Low FPS

I didnt comment on that.

But BeamNG runs each vehicle in its own thread. 1 thread can only be processed by 1 core, on 8 cores, that leads to a maximum of 12.5% load caused by a single vehicle within BeamNG. Throw other processes in the background plus the BeamNG renderer/UI systems. 20% is very very normal for 1 vehicle in BeamNG.


Although. Pause physics, does FPS increase or not?

 

Also, an FX8320 at 4Ghz gets a slightly different performance depending on if the GPU is a GT710 or GTX980Ti. Just saying.

 

The physics engine is as optimised for AMD as it is for Intel, it doesn't care what CPU you have. AMD CPUs just suck at single threaded performance.
Still, sounds like you have a GPU bottleneck. Full specs?

 

Yes

No sir, my GPU is at 16%.
Sapphire R9 280 @ 500Mhz (3GB),
16GB RAM,
Win 10 x64.

Testet it on my brother's PC (also AMD, FX 8320E). Same poor performance.
Well, I guess I have to play with 2 times slower than reallife now.

Edit:
http://i.imgur.com/Jj1EAXA.png

Everything works fine if I slow the speed down a bit.


Well, it's okay I guess. I think I have no other choice than that. Thanks everyone.

 

Yeah, your GPU is fine. I didn't expect 'some vehicles' to be the T75.

Don't expect to run a T75/65 on an AMD CPU. Not the engine's problem though, any other CPU intensive game will also run like shit on AMD because of poor single threaded performance.

 

AMD cpus = not too great per-core performance (IPC).
AMD FX cpus (all of them) = FAIL at math
BeamNG.Drive = All math computations with each vehicle residing in it's own 'core' on the processor.
BeamNG.Drive reliance on graphics boards = This is dependent entirely on what level you're running. Normal levels don't require more than the game states it needs at bare minimums... huge 10mile x 10 mile maps with super-reflective water and looooots of trees will bring anything less than a Radeon 7850 2gb OC'ed gaming card below 20-30fps. Canyon of Speed will even bring THAT gfx card to it's knees @ 12-18fps... (very demanding user-map).
BeamNG.Drive on an Intel CPU (anything sandy-bridge/westmere or newer)? It runs fluid and smooth, because intel cpu has great per-core performance + great math co-processor abilities. They've put a lot of work into the HASWELL revision and newer cpu's math coprocessor, so even sandy-bridge users will notice a good jump unless they're already running at over 4.6-4.8ghz as many have done.

So yeah, friends don't let friends buy BeamNG.Drive to run it on an FX processor. You can buy the game, but you're not going to be able to get 30+ fps, on any car, and you won't be driving the truck. It doesn't matter how good of a graphics card you have, the game's main process is math intensive & AMD chips absolutely positively stink @ this. Per-core performance and math (Whetstone benchmark, FPU-intensive) are two things both Beam NEEDS and AMD cpu's absolutely are rubbish at doing. That's why my AMD FX 6300-based PC sits in the corner ashamed it's collecting dust and I'm using an I7 and making maps for Beam.

You don't need an i7 unless you want to run like 4+ cars. i7 vs i5 only means a better binned chip + hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is only useful to those who are going to use ALL the cores - that's when it works great. It keeps your music player running smooth with a quad-core game running using 100% the cpu. It keeps windows processes (random stuff) from making the game hitch up everytime something else happens. Not essential, but a luxury to those with an extra 100$. Hyper-threading helps minimum FPS by removing some hitches that happen in normal every day computing when an instruction is called but not ready - because it keeps the CPU fed better hence it's busy more efficiently and able to do a little more in the same amount of time. If you don't multitask and don't run a demanding music player ALL THE TIME and don't leave your web browser open ALL THE TIME you won't see much benefit of it.

That said, a 200$ 4690k i5 will run BEAM absolutely beautiful. Skylake isn't a necessity, and for those with more money than sense, or just want the best, go X99. I wasn't about to pony up 1000$ for a cpu, so I went with a Z97 and a 4790k, and loaded up with 16gb of really fast ram, and have little regret.
Performance is 200% what the amd FX-6300 was, the FX was 4.2ghz and this benched @ the 4.4ghz turbo mode.
Do NOT feel obligated to get the K processor unless you're going to get super-spiffy cooling and know what you're doing - they run stupidly hot when at turbo speed or higher, like enough that your system will go into throttling if you have anything less than the best air cooling or decent water cooling.
A non-K intel quad core processor with an H-series chipset will net you most all of the speed and the features that are most important to you for this game to run smoothly. Even a recent i3 will do well on this game, it just won't do well on more than 2 cars at once.

All in all, any recent intel processor will do, the higher the ghz, the more FPS you'll get. The more cores, the more cars you can have at the same time. As soon as you have more CARS than CORES on the cpu, FPS gets cut in half, but with the more recent intel processors, you can have 2 cars per core on an i7 without seriously turning it into a slide-show. I can run up to about 8 cars, beyond that it slows down noticeably.

Best cpu for beam, hands down, is the highest clocked i5's and i7's. A 5960x is great, but not needed unless you want LOTS of cars. If you only run a few cars, a fast quad-core will do. If your going to go the X99 route and buy a 1000$ cpu for it, seriously consider a dual socket (dual processor) XEON system in the SSI-CEB form factor... this will give you the possibility of LOTS of cores and LOTS of cars... in other words, you can load up as many cars as you have physical cores for, and the fps will stay the same.

I hope this book I just typed up is useful to someone.
If you've got a thuban or deneb Phenom II cpu, don't bother buying an FX cpu for Beamng.drive, it WONT HELP. Wait for ZEN if you are one of the people that hate intel that much. I'm not the biggest fan of Intel but that AMD FX chip reminded me too much of my 486...

If you remember one thing, just remember, get an Intel system, the higher the ghz, the higher the fps... the more cores, the more cars @ once. Most MODEST gaming cars will run this game just fine - you don't need anything fancy, just try and get a card with GDDR5 memory or better as most of those are good enough. Skip the cheaper DDR3 options if you can afford to.

 

I think @BlueScreen should consider entering at least parts of this into his Computer Building Guide as well, at least if there are things that fit or are still missing or could be better.

 

Hahaha computer novel, nice. Yeah that was a lot, but it's pertinent, and should be above all valuable to those who aren't completely computer-hardware literate to atleast pick a PC or parts off the shelf and have a general idea, will this run Beam or will it just... walk... slowly. I do honestly feel pity on the AMD users though, as folks who have never used a recent i5/i7 just don't know what they're missing until they've built a new system. The direction recent pc games are taking with AI and physics is really showing the AMD cpu's architecture age quite vividly.

 

Yeah, you're right. I keep wondering though: What kind of CPU could somebody get for the money they spend on an FX8320?
*Looks it up for himself, that's what I call not wasting anyones time* An i3 6300/4350/4360. I wonder which would be more practical. The i3 definitely has a way, way better single core performance, but the FX can run twice as many vehicles at least. I'll check it up on a benchmark page.
EDIT: Look! That's what an i3-6300 behaves like compared to the FX-8320 and FX-8370 (An FX should sometimes be overclocked. I don't think you can overclock a non-K i3 though.

 

A new i3 6xxx series on Skylake will outperform an FX-63xx series cpu. That's how far they've come. Seriously.
i7 4790k @ 4.4ghz = 2x FX 6300 @ 4.2ghz ... seriously.
It's absolutely amazing how much has gone into processor efficiency and single-core performance since the days of Core 2 and FX/Phenom II.

 

I know. See above, my edit. Note that these CPUs all cost almost exactly the same.

 

If you want Beam to run nice, get an intel. The intel is considerably better per-core, like almost double that of the AMD. The AMD folks will try and say 'oh you won't notice a difference' ... you will if you've ever used a newer chip. I upgraded my athlon II rig with an FX chip and was like WHAT, THATS IT... seriously, going from an AMD Athlon II 2.8ghz to a lightly-OC'ed 4.2ghz FX 6300, got me about a 30-40% increase in ability to run my games... I was so steamed. Still slow, still terrible performance on my SSD's. It's not just the CPU issues, it's the chipset features you get on any decent intel chipset motherboard. Intel NIC = Awesome, Intel southbridge (HDD/SSD controller) = awesome... you get my point. A higher-end board will even garner you m.2 support which is a new SSD standard.
The i3 will run the game close to 50-60fps all the time, whereas the amd is going to be half that, all the time. Atleast with the intel, you'll be able to control if you want it smooth (less cars) or not (MOAR CARS!). There are times when you may want less or more cars/less or more fps... leave that control in your hands. You can always buy into a bigger cpu later and sell your old cpu. With the AMD, you're stuck. Buy the i3 or a non-k i5 if you're strapped. There usually aren't k-models in the i3 line, that i know of. Get an H-series motherboard, and 16gb of ram if you can afford, though 8gb is 'enough' if that's all the budget allows. More and more things require atleast 8gb of ram in the system, just fyi.
That said, 8gb & an i3 will take you far. Get the fastest ghz chip you can afford. It will run beam much better than any AMD could hope for.
Those FX chips only have a math co-processor for every other core. When all cores use the math stuff, it splits the math units down, so you have the half-speed per-core performance AND now half-speed math units and what that means is FPS falls drasticly to 1/2 to 1/4th of what it could be if it was any decent quad-core intel chip. The i3 will run 2-4 cars playably. Whether it runs only two or four cars is dependant on the ghz speed of the chip and what cars you're running, though those newest i3 6xxx series can do quite a bit.

Remember, with the intel option, you can always drop a nice quad core on it later-on down the road. AM3+/FX socket is a DEAD-END socket. You're not going to see too much better on the FM-sockets either. AMD won't have anything significantly better until ZEN/Zeppelin drops in late 2016 and that will be AM4 socket.

This is the page you want, THREAD PERFORMANCE, how fast a cpu can do an operation, any operation.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

I know all that. I think it's a bit miserable to hear that they have improved so unbelievably little since the Phenom II X4 965. An okay CPU, but well... It's a bit less than an FX in single thread and has half as many cores.
i5's are great. Running smooth and fast. They also use less than 100W and don't require a lot of cooling unless you overclock. The downside still is that they are quite expensive though. I really tended towards an FX first because of that.

Not glad to hear that you've learned it the hard way though. I really hope for AMD that they'll ever produce something really powerful again. Otherwise... Well, one single CPU manufacturer on the entire market would be quite dumb.

 

Well, I already had an AM3+ motherboard I got for 60-70$ new, OEM overstock Asus M5A97 (non-LE) rev 1.x
Not a lot of super-dandy features, but everything you needed, including heatsinks on the VRM portion of the motherboard (which I consider essential in a gaming PC especially so if you do NOT use an OEM cooler as they won't get as much air circulation). I wouldn't consider upgrading from an am2-based ATHLON II x2, x3, or x4 cpu to an FX a waste of money - but from a Phenom II x4 or x6 cpu, it's not going to gain you much. It may actually be even *slower* in some tasks. In WHETSTONE, an FX-6xxx series cpu is *HALF* the speed of a Thuban-based Phenom II x6 processor. Whetstone is the daddy of math-benchmarking - and how many times I've put Beam & Math processing in the same line. You get the point. AMD took a gamble here and they lost the bet when it comes to physics processing. Piledriver was an improvement over the initial Bulldozer cores, but not by leaps and bounds. Bulldozer (the first FX series chips) was a disappointment when it did come out, for AMD fans.

We need AMD back in the game as computer gurus and consumers together, because we need the CPU wars back. When Intel rules the roost without competition, technology advancement stalls out and the prices go through the roof. Whether intel is putting out cream of the crop or just cream of the crap, they can charge an arm and a leg and then some if you need what they have. They have almost a monopoly on the market now, but we'll see this change in the coming year if Zen is any worth it's weight. It should be good, it'll help them catch up, but unless they're really certain on the up-to-32-cores-per-cpu promise, it's not going to be any better than just the initial 40% IPC gains (per-core speed). Still, 40% is a pretty good gain.

I tried to keep my AMD system, but in the end, it was a loosing battle on what I use my computer for. I regularly even max out this processor I have now, but hey, might as well get my monies worth right? If your stuck on an AMD and have no means to get a better mobo/cpu at the moment, consider just putting up with the slowness for now, until a later date when they possibly work on distributed vehicle physics calculations that will split the load across more cores on the AMD chips. I have brought the performance issue reasons to light with some of the devs on the steam forums, so it is on the table as an issue at the very least.
Time will tell. For now let us just keep our fingers crossed and hope ZEN pulls off what we need for the cpu-market.

 

I think the biggest advantage of Zen as a new, way more powerful hardware architecture wouldn't be that AMD would finally catch up a little by itself, but that Intel finally gets a little concurrence up on the podest of high-end.

 

@bob.blunderton Haven't read all of your posts, but tl;dr AMD single thread performance sucks.

And btw, an HD 7850 is a low end card by today's standards, and Torque3D is poorly optimised, it won't run BeamNG very well. I used to have an R9 270 (basically a rebranded 7870) and it wouldn't do 60fps on mid-high settings. This was before dynamic reflections and DX11 too.

Hell, a GTX 970 struggles to keep a steady 60fps on high settings, and it's about twice as powerful as a 7850.

 

I'm really impressed by what a ton of money you have to throw at this game...
It definitely needs at least the same GPU performance as the most recent 3D-titles. And a good bit more on the CPU.

 

Yup my card is gettin' "mad old" and it "sucks by today's standards" BUT it's still tickin' away and still under warranty - so this old dog refuses replace what works and isn't broke. When it blows up, or the summer gets here, I'll be replacing it with a R9 390x, GTX 980, or better. Not sure, we'll see what the summer brings. The 980 Ti is a beauty but I am absolutely, positively not paying more than 300$ for a card (US prices). It's not worth it to me, I got this 7850 2gb 1ghz core Asus card (non-reference) for like 140$ on sale with 3 free games 2.5 years ago. It's quiet as a mouse, doesn't coil whine and runs what I need it to - with few caveats. Gfx performance on medium to high (either) is beautiful and fluid an I often see 45-60fps range. It is overclocked quite a bit, though. That is 1920x1080 resolution. It really only slows down when you rely on the shaders too much (shadows, water, the typical AMD card crutches). Do I want a new one? SURE! Do I need a new one? Nope, just cannot justify it. I need more MLC-Based SSD's and a steering wheel for this thing long before a new video board gets bought, as I've almost entirely filled my SSD Raid 0 Array.
Even with a MONSTER map size of what a rough estimate is like 14mi X 14mi (I though it was 10x10; it's bigger) map, with super-reflective water, it's not going really below 30fps and the water is gorgeous.

So yeah, unless you people want to be driving past buildings with 6kb 128x128 pixel DOOM GRAPHICS on them, in your new maps (I'm still making maps), SSD's come 1st.
"Hey look Bro, It's the STARTAN3 Apartment block!" I will totally prob stick a building in there with doom graphics @ some point somewhere outta-the-way (I have ones I've modified a bit so they're "free").

For those that're too young or haven't been doing this since the early-mid 90s here's what I'm mentioning http://doomwiki.org/wiki/File:STARTAN3.png heh heh...

So yeah, I think my BS convo is entirely de-railing this thread, but while the OC'ed 7850 2gb is enough for Beam to run nicely, it's admittedly not the perfect card - but the price is right and until it explodes in my face, launches itself outta the PC cabinet across the room, or otherwise goes to the great PC case in the sky, it's what I got I'm retired on a fixed income (about what a working man's salary is) so, it's one PC part a month basically, or two when it comes to cheap things like SSD's.

That said - you people are pretty chill, so, if I can help on here, I will. Oh, and I did get my NEVADA INTERSTATE map fixed, that fix will be going LIVE tomorrow night/monday mid-day depending on how plastered I end up sunday night or if I don't drink @ all. That 1st launch was the Windows Vista of map disasters, or Windows Me, depending on how old you are.
Got a map of Route 40 in Tennessee comin up in several weeks to a month. Real terrain!

 

Just bought BeamNG yesterday and am not getting very good FPS with it. My CPU is a AMD FX-8320 @ 3.5GHz and from what I've been reading here, it's the CPU which can't quite handle the processing or? Running the game runs the utilization in the Task Manager up past 50% and I can run resource heavy stuff like GTAV and rFactor 2 without a problem.

 

I think the game isnt well optimized for AMD Processors from what I heard