not interested and mine runs OK. I guess I'll take a look tonight.

I would recommend using procmon, perfmon, fraps and 3Dmark or similar.
Make sure nothing else is eating your resources including AV or a hardware issue (check OS log and # of interrupts when idle)
Then in game look at when you are slow and that should give you an idea of whether it is GPU or CPU.
It is more often than not GPU, especially if you are not thrashing at above 75% CPU (multicore 65% is when depreciation becomes more noticeable) and there is little else using CPU and you aint run out of RAM.
One issue with Benchmarking is you need a similar machine running the same Civ game.

Regardless, last thing you want to do is upgrade your graphics / CPU if it makes no difference, so try to check as best as you can.

 

[lordhaw]

Just for the sake of saying so here, I am running Civ 6 on a 5 year old i3-530 with 6GB RAM and a ATI Radeon R7 250 1GB video card. Nothing special on the disk, just a 1TB 7200 RPM SATA drive. All standard run of the mill equipment from the time. It's certainly minimal specs, with the RAM being higher than the minimum of course. But the game runs perfectly fine for me. Now it by default set the graphics to fairly minimal settings due to the hardware but I've since upped some of the graphic settings a bit (most to medium and turning on AA), and also turning on leader animations to medium. The game performs perfectly fine in that setup on this system. It runs much faster than Civ 5 does on this system by a long shot. Load times are fast, turns are faster than Civ 5 and there are no graphical issues or slowdowns apparent. The only thing that's a bit choppy are the leader animations and they aren't bad, just not as smooth as they should be. I've never run any framerate tests or anything because I've been quite pleased with the performance of the game on this system so far. The graphical effects are actually fairly nice even on medium settings. I've also never tried to break things yet to see at what point this falls apart on me.

I work on server equipment all day as a Sysadmin and don't always feel like playing with this stuff after hours...I just want to play a game to relax

 

[dexters]

I7 2600k is old enough now that a 6700k will show gains. But it may not matter for a lot of things especially if 60fps is the target

Not a huge fan of cpu boss comparisons.

Here is anandtech benches
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=1550

 

[Roller123]

I7 2600k is old enough now that a 6700k will show gains. But it may not matter for a lot of things especially if 60fps is the target

Not a huge fan of cpu boss comparisons.

Here is anandtech benches
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=1550

Shadow of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]
1080p Ultra, Minimum Frames Per Second
2600k: 62.97fps
6700k: 59.34fps

 

[dexters]

Shadow of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]
1080p Ultra, Minimum Frames Per Second
2600k: 62.97fps
6700k: 59.34fps

Yeah for that game no gains. But other Benches show gains of 30+% Hence my qualified post and that's measuring fps only not turn times. Though all the multi tasking multi threaded operations show huge gains foe the 6700k.

We'd need someone to bench Civ games to see if cpu is a bottleneck. I'd assume so

If someone is upgrading from a 5 your old pc there's really no reason not to look for a cpu upgrade as well if the budget is there.

 

[Victoria]

So.. Civ is turn based. Each civ takes its turn when you click next. This cannot be multithreaded. Also how much of a Civs turn can be multi threaded safely? Has anyone considered that turning off MT can in fact help heavily ST tasks like this seems to be?

During this "next" period, anything visible on the screen needs its action to be displayed for your knowledge and pleasure screaming graphics please!

When you next click next and it churns... does it spend more time on the largest foes turn or does it spend more time showing you pretty fights and re-rendering the map during these fanciful displays?

It is not hard having the native perfmon tool (accessible through task manager) recording various useful stats to a file for review later.
Its even easier to try and assess which of the two is being done just by looking.

 

[Roller123]

Yeah for that game no gains. But other Benches show gains of 30+% Hence my qualified post and that's measuring fps only not turn times. Though all the multi tasking multi threaded operations show huge gains foe the 6700k.

We'd need someone to bench Civ games to see if cpu is a bottleneck. I'd assume so

If someone is upgrading from a 5 your old pc there's really no reason not to look for a cpu upgrade as well if the budget is there.

I don't really want to get into this discussion, but the linked test compares a default 2600k@3.2GHz vs an overclocked 6700k@4.8GHz. I'm sure it was an oversight, but gains in game would be a result of that 50% clockrate boost. and the 2600k overclocks as well. There is there a 3.2 vs 4.0 comparison, and the results are pretty much equal, with some extremes here or there, and still having the clock advantage. Again not that i really care, but unless the game is really heavy into the CPU, like Total War levels, these CPUs are pretty much the same. The former lacks AVX2 though, and that will kill the 2600k sooner or later. But i agree Civ6 benchmarks would the the relevant factor there but i highly doubt there will be non clockrate related difference.

 

[dexters]

I don't really want to get into this discussion, but the linked test compares a default 2600k@3.2GHz vs an overclocked 6700k@4.8GHz. I'm sure it was an oversight, but gains in game would be a result of that 50% clockrate boost. and the 2600k overclocks as well. There is there a 3.2 vs 4.0 comparison, and the results are pretty much equal, with some extremes here or there, and still having the clock advantage. Again not that i really care, but unless the game is really heavy into the CPU, like Total War levels, these CPUs are pretty much the same. The former lacks AVX2 though, and that will kill the 2600k sooner or later. But i agree Civ6 benchmarks would the the relevant factor there but i highly doubt there will be non clockrate related difference.

Thanks for pointing out the oversight
here's the non OC comparison
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=1543

And yes I generally agree that no point upgrading to i7 6700k if one has a 2600k and isn't looking to upgrade right now. but if one is making a new pc today, going for the i7 6700k from a 2600k wouldn't be a bad idea.

There are other benefits too. Like the new z170 Motherboards support better USB standards

 

[whyidie]

I could be many things. Sometimes it's one of the graphics settings that is slowing you down.

Shadows are usually the culprit so I'd turn it down first and see if performance improves.

What is your pc like?

i5-3570 with a Radeon 7800 series and 8GB of RAM. Have the game loaded onto SATA drive, assuming that only hurts game load times which I'm fine waiting on.

But the game runs perfectly fine for me. Now it by default set the graphics to fairly minimal settings due to the hardware but I've since upped some of the graphic settings a bit (most to medium and turning on AA), and also turning on leader animations to medium. The game performs perfectly fine in that setup on this system. It runs much faster than Civ 5 does on this system by a long shot.

This is pretty much my experience. Its just that things are so much snappier in strategic view that I can't help but think maybe its worth upgrading the GPU to get that level of performance in default mode. If I've got to do another build I'll probably hold off until the expansion.

 

[dexters]

@whyidie yeah your cpu and gpu are below recommended but above minimum. in the case of gpu the AMD HD 7800 is about 30-40% less powerful than of the recommended gtx 770 on the nvidia side

I'd turn everything down to medium and low. Shadow resolution to the lowest or off entirely and see if it helps. You shouldn't have to play on strategic view though

 

[Larsenex]

So.. Civ is turn based. Each civ takes its turn when you click next. This cannot be multithreaded. Also how much of a Civs turn can be multi threaded safely? Has anyone considered that turning off MT can in fact help heavily ST tasks like this seems to be?

During this "next" period, anything visible on the screen needs its action to be displayed for your knowledge and pleasure screaming graphics please!

When you next click next and it churns... does it spend more time on the largest foes turn or does it spend more time showing you pretty fights and re-rendering the map during these fanciful displays?

It is not hard having the native perfmon tool (accessible through task manager) recording various useful stats to a file for review later.
Its even easier to try and assess which of the two is being done just by looking.

This is not true. Gal Civ III is turn based and its is definitely multi threaded.. In fact its coded so that each AI gets its own thread and the more threads the faster the turn times are. The monster 8 and 10 core CPU's make short work of a galaxy that has 50 ai, turn times are <significantly> reduced compared to a cpu that has only 4 threads.

 

[whyidie]

@whyidie yeah your cpu and gpu are below recommended but above minimum. in the case of gpu the AMD HD 7800 is about 30-40% less powerful than of the recommended gtx 770 on the nvidia side

I'd turn everything down to medium and low. Shadow resolution to the lowest or off entirely and see if it helps. You shouldn't have to play on strategic view though

Thanks dexters, appreciate the advice. Medium is where I'm at and it performs pretty well in default view, turn times never go beyond seconds and I'm thrilled with the leader screens. I seem to upgrade with every iteration of Civ, so maybe its time to get the ball rolling with a new GPU.

 

[Sascha77]

so dunno why OP expects max settings on a 5-year-old 670gtx.... it's ridiculous really...

Thing is: I am pretty close to upgrading my GTX 660 myself and was going to use Civ VI as an "excuse" to do so. However: With my settings (more or less on "high") I can run the game smoothly and without it looking as ugly as Civ V does on my ancient laptop - which will only run Civ V on minimum settings.

And that's the main point here, IMO: Having seen Civ VI on "Ultra"-settings, I don't really see the need to get a faster card to run it at those settings. The visual difference between max details and high or even medium-to-high is pretty negligible and certainly doesn't warrant dishing out €250 - 500 for a new card. Especially since this is a strategy-game where you won't be hovering over the map at max zoom level to "explore" the landscape.. .

S.

 

[Victoria]

I ran some tests last night on a dual i7 4790 with Radeon R9.
I only ran standard and normal and only used perfmon and GPU-Z as tools.
I was burning at the same time but that has little impact as it was mainly disk.

Overall is used @20% CPU regardless and tiptoed round my G card upper boundary happily.
Thread wise it ran 31 threads with thread 0 unsurprisingly using the lions share and I guess thread 8 was me.
The real work started happening when I went overseas and the map had to be moved around a lot.

I watched carefully when I clicked next... it zips through the other player moves first and does this damn fast then spends a long time showing you the pretty battle results then finally hangs for a bit before coming back to your turn. Likely cleaning up stats and saving logs.

IMO
There was a spike at startup as 31 threads do their thing, so being super fly CPU may help startup by a few seconds.
Fast combats and moves are the best way to speed up end of turn, significantly so but detracts from both pleasure and information.
Keeping graphics average and looking at the advanced graphics options if still laggy helps.
Crap disks? limit logging and do not save every turn.

Your CPU can be fairly bad before you would notice bad performance
Your graphics card will be the ruler of whether you are that fussy about definition

What we really need is one save of a very busy game that can be tested across PC's as already mentioned.

One little query on Skythian hairstyles, can someone pop back in time and ask them how they do square plaits? How can she look soo good in beautifully crafted battle armour and have those plaits!

 

[Jon the great]

GPU performance has massively improved since the 600series! New games today are built with that in mind.

Also although there has been a lot said about the "Cartoony graphics" if you compare it to 5 the graphics are much improved, clearer and more detailed. And depending on the size of map the GPU needs to produce quite a bit here to generate the map and all the units and animations. When I start a game the fps is around 170fps+ (im running a i7-4770k & GTX 1080) and as i play through and open up the map the fps drops as more needs to be generated.

Drop the settings from ultra to high and see how it performs. Developers do cater for older systems its called Low, Medium, High and Ultra settings....

 

[tekjunkie28]

There are always someone. Always.

Whoa Whoa Whoa, just back this blame train up a bit.... YOUR specs ARE old. You will NOT be able to get 60fps with your current build unless yours zoomed in and doing nothing. Nothing in the games graphical settings are broken that I have found.

My specs when the game came out were
4670k @stock
16GB ram
GTX 680 @ stock

My FPS was acceptable with that at 40fps while loading turns and what not. I upgraded to a GTX 1070 and its a world of difference but I'm still not going to get 120fps all the time.

I see you have that sandy bridge processor overclocked. Take it further at your own risk and see what you get out of it. I bet with a bit more OC and the OC on you video card you can crank out another 10 to 15 fps. Just set a more aggressive fan profile on the video card and see what you get. GL and remember Overclocking is at YOUR own risk and expense!

 

[Kwami]

Shadow of Mordor on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560) [Minimum FPS]
1080p Ultra, Minimum Frames Per Second
2600k: 62.97fps
6700k: 59.34fps

You know, that one Anandtech article has been cited a few times in this thread. But, it was done before Intel fixed some problems that made Skylake perform worse in games than it does today. Further, Skylake has a 30-60% advantage over the 2600k in non-gaming benchmarks in that same article. Keep in mind that Civ VI is about more than just frames per second, too. The CPU is always the bottleneck on AI and, thus, turn times.

 

[Cromagnus]

In terms of FPS, Civ 6 runs fine on my Westmere Xeon X5670, which is a 2010 CPU that I purchased for about $100 this year as an upgrade over my i7 920. I'm still using the same motherboard I bought in 2008(?).

I do have the Xeon OC'd from 2.93GHz to 4.4GHz, but regardless, it runs the benchmark at 12ms, (24ms 99th percentile) which is more than sufficient.

Now, as far as Turn Times... (the performance metric that *matters*)

From what I can tell, the limiting factor is "things that take a long time that shouldn't". Like "Quick Combat" and "Quick Movement". They don't actually turn off animations, they just accelerate them. No single core on my PC goes above 50% utilization between turns because of this.

Has anyone found a way to turn animations off entirely? If so please post under a new thread. I'd be very grateful.