46 replies to this topic

[Sen]

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If that's the case then it ONLY occurs while im in game in MWO, and only while I'm moving. If it were an exterior process it would probably occur in the mechlab as well as while I'm totally still in game

You are expecting this game to operate stable like a polished FINISHED piece of software. MwO is neither. The reason the game still crashes/freezes/black screens/4FPSs is because of errors in code and memory leaks. As such, having issues like this ONLY in MwO is completely understandable [at least THAT it happens, if not WHY it happens]

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It seems really unlikely to me that the vram is getting overloaded, especially considering that this isn't a consistent issue. I suspected it may have something to do with how levels are being cached in memory, but dumping the game to minimum possible settings doesn't relieve the issue in the slightest and the entire texture library of alpine should fit in 512 at min settings.

I completely and totally agree 100% with what the entire quoted text above this line. That said, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if you were to find it's doing exactly what I theorized anyway. For an explanation, reread my first quote answer above.

To expand on this and give another possible explanation, I have a 720QM notebook with 5870m graphics. it doesn't matter if it's @ 1024 x 768 at minimum or 1920 x 1080 at max. When in combat it drops to 15-18 FPS. Since we're stuck @ DX9, many things handled by the GPU in DX11 are done by the CPU instead. The CPU in the 720QM can't keep up, and since it's CPU bound and not GPU bound, even though the GPU should be enough to easily drive MwO, the notebook falls flat.

By comparison, I have a 3930k intel 6 core desktop with 2x 7950s. at 4.2 Ghz overclock, GFX maxed, at 2560 x 1440 I run about 48-49FPS max, dropping it down to about 35-37 in heavy combat with occasional dips to 32ish.

If I raise the overclock to 4.7 [adjusting Vcore to compensate, obviously] I get 50-54FPS average, with a drop down to about 45-47 and occasional dips to 37ish.

Now, given that there is *NO WAY IN HELL* this game should tax a system like mine, you can begin to see the behind the scenes unexplainably power and inefficient core programming of MwO. No, it doesn't tell you how to FIX the problem you're having, but it starts to explain why issues like this are popping up. Most other games I run don't even cause my fans to spin up [stays around 54c or lower] but in idle in the mechbay in MwO I'm breaking 65c!

This is why, unfortunately, a full reinstall is often the best bet. I'm not sure if sometimes the patcher fails to download/overwrite changed files or if they're just getting corrupted somewhere or if somehow it doesn't want to play nice with DX9 or .net framework. . . and with the way this game is currently coded there's no way to tell. But knowing that the code is so unoptimized and potentially fragile, it's not a stretch to imagine that it's the game, not you.

I know it's not very helpful, but that's the best I've got in terms of what's going on behind the scenes. If it worked before, and the only thing you changed was to patch the game. . . then a full reinstall is the best answer. If you continue to have the same issues, given the above, i'd STILL blame the client if running said client is the only time the issue arises.

Edited by Sen, 12 March 2013 - 10:54 AM.

[Shumabot]

I'll reinstall tonight. "The game is badly made" was not the answer I was hoping for, but it's the one I had been expecting.

[LuckJaw]

I found my problem... I uninstall McCafee antivirus and BAM! Problem solve...

[Catamount]

LuckJaw, on 12 March 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

I found my problem... I uninstall McCafee antivirus and BAM! Problem solve...

Boy if I had a dollar for every time I heard that...

Seriously, McAfee AV is teh suck I'm glad things are working now that it's gone

[Shumabot]

I don't have mcaffee installed D:

[Sen]

Shum:

I know it's not the answer you want, and I hate delivering it. .especially since I LOVE MwO. A lot of people throw around the "It's a beta" excuse, and while I'm not fond of calling "Beta", in this case it has a certain credibility.

As for why they would release so early. . I honestly believe the only way they were ever going to get the combat system anywhere near balanced was to put it to the test, and this way they can scale balance and server at the same time while they work on the core game components [community warfare, clan invasion, etc]

I wasn't happy when I had to reinstall on my desktop after both large patches back to back, but my love of MwO and my merc unit outweighs the negatives.

ANYWAY. .let us know how it turns out ^^

[Shumabot]

http://mwomercs.com/...llation-needed/

I tried this out and it worked like a charm. Mind you this basically IS reinstalling, but it's a smidge faster. I can now confirm that this is the fault of the game, not my system.

[Sen]

Yea, if there's one person who'd know how to get around a full uninstall/reinstall, it's Deer Spotter. The guy could probably re code MwO in it's entirety and fix the entire client.

Thank you for bookmarking that btw. I hadn't seen it, but now I'll add that to the "try first" list in future posts

Edited by Sen, 12 March 2013 - 03:36 PM.

[LuckJaw]

It did fix it. For about half a day, and then, guess what... yep it return....

[Tarl Cabot]

LuckJaw, on 12 March 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

It did fix it. For about half a day, and then, guess what... yep it return....

Try the following, the antivirus program, exclude MWO folder and subfolder from active scanning.

Either Task Manager or download and install Process Explorer. This way when the FPS drops during game, and before it lets up, see if a program or file is ramping up the CPU utilization.

[Shumabot]

And two days later it's back. This game is a mess. There's no way it's ever going live in the shape it's in, they're just going to rely on overly forgiving golds for income until it dies.

[Alymbic]

Shumabot, on 14 March 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

And two days later it's back. This game is a mess. There's no way it's ever going live in the shape it's in, they're just going to rely on overly forgiving golds for income until it dies.

Im going to choose to ignore the gold comment and ill just say that I was running the game on a laptop much worse than the one you outlined without issue with 25~30 fps. I. Guessing the bug your getting is uncommon else it would be all over the forums if it was truely that game-breaking. For some reason your particular config doesnt like it seeing as you got it again after reinstall.You mentioned that this bug only occured while you are moving. In what sense do you mean? Walking, turning quickly ect?

Seeing as you have already done most of the general things in regards to this, ill just ask if you have set the gpu power to max in the nvidia control panel folder and tried deleting the shaders catch. Odds are you have already tried this, but you never know

[Barbaric Soul]

Alymbic, on 14 March 2013 - 08:40 PM, said:

Im going to choose to ignore the gold comment and ill just say that I was running the game on a laptop much worse than the one you outlined without issue with 25~30 fps. I. Guessing the bug your getting is uncommon else it would be all over the forums if it was truely that game-breaking. For some reason your particular config doesnt like it seeing as you got it again after reinstall.You mentioned that this bug only occured while you are moving. In what sense do you mean? Walking, turning quickly ect?

Seeing as you have already done most of the general things in regards to this, ill just ask if you have set the gpu power to max in the nvidia control panel folder and tried deleting the shaders catch. Odds are you have already tried this, but you never know

Uh, it is all over the forums, has been for months.

http://mwomercs.com/search?q=4+FPS+BUG

[Alymbic]

Barbaric Soul, on 15 March 2013 - 02:47 AM, said:

Uh, it is all over the forums, has been for months.

http://mwomercs.com/search?q=4+FPS+BUG

Uh, a) we haven't confirmed for certain that its the 4fps bug, b ) it really doesn't hurt to try to help

Edited by Alymbic, 15 March 2013 - 06:28 AM.

[Shumabot]

Alymbic, on 14 March 2013 - 08:40 PM, said:

Im going to choose to ignore the gold comment and ill just say that I was running the game on a laptop much worse than the one you outlined without issue with 25~30 fps. I. Guessing the bug your getting is uncommon else it would be all over the forums if it was truely that game-breaking. For some reason your particular config doesnt like it seeing as you got it again after reinstall.You mentioned that this bug only occured while you are moving. In what sense do you mean? Walking, turning quickly ect?

Seeing as you have already done most of the general things in regards to this, ill just ask if you have set the gpu power to max in the nvidia control panel folder and tried deleting the shaders catch. Odds are you have already tried this, but you never know

Yeah, I've deleted shaders, the GPU is currently set to max, and the only fix I've found it deleting frontend.dll and letting it repatch.

I was getting 50fps last night with relatively high settings after tweaking the environment slider a bit and it would drop to 5. I dropped it to min resolution and minimum all settings and dropped from 90fps to 5. Nothing I control seems to effect this.

In answer to your question, it happens most often when I'm moving quickly. Much more often with lights than assaults for instance. It also, and I tested this yesterday, occurs when I spin and face mechs. I can stand in place, spin away from my team and towards the horizon and nothing happens, then when I finish the 360 and look back at my team it drops to 5 for a moment (it lasts roughly 1.5-2 seconds). I'm starting to suspect that I'm reloading mech geometry or textures when I get within a certain view distance of them and it clears them when I look away. This is actually what it is supposed to be doing, since it shouldn't be rendering them when off screen, but whatever process they use to begin rendering them again seems bugged. Once it starts happening it's fully consistent, it doesn't stop. Reinstalling does fix it (but only for a short time), so I'm wondering if it's corrupting itself over time due to a bug with my hardware configuration, but I have absolutely no idea what file could be corrupting.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Im a non laptop fan, and yes MWO is coded badly, and it has been established long ago, even the best systems today really can struggle with it it is important to note even identical systems can behave completely differently.
Laptops do seem in general to struggle with MWO far more than desktops, i personally put that down to 90% of laptops generally being ill equipped for gaming (parts, Heat being the major factors and alienware....yeesh).

Your last post sounds reminiscent to an old closed beta bug, where high mouse polling rates completely trashed FPS into single digits when torso twisting, it last a second or so then be fine, that bug i believe was fixed (im assuming your using a mouse and not touchpad.)

That said, i feel looking over the specs of the machine, the GPU is playing its part in the issue, the 555 is fairly low end in graphics grunt, but i think its the VRAM that is killing you, as you torso twist or turn, the game is trying to render the scenery and mechs between the low amount of RAM available and speed of the VRAM it momentarily bottlenecks the system and MWO's coding won't help you at all in DX 9.

Why a re-install fixes it temporarily is odd, but for me the fact it consistently reproduces points to a conflict between both game and machine, and as i said in opening it does at least appear more prevalent on laptops.

I honestly don't think you'll find a fix, at least not untill DX11 implementation and then you'll probably notice a small improvement.

Edited by DV McKenna, 15 March 2013 - 10:59 AM.

[Shumabot]

DV McKenna, on 15 March 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

Im a non laptop fan, and yes MWO is coded badly, and it has been established long ago, even the best systems today really can struggle with it it is important to note even identical systems can behave completely differently.
Laptops do seem in general to struggle with MWO far more than desktops, i personally put that down to 90% of laptops generally being ill equipped for gaming (parts, Heat being the major factors and alienware....yeesh).

Your last post sounds reminiscent to an old closed beta bug, where high mouse polling rates completely trashed FPS into single digits when torso twisting, it last a second or so then be fine, that bug i believe was fixed (im assuming your using a mouse and not touchpad.)

That said, i feel looking over the specs of the machine, the GPU is playing its part in the issue, the 555 is fairly low end in graphics grunt, but i think its the VRAM that is killing you, as you torso twist or turn, the game is trying to render the scenery and mechs between the low amount of RAM available and speed of the VRAM it momentarily bottlenecks the system and MWO's coding won't help you at all in DX 9.

Why a re-install fixes it temporarily is odd, but for me the fact it consistently reproduces points to a conflict between both game and machine, and as i said in opening it does at least appear more prevalent on laptops.

I honestly don't think you'll find a fix, at least not untill DX11 implementation and then you'll probably notice a small improvement.

It can't possibly be a Vram issue. A hardware issue would be consistent and the behavior would change depending on my in game settings. The fact that this doesn't occur at all for a few days (and I get great frames, the 555m is fine, leave it alone) then it begins (and stays until reinstall) implies that it can not be a hardware issue. A hardware conflict? Maybe. But this is truly bizarre behavior for a hardware conflict. This seems like an issue with something being cached and stored within the game files themselves, either corrupting or evidencing some sort of memory leak.

[Riddlez]

Just dropping in my two cents.

I've read a number of posts in line with that's been said here and even some saying stuff about the optimus feature of switchable graphics cards in laptops. Furthermore, I spent 2.5 weeks in contact with PGI tech support: it is honestly a game breaking and persistent problem for those that have it. In the end they said there is no short term fix and are working on it.

Just for those that are curious of how bad it is, the following are a series of FRAPs I took to illustrate the problem to PGI. These videos were taken from three subsequent matches after a fresh install, up to date drivers, minimal resolution settings and a properly set up nvidia control panel.

System:
i5-2410m 2.3-2.9GHz
GT 555m
4GB 1333Hz RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium


1a
Start up-smooth

1b
Surprisingly smoot

1c
Surprisingly smoot

1d
In fighting - choppy

__________
>>Videos:<<
2a
Start up-uber freeze

2b
Choppy maneuvering

2c
Choppy maneuvering

2d
Spectating - Choppy

2e
Spectating choppy
____________

>>Videos:<<
3a
Start up-uber freeze

3b
Fighting - choppy

Edited by Riddlez, 22 March 2013 - 05:32 PM.

[Shumabot]

That is it! That is the exact thing I am suffering from. It's good to see that I'm not the only one. Thanks for putting the effort forth to get it on video, that is exactly what it feels like to play when this is happening.

Edited by Shumabot, 26 March 2013 - 11:52 AM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Only posting this for those who may not have read the entire thread or only parts of it. The following is from personal experience, interaction and other feedback provided in this and other forums.

*******************************
The video shows the end results but without a detailed analysis of a particular gaming system it could be anything from the GPU choking, the CPU choking, a program running in the background some serious CPU time to the CPU/GPU throttling up/down.

And with the poster of those vids, it was done on a laptop with turbo boost. With turbo boost when the system believes a program may benefit from more CPU speed, it kicks up the speed but it is only on ONE core, not both. From other players that particular core can then reach the heat threshold which then causes the laptop to down the CPU to half of its speed to allow it to cool down so the CPU speed can look like VvVvvVVVVvv, which will also cause the FPS to be erratic.

Turbo frequency2900 MHz (1 core)
2700 MHz (2 cores)

The other is the laptop has both a Nvidia mobility card, and the intel GPU on the CPU. This is where hopefully in the Nvidia graphics panel he has setup a profile to ensure the nvidia card is used when playing MWO, turned off Ambient Occlusion and set other preferences to application control, simply to ensure MWO is using the nvidia card.

Now, as with the CPU, for a few if they manually lowered the GPU speed that helped reduce both the power draw and the heat being generated, providing a more consistent FPS instead of an erratic FPS.

And neither is MWO optimized. PGI continues to make small improvements, seen by some whereas such improvements actually has a negative result on others. Dang if ya do, dang if ya don't.