upgraded graphics card but little difference, is this right?

[mark2410]

hi. from having read some stuff round here before i was on the understanding that EU4 and some of the other paradox games shunted as much as they could over to the gpu to crunch. that having a better graphics card would alleviate the cpu somewhat. so with this in mind i upgraded my old 5550 to a 270x, by all accounts a vast leap up in power but..... im not really noticing much of a difference. is it me just not noticing? i havent as of yet played southing long term to reach the stage where things normaly slow to the point of painful so it could be me i suppose. is there something i sohuld be doing or looking out for or what?

i would greatly appreciate any help or input as just now im thinking about returning the card as i dont really play any games other than paradox stuff and supreme ruler.

 

[AndrewT]

Getting a better GPU will only speed things up if it was the slowest part to start with. If you have inadequate memory, for instance, the game will be slow regardless of the GPU in use.

Please post a dxdiag.txt (you can delete everything after the end of the "Sound devices" section for brevity) and your Documents/EU4/settings.txt. From your Documents/Paradox/EU4/logs/ directory, post system.log . Open setup.log in notepad and search for 'checksum', post that line only here too please.

 

[mark2410]

hi, well at the moment ive just swapped gpus so cant get the info you wanted from the situation i mentioned. ill put them as of just now.

hardware wise things stand as FX6300 @4.5ghz 8gb ram @ 2400mhz was a radeon 5550 to a 270x and right now there is a 750ti in it.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 10/11/2014, 13:25:30
Machine name: URANUS
Operating System: Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit (6.3, Build 9600) (9600.winblue_gdr.140723-2018)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: To be filled by O.E.M.
System Model: To be filled by O.E.M.
BIOS: BIOS Date: 11/25/13 14:09:24 Ver: 04.06.05
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor (6 CPUs), ~4.5GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8092MB RAM
Page File: 5269MB used, 6918MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
DxDiag Version: 6.03.9600.16384 64bit Unicode

------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
Display Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Sound Tab 2: No problems found.
Sound Tab 3: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.

--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (retail)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (retail)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 750 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1380&SUBSYS_37533842&REV_A2
Display Memory: 4018 MB
Dedicated Memory: 1970 MB
Shared Memory: 2048 MB
Current Mode: 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (59Hz)
Monitor Name: Dell U2412M(Digital)
Monitor Model: DELL U2412M
Monitor Id: DELA07A
Native Mode: 1920 x 1200(p) (59.950Hz)
Output Type: HDMI
Driver Name: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver File Version: 9.18.0013.4411 (English)
Driver Version: 9.18.13.4411
DDI Version: 11
Feature Levels: 11.0,10.1,10.0,9.3,9.2,9.1
Driver Model: WDDM 1.3
Graphics Preemption: DMA
Compute Preemption: DMA
Miracast: Not Supported by WiFi driver
Hybrid Graphics GPU: Not Supported
Power P-states: Not Supported
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 9/14/2014 00:48:03, 19954520 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-50C0-11CF-C94A-5E171FC2C435}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x1380
SubSys ID: 0x37533842
Revision ID: 0x00A2
Driver Strong Name: oem7.inf:0f066de3a79f2f53:Section140:9.18.13.4411ci\ven_10de&dev_1380
Rank Of Driver: 00DA2001
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D3D9 Overlay: Supported
DXVA-HD: Supported
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled

settings


force_pow2_textures=no
language="l_english"
graphics=
{
size=
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x=1920
y=1200
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min_gui=
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x=1280
y=720
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refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=no
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scroll_speed=50.000000
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mouse_speed=50.000000
master_volume=7.000000
ambient_volume=50.000000
combat_sound_random=6
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draw_terrain=yes
draw_water=yes
draw_borders=yes
draw_trees=yes
draw_rivers=yes
draw_postfx=yes
draw_sky=yes
draw_bloom=yes
draw_tooltips=yes
draw_hires_terrain=no
draw_citysprawl=yes
draw_shadows=yes
draw_reflections=yes
draw_ambient_objects=yes
draw_particles=yes
moving_units=yes
}
camera_speed=50.000000
camera_tilt=100.000000
centered_zoom_in=yes
lastplayer="Player"
lasthost=""
debug_saves=0
autosave="YEARLY"
autosave_tocloud=no
difficulty="LUCK_NONE"
outliner=
{
2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 19 20
}
outliner_open=no
messagelist_open=yes
windowmovetime=0.200000
floating_chat_text=yes
hints=yes
custom_mapmodes=
{
0 1 4 3 2 5
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last_mods=
{
"mod/AutoBuild Mod.mod"
"mod/extendedtimeline.mod"

}


the "checksum" line

[eu4application.cpp:738]: Checksum is EU4 v1.7.3 (5a34)

 

[AndrewT]

Is this still the case if you run with no mods active?

so with this in mind i upgraded my old 5550 to a 270x

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti

Can you clarify what's going on here please?

 

[mark2410]

as i said at the top

hi, well at the moment ive just swapped gpus so cant get the info you wanted from the situation i mentioned. ill put them as of just now.

hardware wise things stand as FX6300 @4.5ghz 8gb ram @ 2400mhz was a radeon 5550 to a 270x and right now there is a 750ti in it.

to elucidate more fully, i had ordered the 750 but the internet shouted that the 270x was the far better card for the money so i ordered one of them, with the intention of returning the 750. given i was having issues with the 270 i asked amazon if it was okay to try the 750 and still return if i dont like and they said yes. so i put it in there. in game performance with the 750 and 270 felt more or less the exact same.

i know the gome is cpu heavy i had read that eu4 ofloads as much as possible to the gpu so in it getting a good gpu mattered. so i expected things to go more smoothly and faster.

i have a couple mods as in two but thuy never made any difference to the rate at which the game runs. its fine to start but as the years clock by it just gets progresivly slower. i had thought the gpu was supposed to take on board some of the data chrunching. is this not the case or have i not done some required step?

 

[AndrewT]

It is true the GPU does do certain classes of data processing in our games. I can't really account for such an upgrade making no difference in your case, to be honest, except to say that it wasn't the bottleneck in he first place, most likely.

I guess you may as well return the card, as you mentioned in your OP (unless you are also looking at doing other upgrades in your system).

 

[jpd]

Three months ago, I've build myself a brand new system, with 8 GB system RAM, a 750 ti graphics board and an Intel i7 (Ivy Bridge) quad core + hyperthreading (giving it 8 virtual cores). The previous system (build 6 years ago), had a Core 2 duo (dual core) on 2.2 GHz, 2 GB RAM and a 650 ti graphics board. Note: the graphics board was an upgrade some 18 months ago, replacing the aging 8800 GTS. Without the 650 ti upgrade, I basically could forget running EU4 in any reasonable frame rate on an acceptable resolution.

On the new system, the game runs smooth as silk, while on the previous system it would not. Graphics wise, the power is roughly similar. Yes, the 750 ti has less CUDA cores, but the ones it has are faster, and it has double the VRAM (2 GB instead of 1 GB on the 650 ti. The 8800 GTS had a mere 512 MB).

But I did notice something in the Asus hardware monitor software that came with the new motherboard. The CPU gets turbo boosted to 4.3 GHz, while it's base clock is 3.6 GHz. This basically means that the game engine is utilising only one of the cores fully. If all cores were under load, turbo boosting would not occur. The others aren't completely idle, but most of the number crunching that is done by the CPU gets done on a single core. Making it a good candidate for a bottle neck, once the bottle bottle neck in the graphics subsystem is lifted.

Basically, on my previous system the bottle neck was either RAM or the main CPU. Can't say which, as I upgraded both at the same time (needed more RAM to be able to move to Windows 7 64 bit. The old system ran under Windows XP, 32 bit). Probably a combination of both, given that the turbo boost kicks in, overclocking the one CPU core that's doing the bulk of the number crunching.

What you have to keep in mind is this: Any number crunching that is offloaded to the GPU has to pass through the CPU first. A very fast GPU does not help one bit if the CPU can't keep up feeding the GPU data to work on.

PS. There is a chance that the real bottle neck is the Power Supply Unit. If the PSU can't supply all of the amps needed to run all components (hard disk, GPU, CPU, RAM) under load, both the CPU and GPU will react to this by scaling down the clock frequency. If that's the case, then installing even faster (which usually means: drawing more amps) replacement components will have no effect, or make things even worse. Although I suspect that is not the case here, as the 750 ti draws considerably less power than the other boards. One of the reasons I installed one myself.

 

[mark2410]

iam i think working on the assumptions its the cpu. i had rather thought that my old gpu, the 5550 being old and pretty low end might be not able to take whatever was supposedly handed of to the gpu but the present newer ones, well i guess that ever it is that is moved to the gpu isnt the bottle neck.

if im honest i really wish the game was properly multithreaded. it seems so odd to be trying to ofload calculation to the gpu when i would have expected it far simpler to just shunt that stuff inte another cpu process and make use of the spare cores we all have sitting doing nothing. oh well.