2nd GPU support comes to Civilization

Flint Ironstag said:

Aspyr just rolled out a patch. Not sure if it's Crossfire or if it's using the 2nd GPU for some other type of computation, but it's being used.

Bring it on

http://www.aspyr.com/news_articles/civilization-v-gets-open-cl-update-for-mac-pro

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Hey that's nice! It's the only game i am playing (4k and max details already ), looking forward to trying the patch tonight!

Now adobe do the same and add GPU support in Lightroom!

It's definitely a lot more responsive when interacting with the UI.

Here's to a nice start.
Blizzard, it's your turn now.

only Blizzard game i have is sc2 and thats CPU bottle necked not GPU
second GPU will make little change, using more than 2 CPUS will make a massive change.

antonis said:

Here's to a nice start.
Blizzard, it's your turn now.

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Any news if Blizz is doing something with Diablo3?

saschke said:

Any news if Blizz is doing something with Diablo3?

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Sadly no. They said some time ago they will soon drop support for earlier OS X versions due to the new OpenGL coming with Mavericks. But they haven't mentioned anything at all about OpenCL and dual GPU support.

orph said:

only Blizzard game i have is sc2 and thats CPU bottle necked not GPU
second GPU will make little change, using more than 2 CPUS will make a massive change.

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Well, I'd like to see dual GPU support on WoW and D3 though
It would definitely help, especially since the upcoming WoW expansion will have much higher detailed models, as announced.

antonis said:

Sadly no. They said some time ago they will soon drop support for earlier OS X versions due to the new OpenGL coming with Mavericks. But they haven't mentioned anything at all about OpenCL and dual GPU support.



Well, I'd like to see dual GPU support on WoW and D3 though
It would definitely help, especially since the upcoming WoW expansion will have much higher detailed models, as announced.

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Wow wouldn't benefit much from dual GPU support. On Windows the extra FPS you get out of WoW by using crossfire is abysmal. Wow is always 90% CPU bound whenever it needs more fps.

Well this update has broken my 4K support that I had previously.
Not happy.

iBug2 said:

Wow wouldn't benefit much from dual GPU support. On Windows the extra FPS you get out of WoW by using crossfire is abysmal. Wow is always 90% CPU bound whenever it needs more fps.

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Maybe it's an issue with WoW and crossfire - unfortunately many games don't play nice under Windows implementation of crossfire.

On the other hand, OpenCL on OS X side is a different story. It allows the application to decide which GPU does what, so unloading some of the higher-setting effects on the 2nd GPU should be a major factor to the performance. I know my iMac's 2010 gpu struggles in high settings, while the cpu is pretty comfortable.

antonis said:

Here's to a nice start.
Blizzard, it's your turn now.

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Haha! Blizzard needs to start supporting more than 3 cores as well.

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iBug2 said:

Wow wouldn't benefit much from dual GPU support. On Windows the extra FPS you get out of WoW by using crossfire is abysmal. Wow is always 90% CPU bound whenever it needs more fps.

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Yes. I had confirmation from Blizz that WoW supports a maximum of 3 cores. It was explained to me by someone not from Blizz that one core does the processing, one acts as a message server, and a third does some housekeeping and environment details. WTH was Blizz thinking?

HuntingPudel said:

Yes. I had confirmation from Blizz that WoW supports a maximum of 3 cores. It was explained to me by someone not from Blizz that one core does the processing, one acts as a message server, and a third does some housekeeping and environment details. WTH was Blizz thinking?

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Have they actually given such internal information outside ? That's interesting. I guess that explains why my CPU is comfortable when running WoW, then.

HuntingPudel said:

Haha! Blizzard needs to start supporting more than 3 cores as well.

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Yes. I had confirmation from Blizz that WoW supports a maximum of 3 cores. It was explained to me by someone not from Blizz that one core does the processing, one acts as a message server, and a third does some housekeeping and environment details. WTH was Blizz thinking?

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WoW is using a 12+ year old graphics/game engine..

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iBug2 said:

Wow wouldn't benefit much from dual GPU support. On Windows the extra FPS you get out of WoW by using crossfire is abysmal. Wow is always 90% CPU bound whenever it needs more fps.

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??? Take a look at: http://www.barefeats.com/tube07.html

The improvements there are not bad at all. Allthough the benefit for D3 is a lot bigger.

2nd GPU support comes to Civilization

This title is misleading. They are just OpenCL optimisations, but single GPU only. Aspyr have stated that it is single GPU only at the moment so that everyone gets the benefits, not just those with dual GPU systems.

leon771 said:

This title is misleading. They are just OpenCL optimisations, but single GPU only. Aspyr have stated that it is single GPU only at the moment so that everyone gets the benefits, not just those with dual GPU systems.

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Yesterday the linked web page (on aspyr.com) said "Aspyr has just released a new update for Civilization V that, among other improvements, takes advantage of the second video card in the Mac Pro." I had pasted that text straight from the web page into an IRC channel and just confirmed looking at my logs. That's what it said yesterday.

Looks like today they changed it and removed the reference to the second video card.

How weird.

antonis said:

Have they actually given such internal information outside ? That's interesting. I guess that explains why my CPU is comfortable when running WoW, then.

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I was considering changing my processors from a pair of dual cores to quad cores, but wanted to find out from Blizz if WoW would take advantage of that. So, I asked on their Mac Forum. Their reply was that it would not because they only use 3 cores and that I need to find higher clock rate processors instead of throwing cores at it.

antonis said:

Maybe it's an issue with WoW and crossfire - unfortunately many games don't play nice under Windows implementation of crossfire.

On the other hand, OpenCL on OS X side is a different story. It allows the application to decide which GPU does what, so unloading some of the higher-setting effects on the 2nd GPU should be a major factor to the performance. I know my iMac's 2010 gpu struggles in high settings, while the cpu is pretty comfortable.

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The CPU is comfortable because WoW cannot use more than 2 cores. So if you buy a CPU with higher single core clock speed, wow will run better with the same GPU. But of course the GPU matters as well.

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wildmac said:

WoW is using a 12+ year old graphics/game engine..

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??? Take a look at: http://www.barefeats.com/tube07.html

The improvements there are not bad at all. Allthough the benefit for D3 is a lot bigger.

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Who cares about 70 fps vs 110 fps when you are looking at an idle scene? Your monitor can only give out 60 fps to begin with. WoW's fps issues are on heavy fight scenes when there are 25+ toons moving around and doing stuff, and that's 100% CPU bound and that's where your FPS gets a huge hit and drops from 150 to 25, whatever GPU you have. And adding more and more GPU's in that case does not increase the FPS even one bit.

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HuntingPudel said:

I was considering changing my processors from a pair of dual cores to quad cores, but wanted to find out from Blizz if WoW would take advantage of that. So, I asked on their Mac Forum. Their reply was that it would not because they only use 3 cores and that I need to find higher clock rate processors instead of throwing cores at it.

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They say 3 but they mean 3 major threads. I have never seen WoW use more than 170-180% CPU, that's below 2 full core loads.

You can see the old text in the google cache of the page:

Nugget said:

You can see the old text in the of the page:

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It's okay, I believe you.

I tried Civ 5 out on my 5,1 MP with a 7970 card, and it seems to run much more smoothly than before. I haven't yet gotten to a mid-game where the graphics usually start blacking out and lagging.

As it turns out, buying computers requires enough work that Civ 5 habits get pushed to the back-burner...