Hardware for OTTD

[Jaume]

Hi all.

I'm playing a very large game with over 2700 trains in a 4096x4096 map. Obviousy, this game runs very slowly. For this reason, I will buy a new computer, but I don't know what is the best option for OTTD:

* dual core 64 bit CPU at 2.0GHz
* quad core 32 bit CPU at 2.4GHz
* dual core 32 bit CPU at 3.2GHz

Which of these CPU's do you suggest me?

Thanks.

PD: Excuse my poorly english
PD2: I'm playing a patched version of OTTD over Debian Linux.

[planetmaker]

* dual core 32 bit CPU at 3.2GHz

As OpenTTD cannot use more than one core, the CPU with the fastest speed of one core is most suitable. Not entirely sure, but 64 bit won't compensate the lower CPU fequency of the CPU with respect to the faster 32 bit CPU.

Graphics card doesn't matter much either.

[CommanderZ]

OTTD doesn't support more multiple threads, so it will use only one core without caring if you have one or hundred of them. Buying C2D gotta be more price effective. Overclocking can also earn you some more power. Of course - if you have BUDGET - you can go for Intel i7, nitrogene cooling and overclock it to heaven

[borg83]

I would recommend a C2D CPU as these can be easily overclocked and support DDR2 RAM which is very cheap at the moment. I think CPU clock and RAM (RAM especially when playing with NoAI) is the only thing that counts for OTTD.

[Jaume]

Ok, thank you very much.

[audigex]

Come again? ALL modern AMD or Intel CPUs are capable of 64-bit... it's just the operating system.

Any athlon64/phenom from AMD or Pentium4/PentiumD/CoreDuo/Core2Duo/CoreQuad/Core2Quad will do fine.

As said, go for the highest single processor speed, although my laptop's 1.5gHz dual core (that's 1.5gHz per core) runs fine with 1500+ trains on 2048x2048 maps while multi-tasking, so I can't imagine you need anything too stunning.

If you can get hold of an Intel Core2Duo E8500, you're away, that's a cracking processor.

[Xander]

Don't forget about RAM. No good having all the CPU if you have to keep checking the hard disk for your memory cache.

[Thief^]

The higher frequency AMD Athlon X2s are very good value for money these days, as are the comparable Intel Core 2 Duos.

I'd definitely say to get a dual-core cpu (i.e. Athlon X2 or Core 2 Duo), as the quad-cores perform worse than the duals for any program not designed to use them. The duals have been scaled to comparable speeds to the old single-core cpus now, so there is no performance loss choosing a dual-core over a budget single-core in programs that aren't designed to run on a dual (and a lot are these days), and you could get a performance boost due to background tasks (e.g. antivirus) being moved onto the other core.

OpenTTD doesn't need particularly good hardware, it will run reasonably on anything from the past 5 years, possibly even older. For larger games (thousands of vehicles) you might need a more modern system, but you don't need an 8-core 4GHz powerhouse gaming machine.

[audigex]

Please also note that even with the fact that OTTD only uses one core, it will usually get virtually sole use of that core under windows vista, if that's your OS. I'm not so sure about XP, but vista is very good at recognising single-threaded apps and spreading the load out (by running background processes on the other core). At the same time, an old 3gHz single core is usually slower than a new 2.4gHz dual core, even on a per-core basis, because of more efficient manufacturing processes, higher bus speeds and greater cache levels.

[ostlandr]

The Vista box I bought last year has an AMD Athlon X2 at 2 ghz and I upgraded the pig to 4GB of RAM (an absolute must with Vista, as it kills most of 1GB of RAM all by itself.) It now runs acceptably. OTTD is one of the programs I have had no Vista related issues with (Thank you, Devs!!!) and I have yet to "go big" enough in OTTD to test the limits of this system.

A PC with a single processor is pretty cheap these days- "2.7GHz AMD Athlon LE-1640 Single-Core Processor"

http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/desk ... AA%2523ABA

$330 US, if you don't mind upgrading the RAM to 4GB yourself (from Crucial.com, about US$44.00)

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts. ... %20SR5604F

So for less than $500 US (plus the inevitable shipping & handling) you can have a Vista box that should work as an OTTD server.

Edit: This box: http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/desk ... AA%2523ABA comes with a dual core processor for $400 US, and would only need a 1GB DDR2 DIMM for $12 to max out the memory at 4 gig (more than 32 bit Vista will address).

[Agrajag]

TTD runs pretty slow for me. It's "normal" at resolution 800x600 and below, but the effect of fast forwarding is practically zero. If I fast forward and minimize the window, it fast forwards about 0.5-1 years per minute, which is too fast
I'm posting the specs below. Is TTD really this hard on the hardware or have I got some other issue? I'm playing a 256x256 map.

specs:
AMD Sempron 2200+ (1.5 GHz), Socket A
1.5GB of DDR400 RAM (I think it's working at 333, though)
ATI Rage Fury Pro 32MB graphics (just barely better than the integrated chip on the mobo)
Windows XP Home
OpenTTD 0.5.0 (I know, I should update, but would it help?)

Certainly memory is not an issue here. And I doubt it's the graphics, either, even though the card is crap. Feels like it's taking a whole lot of CPU, cause while playing TTD it's virtually impossible to do anything else. Firefox takes over 1 minute to start. If I pause TTD, it starts almost instantly...
But wait, didn't I use to play original TTD on a 366MHz machine with 64MB of RAM? And even a 133MHz with 32MB of RAM? I do realize OpenTTD has a lot of improvements, but the map size for me is the same, as are the graphics (I have no NewGRFs installed)...

I have another machine with an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2.6 GHz), 2GB of RAM and an 8800GTS 640MB for graphics. OpenTTD is stunningly fast on that one, even at 1920x1200. Then again I have 0.6.x on that one...

[CommanderZ]

Updating would certainly help, there are optimizations done every day. 0.5.x is pretty ancient nowadays.

I'm running the game on a machine almost identical to yours - it runs smoothly on 1024^2 map with 800 trains and a ton of ships smoothly, it slows down while zoomed out significantly though. Fast forward means no speed-up for me too in such CPU heavy situation.

[audigex]

1.5gHz core2duo
2gb ram

Runs anything other than a full-blown OTTDcoop game (at which point it starts to struggle) without issues. So anything less than 2048^2 with 2000 trains and it's fine

[Agrajag]

thanks, CommanderZ, for your answer. Glad to hear I'm not having any specific problem with the fast forwarding bit. And the latest version does seem faster. Going full-screen seems to have a dramatic positive effect as well. I can then actually fast forward (with a slight but noticable difference) at 1024x768...

Man, 800 trains... I have 100 and traffic is clogged. Then again I'm only playing a 256x256 map atm with two huge stations receiving all the coal, wood, iron and farming products from the map and no other transports
I just got bored of it at 2002 so I'm probably starting a new one. Thank god for holidays!

[Zuu]

Disabling full detail and full animation gives a significant boost to. Now I don't remember which of those that are most important. But one of them is it that gives most performance increase.

[Agrajag]

Zuu, WOW!! You weren't kidding! Can finally run it windowed AND fast forward superfast! Such a simple solution. I never even imagined it was possible turn down graphics in TTD. I wonder why...

Edit: I did some reserach with task manager. Turning off full detail had practically no effect on CPU use, which was around 45-50% with a 640x480 window and 1024^2 map size. Turning off full animation put the CPU use down to 5-10%. The OpenTTD process only showed between 0 and 3%, while with full animation OpenTTD alone was responsible for 40-45%. I can actually surf the internet and do schoolwork now. I turned up the window size to 1024x768 (which fills most of my 1280x1024 screen) and it had practically no effect. It runs and fast forwards just as fast as 640x480. I only have like 10 vehicles so far in this new game tho. Fast forwarding puts CPU to 100%.

Thank you so much for that fantastic tip!

[PhilSophus]

The reason is that animations are done by palette cycling in OpenTTD. That was a cheap way to do animation in the old days, as long as you are really using a palette (i.e. 8-bit) graphics mode. In real and true color modes, which are common today, you've to redraw every pixel that has changed color, which is quite expensive as you noticed.

[Thief^]

Perhaps we should have a separate option to turn off full animation while fast-forwarding?

Also, is there a cap on the fast-forwards speed?

[CommanderZ]

No. You can see it when you turn fast forward on and minimize the window - the CPU is not drained by updating the screen then and you can jump even several years a minute - then the speed directly depends on map size and count of objects

[Youri219]

Not only OTTD, but almost any modern game basically uses only 1 core. Some may do some preloading of textures on another core, but that's usually just a few percents of total CPU cycles. Not only OTTD has the multi-threaded difficulties, it's an inherent difficulty for almost all games to design it with multiple cores in mind. Just look at any random game's (technical) forum and note the 'CPU runs only at 25%/50% threads'.

You do have some background processes from your OS, and some games some pre-loading like stuff (I think OTTD saves games in another thread), which could benefit from a second core, but anything more than 2 cores is for most current games just a waste.