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Is there any significant impact on video cards used for Command. My gut instinct is that Command is CPU-intensive and VGUs only play a minor role.

I have always played on laptops where I just told it to use the fastest GPU available. But I just got a Surface Book 2 with a detachable screen/tablet. Attached, it uses an nVidia 1050. Detached, it uses the Intel integrated GPU. So before I do any testing, I was wondering if anyone else had looked at it.

btw, I am interested in trying Command on the Intel GPU because battery life is 12-14 hours if I keep the nVidia quiet.

Just ran a couple tests...

I am not going to go into details because its all relative anyways. But ran Op Bass Drum for 24 hours at 5x time compression.

with nVidia 1050 - Actual time compression was 29.4 sec. of game time per 1 sec. of real time.

with the Intel integrated GPU - Actual time compression was 28.1 sec. of game time per 1 sec. of real time.

So the nVidia set up, with all other things being equal, ran about 5% faster than the Intel GPU. I also noted that the entire CPU/GPU package ran hotter with the Intel GPU. I suspect its because the Intel GPU is integrated into the CPU and puts more of a load on that chipset. Just a guess.

So, if you have a laptop with a discrete GPU and an integrated GPU, use the discrete GPU. Unless battery is an issue...Then the power draw on the integrated GPU is a better option.

I'm jealous... I really want one of those Surface Book 2s. Did you get the 15" (sounds like maybe not - the 15" has the 1060 GPU, IIRC)?

I was wondering about GPU performance as well. I doubt it does much for the actual imaging on-screen (which your 5% improvement seems to support), but I was wondering if CMANO was coded to take advantage of a GPU to do arithmetic functions?

It is great. I had a Surface Pro and a 15" Omen HP laptop. I am tired of carrying both through airport security. I used the Surface a ton for reading and taking notes. I used the laptop for heavy email, writing, and gaming. Wanted to find something that combined both without sacrificing gaming performance. The SB2 did it. In fact, the removable display is in many ways far superior than a Surface Pro. Its lighter, faster, has a solid battery, and has the built in docking station on the SB2 keyboard.

btw, its the 13". The 15" was just too unwieldy. And with my self-imposed budget, I was more concerned in the end about SSD size than the extra oomph of the 1060

At some point, I read in the forums that having Command installed on a solid state drive is more important than a having a "state of the art" video card. That makes sense given the minimally graphic display we are presented during a scenario and the behind the scenes math calculations that are required to make the combat come to life. But the wood1 brings up a great point since we will never know without controlled testing and exchanging thoughts regrading purchasing hardware.

Kevin

And what about RAM memory? The more the better?

ORIGINAL: Bert Blitzkrieg

And what about RAM memory? The more the better?

Neither RAM or GRAM (on display card) matters too much, usually the programs don’t runs in massive memory cache unless it’s a scenario with >1000 active units/assets.

If you do have ram size more than 24GB, then you can setup a RAMdisk partition at least 16GB to install and run CMANO in there, the time-lapse & autosave performance will be even better.

if you want speed in CMANO the priority is:

CPU
SSD
RAM
GPU

GPU frame improvement is marginal unless you are running some mobile chip. past a certain point more power in the graphics arena doesn't achieve anything as far as i can tell. command is not really a very demanding application graphics-wise- if you have a gaming GPU you are probably already past the point where upgrading would not do anything for you.

Even in large scenarios, I have never seen Commmand use a lot of RAM. I ran it on a 4Gb RAM Surface Pro for years with no issues and it never seeming to use all the RAM available. Of course it was slower than my laptop with 8Gb of RAM, but it had a much slower CPU.

Back when Command first came out, I tested it on my laptop with both a HD and and SSD. The SSD only seemed to make a difference on start up, scenario load, and accessing the database viewer. There might have also been an impact on menus as well. But if I left the game running on its own, the performance was almost equal between SSD and HD. Where the SSD and HD, and RAM for that matter, made a big difference was if I was doing anything else like email while Command was running.

I tried using a RAM disk on a work computer that had 24 Gb of RAM. It was just not worth the effort. It took a long time to load and I saw almost not performance change. I also had issues with pictures in the database. Again, wasn't worth the effort.

So my conclusion has not changed much over the years. Command is CPU-intensive and its performance is very much CPU-locked. You can nibble at the edges of performance with GPU, RAM, SSD, etc. But a low-end CPU will never perform as well as a high-end CPU. But you can get very playable performance with something as low-end as an i3. You just might not be able to play 3000-unit scenarios in a couple hours.

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GPU frame improvement is marginal unless you are running some mobile chip. past a certain point more power in the graphics arena doesn't achieve anything as far as i can tell. command is not really a very demanding application graphics-wise- if you have a gaming GPU you are probably already past the point where upgrading would not do anything for you.

Graphics-wise, no, CMANO is relatively simple. But what I was wondering is if CMANO would take advantage of a GPU to do the all the calculations that it churns through, using something like NVidia's CUDA framework:
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-faq

This would most likely ential a code change to recognize the GPU and utilize it.

All the guys that are mining crypto-currency are running single CPU boxes with multiple GPUs to crunch the numbers. I would think that if CMANO could take advantage of a GPU for the same, there'd be a significant performance improvement.

FWIW, I run it on a slightly older laptop w/ an quad-core i7, an SSD, 12GB RAM, and a 5xx series NVIDIA GPU and it seems to run just fine with most scenarios up to about 15-30sec time compression. After that it get a bit jerky, though the laptop itself doesn't seem to be struggling much. I'm not exactly unhappy w/ the performance, but it can always be better.

I think thewood1 nailed it. I've tried many configurations of CPUs, RAM, disk drives, etc. I have also found that the system's CPU is the most influential component in the mix.

CMANO is not particularly drive intensive so RAM drives will help the initial program and file loading but do not contribute much after that. Being in RAM does not improve performance of the simulation over SSDs or even HDDs.

One application I have found that does improve CMANO operation (at least for me) is Bitsum's "Process Lasso", site:https://bitsum.com/?inproduct. For me this has improved CMANO's speed by allowing a little more user control over CPU/system resource allocation. Bitsum has both a free and paid for version (No, I'm not a Bitsum employee and own no stock - only speaking as a user).

-Wayne Stiles

I have been using Process Lasso for about 5 years. It can help a little on a standard laptop. But have found that on my Surface and Surface Book 2 screwing around with processor and OS priorities can actually backfire and cause applications to run slower. You will have to do some benchmarking to really get at what helps.

I have found PL is super helpful in single core apps like Combat Mission. When apps start using multiple cores, like ARMA 3, it can sometimes hinder the actual app. Command seems to be somewhere in between.

Can't argue that. All my CMANO stuff is done on a home built desktop - never have tried it on a laptop/Surface system. No longer a "road warrior".

-Wayne

Does anyone know why there's a performance hit when you have, for example, a CAP mission selected with its red shaded patrol area? I always have to make a blank mission consisting of a single reference point to minimize so as to keep the game running smoothly. A hot key assignment for missions would be nice versus having to select a mission via the menu.

I'd suggest moving that question to Tech Support and not burying it in this thread where the devs might not see it. They have answered this question before I think so they should be able to get an more accurate answer.