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
 
 

Maybe supreme commander experimentals (another expansion) will provide further core support.
 
Yeah its annoying trying to play against  large numbers of ai's with large unit caps. I have an e6600 @ 2.8ghz 4gigs of 6400ram and running vista 64bit. I have to limit myself to a unit cap of 250 if i want to play on any maps above 10x10Km with more than 6 players, and this will this lag like crazy, 1hr of gameplay can take from 3-5hrs of real time playing.
 
I have found increasing the amount of ram and buying better performing ram do help, going to 4gigs from 2 helped big time. With my next build(in about 2-3months) I will probably put in 8gigs of ram and buy a Q9450 and oc it. Maybe the increased L2 cache will help as well as the easier oc.
 
If you are looking for a challenge have you tried sorians ai? There are a couple of other ai related things out there that are pretty sweet. Such as being able to adjust the rate of cheating and the build multiplier of cheating ai.
 

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!
 

i thought the game already had support for upto 32 CPUs

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

hmm i would but i cant find the link, i just remember reading it somewhere, i actually think its in the release notes for one of the patches, but im at work atm and cant check.

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