3 ms·

I have a 10 year old i5 and it struggles with my 10,000 SPM mega base. So I don’t think a switch is a device for building mega bases (Factorio points this out t

I have a 10 year old i5 and it struggles with my 10,000 SPM mega base. So I don’t think a switch is a device for building mega bases (Factorio points this out themselves).

fredley 4y ago
Perhaps there's a higher percentage among the HN readership, but the number of people who make it to 'just' a 1kSPM base is very small indeed as a fraction of the playerbase. Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats!
- louwrentius 4y ago
  It's a serious amount of both learning and building so I can imagine that a stat like that is true.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  > Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats! One caveat is that Steam achievements are only granted to players who don't have any mods enabled. There's probably a nontrivial number of players who have only completed the game with mods.
Comevius 4y ago
It's probably memory throughput and latency more than single core performance in your case. Factorio is primarily limited by CPU cache misses. It ticks 50% faster on a Ryzen 7 5800X3D than on an 5800X because of the extra 64 MB L3. Needless to say the Switch won't fare well for mega bases with it's 2 MB L2.
- louwrentius 4y ago
  Wow, that's interesting[0] as I'm planning to replace the 10 year old i5 with something new to run my mega bases at 60 UPS. [0]: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29051060343c517816ee0f8655a52e1351fbc449da8e9ff0ea https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29...
  - Comevius 4y ago
    There will be at least one Zen 4 CPU with 3D cache coming this year, with DDR5-6000 it will be the belle of the Factorio ball.
- xani_ 4y ago
  NGL, performance in Factorio and Dwarf Fortress will probably be criteria for when I will be upgrading my rig.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Melatonic 4y ago
  I wonder if I should upgrade my old ass intel 5820k (looks like it has 15mb "smart cache") to the basically just as old 6950x with a whopping 25mb
  - louwrentius 4y ago
    My i5 4670K does like 107 on 6MB of cache. Whereas a modern CPU does double that. https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504&vl=1.1.69&vh=1.1.69 https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...
clowen 4y ago
You'd be surprised how much efficiency an engineering team can squeeze out of their games with time and motivation. A lot of bloat happens just to get the game out the door and is then good enough. While I didn't work on the port itself, the effort that went into the Doom Eternal switch port paid off pretty well. https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-doom-eternal-switch-the-most-ambitious-port-yet https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-doom-eternal-s... I'm hopeful that working with Nintendo would provide the time, money, and expertise needed to put the effort into making this a solid port.

I have a 10 year old i5 and it struggles with my 10,000 SPM mega base. So I don’t think a switch is a device for building mega bases (Factorio points this out themselves).

fredley 4y ago

Perhaps there's a higher percentage among the HN readership, but the number of people who make it to 'just' a 1kSPM base is very small indeed as a fraction of the playerbase. Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats!

louwrentius 4y ago
It's a serious amount of both learning and building so I can imagine that a stat like that is true.
duskwuff 4y ago
> Only 18% get as far as launching the rocket according to Steam stats! One caveat is that Steam achievements are only granted to players who don't have any mods enabled. There's probably a nontrivial number of players who have only completed the game with mods.

Comevius 4y ago

It's probably memory throughput and latency more than single core performance in your case. Factorio is primarily limited by CPU cache misses. It ticks 50% faster on a Ryzen 7 5800X3D than on an 5800X because of the extra 64 MB L3. Needless to say the Switch won't fare well for mega bases with it's 2 MB L2.

louwrentius 4y ago
Wow, that's interesting[0] as I'm planning to replace the 10 year old i5 with something new to run my mega bases at 60 UPS. [0]: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29051060343c517816ee0f8655a52e1351fbc449da8e9ff0ea https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=d3c52cb60a225a29...
- Comevius 4y ago
  There will be at least one Zen 4 CPU with 3D cache coming this year, with DDR5-6000 it will be the belle of the Factorio ball.
xani_ 4y ago
NGL, performance in Factorio and Dwarf Fortress will probably be criteria for when I will be upgrading my rig.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Melatonic 4y ago
I wonder if I should upgrade my old ass intel 5820k (looks like it has 15mb "smart cache") to the basically just as old 6950x with a whopping 25mb
- louwrentius 4y ago
  My i5 4670K does like 107 on 6MB of cache. Whereas a modern CPU does double that. https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504&vl=1.1.69&vh=1.1.69 https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...

clowen 4y ago

You'd be surprised how much efficiency an engineering team can squeeze out of their games with time and motivation. A lot of bloat happens just to get the game out the door and is then good enough. While I didn't work on the port itself, the effort that went into the Doom Eternal switch port paid off pretty well. https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-doom-eternal-switch-the-most-ambitious-port-yet https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2021-doom-eternal-s... I'm hopeful that working with Nintendo would provide the time, money, and expertise needed to put the effort into making this a solid port.