Anno 1404 - CPU load

Anno 1404 - CPU load

After releasing this article I got a couple of question from users asking about the difference in-between AMD and Intel processors with this game.

Now the game does require a decent processor, mid range would be fine though. And what we love about Anno 1404, it's very multi-threading aware and capable. But to proof that the CPU is by far not as important as some of you guys think, let me show you something. We'll take two PCs .. one uber extreme high end, the other affordable. Both systems run the same software and updates.

This is the 2000+ USD setup, our primary Intel test rig :

• Core i7 965 overclocked to 3.75 GHz -- 1099 USD
• Asus Rampage II extreme X58 motherboard - 399 USD
• 6 GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator memory @ 1500 MHz -- 249 USD
• Radeon HD 4890 -- $199.99

Now our second setup, 600 USD AMD Phenom II PC:

• Phenom II X4 955 BE (clock regular at 3.2 GHz) -- 235 USD
• Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P motherboard -- 80 USD
• 4 GB (2x2GB) DDR3 @ 1066 MHz -- 59 USD
• Radeon HD 4890 -- $199.99 USD

So the AMD platform is roughly 3x cheaper than the latest high-end rig. We opted the Radeon HD 4890 as it's a really fair high-end graphics card. Mind you that with multi-GPU setups, Core i7 of course without doubt is the better platform and would yield better results. But that's like 1 maybe 2% of you guys.

From a more mainstream enthusiast kind of view you tell me .. what makes the most sense ? Have a look at the charts:

So as you can see, there was literally hardly a performance difference in-between the expensive Core i7 and AMD Phenom II X4 platform. On average the difference was 1 maybe 2 frames per second at best.

Now the reason why the beefy processor setup doesn't matter that much is that the game is multi-threading really well (spreading out CPU load over multiple cores). And while the CPU load on the AMD processor is higher than Core i7, it's still by far plenty enough for a game like this. Let's have a look at that CPU load shall we?

 Note - where you see 'CPU-gebruik (CPU load) at say 1% - the screenshot is taken AFTER we exited the game. And 27% and 1% thus is the Windows 2D desktop. please ignore that and just focus on the graphs.

To your left the Phenom II X4 955BE processor, which we kept at default clocks. To the right the Core i7  965. It's clear that the Core i7 processor shows a much more calmed down CPU utilization. However the Phenom II shows that it has more than enough power and performance available. And that one was not even overclocked a single MHz.

BTW -- it's good to see games really make use of multiple CPU cores. But let's startup the benchmark session and look at VGA performance.