A Free-To-Play MMO? Neverwinter Performance, Benchmarked

[sarinaide]

[citation][nom]de5_Roy[/nom]i can't believe it...http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 495-4.htmlhttp://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 495-5.html i could believe fx8350 sinking itself to core i3 level performance (it's kinda fx8350's routine) but hd4000 significantly outperforming radeon 7660g in min., avg., and frame time variance? with dual core i5 vs quadcore a10 even...how would an overclocked i5 3550 or 3570k or fx6300 would fare in this game?[/citation]

I don't understand why you are so surprised at this considering you follow and contribute to said thread. Top line Trinity APU mobile with a 1.8ghz core clock is severly holding back the 7660G, this is why AMD have opted for power control and uping Richland mobiles to as high as 3.4ghz clocks while leaving the iGPU much the same. Another indicative aspect is that the 5800K performs significantly better than the top mobile part yet both have the same graphics part of the node, the difference is that 3.8ghz on the DT part can drive the 7660D a lot further than the 7660G can.

 

[de5_Roy]

I don't understand why you are so surprised at this considering you follow and contribute to said thread. Top line Trinity APU mobile with a 1.8ghz core clock is severly holding back the 7660G, this is why AMD have opted for power control and uping Richland mobiles to as high as 3.4ghz clocks while leaving the iGPU much the same. Another indicative aspect is that the 5800K performs significantly better than the top mobile part yet both have the same graphics part of the node, the difference is that 3.8ghz on the DT part can drive the 7660D a lot further than the 7660G can.

amd a10 4600m has 4 cores running at 2.3 ghz baseclockrate, can turbo up to 3.2 ghz while core i5 3210 has 2 cores with ht and runs at 2.5 ghz base clockrate, 3.1 ghz max single core turbo. the a10 has 2 more real cores vs i5's ht. an online multiplayer game shouldn't be so bottlenecked that it'd defy a10's igpu resources, higher cores and clockrate. tha apus are bottlenecked by the cpu but not so much that a mobile dual core i5 can outperform them @1080p... in an mmo. i think there is something else in the play, like the apu platform using lower clocked ram or the a10 hitting it's thermal ceiling fast or something like that or amd's typically lackluster launch driver support.... i dunno...
i woulda liked to see how a10 5800k performed vs a core i3 3225 in this game. since the game is so cpu dependent, may be a little bit deeper look into cpu performance woulda been more informative imo.

 

[sarinaide]

I don't understand why you are so surprised at this considering you follow and contribute to said thread. Top line Trinity APU mobile with a 1.8ghz core clock is severly holding back the 7660G, this is why AMD have opted for power control and uping Richland mobiles to as high as 3.4ghz clocks while leaving the iGPU much the same. Another indicative aspect is that the 5800K performs significantly better than the top mobile part yet both have the same graphics part of the node, the difference is that 3.8ghz on the DT part can drive the 7660D a lot further than the 7660G can.

amd a10 4600m has 4 cores running at 2.3 ghz baseclockrate, can turbo up to 3.2 ghz while core i5 3210 has 2 cores with ht and runs at 2.5 ghz base clockrate, 3.1 ghz max single core turbo. the a10 has 2 more real cores vs i5's ht. an online multiplayer game shouldn't be so bottlenecked that it'd defy a10's igpu resources, higher cores and clockrate. tha apus are bottlenecked by the cpu but not so much that a mobile dual core i5 can outperform them @1080p... in an mmo. i think there is something else in the play, like the apu platform using lower clocked ram or the a10 hitting it's thermal ceiling fast or something like that or amd's typically lackluster launch driver support.... i dunno...
i woulda liked to see how a10 5800k performed vs a core i3 3225 in this game. since the game is so cpu dependent, may be a little bit deeper look into cpu performance woulda been more informative imo.

a) we already know the APU's watered down cores are slower than the main line processors cores, and we know that AMD has slower per core performance than Intel, so what benefit is there to delving into what we already know?

b) we know this game is CPU bottlenecked to the highest order, so benchmarking a 3225 and 5800K will yield the same results, again why would you want to know what you already know.

c) Flip it around and you go to a GPU bound title like BF3 albeit at a low 1366x768 and the dynamic flips, the APU's consistently play at 44-50FPS while a 3770K can barely muster up 25FPS constant, but again we already knew that.

Ultimately Trinity mobile is very slow, the 4600M is weak and clocked low, AMD have shown 50-60% over HD4000 based i7's (report) and that is in no part due to the core element being refined, along with higher clock rates, power control features, so the performance is because the cPU part can push the GPU part further hence why only a 44mhz clock bump on the iGPU which will not alone yield the 20-40% application dependant gains that were put out on AMD's site. Richland mobile from what I am told, the top end part makes the 4600M look distinctly low end.

Overall NWN is another gimped game that will fail miserably due to its nigh on unfathomable expectations on system resources, in the end WoW will once again be the MMORPG to beat.

 

[de5_Roy]

Spoiler

a) we already know the APU's watered down cores are slower than the main line processors cores, and we know that AMD has slower per core performance than Intel, so what benefit is there to delving into what we already know?

b) we know this game is CPU bottlenecked to the highest order, so benchmarking a 3225 and 5800K will yield the same results, again why would you want to know what you already know.

c) Flip it around and you go to a GPU bound title like BF3 albeit at a low 1366x768 and the dynamic flips, the APU's consistently play at 44-50FPS while a 3770K can barely muster up 25FPS constant, but again we already knew that.

Ultimately Trinity mobile is very slow, the 4600M is weak and clocked low, AMD have shown 50-60% over HD4000 based i7's (report) and that is in no part due to the core element being refined, along with higher clock rates, power control features, so the performance is because the cPU part can push the GPU part further hence why only a 44mhz clock bump on the iGPU which will not alone yield the 20-40% application dependant gains that were put out on AMD's site. Richland mobile from what I am told, the top end part makes the 4600M look distinctly low end.

Overall NWN is another gimped game that will fail miserably due to its nigh on unfathomable expectations on system resources, in the end WoW will once again be the MMORPG to beat.

the game is cpu dependent, but it favors 4 cores. see the cpu bench showing core i3 3220(2c/4t) being significantly behind core i5 3550(4c/4t) while the i3 barely outperforms fx4170. that's why i didn't know what to make of the 4 core apu being behind 2c/4t core i5. the a10 isn't that much watered down, nowhere near the extent of i5 3210.
core i3 3225 has same clockrate as 3220, which is barely ahead of the dual module fx in the cpu benchmark. the a10 5800k, another dual module but more improved (around 15% faster) cpu cores than zambezi, enjoys unlocked multiplier and full-speed igpu. i think the performance woulda been different.
however, it's kinda amusing seeing you trying to undermine amd apus.

 

[Traciatim]

[citation][nom]Traciatim[/nom]Yet again we see any game that requires a descent amount of CPU power that AMD falls flat on it's face.I sure wish AMD was still in this competition so that we wouldn't have things like Haswell being essentially the same CPU as Ivy Bridge with a few tweaks and a better useless section that gets instantly disabled if you want to actually play games.[/citation]
That is odd since both my FX-8120 and FX-8350 based rigs get consistent 60fps vsync'd at 1080p max settings. The same by the way as my i5 3570K rig. So were did AMD fall flat on it's face? At least with my rigs AMD is right up there with intel just like with any other game I have.

Interesting, if you artificially limit them both to go slower than they are capable they go the same speed. I guess that's why no one has ever purchased a Lamborghini because it drives the speed limit exactly like everyone else... right? Keep driving your Yugo.

 

[sarinaide]

Spoiler

a) we already know the APU's watered down cores are slower than the main line processors cores, and we know that AMD has slower per core performance than Intel, so what benefit is there to delving into what we already know?

b) we know this game is CPU bottlenecked to the highest order, so benchmarking a 3225 and 5800K will yield the same results, again why would you want to know what you already know.

c) Flip it around and you go to a GPU bound title like BF3 albeit at a low 1366x768 and the dynamic flips, the APU's consistently play at 44-50FPS while a 3770K can barely muster up 25FPS constant, but again we already knew that.

Ultimately Trinity mobile is very slow, the 4600M is weak and clocked low, AMD have shown 50-60% over HD4000 based i7's (report) and that is in no part due to the core element being refined, along with higher clock rates, power control features, so the performance is because the cPU part can push the GPU part further hence why only a 44mhz clock bump on the iGPU which will not alone yield the 20-40% application dependant gains that were put out on AMD's site. Richland mobile from what I am told, the top end part makes the 4600M look distinctly low end.

Overall NWN is another gimped game that will fail miserably due to its nigh on unfathomable expectations on system resources, in the end WoW will once again be the MMORPG to beat.

the game is cpu dependent, but it favors 4 cores. see the cpu bench showing core i3 3220(2c/4t) being significantly behind core i5 3550(4c/4t) while the i3 barely outperforms fx4170. that's why i didn't know what to make of the 4 core apu being behind 2c/4t core i5. the a10 isn't that much watered down, nowhere near the extent of i5 3210.
core i3 3225 has same clockrate as 3220, which is barely ahead of the dual module fx in the cpu benchmark. the a10 5800k, another dual module but more improved (around 15% faster) cpu cores than zambezi, enjoys unlocked multiplier and full-speed igpu. i think the performance woulda been different.
however, it's kinda amusing seeing you trying to undermine amd apus.

Its not undermining it is just fact, clock for clock the A-Series is weaker than FX which is weaker than Intel. This is old news, since the i5 notebook has stronger cores than the APU roughly twice as strong, its not really that surprising to see the 7660G trail

 

[CrypticMeow]

Neverwinter actually runs pretty well for me. and not sure what people are talking about with the 8350 as i use it and get easy 60FPS (V-sync on) in explorable maps and dungeons and about 30-45FPS in main city and this is at maxed graphics settings with Anti Aliasing off.
I'm running:
Fx 8350 @4ghz, AMD radeon 6970 2gb, 16gb ram @1920x1200.

 

[George Silsby]

It's a great game, the Foundry I had used and made many missions over on Star Trek Online, but it's even better handled for Neverwinter.

 

[gyggalax]

There are places in NWO where your fps will drop to like 2, and you'll be stuck sitting there looking at an unmoving screen till the particle effects manage to calm down... One of these "spots" is inside the Cloak Tower Dungeon where the dungeon transfers from a stone and mortar tileset to one of a natural cave.

 

[whyso]

Ultimately Trinity mobile is very slow, the 4600M is weak and clocked low, AMD have shown 50-60% over HD4000 based i7's (report) and that is in no part due to the core element being refined, along with higher clock rates, power control features, so the performance is because the cPU part can push the GPU part further hence why only a 44mhz clock bump on the iGPU which will not alone yield the 20-40% application dependant gains that were put out on AMD's site. Richland mobile from what I am told, the top end part makes the 4600M look distinctly low end.

In reality its more often a 30% advantage over mobile i7.

 

[smithereen]

Wow, was Tom's paid off by Cryptic or what?

 

[morpheas768]

[citation]But when a game opens up to the public, it accepts real-world currency, and the developer makes it clear that characters are not going to be wiped, we aren't going to let it off the hook because of a beta label slapped on. It's too easy for that to become an excuse when things aren't quite right.[/citation]
The game IS open to the public, it DOES accept real-world currency, and the devs have said that the characters are NOT going to be wiped, so....yeah.

This review was posted on May 9, well after the "Open Beta" had already started (April 30), and to be honest, this isnt really an open beta, its a slow launch. Cryptic just calls it open beta in order to use it as an excuse for "things that arent quite right", like said above.

So I'm guessing that the insane bottleneck this game has got wont be fixed? I hope it will though, because my i3 3220 is still struggling at the main area (protectors enclave).

 

[bystander]

[citation]But when a game opens up to the public, it accepts real-world currency, and the developer makes it clear that characters are not going to be wiped, we aren't going to let it off the hook because of a beta label slapped on. It's too easy for that to become an excuse when things aren't quite right.[/citation]
The game IS open to the public, it DOES accept real-world currency, and the devs have said that the characters are NOT going to be wiped, so....yeah.

This review was posted on May 9, well after the "Open Beta" had already started (April 30), and to be honest, this isnt really an open beta, its a slow launch. Cryptic just calls it open beta in order to use it as an excuse for "things that arent quite right", like said above.

So I'm guessing that the insane bottleneck this game has got wont be fixed? I hope it will though, because my i3 3220 is still struggling at the main area (protectors enclave).

I wouldn't expect things to get better in the populated city. All the MMO's I've ever played had issues in big cities. There are just too many people, buildings and NPC's to run well on lower end CPU's. WoW is the same way, and it generally regarded as the easiest MMO on PC's.

 

[His Nibs]

I wonder how an i7 @ 2600 with 2x sapphire HD 6970's in Crossfire would handle this game?

 

[His Nibs]

I wonder how a Core i7 @ 2600 with 2x Sapphire HD 6970's in Crossfire would perform.

 

[Caleb Hale]

So where are the tests with processors better than an i5?
Are you guys still throwing out the suggestion that if you're debating between i5 and i7 to save your money and get the i5 because the i7 won't provide you with any measurable difference? Lol...

 

[zaxxx]

played till I got to level 60, and then it really drops off. End game is dungeons and mini games. As for buying zen with the AD, you are talking months of play just to get a simple amount of zen. I imagine playing 6 months 12 or so hours a day you could eventually afford to by an extra bag, lol. Things are priced ridiculously stupid. To change the look of a weapon, it asked me for 60k AD, mind you in the month I played I managed to farm about 80k total. But you have to spend your AD on stupid things like id scrolls and such. Its a pay to win set up, I see this going the route of SWTOR, where it has a big release that drops off a cliff.

 

[ubercake]

I played this weekend. I set all visuals to the max (draw distances for everything and AA include... everything maxed).

I played some missions and PvP. It's pretty fun. Performance is good (with the exception of the servers being down the entire day yesterday?) even though framerates are not great. Framerates are capped at 60 even though I change the setting to 120 (my monitor is 120Hz). Framerates are in the 30s when in busy player areas though the game never visually bogged down or got choppy.

SLI is not working with this game yet.

Overall, it seems pretty fun and addictive. Easy to pick up and while the skill trees make you feel like you have a degree of control over your advancement, the limits make advancement pretty linear. I made it to level 12 and never even got close to dying with the exception of during PvP where I died a few times. Graphics are decent.

I'm going to try the /maxfps 120 trick next time I can get logged in.

 

[bystander]

I played this weekend. I set all visuals to the max (draw distances for everything and AA include... everything maxed).

I played some missions and PvP. It's pretty fun. Performance is good (with the exception of the servers being down the entire day yesterday?) even though framerates are not great. Framerates are capped at 60 even though I change the setting to 120 (my monitor is 120Hz). Framerates are in the 30s when in busy player areas though the game never visually bogged down or got choppy.

SLI is not working with this game yet.

Overall, it seems pretty fun and addictive. Easy to pick up and while the skill trees make you feel like you have a degree of control over your advancement, the limits make advancement pretty linear. I made it to level 12 and never even got close to dying with the exception of during PvP where I died a few times. Graphics are decent.

I'm not sure what your GPU's are, but I had a similar issue with my 120hz monitor. The problem is the game will not put your monitor into 120hz, so if you had v-sync or adaptive v-sync on, you got capped at 60.

You can fix it by 1) running in Windowed Fullscreen mode, which will not use SLI, but as you noted, it doesn't work with SLI much anyways, and really doesn't need to as the game is extremely easy on GPU's. 2) you can still use fullscreen mode, but start the game with your 3D Vision drivers on, then hit ctrl-T once in game to turn it off. 120hz is then maintained.

 

[Nic Reed]

There is a setting in Neverwinter options to change the max framerate. Believe it was under the troubleshooting section, allow max fps to 120.. might be worthwhile testing the high end cards again with that setting adjusted.

 

[ubercake]

I'm not sure what your GPU's are, but I had a similar issue with my 120hz monitor. The problem is the game will not put your monitor into 120hz, so if you had v-sync or adaptive v-sync on, you got capped at 60.

You can fix it by 1) running in Windowed Fullscreen mode, which will not use SLI, but as you noted, it doesn't work with SLI much anyways, and really doesn't need to as the game is extremely easy on GPU's. 2) you can still use fullscreen mode, but start the game with your 3D Vision drivers on, then hit ctrl-T once in game to turn it off. 120hz is then maintained.

I have two 680s. I'm running in fullscreen mode. I did the /maxfps 120 trick and got framerates into the 70s (full on details, AA and AF, nothing can turn up higher), but still no utilization on the second card and only GPU utilization in the 50%s for card 1. I think we'll have to wait for a driver optimization that will coincide with the actual "production" release of this game. I still haven't encountered any choppy slowdowns in busy areas like I once did when playing Rift, so that's a plus.

I'll try the 3D switch as you've suggested.

I think the game is lot of fun. You can play and actually accomplish a task or small mission in a 15-20 minute setting. This is a very key factor for me since I have other obligations. Plus, it's D&D. I am a total geek for the stuff. This is the first game to pull me away from a first-person shooter in a while.

 

[xelliz]

I wonder how an i7 @ 2600 with 2x sapphire HD 6970's in Crossfire would handle this game?

I'm running this on a i7-920 with a single Radeon HD4830. I am using the default settings that the game chose excluding dropping shadows down to low. I don't have any issues.

 

[Michael McDonald]

Turned shadows off ,aa and put shaders to Medium and I get 50+ FPS out in the world. i7 3770k. radeon 6750. So glad I bought a good CPU. Will buy a good gpu soonish too!

 

[Michael McDonald]

50+ FPS out in the world at 1080P. i7 3770k. Radeon 6750. All I did was turn Shadows and AA off and shaders to Medium. Rather small image quality drop for huge performance gains. Need a good video card!

 

[ubercake]

Now with all details cranked and using the /maxfps 120 command, I'm getting regular performance in the 110s with two 780s and a 3930k.