Detailed Stats/ GPU bottleneck?
SloppyKisses
omgawd a furreh!Virginia Join Date: 2003-07-05 Member: 17942Members, Constellation
omgawd a furreh!Virginia Join Date: 2003-07-05 Member: 17942Members, Constellation
I know many say that this game is very heavily relied on CPU, but my GPU is rather old, and before i tell you what my GPU is, by looking at this detailed information would you still say its the processor that is currently limiting my FPS ingame?
My FPS still drastically drops down to 10-15 FPS randomly and rather often, including in a full server.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/98OlO.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
from my understanding, since none of my cores are actually reaching 100% that it still has computing power to spare and should not have a fps drop off, yes? If this is true, would it be my video card hindering current performance?
EDIT: Mu CPU is a i7 2.93ghz turbo unlocked to nearly 4ghz as you can see in the data. Also, despite my rather old GPU I can still run games like BF3, SKYRIM and others on perfectly high-mid range settings and keep a stable 60 FPS. Even with setting everything to off or low on NS2 i'm still having the FPS troubles. Also before you remind me that the game is still not fully optimized thats not the point here. i would still like to know whats bottlenecking my overall fps.
My FPS still drastically drops down to 10-15 FPS randomly and rather often, including in a full server.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/98OlO.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
from my understanding, since none of my cores are actually reaching 100% that it still has computing power to spare and should not have a fps drop off, yes? If this is true, would it be my video card hindering current performance?
EDIT: Mu CPU is a i7 2.93ghz turbo unlocked to nearly 4ghz as you can see in the data. Also, despite my rather old GPU I can still run games like BF3, SKYRIM and others on perfectly high-mid range settings and keep a stable 60 FPS. Even with setting everything to off or low on NS2 i'm still having the FPS troubles. Also before you remind me that the game is still not fully optimized thats not the point here. i would still like to know whats bottlenecking my overall fps.
Comments
The issue with any game is that there's a very high amount of system setups, and any of these can prove to have some special cases you need to adress.
Just to be sure (you probably already have tried); get the newest drivers and so on.
I have a ATI 4870 512mb and I play on 1024x768 in order to maximize my FPS. If I put it up to 1280×800 I notice about a 10fps drop on a local server.
Assuming i have hyper threading enabled (not sure) based on those processor stats would you say my CPU is the bottleneck? or even better yet, how can i check which core NS2 is running on at the time, as well as check if i have HT on?
<!--quoteo(post=1980806:date=Sep 20 2012, 10:56 AM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Sep 20 2012, 10:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1980806"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Try running a local server and see what your fps is. Then turn down the resolution and see if you notice improvements. If your GPU is a bottleneck you would expect your FPS to go up as you turn down the resolution. However I suspect when playing on an actual server the CPU will be doing more work and may become the bottleneck again.
I have a ATI 4870 512mb and I play on 1024x768 in order to maximize my FPS. If I put it up to 1280×800 I notice about a 10fps drop on a local server.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Im currently too busy at the moment, but i will surely give this a try and update the thread as soon as i can.
So I would think that your CPU is probably not the bottleneck. I say this because there is no historical record of any HT unit maxing out the CPU, but there is clear history of the GPU core being maxed out.
As an experiment, you can disable HT in the bios to see if single-thread procedures gain in performance, but from looking at those stats, I wouldn't expect to see much change.
So I would think that your CPU is probably not the bottleneck. I say this because there is no historical record of any HT unit maxing out the CPU, but there is clear history of the GPU core being maxed out.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
so most likely, long story short an upgraded GPU will most likely solve my fps problems then? Thanks! i guess what im really trying to ask is if my processor should be satisfactory enough without an upgrade, to run the game smoothly, so long as i have a way better gpu?
I didn't mention my GPU at first in this thread because i didn't want unbiased answers without anyone actually looking at the details of the processor first, but since we've pretty much established my CPU should be adequate enough to run the game smoothly with a decent GPU in place. I'm currently running a GTS 250 1GB DDR3. I know its on the low end of the spectrum, but like i said before. I first wanted to make sure my processor is adequate enough for smooth fps so long as i buy a higher end GPU lol.
awesome answer! Every now and then i hit 8ms and its not at 0. So now that i know it's the GPU for sure, what about my CPU? Do you think its still in the higher end ranges of things to perform well with a better GPU?
a GTS 250 - I didn't list it in the beginning of the thread because i didnt want unbaised answers without anyone actually looking at my processor specs first lol. I know i NEED a new GPU, but mostly, wanted to make sure that NS2 was not also bottlenecking my processor as well and that my processor is adequate enough to run NS2 without a CPU upgrade.
I do, i run with everything off and or on low settings :P Only suggestion i have not tried yet is running at a lower resolution. Someone pointed out early that lower resolutions should increase FPS
what should the x number be at if everythings in perfect harmony? lol
edit: apologies for the double post. Its been a long day
would that be in the bios?
no, it's a windows configuration
To access your Windows 7 power management plan, go to > Start and type > power options in the search field. Under > Control Panel pick the top result, i.e. > Power Options.
I'm _very_ GPU limited, even without ambient occlusion, shadows, and with only 1280*800. What I'd like to know is: what amount of imporvements should we expect on the GPU perf side? Rocket as a new "LUA engine"/whatever sounds more like CPU perf and thread contention improvements. Is there some improvements to be expected for someone who is amost constantly seeing > 0 ms (around 20ms usually , much worse in combat) spend waiting for GPU, in the next weeks? And how much "room for improvement" is there on the GPU side, longterm? And would I see, in theory, any improvements from Rocket etc. when I'm almost 100% waiting for GPU, in the rel. near (weeks) future?
Thanks a lot for any answer.
P.S.: also, I have extreme freezes (~3-5 seconds) in server browser, when opening menu ingame first time, when accessing armory first time, see textures quality improve in a one-second-interval on game join (up to max).. is that due to texture streaming not working correctly, and are at least the freezes pretty much known and expected right now? Is that in part due to the 256MB graphics card?
Freezes are unrelated to your graphics card. Server browser executes poorly written CSS rendering code. Other cases you mentioned are first time preloads during a round, NS2 doesn't load some pieces of textures/models/whatever and just stalls when it has to load it.
Maybe I should have been more clear that I'm pretty confident with GPU related topics, I'd just like to know if my experience is "expected right now given the setup". Not a big deal btw, just curious and pretty confident in the game shaping up pretty well for 1.0. My problem is that buying a new GPU is something hairy right now for me. So I guess I'll just be patient and be confident in freezes being fixed by Max/Dushan/the new guys.
There are versions with more memory. Fact is they explicitly state 1GB memory.
From r_stats it shows me that I'm using ~130MB RAM on the GPU (maybe that's just textures, but it looks like that's the whole set used by the GPU), it should be clear that 256 MB aren't ideal, I'm sure, but certainly not the cause or a good reasoning for 3 second freezes, because <i>they only occur on the first interaction</i> with armory/ingame menu, etc..
So technically there is no need for freezes. You could preload that stuff into VRAM while the game loads. Of course, there is always a prio list, as a dev I know that. So, the (more curious) question remains: how big is it a priority right now? Still I can live with it, don't get me wrong.
What bugs me a little bit is the persistent "buy better hardware" I see sometimes, which is oviously true, but.. I used to think that a long time, too, until I started programming myself and was shocked when realizing <b>a)</b> how wastefull most software is with hardware resources (there are exceptions like LMAXs disruptor) and <b>b)</b> that it's not just about better GPU/CPU/RAM, because then anyone could e.g. easily get 100FPS in a wow raid by now.. but well.. there's something called thread contention and locks, and if programmers don't take into account multithreading right from the start of development, well it really shows in game performance after some years of development. And the rpoblems that one introduces into the codebase with multithreading, esp. when one switches from single threaded to multithreaded, like in the case of the Spark engine... that really <b>really</b> sucks from the developers point of view.
Well, sorry for the text wall, I just love those topics I guess... and I sure don't want to derail the thread, so I'll just stop here.
If you want to optimize the game for them, please go ahead and provide an application. I'm sure they will consider it. They actually have to make a game, you know? There are so many things broken in the game and so many things need to be optimized. They have also made a <b>very </b> aggressive decision with using Lua for gamplay code, so cut them some slack.