Launching the #CPUOverload Project: Testing Every x86 Desktop Processor since 2010
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 20, 2020 1:30 PM ESTGaming Tests: Civilization 6
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer underflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but I have played every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, and it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
For this benchmark, we are using the following settings:
- 480p Low
- 1440p Low
- 4K Low
- 1080p Max
For automation, Firaxis supports the in-game automated benchmark from the command line, and output a results file with frame times. We call the game, wait until the file is created, pull it out and regex the relevant data. For the in-game settings, because Civ 6 seems to require the hardware from the last run to be the same as the current run else it defaults to base settings, we delete the settings file, run the benchmark once, and then use regex on the generated settings files to call the relevant resolutions and quality settings. We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages and percentiles.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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DiHydro - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
This is epic. Thank you for doing this.DiHydro - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
To add a note: I think the ~$300 CPU year-over-year performance would be an interesting metric to see. That price point seems to be pretty popular for enthusiasts, and seeing back 5-6 years how that performance has increased per dollar would be neat.bldr - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Agree!close - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
It will be especially interesting to see those CPUs (the popular mainstream ones) tested now and compared to the numbers they got originally to see how much they lost with all the recent mitigations.close - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
Oh, because I forgot previously, congratulations and good luck with the endeavor! I got exhausted only by reading about the work you're going to have to doFozzie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Except keep in mind that adjusted for inflation $200 in the year 2000 is worth over $300 now.You'd either be making a chart of the increased value over time just due to inflation or in fact the every increasing value at the $300 price point due to the reduced value of the Dollar on top of whatever performance gains occurred.
biosstar - Friday, July 24, 2020 - link
You could also use the value of a dollar in a certain year (let's say 2020) and compare the processors in the inflation adjusted equal categories.PeterCollier - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
What's the point of this Geekbench/Userbenchmark knockoff? I've never used AT's Bench tool. Especially not for smartphones, since the Bench tool is about 5 years out of date.BushLin - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
A controlled environment across all tests is reason enough. Even if I don't agree with AT policy on what speed they allow RAM to operate, it is a fair comparison.Byte - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
RAM is a really important topic. I think at this point in time, we can reasonable put almost maxed out ram for every platform. Like DDR3 can run at 2133, DDR4 we can run it at 3200 as prices are so close.It is like rating sports cars but all have Goodride tires on them.
A dodge viper was a widowmaker when it came out. Today with a good set of summers like PS4S or PZero, you will have a hard time slipping even if you tried.