1.1 Performance: AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL

[FullMetalMachinist]

6 hours ago, Temeter said:

The framecounter was obviously broken and didn't go below 25fps.

I'm not so certain about that. While flying the ship in question he switched to map view and the frame counter bounced between 40 and 80 FPS.  Then going back to flight view it wiggled around, but not exactly 25.

I think it was more that the "max physics time delta" (or whatever it's called) was kicking in. It was slowing down the game clock time in order to keep up the 25 frames. 

[Temeter]

16 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

I'm not so certain about that. While flying the ship in question he switched to map view and the frame counter bounced between 40 and 80 FPS.  Then going back to flight view it wiggled around, but not exactly 25.

I think it was more that the "max physics time delta" (or whatever it's called) was kicking in. It was slowing down the game clock time in order to keep up the 25 frames. 

No, it's not. Firstly, the games didn't have heavy slowdowns, and secondly, you never reach a 100% stable framerate. The counter is clearly bugged, and this isn't the first time it happened either.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[regex]

2 hours ago, justspace103 said:

my computer has a 3.3 GHz intel core i5

Well, an i5 is 5/7 the computer that an i7 is, so expect performance to be proportional.

[Temeter]

@Navy2k This I7 does have 6 cores. ;)

26 minutes ago, regex said:

Well, an i5 is 5/7 the computer that an i7 is, so expect performance to be proportional.

From what I've heard, i7 aren't very usefull for games and only bring a minor boost compared to i5. Stronger when it comes to stuff like video encoding, tho.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[Navy2k]

16 minutes ago, regex said:

Well, an i5 is 5/7 the computer that an i7 is, so expect performance to be proportional.

The main difference between a core i5 and a core i7 cpu is hyperthreading(+ a bit cache), which doesn't help much in a standard KSP Scenario. And depending on the exact model the mobile i7 has only haf the physical cores compared to a desktop i5. So i would call it more even then 5/7 at simmilar clock speeds.

[FullMetalMachinist]

@Navy2k and @Temeter, I'm pretty sure that was one of regex's famous snarky/sarcastic comments, and not meant to be taken seriously. (it made me chuckle, anyway)

[Temeter]

3 minutes ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

@Navy2k and @Temeter, I'm pretty sure that was one of regex's famous snarky/sarcastic comments, and not meant to be taken seriously. (it made me chuckle, anyway)

Can't believe he got me with that one... （ಠ︿ಠ´）

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[justspace103]

1 hour ago, regex said:

Well, an i5 is 5/7 the computer that an i7 is, so expect performance to be proportional.

How does my i5 intel core compare to the laptop we saw during squadcast?

[Vim Razz]

1 hour ago, FullMetalMachinist said:

@Navy2k and @Temeter, I'm pretty sure that was one of regex's famous snarky/sarcastic comments, and not meant to be taken seriously. (it made me chuckle, anyway)

Oh, well troll'd, @regex.  It got me as well.

 

Given the amount of general confusion regarding hyperthreading and games, though, it may be worth taking a moment to note what hyperthreading is: It reschedules processing threads to get more of them done within a fixed amount of time.

This is awesome for bulk data processing, because you don't really care when each individual thread runs or finishes.  You just want the end result when all of them are done.

It's less useful for games, because game threads generally need to stay synchronized with each other so that they can be interacted with in real time.  Rescheduling them changes the timing and breaks that. 

You can get a small benefit to games from system background tasks being rescheduled, though.

[Camaron]

14 hours ago, DMagic said:

Before getting too excited about how well it was running on a laptop, we should keep in mind that this was an extremely high end machine. 

The thing had an i7 6700hq, which is about as good as you can get in a laptop, and better than a substantial amount of desktop CPUs.

I cant wait to put KSP 1.1 up against a Xeon E5 2695 V3 (or higher). Oh, the monstrosities I shall build... 

Given that I am a computer parts reseller, this will happen.

My roommate will have KSP contend with his 3.3GHz 10-core. I traded him for his 4820K last year because it was an obscure ES processor with roughly the same value, but much harder to sell. He didn't object

[Temeter]

31 minutes ago, Vim Razz said:

Oh, well troll'd, @regex.  It got me as well.

 

Given the amount of general confusion regarding hyperthreading and games, though, it may be worth taking a moment to note what hyperthreading is: It reschedules processing threads to get more of them done within a fixed amount of time.

This is awesome for bulk data processing, because you don't really care when each individual thread runs or finishes.  You just want the end result when all of them are done.

It's less useful for games, because game threads generally need to stay synchronized with each other so that they can be interacted with in real time.  Rescheduling them changes the timing and breaks that. 

You can get a small benefit to games from system background tasks being rescheduled, though.

Sadly, most of these advantages are crushed by most games lack of multi-threading in the first place. Even a modern high budged RTS like Starcraft II couldn't manage to utilize more than two cores/threads at once with the heaviest tasks (pathfinding etc). Background processes aren't really an issue if you got 2 cores near idling around.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[Camaron]

But wasn't Unity 5's performance jump coming from multithreading?

[regex]

I think partially, but most is just general optimization.

[John FX]

2 hours ago, Navy2k said:

The main difference between a core i5 and a core i7 cpu is hyperthreading(+ a bit cache), which doesn't help much in a standard KSP Scenario.

But for those people who have multiple separate craft as a base, they would have 8 virtual cores to work with, this is good news for base builders.

[Camaron]

Oh, well, whatever gets the job done, I guess.

[basic.syntax]

7 minutes ago, Camaron said:

But wasn't Unity 5's performance jump coming from multithreading?

yes, BUT KSP craft are processed in a single thread. Meeting other craft in space rendezvous could have slightly improved performance, plus benefits from other optimizations under the hood in the newer version of PhysX. The UI could be a bit less taxing on resources: different screens and controls relied on different code libraries; it has been heavily rewritten.

The groundwork has been laid, but I expect over time the devs will discover more tweaks they can make to further improve performance in their new code base.

[Memory lane]

[Temeter]

47 minutes ago, Camaron said:

But wasn't Unity 5's performance jump coming from multithreading?

No, multithreading isn't the big thing. Afaik Unity 4 already had multi-threading, just the phsyics engine couldn't multi-thread. But that isn't very important either, because you can't multi-thread a single ship either, one craft will always only utilize one core, even in 1.1.

There are lots of optimization on squads end, especially with the way fuel is handled, but the biggest performance improvement comes probably by an update to the physics engine. Unity 4 uses a really excrements, outdated version of PhysX, which traditionally had lots of performance issues, because it didn't exactly harmonize with modern processor functions.

Otoh, Unity 5's updated PhysX just beats the old version in every regard and can already by itself be a huge performance increase. Of course multiple ships can now be multithreaded, so that's is also gonna run sooooooooooo much faster as well.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[godefroi]

1 hour ago, Vim Razz said:

Given the amount of general confusion regarding hyperthreading and games, though, it may be worth taking a moment to note what hyperthreading is: It reschedules processing threads to get more of them done within a fixed amount of time.

That is *not* what hyperhreading does. Don't add to the confusion.

[pincushionman]

21 minutes ago, Temeter said:

…Otoh, Unity 5's updated PhysX just beats the old version in every regard and can already by itself be a huge performance increase. Of course multiple ships can now be multithreaded, so that's is also gonna run sooooooooooo much faster as well.

This this this this.

[Vim Razz]

15 minutes ago, godefroi said:

That is *not* what hyperhreading does. Don't add to the confusion.

It's but no means a complete description, but if you can describe the core function more effectively in a few brief statements then that would be great. 

I'm not exactly sure what you're taking an objection to, though, tbh.  Rescheduling tasks on the processors to maximize load efficiency is quite literally what hyperthreading is intended to do.

[Camaron]

It was phrased a little bit weird, but as far as layman's terms go, it was a decent descrition, though I can see how his choice of words could be confusing. We shouldn't keep arguing over it though, anyone interested should just google the details themselves.

[Majorjim!]

10 hours ago, Temeter said:

Downclock itself in no time as soon as more than one core is even slightly utilized. Got an I5 with Turbo and that thing rarely ever goes above the stock clock.

Sure but my statement still stands. It overclocks itself to 3.50GHZ.

[Temeter]

7 minutes ago, Majorjim said:

Sure but my statement still stands. It overclocks itself to 3.50GHZ.

Which isn't relevant to KSP's performance, if it's the same case like my I5.

Even Unity 4 KSP does multithreading, manages to drive 4 cores to 60%+ at times. Won't ever get that dumb boost. Is more less than a marketing gag.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter

[ainurakne]

2 hours ago, Vim Razz said:

Given the amount of general confusion regarding hyperthreading and games, though, it may be worth taking a moment to note what hyperthreading is: It reschedules processing threads to get more of them done within a fixed amount of time.

Hyperthreading means that the register sets of processor cores are duplicated. This means that two processes/threads can simultaneously sit on a single core, sharing its common execution resources. When the execution of one process/thread stalls (which happens quite often), the other one can jump in without the need of expensive context switch. So, hyperthreading actually means 2x less rescheduling than without hyperthreading.

[Temeter]

6 minutes ago, ainurakne said:

Hyperthreading means that the register sets of processor cores are duplicated. This means that two processes/threads can simultaneously sit on a single core, sharing its common execution resources. When the execution of one process/thread stalls (which happens quite often), the other one can jump in without the need of expensive context switch. So, hyperthreading actually means 2x less rescheduling than without hyperthreading.

^Jep, I think it's important to say games usually don't stall, because they are realtime, and therefor don't benefit very much from HT. Even moreso cause the most demanding game applications, like KSP's ship physics, won't run on more than a single thread in the first place, since you can't just delay them.

Edited March 26, 2016 by Temeter