Is it worth to upgrade CPU?

[alteration]

My specs:
gtx 1080
i5-3570k occed to 4.4 ghz

I'm thinking to upgrade to i7-7700k, would I notice a significant improvement in late game lag?

 

[Coffee Fox]

I have a I5-4690K at 4.3 GHz, a GTX 970, and 16GB of RAM with Stellaris on a high end SSD and still have late game lag.

I also thought about upgrading to the I7-7700K, but people using a 7700K appear to also experience lag later game as well.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be fixed anytime soon, unless Paradox devotes a patch to just optimization. Because honestly, when a game lags using an amazing processor with a good overclock, there is a problem.

It doesn't help that so many people do not play to late game. I see so many players that claim there is no lag, only to find out they've simply quit when they believe the game is won, not when a victory screen comes up. This wouldn't be a problem if they did this in late game, but apparently there are quite a few that simply make a new game after getting to mid game and dominating a few empires.

When I say mid game, I mean a length of time. Like, quitting the game long before they have played long enough to experience lag (which normally happens late game).

I don't know enough the I5-3570K, but if it's similar to an I5-4690K I don't think upgrading to a 7700K will do much for Stellaris.

 

[krios41]

I wanted to do something similar, but my dad adviced against it and instead got me an SSD, telling me that that should improve things.
Don't ask me how, but when my dad get's my SSD sorted and i have stellaris placed on that one i'l update you guy's if it helped me or not

 

[Kat Tsun]

I have a I5-4690K at 4.3 GHz, a GTX 970, and 16GB of RAM with Stellaris on a high end SSD and still have late game lag.

I also thought about upgrading to the I7-7700K, but people using a 7700K appear to also experience lag later game as well.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be fixed anytime soon, unless Paradox devotes a patch to just optimization. Because honestly, when a game lags using an amazing processor with a good overclock, there is a problem.

It doesn't help that so many people do not play to late game. I see so many players that claim there is no lag, only to find out they've simply quit when they believe the game is won, not when a victory screen comes up. This wouldn't be a problem if they did this in late game, but apparently there are quite a few that simply make a new game after getting to mid game and dominating a few empires.

When I say mid game, I mean a length of time. Like, quitting the game long before they have played long enough to experience lag (which normally happens late game).

I don't know enough the I5-3570K, but if it's similar to an I5-4690K I don't think upgrading to a 7700K will do much for Stellaris.

What is "late game" in this instance?

I experience noticeable lag around 150-200 years into the game.

In v1.0.x it was about 400-500 years.

 

[Coffee Fox]

What is "late game" in this instance?

I experience noticeable lag around 150-200 years into the game.

In v1.0.x it was about 400-500 years.

Wow, that's a big time difference. I haven't played the latest patch due to waiting it out for Utopia.

I picture late game as when the player has a pretty big empire, and things like the end-game crisis-s and the Fallen Empires start doing their thing. More ships, inhabited planets, and large populations all mean more lag.

In fact, I would go as far to say that late game is when things have progressed enough that the lag starts effecting your game. The lag always happens at one point, unless your playing a small galaxy with few AI and/or habitable planets. Even then it's not really avoidable, it just takes longer to set in.

 

[Qoff]

My specs:
gtx 1080
i5-3570k occed to 4.4 ghz

I'm thinking to upgrade to i7-7700k, would I notice a significant improvement in late game lag?

i have a 6700k and the game runs smoth until endgame where it still lags, the problem is that even with this CPU the game still limits the speed.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Wow, that's a big time difference. I haven't played the latest patch due to waiting it out for Utopia.

I picture late game as when the player has a pretty big empire, and things like the end-game crisis-s and the Fallen Empires start doing their thing. More ships, inhabited planets, and large populations all mean more lag.

In fact, I would go as far to say that late game is when things have progressed enough that the lag starts effecting your game. The lag always happens at one point, unless your playing a small galaxy with few AI and/or habitable planets. Even then it's not really avoidable, it just takes longer to set in.

More than likely the closure of Lag Gap is due to the uncapping of naval capacity.

In 1.0.x it was capped at 1000, which I've been able to exceed with a tiny empire now, relative to my first game. The AI does similar, and my first game was also down to about 3 major empires and the Unbidden by the end.

There might be other factors but I'd say that the larger fleets are the big issue for FPS drop later on.

 

[Coffee Fox]

More than likely the closure of Lag Gap is due to the uncapping of naval capacity.

In 1.0.x it was capped at 1000, which I've been able to exceed with a tiny empire now, relative to my first game. The AI does similar, and my first game was also down to about 3 major empires and the Unbidden by the end.

There might be other factors but I'd say that the larger fleets are the big issue for FPS drop later on.

If it's a problem with too many ships due to uncapped naval capacity, it might be an old code loop that's talked about on the HOI4 dev diary.

• There is one last that is my favorite. In our Clausewitz engine, there was an old code loop that nobody ever dared to touch. It was processing all the user interface elements in a "flat manner" instead of the "tree hierarchy". This means, that the more windows and buttons we add to the game, this loop was heavier and heavier. And the windows didn't even had to be shown for it to slow down the game. We always knew about this infamous spot, however reworking it without breaking all the interfaces was nearly impossible. Until now. I found the way! Previously that code loop had ~120 000 passes in each frame, now it's under 700, processing only the necessary interface elements. By that I mean, when you are looking at the technology trees, we are not processing through the hidden production windows and buttons, etc.

If that is the problem, I hope the fix is applied to Stellaris as well.

 

[Kat Tsun]

Anyway to answer the OP's question the answer is probably "not a lot".

Skylake/Kaby Lake aren't massive improvements over Ivy Bridge. Sandy/Ivy are still pretty competitive uArches compared to Sky/Kaby Lake. They'll improve bench scores maybe 20-25% or so which isn't hugely impressive. The biggest reason would be for things besides performance, like USB 3.0, M.2, and thermal management. Performance increases will be lower in games, though, since in general tick-tock improves benchmarking and workstation performance while games tend to lag behind work applications.

Ivy/Sandy Bridge is probably useful for at least another year when GPUs get powerful enough to make CPUs a big bottleneck for 1080p gaming.

 

[tobias.mb]

Well, I have no idea, whether Stellaris is CPU heavy or GPU heavy or you simply need lots of RAM or an SSD... and I have no idea what your bottleneck is.

But I'm playing with an i7-7700k and I have no late-game lag, even in 1k Galaxies. (I'm also using the same GTX 1080)

I should add however, that I usually don't go over 300k Fleet strength, even if my Fleet cap would allow it. Also I mostly use big ships. Meaning in my Games there's probably less Ships than average flying around.

 

[Qoff]

I'm using:

i7 6700k
16gb DDR4 TridentZ 3400mhz
GTX 1070 Galax HoF
SSD Kingston v300

And the game still lags with large feets, I guess is bad optimization, afterall it runs on 32bit

 

[Mummolus]

I wanted to do something similar, but my dad adviced against it and instead got me an SSD, telling me that that should improve things.
Don't ask me how, but when my dad get's my SSD sorted and i have stellaris placed on that one i'l update you guy's if it helped me or not

The SSD should help a bit, it'll certainly put an end to load times, but I actually wouldn't suggest it for Stellaris (or any active Paradox game). The regular updates and patches mean more writes on the drive which will put a lot more strain on an SSD in particular. You'll still get a couple of/a few years out of it but as a rule you want to avoid writing to an SSD whenever possible.

 

[Kat Tsun]

An SSD can withstand a few hundred terabytes or more (>1 petabyte) of read/write.

It'll fail for other reasons long before the read/write becomes a problem.

 

[stumason]

The SSD should help a bit, it'll certainly put an end to load times, but I actually wouldn't suggest it for Stellaris (or any active Paradox game). The regular updates and patches mean more writes on the drive which will put a lot more strain on an SSD in particular. You'll still get a couple of/a few years out of it but as a rule you want to avoid writing to an SSD whenever possible.

Bah, don't be silly - I've been running on two SSD's for 4 years now, with many installs/uninstalls/patches/mods of many games. It's even had the OS replaced twice. Still works fine.

As for lag, I get a noticeable slow down in the game in the "middle" - but then I play on 5,000 star galaxies (although only with 20-30 AI's), so I expect I am seeing the same lag everyone else see's but earlier due to the size of the galaxy.

Upgrading your CPU won't do much - for that matter, neither will getting SSD's (although I would still recommend it - the difference in load times is amazing.. I used to wait for 5 minutes to load a battle map on Total War before, now it's done in a flash)

The problem is with the engine.

EDIT: I should probably add I am running on an i7 with 16GB of RAM

 

[EU3NOOB]

My specs:
gtx 1080
i5-3570k occed to 4.4 ghz

I'm thinking to upgrade to i7-7700k, would I notice a significant improvement in late game lag?

No. The i7 does not have significant improvement to game performance to the i5.

Don't waste your money.

 

[Kat Tsun]

No. The i7 does not have significant improvement to game performance to the i5.

Don't waste your money.

Wrong.

i7 is better in games that deal with multiple threads. It's also better in general, because of hyper-threading, so it's worth it. Especially when you do other things like streaming, video/photo editing, and make use of multiple cores. Especially when an i7-7700k is so cheap. Z170 or Z270 are the real upgrade for Skylake/Kaby Lake, though. The only reason you'd really upgrade from a Ivy Bridge rig is because you're stuck with USB 2.0, SATA 3 or 3.1, and PCI 3.x. Might as well be a SCSI rig or something. USB 3.0, M.2, and Thunderbolt/PCI 4.0 are just loads better for modern rigs.

A 7700K is $350 right now anyway. That's almost free compared to typical Intel price gouging that has dominated the Earthshaker Era. Thanks Raisin.

 

[Ramiel]

I can normally get to about 200 years in before the game becomes unplayable due to lag.
Running on a Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Wolfdale, think I should upgrade? Would probably let me play maps larger than 600 stars I hope.

 

[Kat Tsun]

I can normally get to about 200 years in before the game becomes unplayable due to lag.
Running on a Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Wolfdale, think I should upgrade? Would probably let me play maps larger than 600 stars I hope.

Yes. Socket T is very old, even compared to my AM2+ Thuban rig.

 

[alteration]

So recap, I would get a 20-30% boost in performance. Imho the devolpers fu**ed up, I mean this is 2017, we have 16 threads CPUs and you make a single thread game that eats your CPU, I really don't get it. And don't say "it's becouse of the clock" and stuff like that, you can always find a way to use the other cores, I guess they though that was a waste of money since people don't look to technical stuff.

 

[Gilad Pellaeon]

Running on a Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Wolfdale, think I should upgrade?

...

Yes. Yes you should upgrade if you have the money.
But be weary that you'll have to change the Motherboard and thus also your RAM if you upgrade from that relic.