[nvidia] the performance drop in NS2
ezekel
Join Date: 2012-11-29 Member: 173589Members, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2012-11-29 Member: 173589Members, NS2 Map Tester
So it turns out one card in specific the 970 gtx by nvidia (probably more) begin to stop working properly when they get near their VRAM max. Since the latest ns2 updates I noticed my framerate went to crap (but im using agtx 680) and a few other 900x series users reported the same.
So whether or not this is GPU specific (seems unlikely) I believe this is a driver problem by nvidia, and anyone with the 900 series should essentially be screwed as the first gpu driver (344.11 WHQL) that supports the 900 series apparently has this issue. . So basically anyone with a 900 series will have issues, and anyone below that series using 344.11 above should have issues.
I believe you don't notice it in other games because no other game comes close to using your maximum VRAM like ns2 does.
So whether or not this is GPU specific (seems unlikely) I believe this is a driver problem by nvidia, and anyone with the 900 series should essentially be screwed as the first gpu driver (344.11 WHQL) that supports the 900 series apparently has this issue. . So basically anyone with a 900 series will have issues, and anyone below that series using 344.11 above should have issues.
I believe you don't notice it in other games because no other game comes close to using your maximum VRAM like ns2 does.
Comments
Just want to say this is me brainstorming, I'm just making what I think is a relation here
That problem happens when using 3.5gb of vram, and I don't think ns2 uses that much.
Since they were reporting performance issues BEFORE 273.. and they were the only ones reporting this.
Are you also getting performance drops too? In the main thread I made the post about my performance drops - so you think something got loose in one of the updates?
My performance problems came from 272(still exists in 273), before that I don't believe I had any - but like I said I changed drivers in the meanwhile and just thought it was the main cause
Uhhhh what can I do on my end to supply info to help u guys out if anything
Then post that on the appropriate nvidia driver forums - bonus points if you tweet some PR monkey, or any other means of contacting Nvidia that you can think of.
While we're at it : paging @Dictator93 in case he still has his inside guy at Nvidia
If you are a 970 or 980 GTX user and are tracking this VRAM allocation issue and do not want to roll back your drivers (because 344.11 has great input delay changes) you can simply limit the amount of VRAM that Natural selection 2 uses in the options! Either change the Texture memory setting to 1.5 GB (since higher than that is 2GB+ = unlimited, really) OR for something more accurate, you can manually type in the console "r_texmax 3072" without the quotes.
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/does-the-geforce-gtx-970-have-a-memory-allocation-bug.html
I really don't think that is related. Only the 970 is affected by that, and 980's are having issues with ns2 also. That and I don't think ns2 uses more than 3.5GB of vram ever. The memory is partitioned in such a way that it will use all of the 3.5GB before using the .5GB of slower memory.
Here is a great write up on the issue, or more non issue.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8935/geforce-gtx-970-correcting-the-specs-exploring-memory-allocation/4
One of our new CDT members got the VRAM to 4 GB when using OpenGL
Still though, the vram problem is only on the 970 not the 980.
Over 3.5 GB usage can equal 50% loss in FPS in some games
edit: Ok i see what you mean with the issue being 970 specific, but I think it doesn't matter if the end result is the same. Not that I would ever game with 4k resolutions anyways
Prior to this build everything was fine. Now am getting massive FPS drops, especially if I am throwing a nade
Nvidia driver version 347.09
Game is unplayable now....
Experiencing exactly the same thing @Zavaro and @IronHorse
Rocking a MSI GTX 770 using the latest Geforce drivers, cluster grenades will cause my fps to plummet from 80fps right down to below 30fps, this never happened pre 273.
I have renamed clusters FPS grenades for the meantime, as I don't get any frames when I use them
I even lowered the texture memory ingame to 1.5 instead of 2gig to see if that made a difference, it didn't.
I'll upload the files you need first, then rollback my driver to see if the conditions change, atleast we can narrow it down to definately being the driver and not so much the cards or patch 273 themselves.
Please see if your issue still exists after the hotfix is released today (very shortly)
What exactly was causing it @Zavaro
I don't know what happened with NS2 but after almost a year of "FPS improvements" my FPS just keeps getting worse on higher end hardware, that sees no improvements in FPS from GPU or CPU overclocks or SLI.
I wouldn't say it's GTX970 owners only @IronHorse I really don't expect to drop sub 100FPS with this hardware when a year ago I didn't go below 120 doing the same lap of kodiak when it was arguably less optimized.
It's a stuttery mess on low
It wasnt just 970, my 770 was brought to its knees before the hotfix came out.
We began getting reports during a time when it had been over a month since we had pushed out an update.
@Cr4zyb4st4rd I Wish you would have used the same 5960 for that last test with a 680.. now it's hard to determine if the FPS difference is from that 4770k
In any case 100 fps for a minimum is not a bad state for a game - that being said we can still look into this despite my suspicion of it being driver induced.
Can you supply your techsupport zip file ... and are you familiar with how to make Plogs?
Edit: Have you tried rolling back your drivers pre 344.11 WHQL ?
I've run some tests looks like something else is atleast causing some of my FPS differances between systems, not neccesarily NS2. It's just a massive 35FPS differance between systems.
However, 344.11 makes 0 FPS differance and SLI also appears to be making things worse.
It should still work for the card though.
I have submitted a report with Nvidia and they said they are looking at it