I'm going to update my PC soon and I would like the time in the paradox games to go faster
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Get good single core performant CPU
Rest can be whatever if PDX games is what you care about
Rest can be whatever if PDX games is what you care about
- 1
For AMD CPUs, processors with 3D cache (5800X3D, 7800X3D etc) perform really well in PDX games (and other simulation-heavy games for that matter). I don't know how the strongest Intel CPUs compare to that. GPU probably doesn't matter as much but something decent is probably still required, especially for newer games like Victoria 3.
example:
- 4
The best pc build is to build a generally good pc build and hope Paradox develops their engine to use more then a single core like its still 2005.
- 8
If money is not the issue, buy 7950X3D. I think it's the strongest CPU from this series and likely fastest gaming CPU on the market. These are especially great for PDX games mostly due to that 3D cache.
Pair it with fast DDR5 RAM and SSD.
GPU is not that important, something like RTX 4060 would be more than enough (for PDX games, not for all AAA titles since most games are more GPU bound, PDX games are exception) for 1080p, unless you play at 4k or 8k then buy something stronger.
More budget friendly solutions include 7800X3D or even DDR4 5800X3D.
Pair it with fast DDR5 RAM and SSD.
GPU is not that important, something like RTX 4060 would be more than enough (for PDX games, not for all AAA titles since most games are more GPU bound, PDX games are exception) for 1080p, unless you play at 4k or 8k then buy something stronger.
More budget friendly solutions include 7800X3D or even DDR4 5800X3D.
That's a myth. PDX devs confirmed that all modern PDX games are multi core. Search the forum, I think they said that in Hoi4 forum, but I'm not sure it was a while ago. Their last 1 core bound game was Hoi2 which used old Europa Engine from EU1. Even EU3 (first Clausewitz Engine game had limited multicore (2 I think) support.
- 6
Maybe
Lots of background apps may use additional cores effectively.
Additionally, I suggest an excellent hard drive setup. Preferably two efficient drive-types.
As the link above shows, 7800X3D is actually better due to issues with how the game schedules between the CPU cores on the 7950X3D. This is due to how the 7950X3D has one set of cores with extra cache and another slightly faster but with less cache, and this causes problems unless you manually screw around to disable half your cores while running EU4.
Generally speaking though unless you want the best of the best (7800X3D) then any of the current gen Intel or AMD processors is going to be roughly comparable in single core performance and EU4 won't significantly benefit from the increased cores of higher tier CPUs.
Its a complex issue to explain. The game uses more than 1 core, but single core performance is still almost always the bottleneck for the game. It's not "multicore enough" to where throwing more than 4 cores at the game has any measurable performance benefit comparable to even a slight increase in single core speed.
No reasonable amount of background programs is going to come close to measurably affecting performance even on the 4 core systems, let alone modern 6 cores and above.
- 5
AMD X3D CPUs are amazing for all number crunching games like the PDX grand strategy's, Transport Fever 2 or X4 Foundations.
Even if you are on budget and cannot get a 7800X3D get a 5800X3D. Is older gen but still cannot be beaten in these games by anything else other than it's younger brothers (7800X3D, 7950X3D, 7900X3D).
Though these days the difference between the two are around $20-$30 so better get the newer one with 6000/6400Mhz DDR5.
How does AMD and Intel compare to apple silicon?
Heard good things about it
Heard good things about it
- 1
They are, but the balance of work between cores leaves something to be desired.
- 1
I can tell you that the new M3 pro cpu can get 2 second month ticks in the vanilla game which is comparable to 5800x3d. So the apple silicon does run the game pretty well. Biggest issue is graphics still not as good or responsive as say a 780m, but it still looks great at full resolution and 2x scaling on the 14. Even better on the 16. If you’re going windows I’d suggest the 3d cache processors.
- 2
A great way to categorize items, especially when there's no manufacturer attribute. Here's a set of labels inspired by the idea of categorizing levels in a game like Suika based on difficulty.
I've found this thread and all the information it contains very helpful. I'm currently shopping for a new PC setup, anything more than the X3D CPU you guys think about that could give me a bump while playing Eu4 / pdx games ? (since they all rely on the same kind of stuff apparently)
I've never really checked if EU4 was using a lot of RAM, should I just get a lot of it and the fastest one ? Could I get a notable increase in performance by buying some top of the line SSD ? Any more advice would be appreciated.
I've never really checked if EU4 was using a lot of RAM, should I just get a lot of it and the fastest one ? Could I get a notable increase in performance by buying some top of the line SSD ? Any more advice would be appreciated.
For an AMD system get a DDR5 6000 set of ram. Anything more and you probably won't be able to use it at the full speed because faster isn't supported well. It's probably a very minimal difference either way though. You can specifically go for a ram kit with low timings but we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for marginal speed improvements at this point. More ram than you need doesn't help at all, I'd just stick with 32GB unless you know you'll need more for something.
A fast SSD can very marginally speed up save/load times, but otherwise won't do anything. Don't waste your money on a "top of the line" PCIe 5.0 SSD or anything though, they are like 2x the price per TB of PCIe 4.0 for next to no benefit.
A fast SSD can very marginally speed up save/load times, but otherwise won't do anything. Don't waste your money on a "top of the line" PCIe 5.0 SSD or anything though, they are like 2x the price per TB of PCIe 4.0 for next to no benefit.
Last edited:
- 1
Thank you for these helpful pointers. I'm sometimes amazed at the speed I see when watching EU4 streams, like Florryworry's. I think I read somewhere that speed 1/2/3/4 shouldn't vary too much based on your PC because they are fixed by the game, but speed 5 goes at like the maximum your PC can run, can anyone confirm this ?
Any other advice ?
Any other advice ?
Yes, speed 5 is as fast as your PC can go. I actually find it a bit too fast, I wish there was something like a speed 4.5 option. Speed 1 through 4 are limited to a specific speed, though if your PC can't maintain that speed then its just running as fast as it can.
- 2
I'm not going to touch the hardware part of the discussion. Others know it better than I do. I will say that switching from Windows to Linux kicked up the speed and graphics quality a lot for me. Find a Linux distro that has a good windowed interface like Linux Mint so you don't have to learn a bunch of command line stuff.
Linux is in my price range because it is free, as is all of the basic productivity software.
Linux is in my price range because it is free, as is all of the basic productivity software.
Yes. The wiki has a Game speed section which lists the speeds. Any more or less decent computer which is not too old can accomplish the 0.2 seconds per day for speed 4 if you are in the early game and if you don't count month ticks. But if you want to have the speed which you see in florryworry's streams, you need a very fast CPU. I think you can find information about his computer in his discord, but his setup is probably not very cost effective.
Having 4 GB free RAM is probably enough for eu4 and 8 GB free RAM are definitely enough unless you use some extreme resource intensive mods(maybe M&T or voltaires nightmare). How much total RAM you need depends on what else you are running. My laptop with 16 GB of RAM struggles, because I run so many RAM hungry applications alongside eu4.
It won't have an impact on the speed when running eu4, as long as you have enough RAM so that your system doesn't start to swap. But a faster SSD will result in faster startup times. There are very big differences between some cheap SSDs and very fast SSDs, but you should be able to get decent performance without paying a lot. I would recommend that you check some tests before buying.
Eu4 usually starts much faster on Linux than on windows. I think that's because directx9 loads some assets in sequence while they are loaded in parallel on Linux. But better graphics quality is not something which I have heard about Linux. There are quite a few minor graphical bugs on Linux which the developers don't bother to fix. Maybe you prefer the looks of one of the bugs over the intended graphics(e.g. multisampling levels over 0 usually look more blurry on Linux), or you used different settings on Linux than on Windows.
- 1