A few things I have noticed about modded mc from a hardware standpoint

[Wagon153]

Garbage collection by default in Java 8 appears to be multithreaded. I know by watching my CPU core usage while playing an average game. All my cores were each getting at least 50% usage. In addition, when I disabled two of my cores in my BIOS and started a game, I noticed rather alarming FPS drops whenever garbage collection hit. Secondly, the loading of MC itself is surprisingly multithreaded. During the loading of all the mods by Forge, I saw all 4 cores pegged at 100%, and I noticed an increase in loading time when I disabled 2 of my cores. And those optimization arguments in the FTB Launcher? Those do not increase FPS. They appear to optimize the garbage collector even more for multi thread CPUs. With it on, I noticed lower average FPS, however my FPS stayed much more stable, especially during garbage collection.

Also, you CAN be GPU bottlenecked in minecraft. Just for kicks, I swapped out the r9 270 in my secondary build with an HD 5450(for reference, is about on level with sandy bridge/ivy bridge intel integrated graphics.)
My FPS dropped by a decent bit(20-30), and I noticed my GPU usage was pegged at 100%. So anyone with a low end laptop/desktop may not just be CPU bottlenecked, but GPU bottlenecked as well! Some(or all) of this data may seem obvious to some of you guys, but I just thought I'd post my findings.

P.S. These tests were done with my secondary rig, being an athlon x4 860k with an r9 270. My primary rig is currently out of commission.

P.S.S. And if anybody is wondering about that beginners guide to optimizing modded mc and getting started in general, I'm working on it! It's sitting on my secondary media drive as a text document.

AMD users with 3 or more cores, Optifine multicore rendering can do wonders for your FPS(We're talking up by 100-200 frames). This is only in the ultra version.

 

[splashblue]

P.S.S. And if anybody is wondering about that beginners guide to optimizing modded mc and getting started in general, I'm working on it! It's sitting on my secondary media drive as a text document.

Yes please!

Well, of course there can be a bottleneck in the gpu as well, we're talking about realtime graphics rendering in every game.
However, (modded) Minecraft seems to be the most CPU-intensive game I've encountered so far.
It is the only game that has better fps on my laptop (pretty new core i7, but laptop-typical graphics) than on my tower (AMD Quadcore, Geforce GTX 780).
That's probably why in most cases it's the CPU or RAM that's too weak.

 

[Wagon153]

Yes please!

Well, of course there can be a bottleneck in the gpu as well, we're talking about realtime graphics rendering in every game.
However, (modded) Minecraft seems to be the most CPU-intensive game I've encountered so far.
It is the only game that has better fps on my laptop (pretty new core i7, but laptop-typical graphics) than on my tower (AMD Quadcore, Geforce GTX 780).
That's probably why in most cases it's the CPU or RAM that's too weak.

I just found it interesting that mc could be bottlenecked by GPU. But the 5450 is pretty weak(It lags during an iTunes visual ffs). What I would love is to get my hands on a FX-8320 or 8350 and see how well mc runs on it compared to the athlon 860k(which actually has better IPC then the FX chips). I'm most interested in how load times would be affected by the addition of 4 more cores.

 

[Middleclaw]

It takes me about just over a minute to load FTB Infinity 1.5.1 with my FX-8320 (3.5GHz) using a full Soartex modded resource pack. as for runing infinity the CPU seems to handle it with ease barely going above 20% CPU usage.

Current spects if it helps,
AMD FX-8 8320 8 core @ 3.5GHZ (running at 3.7Ghz)
512 GB Sandisk SSD (main OS)
256 GB Sandisk SSD (my minecraft installtion is on this disk)
GTX 970 Ti SC @ 8ghz 4GB DDR5
16GB Novatech DDR3
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

 

[ChemE]

As another data point it takes me 1m36s to load the same pack Middleclaw is loading and I'm using a dual core Haswell running at 3.0GHz (Intel G3220). Haswells have the highest ipc of any core out there but he loads markedly faster and I'm sure not just because of the clock speed since my chip does more ipc. I can easily believe that loading mods is multithreaded given the numbers.

EDIT: Later this month I plan on switching out my G3320 for a G3258 which can do 4.0GHz on the stock cooler. When I do I'll clock it up to 3.7GHz to match middleclaw's clock speed and do another load test. That will eliminate one more variable leaving just ipc (microarchitecture) and number of cores.

 

[Wagon153]

It takes me about just over a minute to load FTB Infinity 1.5.1 with my FX-8320 (3.5GHz) using a full Soartex modded resource pack. as for runing infinity the CPU seems to handle it with ease barely going above 20% CPU usage.

Current spects if it helps,
AMD FX-8 8320 8 core @ 3.5GHZ (running at 3.7Ghz)
512 GB Sandisk SSD (main OS)
256 GB Sandisk SSD (my minecraft installtion is on this disk)
GTX 970 Ti SC @ 8ghz 4GB DDR5
16GB Novatech DDR3
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64

As another data point it takes me 1m36s to load the same pack Middleclaw is loading and I'm using a dual core Haswell running at 3.0GHz (Intel G3220). Haswells have the highest ipc of any core out there but he loads markedly faster and I'm sure not just because of the clock speed since my chip does more ipc. I can easily believe that loading mods is multithreaded given the numbers.

Very interesting. Would you two also post your average FPS? Using default textures, rendering distance of 6, fast graphics, Vsync off, no java arguments. Also, knowing how much your FPS drops during garbage collection would also be great! I'm always hearing how a pentium is better for something like modded minecraft then a FX/Athlon chip, but if recommending somebody a multi core AMD chip would result in more stable FPS, I'd be happy to do it.

 

[ChemE]

Very interesting. Would you two also post your average FPS? Using default textures, rendering distance of 6, fast graphics, Vsync off, no java arguments. Also, knowing how much your FPS drops during garbage collection would also be great! I'm always hearing how a pentium is better for something like modded minecraft then a FX/Athlon chip, but if recommending somebody a multi core AMD chip would result in more stable FPS, I'd be happy to do it.

His video card is beefier than mine but with the settings you asked for (clouds off, smooth lighting off, particles decreased) I'm pretty stable at 327-336 fps. I am using an MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti with 2GB of GDDR5. I'll try again in a bit when garbage collection starts happening; my allocated memory has been slowly creeping up. We are both using the same instance of MultiMC to load the server so aside from our hardware and OS everything else is identical.

 

[Middleclaw]

running the test with the settings required (6 render, fast graphics, default textures, no java arguments) also had clouds on and lighting at maximum. I'm hitting about 370 - 380 FPS on average. Noticed no fps drops so far on garbage collection apart the usual freezes when hitting the maximum allocated RAM.

Yes, we're both on the same server.

 

[Psychicash]

All I know is that with most things on low, I can run well enough to enjoy my 30 to 60 fps. There is the occational freeze that happens at the most inopportune time. I also have noticed that it takes a little over an episode of psych to load infinity or DW20 from open to load. I'm looking forward to my new computer... soon lol

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Interesting about the loading... I must say my quad-core home PC loads up Infinity a LOT faster than my dual-core server.

 

[Wagon153]

His video card is beefier than mine but with the settings you asked for (clouds off, smooth lighting off, particles decreased) I'm pretty stable at 327-336 fps. I am using an MSI GeForce GTX 750Ti with 2GB of GDDR5. I'll try again in a bit when garbage collection starts happening; my allocated memory has been slowly creeping up. We are both using the same instance of MultiMC to load the server so aside from our hardware and OS everything else is identical.

running the test with the settings required (6 render, fast graphics, default textures, no java arguments) also had clouds on and lighting at maximum. I'm hitting about 370 - 380 FPS on average. Noticed no fps drops so far on garbage collection apart the usual freezes when hitting the maximum allocated RAM.

View attachment 19992

Yes, we're both on the same server.

Thanks for the data guys! It's interesting there is very little FPS difference between an Intel Pentium and an AMD FX-8320. And I can't imagine a i5 being a lot better then the pentium(unless the clockspeed bump makes a large difference.)

 

[Wagon153]

Interesting about the loading... I must say my quad-core home PC loads up Infinity a LOT faster than my dual-core server.

Indeed. I've been wondering what speeds up mod loading time for a long time, since hard drive speed doesn't seem to have a big part in it. Now we know!

 

[ajwalters95]

Is there really that big of difference between the FX 8320 and FX 6350?

I run:
FX 6350 (Clocked to 3.9Ghz)
16 GB RAM
256 SSD
AMD R9 280x GPU

And I struggle for 40fps at times. That's on the Infinity btw

 

[Wagon153]

Is there really that big of difference between the FX 8320 and FX 6350?

I run:
FX 6350 (Clocked to 3.9Ghz)
16 GB RAM
256 SSD
AMD R9 280x GPU

And I struggle for 40fps at times. That's on the Infinity btw

No not really. However, those screenshots were with no machines or bases in the background/foreground. If you are struggling to reach 40 FPS, you need to do some lag busting in you base.

 

[ChemE]

Thanks for the data guys! It's interesting there is very little FPS difference between an Intel Pentium and an AMD FX-8320. And I can't imagine a i5 being a lot better then the pentium(unless the clockspeed bump makes a large difference.)

Interestingly I switched from the default MC resolution to 1280x720 to try to align our testing closer (that is what Middleclaw runs for streaming) and my fps jumped up to 414-380 fps. So there really might not be a difference between our two procs as far as fps goes. We can do other tests as the server matures and gets laggier.

 

[snaiperskaya]

I'd love to see what you guys do for optimization. I have a really high end computer and I don't think I ever break 200fps in modded MC even in a new world. By late game, I struggle to get 20-40fps in heavily developed areas. I've tried several different configurations of flags and the like, but still no luck (and yes, this is with fastcraft in 1.7. I've avoided optifine due to issues in the past and the general recommendation against it and COFH Tweaks refuses to load for me, even by itself)

My specs for reference:

i7-4930K (6-core @ 4.3GHz)
32Gb of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz
1Tb Samsung 840 Evo SSD
3x R9 290X (295X2 + 290X, though yes I know MC will never use more than 1 of those)

 

[Wagon153]

I'd love to see what you guys do for optimization. I have a really high end computer and I don't think I ever break 200fps in modded MC even in a new world. By late game, I struggle to get 20-40fps in heavily developed areas. I've tried several different configurations of flags and the like, but still no luck (and yes, this is with fastcraft in 1.7. I've avoided optifine due to issues in the past and the general recommendation against it and COFH Tweaks refuses to load for me, even by itself)

My specs for reference:

i7-4930K (6-core @ 4.3GHz)
32Gb of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz
1Tb Samsung 840 Evo SSD
3x R9 290X (295X2 + 290X, though yes I know MC will never use more than 1 of those)

Sounds like something is bogging your PC down.

 

[snaiperskaya]

Sounds like something is bogging your PC down.

I would be inclined to agree, but nothing out of the ordinary stands out and it's not something that's recently started with MC for me. GPU is barely used and CPU registers less than 1 core's worth in utilization in many cases. I know I'm missing something, but I have no clue where to even begin at this point. Everything else runs flawlessly most of the time, except MC.

 

[Wagon153]

I would be inclined to agree, but nothing out of the ordinary stands out and it's not something that's recently started with MC for me. GPU is barely used and CPU registers less than 1 core's worth in utilization in many cases. I know I'm missing something, but I have no clue where to even begin at this point. Everything else runs flawlessly most of the time, except MC.

What's your render distance set at? Does decreasing it help your FPS? Is this just one pack, or multiple packs?

 

[snaiperskaya]

What's your render distance set at? Does decreasing it help your FPS? Is this just one pack, or multiple packs?

Render distance typically at far, but dropping it doesn't typically have enough of a gain for it to be worth it for me. This has been a long-standing issue for me (even pre-1.7, though I can't say if it was to the same extent), but more recently I've seen it with both Infinity and TPPI2. I love playing modded packs and frequently muddle through, but late game gets hard to enjoy for me with the lag that starts creeping in.