Performance poll/survey - how does cities skylines run for you and what hardware are you using ?

[Woody Red]

Im particually interested in at what population you encounter simulation slow down.

My hardware is :

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.80GHz
7Gb RAM
graphics card is NVIDIA GT 440


simulation starts to slow at around 40k. goes at a snails pace at 80k. Having lots of rail and public transport seems to make it worse.. but Im not sure. If you could post your specs and when you notice significant slowdown that would be helpful. thank you.

 

[KnightHawkTFC]

Intel i7-950 3.0ghz
AMD - r9 270 3gb
24 gigs [20 for primary\game os; 4 in use on constant running vm; mostly idle] the game typically never uses more then 4gb for me, unless I'm testing someones modded up map.

Environment: Frame rates manually locked to 45 via launch option, vcard manually under clocked to 90% of capabilities.
Unless testing; only have dozen or less mods that don't actually do much on constant basis game play wise, about a dozen custom assets nothing beefy mostly just 'customized service ranges\#of cars' type assets. always 25 titles. If by slow down you mean the point at which there isn't too much difference simulation wise in the speed setting... depends but around 120-150kish in pop, I can sense a difference at 90\100ish but it's not pronounced till later, at 250ish there is little to no difference at all and I know things are just cpu bound, but this rig is like 4+ years old, I'm surprised it does as well as it does at times.

 

[JimmiG]

Intel 4770K @ 4.4 GHz
8GB RAM
GeForce GTX 970 4GB

I also use the dynamic resolution mod at 1.5x. Never noticed any slowdowns except a tiny amount on this map:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=542255750
I think it's due to all the vegetation. However after the latest patch I noticed a significant improvement on this map, and it's now completely smooth too.

Haven't built any huge cities though. Most tend to max out at <140k.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Im particually interested in at what population you encounter simulation slow down.

My hardware is :

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.80GHz
7Gb RAM
graphics card is NVIDIA GT 440


simulation starts to slow at around 40k. goes at a snails pace at 80k. Having lots of rail and public transport seems to make it worse.. but I'm not sure. If you could post your specs and when you notice significant slowdown that would be helpful. thank you.

Well, first off your rig is well below minimum spec. GT 440 is very, very weak. Your 6-core CPU should be fine. Your video card will hold you back. If you use any mods/assets it will get worse even faster.

I really only notice major/unexpected slow downs when my city becomes out of balance. Of course once you pass 9-tiles then the balance is tricky as the game is only designed for 9-tiles.

For me things started becoming noticeably slower around 100k. With my city growing and expanding it is hard to keep anything in balance unless I stop growing and focus on balance. But the game becomes too slow and I just continue on growing. I'm at 460k pop and over 20-tiles full, but with the new AD expansion and it's newer update my city is now out of control as the patches have been optimized and traffic seem two fold. It is so chaotic now I have given up fixing it.

My old rig was 4790k, 16GB ram, GTX 780, and Z97 motherboard that overclocked my CPU to 4.4GHz automatically (auto full turbo boost on all cores). My game was lagging horribly at 460k pop and i even lost all game speeds and even the x1 speed was running half speed. I now have:

Intel i7-5820k 3.3GHz (6-core)
32GB ram
Radeon R7 390 8GB

It now plays the game butter smooth. I think the larger CPU cache may help a lot as that is the only real difference beside the extra cores.

ps. Where is the poll?

 

[Woody Red]

would upgrading the just graphics card really give a performance boost - in terms of simulation speed ?

 

[Paranoyd]

AMD FX (8 core), 20 gb RAM, GTX 750 Ti. No problems at max settings (yet).

 

[joewagner501]

would upgrading the just graphics card really give a performance boost - in terms of simulation speed ?

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think it will have much of an impact unless you are using on board video or a really old video card. Most of the game is CPU bound because of the calculations that have to take place.

 

[MarkJohnson]

would upgrading the just graphics card really give a performance boost - in terms of simulation speed ?

Yes, it will make a huge difference since you are so below minimum requirements.

GT 440 specs
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-440-channel/specifications

GTX 260 spec (Minimum requirement)
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-260/specifications

Basicslly the GTX 260 is 3 times faster than GT 440 generally speaking.

Now I haven't seen your city, so you may get performance improvements by putting your city in balance. The more agents on the mazp the more load on your game. I you installed any mods and/or assets then it will get worse fast.

@joewagner501

In a nut a shell, any integrated video is below spec as well and will quickly cause lag.

 

[Paranoyd]

would upgrading the just graphics card really give a performance boost - in terms of simulation speed ?

Well, yes and no. It would help keep the game from slowing down due to graphics issues, IE - high settings. It won't help much for the actual simulation though. The only thing it would help with is the rendering/graphics of the cars, buildings, etc.

Integrated video also ties up system resources, so upgrading to a separate card either way would help. Just don't expect any leaps and bounds ahead of where you already are!

 

[Co Starring]

It runs ok.
I have ~ 20 mods running, and 3 district styles.
So it's a bit silly to do a benchmark/comparison.

PhII X6 1090T 3,2GHz
R9 270
8GB 1600 MHz
Onboard sound

MSI 970 Gaming motherboard
and
Winblows 10 64b





P.S. The "Tilde" sign (means approximately) is displayed as - (minus) on this forum...

 

[Turjan]

I upgraded my graphics card, and it made the game run much more stable. Then again, it was an ATI card (which the game doesn't seem to like) and exactly at minimum spec, so not really surprising. I didn't upgrade because of the game though, but because it simply was on its way out (started producing artifacts).

However, the speed of the game is very much processor-limited. Around 100k population, the speed switch (1x-3x) doesn't really do much anymore. Around 300k, the game is quite slow, and cars and trains move noticeably slower. However, if your traffic is mostly metro-based, it seems to run a bit faster.

RAM determines mostly how much custom content you can load. The base game doesn't exceed 4 GB, even in huge cities.

Edit: I should probably add that I'm not really a performance hunter. I'm usually good as long as a game doesn't go in seconds per frame. If you insist on me putting a number to that, I'm usually happy with 15 fps.

 

[Vimes]

Well, first off your rig is well below minimum spec. GT 440 is very, very weak. Your 6-core CPU should be fine. Your video card will hold you back. If you use any mods/assets it will get worse even faster.

I really only notice major/unexpected slow downs when my city becomes out of balance. Of course once you pass 9-tiles then the balance is tricky as the game is only designed for 9-tiles.

For me things started becoming noticeably slower around 100k. With my city growing and expanding it is hard to keep anything in balance unless I stop growing and focus on balance. But the game becomes too slow and I just continue on growing. I'm at 460k pop and over 20-tiles full, but with the new AD expansion and it's newer update my city is now out of control as the patches have been optimized and traffic seem two fold. It is so chaotic now I have given up fixing it.

My old rig was 4790k, 16GB ram, GTX 780, and Z97 motherboard that overclocked my CPU to 4.4GHz automatically (auto full turbo boost on all cores). My game was lagging horribly at 460k pop and i even lost all game speeds and even the x1 speed was running half speed. I now have:

Intel i7-5820k 3.3GHz (6-core)
32GB ram
Radeon R7 390 8GB

It now plays the game butter smooth.

I think the larger CPU cache may help a lot as that is the only real difference beside the extra cores.

ps. Where is the poll?

I am very surprised, and pleased that it has made such a difference for you. But what resolution are you running at...?
How is the loading over the six cores and do you overclock the CPU at all...?
Which X99 board did you buy...?

I am running at 1440p with a 3770k clocked at 4.5Ghz. Along witrh 16GB of RAM and a GTX 980 it seems to run great providing that I keep the assets down to a very minimum and no Traffic ++ mod. Getting to over 100,000 I can tell a difference which will deteriorate as the population etc grows.

Your "old" rig had a very good spec and yet you have noted such a difference with your 5820k.

 

[vinolik]

My pc:
CPU: Intel i7 4790k @4GHz
RAM: Adata 16gb 1600Mhz
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4G

I have 44 mods active and 660 assets/maps etc. subscribed from workshop. My fps is usually stable around 50, sometimes dip to 20 and sometimes peak to 70. I run all settings at highest possible and at 1080p. I also use dynamic resolution (150%)

 

[MarkJohnson]

I am very surprised, and pleased that it has made such a difference for you. But what resolution are you running at...?
How is the loading over the six cores and do you overclock the CPU at all...?
Which X99 board did you buy...?

I have an Acer 4k monitor (3840 x 2160) G-Sync monitor that I forgot It was when buying the Amd (freesync) video card, but I kept it as it has 8GB vRAM and is faster and live with the subpar video (tearing).

I am running at 1440p with a 3770k clocked at 4.5Ghz. Along witrh 16GB of RAM and a GTX 980 it seems to run great providing that I keep the assets down to a very minimum and no Traffic ++ mod. Getting to over 100,000 I can tell a difference which will deteriorate as the population etc grows.

I do not use mods or assets except for a select few. Mostly info mods and a single asset for a better 4-way all highway intersection.
Yeah, you'll have ups and downs on your lag, usually caused by bad traffic. Mine was so bad that it stopped reporting RCI demand and said there was zero demand. It was just bad roads and demand was lacking because too many cims were not making their destinations on time.

Your "old" rig had a very good spec and yet you have noted such a difference with your 5820k.

I was amazed at the speed increase. My 5820k was stock speed and only had an overall ~25% increase, but I was getting about 75% speed increase. I mean I went from 100% CPU usage and lag so bad that x1 sxpeed was only half speed, to only 35% CPU usage and all speeds working fine.

I mean I was expecting maybe all of my game speeds would work and maybe ~90 CPU usage. But I couldn't fathom such an increase. The only thing I can come up with is the almost doubled cache size on the cpu (from 8mb to 15mb). There must be a large load on the processor that it can't keep enough data cached for the CPU to get right away.

 

[Vimes]

I have an Acer 4k monitor (3840 x 2160) G-Sync monitor that I forgot It was when buying the Amd (freesync) video card, but I kept it as it has 8GB vRAM and is faster and live with the subpar video (tearing).

Whilst I am not taking anything away from the 5820k, even at stock, I would like to think that the GPU might have helped out with your increase, especially at the resolution you are running at. I tend to play games like Total War and Civ V etc which does tend to favour an Nvidia card for some reason but it is good to know that Skylines plays well with yours.

I do not use mods or assets except for a select few. Mostly info mods and a single asset for a better 4-way all highway intersection.
Yeah, you'll have ups and downs on your lag, usually caused by bad traffic. Mine was so bad that it stopped reporting RCI demand and said there was zero demand. It was just bad roads and demand was lacking because too many cims were not making their destinations on time.

Having made a fresh install of W10, and finding some more recent Realtek sound drivers, for once I'm happy that my sound no longer crackles and pops. Mods and assets add so much to this game but can be both compulsive and enticing but as the city grows can be responsible for so much lag, building themes seem to be an issue for me.

I was amazed at the speed increase. My 5820k was stock speed and only had an overall ~25% increase, but I was getting about 75% speed increase. I mean I went from 100% CPU usage and lag so bad that x1 sxpeed was only half speed, to only 35% CPU usage and all speeds working fine.

I mean I was expecting maybe all of my game speeds would work and maybe ~90 CPU usage. But I couldn't fathom such an increase. The only thing I can come up with is the almost doubled cache size on the cpu (from 8mb to 15mb). There must be a large load on the processor that it can't keep enough data cached for the CPU to get right away.

Coming from a 4790k DC I am amazed that the difference could be just the CPU as the DC is an excellent CPU. However from what I have noted this game does seem to use the available cores and doesn't rely on a single fast core as some do.

Great that that you have noted such a benefit. For me to go to a X99 rig would be too expensive for the differences it would bring, as DDR4, board (they are not that cheap) and the CPU all adds up in cost. Then again the Z170 chipset and kit seem to offer little value.

 

[Vimes]

Just added a piccie here so that you can see the type of usage when I play. The CPU is not always running at full speed
across all the cores but it is nice seeing how the game can utilise that....

Spoiler

 

[MarkJohnson]

This game doesn't take advantage of the GPU much, it spends all of it's resources on the CPU. When my game was lagging on the 4790k my fps were ~60 as it was the CPU not GPU lagging. I even had the 780 installed for the first month as I spent all of my money on x99. although it was maybe 25% more cost is all.

So swapping out the 780 for the 390 had zero affect. With this game anyway.

I don't think going skylake over DC or even a 2600k is worth while. There are all very similar with minor feature improvements.

DC vs skylake is just for extreme overclocking and only really benefits users with liquid nitrogen (LN2) or other sub zero solutions.

If you (or anyone) ever try upgrading an existing i7 quad core system, I'd highly recommend to spend the extra 25% and go 6-core. That is if you plan on going a full 25-tiles and lots of assets and mods.

With the new win10 and DX12 more cores should be beneficial and used more often.

What program did you use to show the CPU/GPU in the screenie?

I still have my 4790k/gtx 780 system in pieces. Maybe I'll put it together before I sell it and take a screenie of it as well to show differences.

 

[Woody Red]

what about

8 core Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 5960X @ 3ghz

vs

6 core Intel Core i7-4960X @ 3.60GHz ?

 

[MarkJohnson]

Besides they are both over a thousand dollars each, they overclock well. But the 5820k will overclock past 4.0GHz with ease in most cases. Mine went to 4.7GHz. But it was overkill and ran fine at stock speeds of 3.3GHzz - 3.6GHz. the 4960X is stock 3.6, but I don't think the measly 300MHz is worth almost triple the price. The 8-core 5960X pretty much overclocks past 4.0 GHz as well and seen 4.5GHz and heard over 5.0GHz on extreme cooling. Since 6-core runs this game with ease, I don't think the 8-core is worth it right now. 99.999% of games only use 4-cores or less. CSL is the only game I know of that goes past 4-cores.

lso, the 4960X is an Ivy Bridge processor and designed for socket 2011-V2 (X79) while the new 5xxxx processors are haswell and 2011 V3 (X99).

Did you have any specific questions on those extreme edition processors?

 

[Vimes]

@MarkJohnson You might be surprised at the GPU usage in this game, I was when I first noted it.

If you see this...

Spoiler

You will note the top figure showing the FPS. If I do not use the NVidia adaptive sync , better than v sync the game can use, then the FPS goes to a silly amount, beyond what the monitor can support, the GPU usage goes even higher and the fan noise increases.
But even with adaptive sync limiting the FPS to 60 you can see the GPU usage on that zoomed in still frame at 46% and the memory allocation to almost 81%. The CPU usage is only at 20%. I do remember on a zoomed out "full" map the GPU usage almost maxes out, and probably would if the City was big enough.

Since installing Windows etc I hadn't bothered to save a bigger map to illustrate the games demand as I started new, especially since the latest patch.

The above information is shown on screen, via a hotkey, with the combination of...

MSI Afterburner with Riva Tuner Statistics Server running and...
HWinfo64

The above, when setup, will allow the noted information, and more, to be displayed in game.

@Woody Red - I only have a i7 4 core but I can note, shown in the first posted screen, that each of the four cores can be maximised by the game. Whether that is load balancing or the game itself I do not know but it does seem to use all 4 cores of my CPU when needed.
How that would scale up with more cores I do not know.