I've been away from MC for a couple of years now because the last time I tried to play, about the time v1.8 released, the game was unplayable. Even on a high-end rig, I was stuttering around at < 20fps, with huge lag spikes, stuttering, freezing... etc. I was informed this was due to the v1.8 update and the new way worlds were rendered, and that a large portion of players were experiencing the same issue thus the majority were going back to using v1.7.*.
So, I was wondering as it's been a long time, have any of the new updates that released since I was away resolved or improved these issues, or are most people still playing on v1.7.* for stability and performance??
I never had an issue with anything like that, and my computer at the time didn't even have the minimum requirements for specs for Minecraft. But if I remember correctly 1.9 added VBO rendering that you can toggle on and off. That seems to make the game load better.
I never had an issue with anything like that, and my computer at the time didn't even have the minimum requirements for specs for Minecraft. But if I remember correctly 1.9 added VBO rendering that you can toggle on and off. That seems to make the game load better.
Interesting, I knew it didn't affect everyone but I wonder if there was a catalyst; like those who used OptiFine or alternative, high-end hardware, OS version... etc.
When I last played at length, it was on 1.7.2, I believe 1.7.8 or 1.7.10 was the latest version at that time. I was able to mod the hell out the game, adding tons of new mobs, textures, biomes, assets, and run either SEUS Ultra or Continuum shaders, while maintaining a fairly steady 60-90fps at 2560x1440.
But when I returned to MC around 1.8/1.9 I could barely reach 90fps on vanilla - and when I tried modding it like I normally would, it just broke the game completely, a laggy, stuttering, 5fps slideshow, it was just a broken mess.
I tried a number of supposed fixes/improvements which if I remember correctly they helped a little, but it was still unplayable, so after a dozen or more hours trying to fix it, I gave up and went back to 1.7.5.
I was just hoping that now after another year+, the bugs might have been worked out.
I can't say for sure but 1.8 ran without significant problems on my current computer, which is not exactly high-end, if still not as well as older versions (I have not tried Optifine but 1.6.4 runs better on Far render distance than 1.12.2 does on Normal and world generation is 3 times faster in 1.6.4); my old computer had enough problems with 1.8 though to be considered unplayable (e.g. dropping to 1-2 FPS near/in water and requiring 4 chunk render distance, which also breaks things like mob spawning, a still-unfixed issue present since 1.7.4) and this was a major contributor to the fact that I never updated past 1.6.4 (even 1.7 had a strange issue where the game hitched for half a second every 10th frame regardless of settings (Optifine's lag-o-meter showed e.g. 100 FPS between spikes but average FPS was only half as high and apparent FPS was 10) and when I tried Optifine on 1.8, which had the same issue in addition to general lag, it caused textures to flash all colors of the rainbow).
Even now, I still have not updated past 1.6.4 (I continue to play very heavily, averaging 3.47 hours per day of playtime last year) and don't see myself updating because I started "updating" the game myself with my own mods, which I now see as my own version of the game (I don't really care for most of the newer features, and any that I do I can just mod them in; conversely, I would never play in 1.7+ without using mods to change various things).
It is also worth noting that a lot of players have probably upgraded to newer computers since 1.8 came out, if not necessarily because of lag, just part of the normal upgrade cycle, as was the case for myself (software generally becomes more demanding with time as hardware improves, enabling more/better features; of course, some developers use this an an excuse to become lax on optimization and some of the code changes in 1.8+ are questionable at best).
Here is a comparison of the system requirements as of 1.6, prior to 1.8 release, and now:
Minimum Requirements:
CPU : Intel P4/NetBurst Architecture or its AMD Equivalent (AMD K7)
RAM : 2GB
GPU : Intel GMA 950 or AMD Equivalent with OpenGL 1.2 Support
HDD : At least 90MB for Game Core and Sound Files
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 or up is required to be able to run the game.
Recommended Requirements:
CPU : Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
RAM : 4GB
GPU : GeForce 6xxx or ATI Radeon 9xxx and up with OpenGL 2 Support (Excluding Integrated Chipsets)
HDD : 150MB
Minimum Requirements:
CPU: Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
RAM: 2GB
GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics or AMD (formerly ATI) Radeon HD Graphics with OpenGL 2.1
GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT or AMD Radeon HD 2400 with OpenGL 3.1
HDD: At least 200MB for Game Core and Other Files
Java 6 Release 45
Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon II (K10) 2.8 GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: GeForce 2xx Series or AMD Radeon HD 5xxx Series (Excluding Integrated Chipsets) with OpenGL 3.3
HDD: 1GB
Latest release of Java 7 from java.com
Minimum Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz / AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 2GB
GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Ivy Bridge) or AMD Radeon R5 series (Kaveri line) with OpenGL 4.4*
GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series with OpenGL 4.4
HDD: At least 1GB for game core, maps and other files
OS:
- Windows: Windows 7 and up
- macOS: OS X 10.9 Maverick
- Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards
Internet connectivity is required for downloading Minecraft files, afterwards offline play is possible.
*Current minimum OpenGL requirements is 1.3, but modern GPUs often ship with newer versions of OpenGL
Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 4GB
GPU: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series (excluding integrated chipsets) with OpenGL 4.5
HDD: 4GB (SSD is recommended)
OS (recommended 64-bit):
- Windows: Windows 10
- macOS: macOS 10.12 Sierra
- Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards
I actually haven't tried newer versions for a while and the latest minimum system requirement for the CPU exceeds my computer's specs (2.8 GHz quad-core CPU), and the recommended exceed all of them, and only a year after I got a "new" computer (a secondhand one), but with hardware that was 8 years newer than my last one, which met all the recommended requirements for 1.6 aside from RAM, but the game doesn't need that much; as mentioned before, this is the price of progress (then again, the game itself hasn't really changed much in e.g. graphical quality and my own modding experience shows it is entirely possible to add all the features added since 1.6.4 with negligible performance impact; in fact, I've even offset them by optimizing the game, such as making the lighting engine 4x faster, cutting the time taken to generate biomes with gigantic 64 block tall trees by more than half).
Also, while 1.7.10 is still the most popular version for mods this is mainly due to various changes in 1.8 which made it difficult for modders to update their mods, and many of them are slowly being updated/replaced with 1.12.2 possibly to be the next major modded version given that 1.13 is making even more significant changes (my opinion is that it doesn't really matter what version a mod is based on if it makes major changes to the core game, as my own mod does). Of course, this includes optimization mods, although I have not tried any of them, even Optifine (which from what I understand does not fix some of the issues with 1.8+, like the extreme rate of object allocation (10-20x faster than older versions) which forces the garbage collector to work harder regardless of actual memory usage. The fact that my old computer only had a dual-core CPU likely played a big part in this since it meant that there was not much margin to run the GC alongside the client and server threads, as sp614x mentioned. Their description of the rendering engine; "an over-engineered monster full of factories, builders, bakeries, baked items, managers, dispatchers, states, enums and layers" is also true of the rest of the game, which has increased exponentially in size and complexity since 1.8).
I can't say for sure but 1.8 ran without significant problems on my current computer, which is not exactly high-end, if still not as well as older versions (I have not tried Optifine but 1.6.4 runs better on Far render distance than 1.12.2 does on Normal and world generation is 3 times faster in 1.6.4); my old computer had enough problems with 1.8 though to be considered unplayable (e.g. dropping to 1-2 FPS near/in water and requiring 4 chunk render distance, which also breaks things like mob spawning, a still-unfixed issue present since 1.7.4) and this was a major contributor to the fact that I never updated past 1.6.4 (even 1.7 had a strange issue where the game hitched for half a second every 10th frame regardless of settings (Optifine's lag-o-meter showed e.g. 100 FPS between spikes but average FPS was only half as high and apparent FPS was 10) and when I tried Optifine on 1.8, which had the same issue in addition to general lag, it caused textures to flash all colors of the rainbow).
-Snip-
Wow, thank you for such a detailed reply, that really helps.
I stopped playing on 1.7.* because I was getting bored of sorts, once I'd reached a point were I couldn't really run out of materials, whether diamond or wood, plus having the best enchantments, the game stopped feeling challenging and started to feel samey, I needed a new challenge, new things to do and explore, therefore I took a break for 9 months or so until the 1.8 update released. Once it dropped I was eager to get into MC and explore all the new things the update added, but the performance killed it for me so went on another break - which turned into years instead of months.
So, now I've come back assuming the performance issues would be resolved and I would have tons of new things to find, explore, harvest, kill, etc, But... your post above about staying on 1.6.4 made me check the MC Wiki, I thought I'd take a look at the hundreds of amazing new things I would be missing out on if I played on 1.6.4, and to my shock and amazement, it's hardly anything, I mean there's a few mobs and blocks I would kind of miss, maybe a biome or two, but other than that I can't see any real significant changes that I would class as game changers.
I'm actually struggling to find a reason to play on anything above 1.6.4, like you said, most of these additions can probably be modded into the game or at least something similar, and I would be able to run my favourite shader and texture/resource pack without having to make compromises to keep a framerate above 60fps. The only thing that might prevent me from rolling back to 1.6.4 is going to be a few of my essential mods aren't compatible with 1.6.4 or were released after that update, that might be an issue.
It's really surprising when you actually sit down and take a list of what's been added, at least in my opinion it's very little unless I missed something big on the Wiki page. No new dimensions, no real stand-out unique mobs, no new resources like diamond or iron... I can't really see much at all.
Therefore, I think I may be joining you on 1.6.4 once I know that some mods I can't live without are compatible.
Thank you for the info and help, TheMasterCaver, I really appreciate it.
Wow, thank you for such a detailed reply, that really helps.
I stopped playing on 1.7.* because I was getting bored of sorts, once I'd reached a point were I couldn't really run out of materials, whether diamond or wood, plus having the best enchantments, the game stopped feeling challenging and started to feel samey, I needed a new challenge, new things to do and explore, therefore I took a break for 9 months or so until the 1.8 update released. Once it dropped I was eager to get into MC and explore all the new things the update added, but the performance killed it for me so went on another break - which turned into years instead of months.
So, now I've come back assuming the performance issues would be resolved and I would have tons of new things to find, explore, harvest, kill, etc, But... your post above about staying on 1.6.4 made me check the MC Wiki, I thought I'd take a look at the hundreds of amazing new things I would be missing out on if I played on 1.6.4, and to my shock and amazement, it's hardly anything, I mean there's a few mobs and blocks I would kind of miss, maybe a biome or two, but other than that I can't see any real significant changes that I would class as game changers.
I'm actually struggling to find a reason to play on anything above 1.6.4, like you said, most of these additions can probably be modded into the game or at least something similar, and I would be able to run my favourite shader and texture/resource pack without having to make compromises to keep a framerate above 60fps. The only thing that might prevent me from rolling back to 1.6.4 is going to be a few of my essential mods aren't compatible with 1.6.4 or were released after that update, that might be an issue.
It's really surprising when you actually sit down and take a list of what's been added, at least in my opinion it's very little unless I missed something big on the Wiki page. No new dimensions, no real stand-out unique mobs, no new resources like diamond or iron... I can't really see much at all.
Therefore, I think I may be joining you on 1.6.4 once I know that some mods I can't live without are compatible.
Thank you for the info and help, TheMasterCaver, I really appreciate it.
Really, the only real reason to play on anything above 1.7 is most servers may not support it any more. I don't know for sure, but 1.7 was released in 2013 or 2014 (Which is it? the newest version when I got Minecraft was 1.7.10), meaning that I'm assuming that the oldest supported version for most servers will be 1.8 or 1.9, and 1.13 will be released sometime in the next few months, so yeah.
Well, also, Minecraft maps will need to be in at least whatever version it was released in, like Asleep needs to be in 1.8, it's sequel needs to be in 1.10, etc. Some builds, like houses and cities and such, may be able to get away with going 2 or 3 versions earlier than it was built in.
Versions 1.7 and 1.8 initially were major shifts upwards in performance demands, paired with some issues, as you noticed. I believe the issues may have been mostly worked out, between new versions of the game, Java, OptiFine, etc. perhaps. My hardware has not changed in years, save for a graphics card upgrade on my desktop.
My desktop plays 1.10.2 very well for me. I use OptiFine. I play with the maximum render distance of 32, and a lot of anti-aliasing thrown on top for good measure (this really hurts performance) and still maintain nearly 60 FPS (1920 x 1200 resolution), which is my refresh rate, unless I am very near/looking towards a lot of mobs (like my village which has a lot of villagers), then maybe it drops towards the 40s. I'm using a pretty old now platform with this computer consisting of a Core i5 2500K and 16 GB of RAM, although it has a more recent GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB and an SSD.
My laptop also plays 1.10.2 very well, also actually at a pretty much constant 60 FPS and perhaps feeling even more consistent at it than my desktop does, albeit it at a lower render distance of 12 or 14 or somewhere in that range, and of course no anti-aliasing, which is why. It's much more lower end of hardware, having a Core i3 4010U, 6 GB of RAM, and the Intel graphics, but also an SSD. I also use OptiFine here.
I have not tried Optifine but 1.6.4 runs better on Far render distance than 1.12.2 does on Normal
Didn't versions 1.3.x to 1.6.4 have an issue to where the Far render distance, which should have been 16 chunks, was only rendering something like 10 chunks? I recall this being because 1.3 changed (or rather got rid of the old) single-player in favor of multiplayer (which is also when the LAN feature was added as a result), and the internal server was set to 10 chunks regardless or rendering distance.
A bit unrelated, but the early 1.7 versions also had a similar issue if I am remembering right (they had some issue with render distance beyond a point not working, I know that much, and something made it more apparent here which made many people comment on it) until it was finally fixed.
But... your post above about staying on 1.6.4 made me check the MC Wiki, I thought I'd take a look at the hundreds of amazing new things I would be missing out on if I played on 1.6.4, and to my shock and amazement, it's hardly anything, I mean there's a few mobs and blocks I would kind of miss, maybe a biome or two, but other than that I can't see any real significant changes that I would class as game changers.
Don't get me wrong, 1.2.5 to 1.6.4 were nostalgic times for me, but vanilla to vanilla, there's actually a very different (and positive) change to the game comparing those versions to the latest ones, so I can not agree with this assumption. I can see why you might come to that conclusion looking at a list, but I'd recommend you to try and see despite the list, because they genuinely feel like very different eras in the game.
The new combat, the new terrain and biomes, the completely overhauled End dimension, the elytra, the new blocks and terracotta, new water temples and woodland mansions, as well as appropriate mobs, also other new mobs, major changes to storage potential with shulker boxes, and I'm just scratching the surface and I'm sure I'm missing a couple of other notable ones. 1.7's terrain generation did take a few steps backwards (mostly because of an overly aggressive climate system that was introduced) as well as forwards, and there were the initial performance issues with it and 1.8, but that aside, everything else is great with the newer versions, and now you have 1.13 coming overhauling the aquatic aspects of the game
Really, the only real reason to play on anything above 1.7 is most servers may not support it any more. I don't know for sure, but 1.7 was released in 2013 or 2014 (Which is it? the newest version when I got Minecraft was 1.7.10), meaning that I'm assuming that the oldest supported version for most servers will be 1.8 or 1.9, and 1.13 will be released sometime in the next few months, so yeah.
Well, also, Minecraft maps will need to be in at least whatever version it was released in, like Asleep needs to be in 1.8, it's sequel needs to be in 1.10, etc. Some builds, like houses and cities and such, may be able to get away with going 2 or 3 versions earlier than it was built in.
I understand it is a very old and outdated version now, but as I'm only interested in SP it shouldn't be an issue.
Versions 1.7 and 1.8 initially were major shifts upwards in performance demands, paired with some issues, as you noticed. I believe the issues may have been mostly worked out, between new versions of the game, Java, OptiFine, etc. perhaps. My hardware has not changed in years, save for a graphics card upgrade on my desktop.
My desktop plays 1.10.2 very well for me. I use OptiFine. I play with the maximum render distance of 32, and a lot of anti-aliasing thrown on top for good measure (this really hurts performance) and still maintain nearly 60 FPS (1920 x 1200 resolution), which is my refresh rate, unless I am very near/looking towards a lot of mobs (like my village which has a lot of villagers), then maybe it drops towards the 40s. I'm using a pretty old now platform with this computer consisting of a Core i5 2500K and 16 GB of RAM, although it has a more recent GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB and an SSD.
I think as these performance issues affect some and not others my best bet is to do some testing first, trying every version from 1.6.4 up to the latest release to see how much the performance is impacted, and whether or not the new additions are worth the drop in performance.
My system is also running on an old platform, Ivy Bridge 3770k, but everything is heavily overclocked, and I do mean heavily, which puts me off updating as only the newer Intel SKUs that easily push 5GHz or higher are really worth my attention, but at €700-800 just for a platform change and maybe 20% more CPU horsepower, I can't justify it yet.
Didn't versions 1.3.x to 1.6.4 have an issue to where the Far render distance, which should have been 16 chunks, was only rendering something like 10 chunks? I recall this being because 1.3 changed (or rather got rid of the old) single-player in favor of multiplayer (which is also when the LAN feature was added as a result), and the internal server was set to 10 chunks regardless or rendering distance.
A bit unrelated, but the early 1.7 versions also had a similar issue if I am remembering right (they had some issue with render distance beyond a point not working, I know that much, and something made it more apparent here which made many people comment on it) until it was finally fixed.
I can't speak for versions below 1.7, but yes, you are correct about the render distance bug on 1.7, I totally forgot about that. Damn, that might also be a killer for me. If I remember correctly I read that the render distance physically wouldn't go above 8 no matter what setting was used, which for me is far too short.
I really hope that isn't an issue on 1.6.4 or at least hopefully there's a mod or fix for it.
Don't get me wrong, 1.2.5 to 1.6.4 were nostalgic times for me, but vanilla to vanilla, there's actually a very different (and positive) change to the game comparing those versions to the latest ones, so I can not agree with this assumption. I can see why you might come to that conclusion looking at a list, but I'd recommend you to try and see despite the list, because they genuinely feel like very different eras in the game.
The new combat, the new terrain and biomes, the completely overhauled End dimension, the elytra, the new blocks and terracotta, new water temples and woodland mansions, as well as appropriate mobs, also other new mobs, major changes to storage potential with shulker boxes, and I'm just scratching the surface and I'm sure I'm missing a couple of other notable ones. 1.7's terrain generation did take a few steps backwards (mostly because of an overly aggressive climate system that was introduced) as well as forwards, and there were the initial performance issues with it and 1.8, but that aside, everything else is great with the newer versions, and now you have 1.13 coming overhauling the aquatic aspects of the game
Yeah, I get what you're saying; looking at a text list is one thing, but seeing it in-game is a totally different experience. You are most probably right, but I spent some time last night reading about TheMasterCaver overhaul mod that effectively adds all (most) of the new additions that were added in 1.7 and above, plus a lot more. It's mods like that which make me feel 1.6.4 is still very appealing as most things can be quickly modded into the game so you're not missing out too much.
Again, I think I need to do some testing to see what I would potentially be missing out on versus the performance hit. My rig is still on the high(ish)-end although an old platform, but the shaders I like to use, plus running at a fair high resolution (3440x1440) they absolutely kick the poop out of any system regardless of how new or powerful it is, so I need to run on a version that offers good vanilla (base) performance otherwise I struggle maintaining a reasonably high framerate once I've installed the visual mods.
I am running on a less powerful end computer, but I have zero lag and I get 70-120 fps on my machine, that's on 1.8. on 1.12.2 I get 40-80 with everything maxed out excluding render distance, minecraft 1.8 has a max render distance of 32 chunks, which I don't have it set to usually because of the 20%-30% decrease in performance and how usually do you look that far, but on 1.12.2 with the render distance set to that there is a 40%-60% decrease in fps, so 10-30 fps at the max on my machine, while at 24 chunk render distance there is only a 10-20% decrease (standard testing is 18 chunk render distance for both versions) and 1.12.2, the decrease is 20-40% fps drop. at a resolution of 1920x1080p. at 1080p its has a drop of 2%-3% decrease in both versions.
my machine specs are/ an AMD A6 6310 quadcore cpu with internal graphics set to 856mb, and an overclock at 2.4ghz and runs at a temperature of 10-20 degrees centigrade. with an overclock of 2.6ghz, its temperature is at 15-28 degrees, and 2.8ghz its at 30-40, and at 3.0ghz, which is way above the stock overclock by 0.6ghz and way obove the stock speed of 1.8ghz, it runs at 40+ degrees, so I don't have it set to that, that's with the stock cooler, and my RAM is at 8gb of ddr3 memory. minecraft runs mainly on core 0, if it cant fully run on that it tries core 3, the 2 and one combined, and then it increases temperature, then decreases fps, what optifine does is it uses all cores evenly and distributes the load better decreasing temperature boosting fps.
Didn't versions 1.3.x to 1.6.4 have an issue to where the Far render distance, which should have been 16 chunks, was only rendering something like 10 chunks? I recall this being because 1.3 changed (or rather got rid of the old) single-player in favor of multiplayer (which is also when the LAN feature was added as a result), and the internal server was set to 10 chunks regardless or rendering distance.
This is true, due to the internal server's view distance being hardcoded at 10 chunks, but even when increased to 16 (not using Optifine) 1.6.4 runs better, particularly for server-side stuff (world generation and average tick time). Part of this is due to the fact that 1.6.4 uses a fixed chunk update radius of 7 chunks while in 1.7.4+ it depends on the view distance but even a 1:1 comparison shows 1.6.4 as being better (naturally, more features will increase resource usage and slow things down but the difference is more than I'd expect; for example, the change to the height limit of terrain in 1.7 doubled the number of blocks it must iterate over when a chunk is generated, but this doesn't mean that overall world generation should be twice as slow, and it actually isn't for 1.7.x. I suspect that the internal move to blockstates and code that is highly encapsulated explains the slowdown in 1.8+; for example, I compared some of the code in 1.8 to 1.6.4 in this old post; the more layers of methods and object calls and get/set/conversions there are the slower things will get; for example, x = blockPos.getX() will be slower than x = posX).
I can't speak for versions below 1.7, but yes, you are correct about the render distance bug on 1.7, I totally forgot about that. Damn, that might also be a killer for me. If I remember correctly I read that the render distance physically wouldn't go above 8 no matter what setting was used, which for me is far too short.
I really hope that isn't an issue on 1.6.4 or at least hopefully there's a mod or fix for it.
Optifine fixes it, although you must be on 17 chunks (Far + 16) or more due to a bug in Optifine itself; it doesn't increase the view distance from 10 unless the render distance is greater than 16:
public static int getChunkViewDistance()
{
if (gameSettings == null) return 10;
int chunkDistance = gameSettings.ofRenderDistanceFine / 16;
if (chunkDistance <= 16) return 10;
return chunkDistance;
}
I fixed this myself but I probably can't distribute such a modified copy of Optifine, even if it is just the one class that needs to be changed, and sp614x is unlikely to release an update to fix such an old version. Also, I actually reduced the minimum view distance to 8 so the game does not generate more than the necessary number of chunks for Normal, which I've always played on and see higher distances as wasteful (I spend virtually all my time underground and in-game maps only render 8 chunks, which means I can make surface renderings of my worlds without exposing anything I have not mapped in-game); to avoid issues with mob spawning I reduced the (de)spawn radius to 96 blocks so mobs can't exist in "lazy chunks", where they can't despawn and build up, which is actually what "reduces" mob spawning). As mentioned above, the chunk update radius in 1.6.4 is always 7 chunks so anything higher has no effect on crop growth and the like.
Also, it is worth noting that versions prior to 1.7.10 have several other issues; you have to use a resource pack if you want a custom skin since they recently shut down the skin server they used (I had long ago replaced the default skin with my own as insurance against normal server outages; I actually changed the skin inside the jar along with the few other textures I customized since I modded it anyway. However, multiplayer skins and custom heads will all be the default/your skin, which is also not an issue for me since I've never played multiplayer, or custom maps with one exception back in 2013. You also can't play multiplayer, at least with the official launcher, anyway since they don't recognize the session ID given to them by the launcher, which has no impact on singleplayer), and they do not have sound unless you use the older (Java required) launcher to download them and run the game once since the new one doesn't properly download the assets (they will still work once you go back to the current launcher, or at least they do for me as I've seen others say that this did not work; the files I have are all from when I got my current computer in mid-2016).
Another thing to note is that when comparing versions before and after 1.8 you should test with "Advanced OpenGL" (hardware-based occlusion culling) enabled and disabled in older versions since this was replaced with a custom software-based occlusion culling implementation in 1.8 which is hardware-independent and generally better for computers with non-Nvidia GPUs, where AOGL can actually worsen performance (the relative performance of the CPU/GPU also matters as it trades a reduced GPU load for an increased CPU load, the 1.8+ implementation is also similar but cannot be toggled as far as I know). The 1.8 system has far more visual glitches though, especially when compared with Optifine's AOGL implementation; I do not know if it improves the 1.8 system. Also, Optifine has various options for chunk "loading" (actually, rendering; it has nothing to do with loading chunks from disk) in older versions but not in 1.8+, and there are some other settings which work differently (e.g. in 1.6.4 the "smooth world" setting only works for single-core CPUs and works by evening out the internal server load, while in 1.8+ it works completely differently, including by unloading spawn chunks so they do not use memory and resources).
my machine specs are/ an AMD A6 6310 quadcore cpu with internal graphics set to 856mb, and an overclock at 2.4ghz and runs at a temperature of 10-20 degrees centigrade. with an overclock of 2.6ghz, its temperature is at 15-28 degrees, and 2.8ghz its at 30-40, and at 3.0ghz, which is way above the stock overclock by 0.6ghz and way obove the stock speed of 1.8ghz, it runs at 40+ degrees, so I don't have it set to that, that's with the stock cooler, and my RAM is at 8gb of ddr3 memory. minecraft runs mainly on core 0, if it cant fully run on that it tries core 3, the 2 and one combined, and then it increases temperature, then decreases fps, what optifine does is it uses all cores evenly and distributes the load better decreasing temperature boosting fps.
Sorry, what do you mean your temperatures run at 10-20c? Do you mean a 10-20c increase over idle?
Because a CPU or any component physically cannot run below ambient, unless you have a below ambient setup, like Peltier, Phase Change, LN2, a Chill Box... etc - either that or your room is close to freezing and you have ice on your monitor, haha
If you are actually getting readings of core temps at 10c, then you have an issue with either your software, BIOS or senors.
yes I mean an increase, so, at 3.0ghz, I am running at 80+ degrees. cpu temperature average is at 20-30c, (1.8-2.4ghz) sorry I didn't say that, and thank you for specifying.
P.S. if its doing full load at 3.0ghz my cpu shuts down from over heating meaning a 100+ degree temperature, so I learned, don't overclock a cpu to much!
I got fairly high end PC: Core i7 couple years old, 16gb RAM, GTX1080(used to have 970) and MC runs on fast SSD. Vanilla MC with just OptiFine and a better texture pack ran fine with some occasional stutter but nothing game-breaking. Then I tried Forge mods: JMap,JEI, Abyssalcraft.
It became a nightmare. Literally it was move for half second - freeze for a second. Especially after going into Nether and back. I tried nuking graphics settings: 16 draw distance, fast graphics, flat lighting, simple clouds etc. No effect. When turning on lagometer, it showed massive orange (memory garbage collecting) spikes.
The culprit was JVM command line parameters. It was giving MC only one GB RAM. After tweaking those, giving MC 4GBs among other things, all issues evaporated. Silky smooth, no stutter, pop in/out of Nether as needed, graphics back to all max with 32 draw distance.
Once home tonight, will see if I can post my JVM parameters...
yes I mean an increase, so, at 3.0ghz, I am running at 80+ degrees. cpu temperature average is at 20-30c, (1.8-2.4ghz) sorry I didn't say that, and thank you for specifying.
P.S. if its doing full load at 3.0ghz my cpu shuts down from over heating meaning a 100+ degree temperature, so I learned, don't overclock a cpu to much!
OK, no problem
100+c... Ouch! That's bad for Intel, but on AMD that crazy high. Good job you realised.
I got fairly high end PC: Core i7 couple years old, 16gb RAM, GTX1080(used to have 970) and MC runs on fast SSD. Vanilla MC with just OptiFine and a better texture pack ran fine with some occasional stutter but nothing game-breaking. Then I tried Forge mods: JMap,JEI, Abyssalcraft.
It became a nightmare. Literally it was move for half second - freeze for a second. Especially after going into Nether and back. I tried nuking graphics settings: 16 draw distance, fast graphics, flat lighting, simple clouds etc. No effect. When turning on lagometer, it showed massive orange (memory garbage collecting) spikes.
The culprit was JVM command line parameters. It was giving MC only one GB RAM. After tweaking those, giving MC 4GBs among other things, all issues evaporated. Silky smooth, no stutter, pop in/out of Nether as needed, graphics back to all max with 32 draw distance.
Once home tonight, will see if I can post my JVM parameters...
I know what you mean. I tried this back when I tried 1.8 and 1.9, the issues were so severe, I tried allocating 2GB, 4, 8, 10, I even tried 20+GB (I think it was 24GB to be exact) which is nuts and it didn't help at all.
I went as far as trying a huge string of Java arguments that a professional Java coder had suggested, changing the garbage collection, checking times, memory dumps, chunk load times, and about 50 other things, that helped with some issues but it was still pretty much unplayable, which is when I gave up.
by the way, I am a bit new to minecraft forums (not minecraft) and was wondering how do you get a quote from someone?
Just click the Quote button next to reply and report on the post you want to quote. If it's multiple quotes like I did above, click the Multi-quote button on all of the posts you want to quote and once you've selected them all, click the box that appears on the bottom right of your screen.
The culprit was JVM command line parameters. It was giving MC only one GB RAM. After tweaking those, giving MC 4GBs among other things, all issues evaporated. Silky smooth, no stutter, pop in/out of Nether as needed, graphics back to all max with 32 draw distance.
Once home tonight, will see if I can post my JVM parameters...
I've never been able to understand how even just a few mods require such insane amounts of resources; my own mod needs no more memory than vanilla; for example, I recently took this screenshot with render distance set to 12 chunks (C: x/10000 is 625 chunks * 16 sections; I used my patched version of Optifine so it actually loaded 625 chunks) - yet only 324 MB was allocated and 153 MB used and that after flying around for a while:
This also goes for the current developmental version of TMCW, which is becoming more and more on the scale of a major modpack, with a total of 85 biomes and 124 blocks and items added and countless other additions. Of course it is also a non-Forge mod and I believe that is a major part of the problem, since Forge mods are not "real" mods (i.e. they do not directly alter the game's code but relay on indirect "hooks" that Forge provides, which likely adds a significant amount of overhead; given the amount of code and textures for most of the blocks I've added they require far less than a megabyte of memory so even a modpack that uses every possible ID should not use more than a dozen MB or so for them unless it uses HD textures). IIRC, even with just Forge installed (back when I used it for a few small mods in 1.6.2) it caused the same sort of high memory churn that vanilla 1.8+ causes (due to an extreme rate of object allocation/deallocation, not to be confused with actual memory usage), though it did not noticeably impact performance or memory usage with the mods I had.
FWIW, these are the JVM arguments that I use: -Xmx512M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy -Xmn128M -Xss1024K
These are basically the same as the default (I think they recently changed them) except I replaced Xmx1G with Xmx512M (Xmn was not changed but it is often recommended to be 1/3 of Xmx, so 128 MB is actually a better match for Xmx here), removed CMSIncremental mode (which was designed for single-core CPUs and had been deprecated in Java 8 and removed in Java 9), and added Xss1024K, which allocates the default stack space that 64 bit Java uses (32 bit defaults to 320K, which has lead to stack overflow crashes caused by water and lava mixing during world generation). The main reason I changed the memory allocation is because, at least on my old computer, 1 GB has lead to an "out of memory" error when render distances higher than Normal are used (an in-game message which is not an actual crash; from what I've been able to find it appears to be due to the 32 bit process space being exhausted as it has occurred with F3 showing plenty of free memory. I have not seen this yet on my current computer despite it also having a 32 bit OS).
I think as these performance issues affect some and not others my best bet is to do some testing first, trying every version from 1.6.4 up to the latest release to see how much the performance is impacted, and whether or not the new additions are worth the drop in performance.
My system is also running on an old platform, Ivy Bridge 3770k, but everything is heavily overclocked, and I do mean heavily, which puts me off updating as only the newer Intel SKUs that easily push 5GHz or higher are really worth my attention, but at €700-800 just for a platform change and maybe 20% more CPU horsepower, I can't justify it yet.
I can't speak for versions below 1.7, but yes, you are correct about the render distance bug on 1.7, I totally forgot about that. Damn, that might also be a killer for me. If I remember correctly I read that the render distance physically wouldn't go above 8 no matter what setting was used, which for me is far too short.
I really hope that isn't an issue on 1.6.4 or at least hopefully there's a mod or fix for it.
You're telling me; my Core i5 2500K is even older and only overclocked to 4 GHz, and I feel almost no reason to spend that much when CPU improvements have just been getting smaller (then again, I'm old fashioned and also still on Windows 7 and like it). But, I'm okay with that, especially since RAM and GPU especially prices seemed to go way up recently to offset this. In the years past (think 1990s/early 2000s), after 3 years your CPU was already feeling slower. Now, there's some lasting power with them.
I wouldn't bother testing every version after 1.6.4, as some are known to have issues that get fixed later. As a result, you may come to the conclusion that they have many issues and may not be worth the features. That's why I simply said 1.10.2 works very well for me, even though I also initially felt the performance drops 1.7 and 1.8 (pretty much everyone did) and tried many versions between. I don't think there's any major extra performance demands beyond what 1.8.x increased them to, so you can see the features of versions released later as not needing much more performance. I wouldn't really bother messing with 1.7 or 1.8 now unless you specifically wanted to get into 1.7.10 for mods.
For what it's worth, I stayed with 1.6.4 for a long time after 1.7 released. 1.7 and 1.7.2 had the render distance issue of not going above normal or 8 chunks, and I think it was fixed in 1.7.4. Some time around 1.7.4, 1.7.5, or 1.7.6, I finally updated, and by 1.7.10 it felt okay. 1.8 was also performance issues galore. I think I honestly skipped right past this major version and went to 1.9.x, only for 1.10 to release, and so I updated to it, where I still am today. I'm not refusing to update for any reason of the game itself, by the way. It's mostly procrastination, but once 1.13 releases I may update (I think it requires texture pack changes, which I also need to do now, so may as well wait instead of doing it twice). For what it's worth, modern versions can go up to 32 chunks natively now without mod or OptiFine support (I still use OptiFine for other reasons, like the custom color feature, fancy fog feature on nVidia hardware, and the performance benefits).
Also worth mentioning, if I load my world up and immediately try running around, exchanging items in chests, etc., it's hitching a bit. Once I give it 20 seconds or so to load, it settles, even after I then start moving around and loading more chunks. This could as much be due to playing on a render distance of 32 though. Performance in recent versions is okay for me despite having high demands and settings.
Another thing to note is that when comparing versions before and after 1.8 you should test with "Advanced OpenGL" (hardware-based occlusion culling) enabled and disabled in older versions since this was replaced with a custom software-based occlusion culling implementation in 1.8 which is hardware-independent and generally better for computers with non-Nvidia GPUs, where AOGL can actually worsen performance (the relative performance of the CPU/GPU also matters as it trades a reduced GPU load for an increased CPU load, the 1.8+ implementation is also similar but cannot be toggled as far as I know). The 1.8 system has far more visual glitches though, especially when compared with Optifine's AOGL implementation; I do not know if it improves the 1.8 system.
This... explains a lot. I always noticed massive performance differences with the old Advanced OpenGL on, and it was so much worse with it off. With 1.8, it performed somewhere in the middle of how a previous version would with it on or off for me. I would guess a large deal of 1.8 performing worse after a previous major release already dropped performance came from this change?
I also noticed some occasions where there are always small visual "holes" in the world when viewed from a certain spot and angle, although these holes were just visual/rendering. There's no abnormalities with the actual chunks, blocks, or data. They are usually minor and from a distance, and not very common, but they are always consistent and not random. For example, in my world, this visual "hole" is always here when viewed from this approximate area. If I got closer and go into the cave, however, it renders properly.
If I turn 180 degrees and pillar up slightly, and look between a ship I have and another cave entrance, there's a small visual hole on the floor of the ocean between them.
Again, it's minor and not at all common for me, but as soon as you described that change, it was like a "so that's why" moment, because I noticed the changes after 1.8.
You're telling me; my Core i5 2500K is even older and only overclocked to 4 GHz, and I feel almost no reason to spend that much when CPU improvements have just been getting smaller (then again, I'm old fashioned and also still on Windows 7 and like it). But, I'm okay with that, especially since RAM and GPU especially prices seemed to go way up recently to offset this. In the years past (think 1990s/early 2000s), after 3 years your CPU was already feeling slower. Now, there's some lasting power with them.
Exactly that. There definitely are a lot of benefits to updating, NVME SSD support is a big one I'd like to have and native type-c and USB 3.2 support
Hey, I only just recently updated from Windows 7 as well, and I do miss it. Many things on Windows 10 just rub me the wrong way. I had a perfect custom ISO image of Win 7 Ultimate - I had edited the ISO to remove all the Windows/MS bloatware, everything from IE, all media rubbish, fax support to troubleshooting and help pages. It was glorious! It reduced the install size by roughly 55%, it booted from BIOS post in under 7 seconds, shutdown in 2 maybe 3, it was instantly responsive, no private data mining, no forced updates, it was just frickin' amazing... oh my word I miss it.
But I ran into an issue when I tried playing/modding GTA5 last year. Rockstar forced some stupid ridiculous requirement for installing it and running the intro splash screens - I can't remember the exact name but it was something like "Windows Media Slideshow Feature Package" - and without it the game wouldn't even download. I tried everything, but ended up with a decision; completely reinstall my OS from scratch with no mods, or don't play the game and waste €40. So, I decided (begrudgingly) to try Windows 10 if I was going to be forced into running a stock non-modded OS.
Don't get me wrong, you can if you take a little time tweak a huge amount to disable all the data mining piracy rubbish with registry edits, and it does have some good features, but it is slow and less responsive compared to Win 7.
I wouldn't bother testing every version after 1.6.4, as some are known to have issues that get fixed later. As a result, you may come to the conclusion that they have many issues and may not be worth the features. That's why I simply said 1.10.2 works very well for me, even though I also initially felt the performance drops 1.7 and 1.8 (pretty much everyone did) and tried many versions between. I don't think there's any major extra performance demands beyond what 1.8.x increased them to, so you can see the features of versions released later as not needing much more performance. I wouldn't really bother messing with 1.7 or 1.8 now unless you specifically wanted to get into 1.7.10 for mods
That's a good point, thanks for that. I roughly remember what 1.7 was like performance wise, and I remember the shi poop-show that was 1.8, so I think I'll try 1.6.4, 1.10 and maybe the latest to see what it's like.
This... explains a lot. I always noticed massive performance differences with the old Advanced OpenGL on, and it was so much worse with it off. With 1.8, it performed somewhere in the middle of how a previous version would with it on or off for me. I would guess a large deal of 1.8 performing worse after a previous major release already dropped performance came from this change?
I also noticed some occasions where there are always small visual "holes" in the world when viewed from a certain spot and angle, although these holes were just visual/rendering. There's no abnormalities with the actual chunks, blocks, or data. They are usually minor and from a distance, and not very common, but they are always consistent and not random. For example, in my world, this visual "hole" is always here when viewed from this approximate area. If I got closer and go into the cave, however, it renders properly.
This might be a different issue but it's very similar to this:
This looks a lot like the OpenGL and Nvidia Threading issue.
If you haven't tried this already: open your Nvidia control panel, select Manage 3D settings, then select Program Settings and either find Minecraft on the list or add it manually, then scroll down the options until you find Threaded Optimisation and disable it, then apply and exit. This fixes the random holes and transparent patches in the ground.
This might be a different issue but it's very similar to this:
This looks a lot like the OpenGL and Nvidia Threading issue.
If you haven't tried this already: open your Nvidia control panel, select Manage 3D settings, then select Program Settings and either find Minecraft on the list or add it manually, then scroll down the options until you find Threaded Optimisation and disable it, then apply and exit. This fixes the random holes and transparent patches in the ground.
I wish that would have fixed it, but alas! I just checked where you said, and found that it's... already disabled, probably because years ago I had that issue with OptiFine and the multi-core chunk rendering.
That issue would lead to a whole lot of terrain surface becoming invisible, and (I believe) was random. This is a bit different. The same terrain is always afflicted and seems to be a bug (for lack of better terms) to the new method of... occlusion calling (is it called?) that they introduced in 1.8 and onward. It's usually minor and rare though (I can probably count the number of times I've seen it in years), so it's not too detracting.
Hi everybody,
I've been away from MC for a couple of years now because the last time I tried to play, about the time v1.8 released, the game was unplayable. Even on a high-end rig, I was stuttering around at < 20fps, with huge lag spikes, stuttering, freezing... etc. I was informed this was due to the v1.8 update and the new way worlds were rendered, and that a large portion of players were experiencing the same issue thus the majority were going back to using v1.7.*.
So, I was wondering as it's been a long time, have any of the new updates that released since I was away resolved or improved these issues, or are most people still playing on v1.7.* for stability and performance??
Appreciate any feedback.
Thanks.
I never had an issue with anything like that, and my computer at the time didn't even have the minimum requirements for specs for Minecraft. But if I remember correctly 1.9 added VBO rendering that you can toggle on and off. That seems to make the game load better.
Check out my Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKgkHO1PUgitEdM6su0P8pg
Interesting, I knew it didn't affect everyone but I wonder if there was a catalyst; like those who used OptiFine or alternative, high-end hardware, OS version... etc.
When I last played at length, it was on 1.7.2, I believe 1.7.8 or 1.7.10 was the latest version at that time. I was able to mod the hell out the game, adding tons of new mobs, textures, biomes, assets, and run either SEUS Ultra or Continuum shaders, while maintaining a fairly steady 60-90fps at 2560x1440.
But when I returned to MC around 1.8/1.9 I could barely reach 90fps on vanilla - and when I tried modding it like I normally would, it just broke the game completely, a laggy, stuttering, 5fps slideshow, it was just a broken mess.
I tried a number of supposed fixes/improvements which if I remember correctly they helped a little, but it was still unplayable, so after a dozen or more hours trying to fix it, I gave up and went back to 1.7.5.
I was just hoping that now after another year+, the bugs might have been worked out.
I can't say for sure but 1.8 ran without significant problems on my current computer, which is not exactly high-end, if still not as well as older versions (I have not tried Optifine but 1.6.4 runs better on Far render distance than 1.12.2 does on Normal and world generation is 3 times faster in 1.6.4); my old computer had enough problems with 1.8 though to be considered unplayable (e.g. dropping to 1-2 FPS near/in water and requiring 4 chunk render distance, which also breaks things like mob spawning, a still-unfixed issue present since 1.7.4) and this was a major contributor to the fact that I never updated past 1.6.4 (even 1.7 had a strange issue where the game hitched for half a second every 10th frame regardless of settings (Optifine's lag-o-meter showed e.g. 100 FPS between spikes but average FPS was only half as high and apparent FPS was 10) and when I tried Optifine on 1.8, which had the same issue in addition to general lag, it caused textures to flash all colors of the rainbow).
Even now, I still have not updated past 1.6.4 (I continue to play very heavily, averaging 3.47 hours per day of playtime last year) and don't see myself updating because I started "updating" the game myself with my own mods, which I now see as my own version of the game (I don't really care for most of the newer features, and any that I do I can just mod them in; conversely, I would never play in 1.7+ without using mods to change various things).
It is also worth noting that a lot of players have probably upgraded to newer computers since 1.8 came out, if not necessarily because of lag, just part of the normal upgrade cycle, as was the case for myself (software generally becomes more demanding with time as hardware improves, enabling more/better features; of course, some developers use this an an excuse to become lax on optimization and some of the code changes in 1.8+ are questionable at best).
Here is a comparison of the system requirements as of 1.6, prior to 1.8 release, and now:
CPU : Intel P4/NetBurst Architecture or its AMD Equivalent (AMD K7)
RAM : 2GB
GPU : Intel GMA 950 or AMD Equivalent with OpenGL 1.2 Support
HDD : At least 90MB for Game Core and Sound Files
Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 or up is required to be able to run the game.
Recommended Requirements:
CPU : Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
RAM : 4GB
GPU : GeForce 6xxx or ATI Radeon 9xxx and up with OpenGL 2 Support (Excluding Integrated Chipsets)
HDD : 150MB
CPU: Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 (K8) 2.6 GHz
RAM: 2GB
GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics or AMD (formerly ATI) Radeon HD Graphics with OpenGL 2.1
GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT or AMD Radeon HD 2400 with OpenGL 3.1
HDD: At least 200MB for Game Core and Other Files
Java 6 Release 45
Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i3 or AMD Athlon II (K10) 2.8 GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: GeForce 2xx Series or AMD Radeon HD 5xxx Series (Excluding Integrated Chipsets) with OpenGL 3.3
HDD: 1GB
Latest release of Java 7 from java.com
CPU: Intel Core i3-3210 3.2 GHz / AMD A8-7600 APU 3.1 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 2GB
GPU (Integrated): Intel HD Graphics 4000 (Ivy Bridge) or AMD Radeon R5 series (Kaveri line) with OpenGL 4.4*
GPU (Discrete): Nvidia GeForce 400 Series or AMD Radeon HD 7000 series with OpenGL 4.4
HDD: At least 1GB for game core, maps and other files
OS:
- Windows: Windows 7 and up
- macOS: OS X 10.9 Maverick
- Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards
Internet connectivity is required for downloading Minecraft files, afterwards offline play is possible.
*Current minimum OpenGL requirements is 1.3, but modern GPUs often ship with newer versions of OpenGL
Recommended Requirements:
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690 3.5GHz / AMD A10-7800 APU 3.5 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 4GB
GPU: GeForce 700 Series or AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series (excluding integrated chipsets) with OpenGL 4.5
HDD: 4GB (SSD is recommended)
OS (recommended 64-bit):
- Windows: Windows 10
- macOS: macOS 10.12 Sierra
- Linux: Any modern distributions from 2014 onwards
https://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/articles/325948-minecraft-system-requirements
I actually haven't tried newer versions for a while and the latest minimum system requirement for the CPU exceeds my computer's specs (2.8 GHz quad-core CPU), and the recommended exceed all of them, and only a year after I got a "new" computer (a secondhand one), but with hardware that was 8 years newer than my last one, which met all the recommended requirements for 1.6 aside from RAM, but the game doesn't need that much; as mentioned before, this is the price of progress (then again, the game itself hasn't really changed much in e.g. graphical quality and my own modding experience shows it is entirely possible to add all the features added since 1.6.4 with negligible performance impact; in fact, I've even offset them by optimizing the game, such as making the lighting engine 4x faster, cutting the time taken to generate biomes with gigantic 64 block tall trees by more than half).
Also, while 1.7.10 is still the most popular version for mods this is mainly due to various changes in 1.8 which made it difficult for modders to update their mods, and many of them are slowly being updated/replaced with 1.12.2 possibly to be the next major modded version given that 1.13 is making even more significant changes (my opinion is that it doesn't really matter what version a mod is based on if it makes major changes to the core game, as my own mod does). Of course, this includes optimization mods, although I have not tried any of them, even Optifine (which from what I understand does not fix some of the issues with 1.8+, like the extreme rate of object allocation (10-20x faster than older versions) which forces the garbage collector to work harder regardless of actual memory usage. The fact that my old computer only had a dual-core CPU likely played a big part in this since it meant that there was not much margin to run the GC alongside the client and server threads, as sp614x mentioned. Their description of the rendering engine; "an over-engineered monster full of factories, builders, bakeries, baked items, managers, dispatchers, states, enums and layers" is also true of the rest of the game, which has increased exponentially in size and complexity since 1.8).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Wow, thank you for such a detailed reply, that really helps.
I stopped playing on 1.7.* because I was getting bored of sorts, once I'd reached a point were I couldn't really run out of materials, whether diamond or wood, plus having the best enchantments, the game stopped feeling challenging and started to feel samey, I needed a new challenge, new things to do and explore, therefore I took a break for 9 months or so until the 1.8 update released. Once it dropped I was eager to get into MC and explore all the new things the update added, but the performance killed it for me so went on another break - which turned into years instead of months.
So, now I've come back assuming the performance issues would be resolved and I would have tons of new things to find, explore, harvest, kill, etc, But... your post above about staying on 1.6.4 made me check the MC Wiki, I thought I'd take a look at the hundreds of amazing new things I would be missing out on if I played on 1.6.4, and to my shock and amazement, it's hardly anything, I mean there's a few mobs and blocks I would kind of miss, maybe a biome or two, but other than that I can't see any real significant changes that I would class as game changers.
I'm actually struggling to find a reason to play on anything above 1.6.4, like you said, most of these additions can probably be modded into the game or at least something similar, and I would be able to run my favourite shader and texture/resource pack without having to make compromises to keep a framerate above 60fps. The only thing that might prevent me from rolling back to 1.6.4 is going to be a few of my essential mods aren't compatible with 1.6.4 or were released after that update, that might be an issue.
It's really surprising when you actually sit down and take a list of what's been added, at least in my opinion it's very little unless I missed something big on the Wiki page. No new dimensions, no real stand-out unique mobs, no new resources like diamond or iron... I can't really see much at all.
Therefore, I think I may be joining you on 1.6.4 once I know that some mods I can't live without are compatible.
Thank you for the info and help, TheMasterCaver, I really appreciate it.
Really, the only real reason to play on anything above 1.7 is most servers may not support it any more. I don't know for sure, but 1.7 was released in 2013 or 2014 (Which is it? the newest version when I got Minecraft was 1.7.10), meaning that I'm assuming that the oldest supported version for most servers will be 1.8 or 1.9, and 1.13 will be released sometime in the next few months, so yeah.
Well, also, Minecraft maps will need to be in at least whatever version it was released in, like Asleep needs to be in 1.8, it's sequel needs to be in 1.10, etc. Some builds, like houses and cities and such, may be able to get away with going 2 or 3 versions earlier than it was built in.
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Versions 1.7 and 1.8 initially were major shifts upwards in performance demands, paired with some issues, as you noticed. I believe the issues may have been mostly worked out, between new versions of the game, Java, OptiFine, etc. perhaps. My hardware has not changed in years, save for a graphics card upgrade on my desktop.
My desktop plays 1.10.2 very well for me. I use OptiFine. I play with the maximum render distance of 32, and a lot of anti-aliasing thrown on top for good measure (this really hurts performance) and still maintain nearly 60 FPS (1920 x 1200 resolution), which is my refresh rate, unless I am very near/looking towards a lot of mobs (like my village which has a lot of villagers), then maybe it drops towards the 40s. I'm using a pretty old now platform with this computer consisting of a Core i5 2500K and 16 GB of RAM, although it has a more recent GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB and an SSD.
My laptop also plays 1.10.2 very well, also actually at a pretty much constant 60 FPS and perhaps feeling even more consistent at it than my desktop does, albeit it at a lower render distance of 12 or 14 or somewhere in that range, and of course no anti-aliasing, which is why. It's much more lower end of hardware, having a Core i3 4010U, 6 GB of RAM, and the Intel graphics, but also an SSD. I also use OptiFine here.
Didn't versions 1.3.x to 1.6.4 have an issue to where the Far render distance, which should have been 16 chunks, was only rendering something like 10 chunks? I recall this being because 1.3 changed (or rather got rid of the old) single-player in favor of multiplayer (which is also when the LAN feature was added as a result), and the internal server was set to 10 chunks regardless or rendering distance.
A bit unrelated, but the early 1.7 versions also had a similar issue if I am remembering right (they had some issue with render distance beyond a point not working, I know that much, and something made it more apparent here which made many people comment on it) until it was finally fixed.
Edit:
Don't get me wrong, 1.2.5 to 1.6.4 were nostalgic times for me, but vanilla to vanilla, there's actually a very different (and positive) change to the game comparing those versions to the latest ones, so I can not agree with this assumption. I can see why you might come to that conclusion looking at a list, but I'd recommend you to try and see despite the list, because they genuinely feel like very different eras in the game.
The new combat, the new terrain and biomes, the completely overhauled End dimension, the elytra, the new blocks and terracotta, new water temples and woodland mansions, as well as appropriate mobs, also other new mobs, major changes to storage potential with shulker boxes, and I'm just scratching the surface and I'm sure I'm missing a couple of other notable ones. 1.7's terrain generation did take a few steps backwards (mostly because of an overly aggressive climate system that was introduced) as well as forwards, and there were the initial performance issues with it and 1.8, but that aside, everything else is great with the newer versions, and now you have 1.13 coming overhauling the aquatic aspects of the game
I understand it is a very old and outdated version now, but as I'm only interested in SP it shouldn't be an issue.
I think as these performance issues affect some and not others my best bet is to do some testing first, trying every version from 1.6.4 up to the latest release to see how much the performance is impacted, and whether or not the new additions are worth the drop in performance.
My system is also running on an old platform, Ivy Bridge 3770k, but everything is heavily overclocked, and I do mean heavily, which puts me off updating as only the newer Intel SKUs that easily push 5GHz or higher are really worth my attention, but at €700-800 just for a platform change and maybe 20% more CPU horsepower, I can't justify it yet.
I can't speak for versions below 1.7, but yes, you are correct about the render distance bug on 1.7, I totally forgot about that. Damn, that might also be a killer for me. If I remember correctly I read that the render distance physically wouldn't go above 8 no matter what setting was used, which for me is far too short.
I really hope that isn't an issue on 1.6.4 or at least hopefully there's a mod or fix for it.
Yeah, I get what you're saying; looking at a text list is one thing, but seeing it in-game is a totally different experience. You are most probably right, but I spent some time last night reading about TheMasterCaver overhaul mod that effectively adds all (most) of the new additions that were added in 1.7 and above, plus a lot more. It's mods like that which make me feel 1.6.4 is still very appealing as most things can be quickly modded into the game so you're not missing out too much.
Again, I think I need to do some testing to see what I would potentially be missing out on versus the performance hit. My rig is still on the high(ish)-end although an old platform, but the shaders I like to use, plus running at a fair high resolution (3440x1440) they absolutely kick the poop out of any system regardless of how new or powerful it is, so I need to run on a version that offers good vanilla (base) performance otherwise I struggle maintaining a reasonably high framerate once I've installed the visual mods.
I am running on a less powerful end computer, but I have zero lag and I get 70-120 fps on my machine, that's on 1.8. on 1.12.2 I get 40-80 with everything maxed out excluding render distance, minecraft 1.8 has a max render distance of 32 chunks, which I don't have it set to usually because of the 20%-30% decrease in performance and how usually do you look that far, but on 1.12.2 with the render distance set to that there is a 40%-60% decrease in fps, so 10-30 fps at the max on my machine, while at 24 chunk render distance there is only a 10-20% decrease (standard testing is 18 chunk render distance for both versions) and 1.12.2, the decrease is 20-40% fps drop. at a resolution of 1920x1080p. at 1080p its has a drop of 2%-3% decrease in both versions.
my machine specs are/ an AMD A6 6310 quadcore cpu with internal graphics set to 856mb, and an overclock at 2.4ghz and runs at a temperature of 10-20 degrees centigrade. with an overclock of 2.6ghz, its temperature is at 15-28 degrees, and 2.8ghz its at 30-40, and at 3.0ghz, which is way above the stock overclock by 0.6ghz and way obove the stock speed of 1.8ghz, it runs at 40+ degrees, so I don't have it set to that, that's with the stock cooler, and my RAM is at 8gb of ddr3 memory. minecraft runs mainly on core 0, if it cant fully run on that it tries core 3, the 2 and one combined, and then it increases temperature, then decreases fps, what optifine does is it uses all cores evenly and distributes the load better decreasing temperature boosting fps.
This is true, due to the internal server's view distance being hardcoded at 10 chunks, but even when increased to 16 (not using Optifine) 1.6.4 runs better, particularly for server-side stuff (world generation and average tick time). Part of this is due to the fact that 1.6.4 uses a fixed chunk update radius of 7 chunks while in 1.7.4+ it depends on the view distance but even a 1:1 comparison shows 1.6.4 as being better (naturally, more features will increase resource usage and slow things down but the difference is more than I'd expect; for example, the change to the height limit of terrain in 1.7 doubled the number of blocks it must iterate over when a chunk is generated, but this doesn't mean that overall world generation should be twice as slow, and it actually isn't for 1.7.x. I suspect that the internal move to blockstates and code that is highly encapsulated explains the slowdown in 1.8+; for example, I compared some of the code in 1.8 to 1.6.4 in this old post; the more layers of methods and object calls and get/set/conversions there are the slower things will get; for example, x = blockPos.getX() will be slower than x = posX).
Optifine fixes it, although you must be on 17 chunks (Far + 16) or more due to a bug in Optifine itself; it doesn't increase the view distance from 10 unless the render distance is greater than 16:
public static int getChunkViewDistance() { if (gameSettings == null) return 10; int chunkDistance = gameSettings.ofRenderDistanceFine / 16; if (chunkDistance <= 16) return 10; return chunkDistance; }I fixed this myself but I probably can't distribute such a modified copy of Optifine, even if it is just the one class that needs to be changed, and sp614x is unlikely to release an update to fix such an old version. Also, I actually reduced the minimum view distance to 8 so the game does not generate more than the necessary number of chunks for Normal, which I've always played on and see higher distances as wasteful (I spend virtually all my time underground and in-game maps only render 8 chunks, which means I can make surface renderings of my worlds without exposing anything I have not mapped in-game); to avoid issues with mob spawning I reduced the (de)spawn radius to 96 blocks so mobs can't exist in "lazy chunks", where they can't despawn and build up, which is actually what "reduces" mob spawning). As mentioned above, the chunk update radius in 1.6.4 is always 7 chunks so anything higher has no effect on crop growth and the like.
Also, it is worth noting that versions prior to 1.7.10 have several other issues; you have to use a resource pack if you want a custom skin since they recently shut down the skin server they used (I had long ago replaced the default skin with my own as insurance against normal server outages; I actually changed the skin inside the jar along with the few other textures I customized since I modded it anyway. However, multiplayer skins and custom heads will all be the default/your skin, which is also not an issue for me since I've never played multiplayer, or custom maps with one exception back in 2013. You also can't play multiplayer, at least with the official launcher, anyway since they don't recognize the session ID given to them by the launcher, which has no impact on singleplayer), and they do not have sound unless you use the older (Java required) launcher to download them and run the game once since the new one doesn't properly download the assets (they will still work once you go back to the current launcher, or at least they do for me as I've seen others say that this did not work; the files I have are all from when I got my current computer in mid-2016).
Another thing to note is that when comparing versions before and after 1.8 you should test with "Advanced OpenGL" (hardware-based occlusion culling) enabled and disabled in older versions since this was replaced with a custom software-based occlusion culling implementation in 1.8 which is hardware-independent and generally better for computers with non-Nvidia GPUs, where AOGL can actually worsen performance (the relative performance of the CPU/GPU also matters as it trades a reduced GPU load for an increased CPU load, the 1.8+ implementation is also similar but cannot be toggled as far as I know). The 1.8 system has far more visual glitches though, especially when compared with Optifine's AOGL implementation; I do not know if it improves the 1.8 system. Also, Optifine has various options for chunk "loading" (actually, rendering; it has nothing to do with loading chunks from disk) in older versions but not in 1.8+, and there are some other settings which work differently (e.g. in 1.6.4 the "smooth world" setting only works for single-core CPUs and works by evening out the internal server load, while in 1.8+ it works completely differently, including by unloading spawn chunks so they do not use memory and resources).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Sorry, what do you mean your temperatures run at 10-20c? Do you mean a 10-20c increase over idle?
Because a CPU or any component physically cannot run below ambient, unless you have a below ambient setup, like Peltier, Phase Change, LN2, a Chill Box... etc - either that or your room is close to freezing and you have ice on your monitor, haha
If you are actually getting readings of core temps at 10c, then you have an issue with either your software, BIOS or senors.
yes I mean an increase, so, at 3.0ghz, I am running at 80+ degrees. cpu temperature average is at 20-30c, (1.8-2.4ghz) sorry I didn't say that, and thank you for specifying.
P.S. if its doing full load at 3.0ghz my cpu shuts down from over heating meaning a 100+ degree temperature, so I learned, don't overclock a cpu to much!
My 2c
I got fairly high end PC: Core i7 couple years old, 16gb RAM, GTX1080(used to have 970) and MC runs on fast SSD. Vanilla MC with just OptiFine and a better texture pack ran fine with some occasional stutter but nothing game-breaking. Then I tried Forge mods: JMap,JEI, Abyssalcraft.
It became a nightmare. Literally it was move for half second - freeze for a second. Especially after going into Nether and back. I tried nuking graphics settings: 16 draw distance, fast graphics, flat lighting, simple clouds etc. No effect. When turning on lagometer, it showed massive orange (memory garbage collecting) spikes.
The culprit was JVM command line parameters. It was giving MC only one GB RAM. After tweaking those, giving MC 4GBs among other things, all issues evaporated. Silky smooth, no stutter, pop in/out of Nether as needed, graphics back to all max with 32 draw distance.
Once home tonight, will see if I can post my JVM parameters...
OK, no problem
100+c... Ouch! That's bad for Intel, but on AMD that crazy high. Good job you realised.
I know what you mean. I tried this back when I tried 1.8 and 1.9, the issues were so severe, I tried allocating 2GB, 4, 8, 10, I even tried 20+GB (I think it was 24GB to be exact) which is nuts and it didn't help at all.
I went as far as trying a huge string of Java arguments that a professional Java coder had suggested, changing the garbage collection, checking times, memory dumps, chunk load times, and about 50 other things, that helped with some issues but it was still pretty much unplayable, which is when I gave up.
by the way, I am a bit new to minecraft forums (not minecraft) and was wondering how do you get a quote from someone?
Just click the Quote button next to reply and report on the post you want to quote. If it's multiple quotes like I did above, click the Multi-quote button on all of the posts you want to quote and once you've selected them all, click the box that appears on the bottom right of your screen.
I've never been able to understand how even just a few mods require such insane amounts of resources; my own mod needs no more memory than vanilla; for example, I recently took this screenshot with render distance set to 12 chunks (C: x/10000 is 625 chunks * 16 sections; I used my patched version of Optifine so it actually loaded 625 chunks) - yet only 324 MB was allocated and 153 MB used and that after flying around for a while:
This also goes for the current developmental version of TMCW, which is becoming more and more on the scale of a major modpack, with a total of 85 biomes and 124 blocks and items added and countless other additions. Of course it is also a non-Forge mod and I believe that is a major part of the problem, since Forge mods are not "real" mods (i.e. they do not directly alter the game's code but relay on indirect "hooks" that Forge provides, which likely adds a significant amount of overhead; given the amount of code and textures for most of the blocks I've added they require far less than a megabyte of memory so even a modpack that uses every possible ID should not use more than a dozen MB or so for them unless it uses HD textures). IIRC, even with just Forge installed (back when I used it for a few small mods in 1.6.2) it caused the same sort of high memory churn that vanilla 1.8+ causes (due to an extreme rate of object allocation/deallocation, not to be confused with actual memory usage), though it did not noticeably impact performance or memory usage with the mods I had.
FWIW, these are the JVM arguments that I use: -Xmx512M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:-UseAdaptiveSizePolicy -Xmn128M -Xss1024K
These are basically the same as the default (I think they recently changed them) except I replaced Xmx1G with Xmx512M (Xmn was not changed but it is often recommended to be 1/3 of Xmx, so 128 MB is actually a better match for Xmx here), removed CMSIncremental mode (which was designed for single-core CPUs and had been deprecated in Java 8 and removed in Java 9), and added Xss1024K, which allocates the default stack space that 64 bit Java uses (32 bit defaults to 320K, which has lead to stack overflow crashes caused by water and lava mixing during world generation). The main reason I changed the memory allocation is because, at least on my old computer, 1 GB has lead to an "out of memory" error when render distances higher than Normal are used (an in-game message which is not an actual crash; from what I've been able to find it appears to be due to the 32 bit process space being exhausted as it has occurred with F3 showing plenty of free memory. I have not seen this yet on my current computer despite it also having a 32 bit OS).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
You're telling me; my Core i5 2500K is even older and only overclocked to 4 GHz, and I feel almost no reason to spend that much when CPU improvements have just been getting smaller (then again, I'm old fashioned and also still on Windows 7 and like it). But, I'm okay with that, especially since RAM and GPU especially prices seemed to go way up recently to offset this. In the years past (think 1990s/early 2000s), after 3 years your CPU was already feeling slower. Now, there's some lasting power with them.
I wouldn't bother testing every version after 1.6.4, as some are known to have issues that get fixed later. As a result, you may come to the conclusion that they have many issues and may not be worth the features. That's why I simply said 1.10.2 works very well for me, even though I also initially felt the performance drops 1.7 and 1.8 (pretty much everyone did) and tried many versions between. I don't think there's any major extra performance demands beyond what 1.8.x increased them to, so you can see the features of versions released later as not needing much more performance. I wouldn't really bother messing with 1.7 or 1.8 now unless you specifically wanted to get into 1.7.10 for mods.
For what it's worth, I stayed with 1.6.4 for a long time after 1.7 released. 1.7 and 1.7.2 had the render distance issue of not going above normal or 8 chunks, and I think it was fixed in 1.7.4. Some time around 1.7.4, 1.7.5, or 1.7.6, I finally updated, and by 1.7.10 it felt okay. 1.8 was also performance issues galore. I think I honestly skipped right past this major version and went to 1.9.x, only for 1.10 to release, and so I updated to it, where I still am today. I'm not refusing to update for any reason of the game itself, by the way. It's mostly procrastination, but once 1.13 releases I may update (I think it requires texture pack changes, which I also need to do now, so may as well wait instead of doing it twice). For what it's worth, modern versions can go up to 32 chunks natively now without mod or OptiFine support (I still use OptiFine for other reasons, like the custom color feature, fancy fog feature on nVidia hardware, and the performance benefits).
Also worth mentioning, if I load my world up and immediately try running around, exchanging items in chests, etc., it's hitching a bit. Once I give it 20 seconds or so to load, it settles, even after I then start moving around and loading more chunks. This could as much be due to playing on a render distance of 32 though. Performance in recent versions is okay for me despite having high demands and settings.
This... explains a lot. I always noticed massive performance differences with the old Advanced OpenGL on, and it was so much worse with it off. With 1.8, it performed somewhere in the middle of how a previous version would with it on or off for me. I would guess a large deal of 1.8 performing worse after a previous major release already dropped performance came from this change?
I also noticed some occasions where there are always small visual "holes" in the world when viewed from a certain spot and angle, although these holes were just visual/rendering. There's no abnormalities with the actual chunks, blocks, or data. They are usually minor and from a distance, and not very common, but they are always consistent and not random. For example, in my world, this visual "hole" is always here when viewed from this approximate area. If I got closer and go into the cave, however, it renders properly.
If I turn 180 degrees and pillar up slightly, and look between a ship I have and another cave entrance, there's a small visual hole on the floor of the ocean between them.
Again, it's minor and not at all common for me, but as soon as you described that change, it was like a "so that's why" moment, because I noticed the changes after 1.8.
Exactly that. There definitely are a lot of benefits to updating, NVME SSD support is a big one I'd like to have and native type-c and USB 3.2 support
Hey, I only just recently updated from Windows 7 as well, and I do miss it. Many things on Windows 10 just rub me the wrong way. I had a perfect custom ISO image of Win 7 Ultimate - I had edited the ISO to remove all the Windows/MS bloatware, everything from IE, all media rubbish, fax support to troubleshooting and help pages. It was glorious! It reduced the install size by roughly 55%, it booted from BIOS post in under 7 seconds, shutdown in 2 maybe 3, it was instantly responsive, no private data mining, no forced updates, it was just frickin' amazing... oh my word I miss it.
But I ran into an issue when I tried playing/modding GTA5 last year. Rockstar forced some stupid ridiculous requirement for installing it and running the intro splash screens - I can't remember the exact name but it was something like "Windows Media Slideshow Feature Package" - and without it the game wouldn't even download. I tried everything, but ended up with a decision; completely reinstall my OS from scratch with no mods, or don't play the game and waste €40. So, I decided (begrudgingly) to try Windows 10 if I was going to be forced into running a stock non-modded OS.
Don't get me wrong, you can if you take a little time tweak a huge amount to disable all the data mining piracy rubbish with registry edits, and it does have some good features, but it is slow and less responsive compared to Win 7.
That's a good point, thanks for that. I roughly remember what 1.7 was like performance wise, and I remember the
shipoop-show that was 1.8, so I think I'll try 1.6.4, 1.10 and maybe the latest to see what it's like.This might be a different issue but it's very similar to this:
This looks a lot like the OpenGL and Nvidia Threading issue.
If you haven't tried this already: open your Nvidia control panel, select Manage 3D settings, then select Program Settings and either find Minecraft on the list or add it manually, then scroll down the options until you find Threaded Optimisation and disable it, then apply and exit. This fixes the random holes and transparent patches in the ground.
I wish that would have fixed it, but alas! I just checked where you said, and found that it's... already disabled, probably because years ago I had that issue with OptiFine and the multi-core chunk rendering.
That issue would lead to a whole lot of terrain surface becoming invisible, and (I believe) was random. This is a bit different. The same terrain is always afflicted and seems to be a bug (for lack of better terms) to the new method of... occlusion calling (is it called?) that they introduced in 1.8 and onward. It's usually minor and rare though (I can probably count the number of times I've seen it in years), so it's not too detracting.