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Larsenex
Larsenex
Join Date 04/2009
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Two questions about Gal Civ III GPU scaling and 4K display.

April 7, 2016 7:15:07 AM from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

Greetings Stardock!


My first question is does Gal Civ III support SLI or Xfire  <well>  meaning not just support but really plays well if you bother to spend the money on getting two expensive cards?


Second, if I get two said cards, does Gal Civ III support 4K or higher resolutions and play well if given the hardware to support it?


My post stems from this article from Tweaktown. It has merit in that many games are living in the proverbial stone age as compared to our current technology. 


http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/7631/wtf-wrong-multi-gpu-support-games-days/index.html


A third question which perhaps Frogboy or Islandog or Jafo know, can you get 4K to good frame rates with just one video card? Can I get Gal Civ III to play well on 4K with a good high end card?

I currently have a GTX 970.



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Larsenex
Avatar137
Join Date 06/2004
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Reply #1 April 7, 2016 7:23:08 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

Quoting ,
quoting post
...A third question which perhaps Frogboy or Islandview or Jafo know, ...

 

Sorry for jumping in here but who is Islandview?

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Larsenex
Seilore
Join Date 10/2006
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Reply #2 April 7, 2016 7:24:18 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums


Second, if I get two said cards, does Gal Civ III support 4K or higher resolutions and play well if given the hardware to support it?

If I remember correctly it does support 4K but, that's been a while since talked about. 

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Larsenex
Larsenex
Join Date 04/2009
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Reply #3 April 7, 2016 9:12:55 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

I ment IslandDog. I know GCIII supports 4k, all Gal Civ series have been on the cutting edge of graphix scaling. My real question is how well does it play on turn 368 with 58 factions and most empires built into the Ascension age? 

I remember seeing some of Mormegiels post/blog and he played the game a ways back on a 4k monitor. I wondering if the game plays as well at 4K (or higher) as it does at 1920 x 1080.

 

Does the performance of the game <improve> using two cards in xfire or sli (which of course it should) but the article above seems to thing most games play worse. I really want to know if performance will increase with SLI and if not will  it ever?

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Larsenex
zingo77
Join Date 07/2014
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Reply #4 April 7, 2016 9:17:46 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

From my experience though on single gpu, the overall performance slows down that late in game.

Though i dont think its gpu related- more like engine wise. Then again 2 cards are better than 1 in most cases.

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Larsenex
ManiiNames
Join Date 03/2006
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Reply #5 April 7, 2016 9:25:37 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

I play on a superwide monitor, 38something x 1440. Single GPU, game works fine but it does slow down some eventually. 

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Larsenex
Larsenex
Join Date 04/2009
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Reply #6 April 7, 2016 11:00:40 AM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

Quoting zingo77,
reply 4

From my experience though on single gpu, the overall performance slows down that late in game.

Though i dont think its gpu related- more like engine wise. Then again 2 cards are better than 1 in most cases.

 

^^^ Correct, the slowing is NOT related to graphix but rather the number of threads that I believe are in progress at that stage in game. I do know that multicore CPU's should improve late game turn times depending on type and number of cores/threads. 

This is one reason why I am eyeing the 6900K Broadwell-E for my next build. This processor SHOULD be available later this year under the 800 dollar mark. However before I do that I was also considering migrating to a good 4K monitor and Frogboy had mentioned to wait till Display Port 1.4 is showing up, which oddly enough it will also this year. My idea is a 4K monitor at 120hz refresh rate with a solid 16 thread I7 and 32 gigs of ram. On paper this system 'should' reduce turn times on an insane map at least by half from what I have now which is an I5 with only 4 cores/threads. 

This post was to ask if GCIII graphix improve with multi card/gpus. According to the blog link I posted, most games do not and actually say performance improves with only one card. With that said the only ones who can tell me are the three I mentioned or other folks who are currently running 4K. 

 

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Larsenex
erischild
Join Date 01/2012
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Reply #7 April 7, 2016 12:54:53 PM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

I looked into this a lot recently when getting this new rig.  Unless you are dealing with other games that are known for graphics load, don't bother with the SLI setup.  Think Witcher 3 or maybe Ashes of the Singularity.  I think Ashes is just waiting for an SLI set up to have fun with.  GalCiv challenges your CPU more than your GPU.  I have a 27" 2K monitor with one GTX 980 Ti and an I7 5960x drawing GalCiv very very nicely.  It is noticeably crisper than 1080, but not a whole lot.  I can't see where 4K is going to get you much more visual improvement either.  GalCiv just isn't that kind of graphics.  Any lag I see is definitely increased CPU load.  I probably get less of that with my monster chip, but it still happens.

So, do the 4k and SLI thing if you really want, but don't blame GalCiiv for the gaping hole in your wallet.    My rig was tuned as a work horse that just happens to play an excellent game of GalCiv, and that determined my budgeting.

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Larsenex
shaw
Join Date 07/2015
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Reply #8 April 7, 2016 1:14:57 PM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

Quoting Larsenex,
reply 3

I ment IslandDog. I know GCIII supports 4k, all Gal Civ series have been on the cutting edge of graphix scaling. My real question is how well does it play on turn 368 with 58 factions and most empires built into the Ascension age? 

I remember seeing some of Mormegiels post/blog and he played the game a ways back on a 4k monitor. I wondering if the game plays as well at 4K (or higher) as it does at 1920 x 1080.

 

Does the performance of the game <improve> using two cards in xfire or sli (which of course it should) but the article above seems to thing most games play worse. I really want to know if performance will increase with SLI and if not will  it ever?

The game looks great at 4k (and 5K!).  There will be a performance drop of course but how much will depend on your system.  Having better / multiple cards will help but other factors such as memory, CPU, hard drive type, etc.  also contribute to the overall experience.  

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Larsenex
Larsenex
Join Date 04/2009
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Reply #9 April 7, 2016 1:35:34 PM
from Galactic Civilizations III ForumsGalactic Civilizations III Forums

Thank you for the response Pshaw!

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