What matters most in CPU for RimWorld, main core speed or multicores?

[ProfZelonka]

I'm buying a new CPU and wondering if one will be better for Rimworld than another. Most CPUs now have like 6-12 cores which is crazy. I remember some years back people said RImworld only runs on 1 core and doesnt utilize all the cores anyway - Is this still the case after 1.1???

I'm pretty much buying a CPU for Rimworld as everything else I do can run on much less than my giant Rimworld colony with tons of mods...

[Bozobub]

For RW and most current games, single-core and max possible speed are most important, not number of cores.

[ProfZelonka]

Thanks for confirming! Any idea if the graphics part goes to the GPU or is everything entirely on the CPU?

I read on Steam some guy is seeing a big performance difference going from his i7-4790K to Ryzen 7 3700X, which is technically a slowed clock speed. Really wish one of the RimWorld developers would be able to suggest CPUs that are more likely more effective for the game.

[Canute]

Don't have top grafic, so the video card isn't very important beside that the unity engine work's on it.
Rimworld is more a database game, alot of calculations what pawn's need to do next.
But Rimworld isn#t optimized/made for multicore support, so your operation system decide how the CPU usage get handled not rimworld.
Since intel and amd CPU's give different weakness/strenght it can be that a lower clockspeed can have better overall results.
But most newer CPU will have better results then a 5 years old CPU.
So it shouldn't made much difference and on large/verylarge colonies you will encounter lag anyway.

[ProfZelonka]

The reason I'm asking about GPU is to get an idea if a lot of HD re-texture mods would slow down the CPU or if that would be a load for the GPU. With big colonies, every bit of performance counts!

[Canute]

Textures only affect the loading at first, and all GPUs  should have enough RAM to load these few HD textures from rimworld mods compared to the textures from some AAA tiles.
Once they are at the GPU memory i don't think they have any effect on the speed of rimworld.
But i am not an expert i could be wrong.

[Psycho0124]

Clock speed is a good indicator for performance but there's more to it than that (L1, L2 cache, architecture, etc). What you're really looking for in a gaming cpu is "Single Thread Performance". There are a few benchmarks that will test it specifically, Passmark is a good one. They keep an online database with easy-to-read scores from lots of hardware.
Here's their rankings page. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Be sure and check what motherboard they're using in the sample if you're doing a build and want to replicate a good score with your machine. You'll want a decent gfx card, memory with tight timings (don't just go by the frequency!), and a quick solid state drive to minimize load times.

Sadly, if you're buying a pre-built machine, they're going to use the absolute minimum they can on anything not listed on the sticker. Timings will be garbage on the memory, hard drive will have a tiny cache and huge latency, motherboard will be from the lowest bidder. Processor will generally have minimal cache and clock speed but lots of cores to look flashy. Power supply will leave no overhead for safely upgrading later and will have minimal/no filtering for power spikes/dips. If you're going to spend the money and buy a system, the system-builders rule of thumb is that you can build twice the machine for the cost.. Or the same (or better) machine for half.

[Bozobub]

The reason I'm asking about GPU is to get an idea if a lot of HD re-texture mods would slow down the CPU or if that would be a load for the GPU. With big colonies, every bit of performance counts!

Mods that replace items/objects in the game increase load times.

Mods that add scripting/"per-tick" calculations decrease game speed.

"Quality of Life" (QoL) mods tend to have little to no impact, as they mainly change UI elements and similar tasks; they don't add a lot of processes to each turn.

It is completely possible for a given mod to add both types of slowdown.  Additionally, there's no real upper limit on how much slowdown you add.  Keep this in mind, when contemplating the addition of huge numbers of new mods ^^'.

[ProfZelonka]

Thanks everyone, this is really insightful!