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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   4612 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 20, 2022

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This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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I would have fixed the BSOD if it just required the latest drivers and updates. It's probably something at the hardware level, which sort of goes back to my lack of interest in DIYing diagnostics.

My CPU is not overpowered for RimWorld. This is too much detail, but once you get to 50+ colonists the game barely runs on 1x, let alone 3 or 5x speed.

Also, my setup hardly compares to a Ferrari. It's a $1700 machine. 14'' MacBook Pros start at $2k, and I know the average startup doesn't issue its developers a Ferrari on day one. It's more like a base model 2020 BMW 5 series, with me asking the best way to swap the engine for the 2023 model.

If your main goal is Rimworld performance, AMD's 5800x3D CPU is going to be the best value you can buy (or the 7800x3D when it comes out next year) because its huge cache makes a big difference (up to 40%) for complex sim games with lots of entities.

I've been drooling over these for Factorio, but similar sort of position where I can't justify it for the ~2hrs a week I spend using the PC that way.

CPU sim games are such an upgrade trap: "yesss, now I can simulate seven million pieces of iron moving down a belt! Progress!"

The widely-touted Factorio benchmarks run at well over 200+ UPS. The outsized gains from the big cache don't hold up as well with larger factories that struggle to maintain 60, presumably because they overflow it. Something that does help Factorio run faster on pretty much any computer is forcing it to use a larger page size with mimalloc.

Even in that case it's going toe to toe against a CPU twice its price with vastly higher single core speed, which is pretty amazing!

Thanks for the tip. If my business programs were available on Linux I'd switch over entirely at this point.

Interesting. Never thought about the cache mattering. Thanks for the tip.

Your CPU is in fact overpowered for Rimworld. Having 50+ colonists is an extreme outlier case, like people who play Factorio and then try to build mega factories.

like people who play Factorio and then try to build mega factories.

Is there any point to factorio other than building mega factories? It's not called Cottagecorio, and only like 25% of the content is really involved in a playthrough that just "beats the game."

There are factories and factories. I've had a lot of fun building (quite large) factories in that game, but I have no desire whatever to try to get into the megabase game. Building a factory to produce thousands of science packs per minute is not my idea of fun.

Regardless, though, people who do that in Factorio are at the extreme edge of pushing the game. The hardware they need to sustain that is far greater than what the average Factorio player needs. Similarly, if one has a Rimworld colony with 50+ colonists that's outside the norm, and it means they're going to have higher hardware requirements.

My CPU is not overpowered for RimWorld

I do not know the particulars of RimWorld.

But exotic usecases are insatiable. You can make any CPU in the world struggle if you just spawn an arbitrarily large number of bots in games made in the 90's.

If your usecase is not too far out of the bounds of how RimWorld is meant to be played, then I suppose just do whatever you want. (Do it regardless, but you asked for suggestions).

Ferrari

The point I was aiming to get across is that a Ferrari is far far far too overspecced to drive to the grocery as is a a high end CPU is for running games that were modestly intensive from half to 3/2 a decade ago.

Not about the expense of it.

If your usecase is not too far out of the bounds of how RimWorld is meant to be played

It is way outside the bounds of how Rimworld is normally played, for what it's worth. So a CPU upgrade may help, but it's hardly required by the game.

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