Naz
Active member
First up some disclaimers and notes on the benchmarks.
1. These figures should be taken as ball park figures and not absolute values.
7DTD is a very difficult game to benchmark accurately. It's in alpha and sometimes does weird things. Also some things are difficult to account for such as the ai, they will behave differently and spawn differently every run, which leads to #2.
2. What's controlled for and what's not
I haven't controlled for driver versions & windows versions. My goal was just to get "close enough" results instead of 100% accurate as possible. That said i have controlled for memory leaks, restarting the game after every run. Time of day is reset from the console after every run. When changing resolution i changed ingame before shutting down then validated with the unity screen selector on next launch. Background programs were closed for the tests. No zombies/animals where killed so areas weren't "cleared" until x amount of days, to insure that on following runs they would respawn (Although i can't do much if zombies kill animals or vise versa etc). I only did 1 pass on each test, however any result that didn't look right or didn't make sense was discarded and retested.
3. 2 systems isn't enough to draw definitive conclusions for every configuration, no AMD GPU's were tested, only windows for the OS ect. The conclusions found here may or may not apply to your own systems, these results are only really comparable if you have similar hardware. But they will however give an idea of where the current performance is at with the hardware that was tested.
4. It's Alpha
Any update could change any conclusions drawn from these tests. Also as a work in progress things are always improving and getting worse, by the time 7DTD goes gold these results with be obsolete and invalid. Things are always changing in alpha.
5. Console Options used
Since A17 I've always used sg optionsviewdistance 90 to increase the field of view to 90 degrees and sg optionsviewdistance to increase the view distance to 12.
A18.somthing brought back the FOV slider but it's max is 85 degrees, i doubt the 5 degree less fov has any measurable impact on performance. So i stopped using it for a19, However all other tests are run with the increased view distance.
6. Tests on different resolutions were done on monitors native aspect ratio
16:9 Resolutions were tested on an Asus PB287Q 4K 60HZ Monitor
21:9 Resolution was tested on an LG 38GL950G 3840x1600 175Hz Monitor
7. The benchmark Run
I've been using the same run since A14 for all tests, you can find more details on the exact run in my a15 benchmarks i did ages ago Here
My Other 7DTD Benchmarks
Trident specific note
The system "Trident" has much more going on, so there is much more to test. We'll be looking at your standard tests ultra and lower settings like Hotbox, plus those tests with SLI. Also based on my tests 7DTD runs best with 4 true cores, no Hyper Threading or SMT . I didn't test that on Hotbox in it's current config, but in previous alphas before i put the I7 6700K in there i got much better performance with my I5 4670K than i did with the 6700K. So it seems to apply to both Intel and AMD CPU's.
Also the 3950x/newer AMD CPU's are build a bit differently to Intel/Standard CPU designs. Normally there is just 1 die on the chip or a "monolithic die" all the cores, cache, io controller is all on one "chip". AMD's newer CPU's have multiple die's or "chiplets" the die's that have the CPU's core are called compute complex's "CCD's" and each "CCD" is split into multiple groups of cores (CCX's). They communicate with each other and other ccd's through a super fast bus called "Infinity Fabric". While these are very fast and have minimal impact on performance in some workloads. It's still slower than if all the processing was done on 1 chip.
So with those 2 things in mind i made a "gaming profile" in the bios that i switch to for the best performance when gaming. One of the 2 CCD's is disabled and 1 of each of the remaining CCX's cores are also disabled, as well as Hyper Threading (SMT). This leaves 6 Cores and 6 threads all in one CCD. Although 4 cores is best my tests showed minimal loss in performance, so i chose 6 to make it more general, if i was playing another game that utilised more threads. With much more thermal and power available with this setting i was also able to get a higher overclock on this profile, All these things combined results in huge performance gains compared to having all cores enabled.
A18-A19
We can see that in higher resolutions performance has increased and lowered at lower ones. This shows us that there have been some GPU optimisations, this supports the claim of the new zombies being easier on your graphics card, so it should improve a little more when all types have been updated which is great. The losses at lower resolutions tell us that CPU optimisations have taken a hit this alpha, 7DTD is a massively CPU bound game and any losses in this area is going to have the biggest effect. This theory is confirmed by the substantial losses in the 1% and 0.1% lows across all tests, which also demonstrate the stuttering issues persisting in A19, as well as the losses at lower resolutions.
Cores & Hyper Threading ON or OFF
We can see massive gains going from the all core profile to the 6 thread profile. At 1080p we see anywhere from 20%-70% increase in performance. Although i didn't post the older results on Intel, i can say it helps but not to the same degree it does on tridents 3950x. The reasons for the massive bump in performance in this case were several factors. The higher OC we could get with less cores enabled. Forcing 7DTD to utilise fewer cores with 4 being the best in my tests. Disabling SMT no idea why 7DTD doesn't perform well with virtual threads, some other games are like that, but most games just don't show any meaningful difference on or off. 3rd Gen Ryzen cpu's different CPU Design performing better if we make 7DTD only use cores on 1 CCD.
SLI
There is no official support for sli in 7DTD so we need to rely on 3rd party profiles. That said for a voxel game the gains it can bring can be quite surprising. At 4K on the gaming profile we see scaling of over 49%. SLI in 7DTD always goes back to it's CPU Bound nature. It can scale positively and provide more performance but only if the CPU is strong enough. We can see this looking at scaling with the all core profile vs the gaming profile on 4k lower settings. SLI performs worse than a single GPU until we get to 4K and at stock it's a measly 2.2% gain vs the overclocks 13% gain. Meanwhile the gaming profile only scaled negatively at 1080p, 1440p overclocked and above all scaled positively with 4k oc scaling to 49% where we're now mostly GPU bound. CPU overclocking and fast ram are pretty much required for positive scaling.
1. These figures should be taken as ball park figures and not absolute values.
7DTD is a very difficult game to benchmark accurately. It's in alpha and sometimes does weird things. Also some things are difficult to account for such as the ai, they will behave differently and spawn differently every run, which leads to #2.
2. What's controlled for and what's not
I haven't controlled for driver versions & windows versions. My goal was just to get "close enough" results instead of 100% accurate as possible. That said i have controlled for memory leaks, restarting the game after every run. Time of day is reset from the console after every run. When changing resolution i changed ingame before shutting down then validated with the unity screen selector on next launch. Background programs were closed for the tests. No zombies/animals where killed so areas weren't "cleared" until x amount of days, to insure that on following runs they would respawn (Although i can't do much if zombies kill animals or vise versa etc). I only did 1 pass on each test, however any result that didn't look right or didn't make sense was discarded and retested.
3. 2 systems isn't enough to draw definitive conclusions for every configuration, no AMD GPU's were tested, only windows for the OS ect. The conclusions found here may or may not apply to your own systems, these results are only really comparable if you have similar hardware. But they will however give an idea of where the current performance is at with the hardware that was tested.
4. It's Alpha
Any update could change any conclusions drawn from these tests. Also as a work in progress things are always improving and getting worse, by the time 7DTD goes gold these results with be obsolete and invalid. Things are always changing in alpha.
5. Console Options used
Since A17 I've always used sg optionsviewdistance 90 to increase the field of view to 90 degrees and sg optionsviewdistance to increase the view distance to 12.
A18.somthing brought back the FOV slider but it's max is 85 degrees, i doubt the 5 degree less fov has any measurable impact on performance. So i stopped using it for a19, However all other tests are run with the increased view distance.
6. Tests on different resolutions were done on monitors native aspect ratio
16:9 Resolutions were tested on an Asus PB287Q 4K 60HZ Monitor
21:9 Resolution was tested on an LG 38GL950G 3840x1600 175Hz Monitor
7. The benchmark Run
I've been using the same run since A14 for all tests, you can find more details on the exact run in my a15 benchmarks i did ages ago Here
My Other 7DTD Benchmarks
A19.0 Benchmarks 2 Systems Intel,AMD,SLI,Core Count And SMT Tested
Systems Tested
"Trident" "Hotbox"
CPU: AMD 3950x 16 Core 32 Threads CPU: Intel I7 6700K 4 Core 8 Threads
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 Aurus Xtreme Motherboard: ASUS STRIX Z270I Mini ITX Motherboard
Ram: G.SKILL Trident Z Neo 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3600Mhz CL16-19-19-39 Ram: Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz
Storage: Samsung SM951 512Gb M.2 SSD Storage: 2x Kingston SA400S37/240G 250GB Sata SSD's RAID 1
GPU: 2x Evga Sc2 Gaming GTX 1080ti Black Edition GPU: Palit Gamerock Premiere Edition GTX 1080
CPU: AMD 3950x 16 Core 32 Threads CPU: Intel I7 6700K 4 Core 8 Threads
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 Aurus Xtreme Motherboard: ASUS STRIX Z270I Mini ITX Motherboard
Ram: G.SKILL Trident Z Neo 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3600Mhz CL16-19-19-39 Ram: Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz
Storage: Samsung SM951 512Gb M.2 SSD Storage: 2x Kingston SA400S37/240G 250GB Sata SSD's RAID 1
GPU: 2x Evga Sc2 Gaming GTX 1080ti Black Edition GPU: Palit Gamerock Premiere Edition GTX 1080
Systems Overclock Notes
"Hotbox"
CPU: 4.5Ghz, 1.3V, Cache ratio 43
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (2400Mhz)
GPU: Core:+50 Mem:+325
"Trident" [All Core]
CPU: Vcore: 1.3V
CCD 0: CCX 0&1: 41.75
CCD 1: CCX 0&1: 40.75
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (3600Mhz)
GPU Single: Core:+50 Mem:+250
GPU SLI: Core:+20 Mem:+250
"Trident" [Gaming Profile]
CPU: Vcore: 1.45V
CCD 0: CCX 0: 45.50
CCD 0: CCX 1: 44.50
CCD1 DISABLED
SMT: Disabled
Down Core Control: Six + Six
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (3600Mhz)
GPU Single: Core:+50 Mem:+250
GPU SLI: Core:+20 Mem:+250
CPU: 4.5Ghz, 1.3V, Cache ratio 43
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (2400Mhz)
GPU: Core:+50 Mem:+325
"Trident" [All Core]
CPU: Vcore: 1.3V
CCD 0: CCX 0&1: 41.75
CCD 1: CCX 0&1: 40.75
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (3600Mhz)
GPU Single: Core:+50 Mem:+250
GPU SLI: Core:+20 Mem:+250
"Trident" [Gaming Profile]
CPU: Vcore: 1.45V
CCD 0: CCX 0: 45.50
CCD 0: CCX 1: 44.50
CCD1 DISABLED
SMT: Disabled
Down Core Control: Six + Six
Ram: Stock: Default JEDEC(2133Mhz) , Overclock: XMP Enabled (3600Mhz)
GPU Single: Core:+50 Mem:+250
GPU SLI: Core:+20 Mem:+250
2 Different video Settings Tested
Ultra Settings 1
Ultra Settings 2
Lower Settings 1
Lower Settings 2
Ultra Settings 2
Lower Settings 1
Lower Settings 2
Original Benchmark Excel Files Download
Hotbox Benchmarks
A19.0 B180 & A18.2 B5 Ultra Settings
A19.0 B180 & A18.2 B5 Lower Settings
Trident Benchmarks
Trident specific note
The system "Trident" has much more going on, so there is much more to test. We'll be looking at your standard tests ultra and lower settings like Hotbox, plus those tests with SLI. Also based on my tests 7DTD runs best with 4 true cores, no Hyper Threading or SMT . I didn't test that on Hotbox in it's current config, but in previous alphas before i put the I7 6700K in there i got much better performance with my I5 4670K than i did with the 6700K. So it seems to apply to both Intel and AMD CPU's.
Also the 3950x/newer AMD CPU's are build a bit differently to Intel/Standard CPU designs. Normally there is just 1 die on the chip or a "monolithic die" all the cores, cache, io controller is all on one "chip". AMD's newer CPU's have multiple die's or "chiplets" the die's that have the CPU's core are called compute complex's "CCD's" and each "CCD" is split into multiple groups of cores (CCX's). They communicate with each other and other ccd's through a super fast bus called "Infinity Fabric". While these are very fast and have minimal impact on performance in some workloads. It's still slower than if all the processing was done on 1 chip.
So with those 2 things in mind i made a "gaming profile" in the bios that i switch to for the best performance when gaming. One of the 2 CCD's is disabled and 1 of each of the remaining CCX's cores are also disabled, as well as Hyper Threading (SMT). This leaves 6 Cores and 6 threads all in one CCD. Although 4 cores is best my tests showed minimal loss in performance, so i chose 6 to make it more general, if i was playing another game that utilised more threads. With much more thermal and power available with this setting i was also able to get a higher overclock on this profile, All these things combined results in huge performance gains compared to having all cores enabled.
Ultra Settings Single GPU Benchmarks
Lower Settings Single GPU Benchmarks
Ultra Settings 2X SLI Benchmarks
Lower Settings 2X SLI Benchmarks
Conclusions
A18-A19
We can see that in higher resolutions performance has increased and lowered at lower ones. This shows us that there have been some GPU optimisations, this supports the claim of the new zombies being easier on your graphics card, so it should improve a little more when all types have been updated which is great. The losses at lower resolutions tell us that CPU optimisations have taken a hit this alpha, 7DTD is a massively CPU bound game and any losses in this area is going to have the biggest effect. This theory is confirmed by the substantial losses in the 1% and 0.1% lows across all tests, which also demonstrate the stuttering issues persisting in A19, as well as the losses at lower resolutions.
Cores & Hyper Threading ON or OFF
We can see massive gains going from the all core profile to the 6 thread profile. At 1080p we see anywhere from 20%-70% increase in performance. Although i didn't post the older results on Intel, i can say it helps but not to the same degree it does on tridents 3950x. The reasons for the massive bump in performance in this case were several factors. The higher OC we could get with less cores enabled. Forcing 7DTD to utilise fewer cores with 4 being the best in my tests. Disabling SMT no idea why 7DTD doesn't perform well with virtual threads, some other games are like that, but most games just don't show any meaningful difference on or off. 3rd Gen Ryzen cpu's different CPU Design performing better if we make 7DTD only use cores on 1 CCD.
SLI
There is no official support for sli in 7DTD so we need to rely on 3rd party profiles. That said for a voxel game the gains it can bring can be quite surprising. At 4K on the gaming profile we see scaling of over 49%. SLI in 7DTD always goes back to it's CPU Bound nature. It can scale positively and provide more performance but only if the CPU is strong enough. We can see this looking at scaling with the all core profile vs the gaming profile on 4k lower settings. SLI performs worse than a single GPU until we get to 4K and at stock it's a measly 2.2% gain vs the overclocks 13% gain. Meanwhile the gaming profile only scaled negatively at 1080p, 1440p overclocked and above all scaled positively with 4k oc scaling to 49% where we're now mostly GPU bound. CPU overclocking and fast ram are pretty much required for positive scaling.
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) I already have the stock numbers for a19.0 with the new card in and should have the oc numbers later today, so i should be ready when .2 comes out.
