Memory usage

from Sins Forums
when playing a 6 player map, the game is lagging even at low settings.  I know from expierience that this shouldn't be happening.  I have a AMD X2 3800+ and a 8600 512MB GT with 3 gig of system ram.  I began searching for clues as to why it would lag.  I found my answer in task manager.  other games that i play on my comp such as BF2 (mods of course)  FFOW Oblivion etc. all use 1 gig of ram or more.  I discovered that sins only uses around 550 MB of ram.  I believe that gameplay speed could be improved by allowing more system ram to be alloted to sins.  if 1 gig was used I believe that lag wouldn't be a problem and I could use better graphic settings.

I bought sins and I love the game!  it is in my top 5 RTS of all time.  a big congratulations to Stardock and Ironclad for this great game!


technical
3,233 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
zephyr the engine was designed with the golden rule: It has to be playable on laptops(my understanding, please correct if I am wrong). So it was made pretty conservative. Most of us dont really have power pcs. I'm using intel integrated graphics.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I've a similar system (Laptop) with a somewhat better CPU and 4GB of RAM (Game running on highest) and I've only seen the game start to lag a little late game when all the ai's have large fleets bounching around and I zoom all the way in on fights with Hundreds of ships duking it out(90+ planets with 5 AI's). However the game happily uses 1GB+ RAM for me, I suspect the cause of the lag is the CPU your X2 3800 is a 1.8Ghz Dual core CPU and you may note the min requirements are a 1.8Ghz Single core, seeing the game only apparently uses the second core for loading stuff in the background it's likely on mapswith multiply AI's that your CPU is ending up the limiting factor.

It's also hard to compare RTS games to FPS/RPG's seeing RTS tend to be far more CPU intensive and far less GPU intensive compared to the FPS/RPG's.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
What Aeon said. The game will use as much RAM as it needs - here, it's often used upwards of 1.2GB.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I played the 6 comp 51 planet mission i am on again and checked the processor usage in the task manager. It never went above 60%. So, either my processor is not the problem, or sins doesn't take full advantage of 2 cores, which i am almost certain it does.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
or sins doesn't take full advantage of 2 cores, which i am almost certain it does.
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Sins only uses a second core for texture loading, most of the real work is done on one :P
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
It doesn't take full advantage of 2 cores.

EDIT: Oops, annatar beat me. :p
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
How about hyper-threading? Does the game use a different thread to do texture allocation, and then the rest of the CPU for everything else, or is there no benefit in this case? And would hyperthreading be more efficient than using a dual core processor? Or should I just stfu and go buy myself a new cpu? :)
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
zephyr the engine was designed with the golden rule: It has to be playable on laptops(my understanding, please correct if I am wrong). So it was made pretty conservative. Most of us dont really have power pcs. I'm using intel integrated graphics.
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Not quite; it has to run on a variety of systems, as opposed to only the top end ones.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Sins only uses a second core for texture loading, most of the real work is done on one
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A patch that allows full usage of both cores would be extremely helpful in improving gameplay. I don't know if this would require a lot more work but I am guessing it would be on the harder side. :NOTSURE:
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Your not alone. However it wont become an issue for me before I hit around 100+ planet systems, at 250 it is barely playable.
Sure hope a patch for dual-core comes out, so boring playing the smaller systems IMO :)
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Sins only uses a second core for texture loading, most of the real work is done on oneA patch that allows full usage of both cores would be extremely helpful in improving gameplay. I don't know if this would require a lot more work but I am guessing it would be on the harder side.
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Your not alone. However it wont become an issue for me before I hit around 100+ planet systems, at 250 it is barely playable. Sure hope a patch for dual-core comes out, so boring playing the smaller systems IMO
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This has been addressed again and again and again in multiple threads.