13 replies to this topic

[SamOfTheTribe]

Hi, I have been playing MWO for a while, but I recently got a new computer and can't get MWO to run above about 40fps even with all settings on low.

My computer has a Amd FX 8320 processor, a R9 290 graphics card and 8 gigs of ram.

Is 40 fps what I should expect from this setup, or is there something I can do to get better fps?

I have tried all the User.cfg fixes I can find in the forums, but nothing makes any noticeable difference. My CPU does seem to cap out at 20-25% usage, and I can't seem to get it to go higher.

GPU usage also seems to max out at about 75%.

Anyone have any ideas about what might be causing this?

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Memory leak?

[SamOfTheTribe]

It's not a memory leak, as the performance issues are exclusive to MWO and persist across rebooting the computer and so on.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

I'm running on a FX 8350, EVGA GTX 960 (2GB), and 16 GB DDR3/1866. River City stays around 40 FPS on HIGH, but Alpine and Polar stay above 100 FPS.

Something a buddy showed me when he set this rig up, is that Windows (10, right?) likes to hold back one or two of the processor cores for no really good reason. That is, given its way, Win10 would only allow 6 of the processor's 8 cores to work on the game at once, AT MOST. There was some setting that could be tweaked to take those other two cores back from the system, and we did so.

Might look into that, as you mentioned the cap on CPU usage. System may only be allowing so many cores to work on MWO's processes, and those cores may represent that percentage of the overall processing capability, and therefore, BAM. Just a thought.

Mind you, as pointed out above, different maps will have different frame rates, all else being equal. Forest Colony, River City, Emerald Taiga, for instance, all have destructible objects in their environments, which would hog RAM and CPU (in an already CPU-intensive game). Further, there's a lot of smoke/fire effect on River City, which means more CPU work as well.

Last thing. I run Steam, but I don't run MWO through it. I find I have noticeably better performance when I EXIT Steam, rather than letting it run in the background. After all, I've got a LOT of titles in my Steam library, and Steam does what it wants (which means downloading updates without asking first). This was more of a hit to my ping than framerate, but a thought nonetheless if you have Steam installed (and who doesn't?).

[Squirtoe]

Sam,, Honestly , i believe your problem is that 290 card.. i have one also with the same issue,, fps isnt that great..... but really that is gonna be the least of your problems soon,,,, Just wait till the Black screening starts ,,, its a known 290 , 290x problem with certain games,, and mechwarrior seems to be one of them..... if you google it,, theres ton of reasons why it happens.. and it sucks on this game ,, because you get DC'd from your map,, and penalized.......

My card is less than 6 months old,, and im looking at a new Nvidia card now,,,, pretty pathetic...

[IraqiWalker]

SamOfTheTribe, on 07 February 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

Hi, I have been playing MWO for a while, but I recently got a new computer and can't get MWO to run above about 40fps even with all settings on low.

My computer has a Amd FX 8320 processor, a R9 290 graphics card and 8 gigs of ram.

Is 40 fps what I should expect from this setup, or is there something I can do to get better fps?

I have tried all the User.cfg fixes I can find in the forums, but nothing makes any noticeable difference. My CPU does seem to cap out at 20-25% usage, and I can't seem to get it to go higher.

GPU usage also seems to max out at about 75%.

Anyone have any ideas about what might be causing this?

While I can't help you with the omens Squirtoe mentioned, I can tell you the following:

MWO is CPU bound, that's where your bottleneck is. The more cores you have working the better the performance you can get, even from mediocre cards.

[Eaerie]

careful with the Nvidia cards, i run a 970 and had to actually throttle my GPU clock speed down slightly and also lowered my powel limit a tad to prevent the occasional screen lock, which seems to be an issue with nvidia cards and the cryengine that MWO runs on. Still testing if that is a permanent fix though, have only run a dozen matches so far but so far so good.

[Squirtoe]

Eaerie, on 08 February 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

careful with the Nvidia cards, i run a 970 and had to actually throttle my GPU clock speed down slightly and also lowered my powel limit a tad to prevent the occasional screen lock, which seems to be an issue with nvidia cards and the cryengine that MWO runs on. Still testing if that is a permanent fix though, have only run a dozen matches so far but so far so good.

this is pretty much what you have to do to fix r290 black screen! except memory speed instead..

Im actually just trying 1200 memory speed right now dialed down from 1250,, and i played for a few hours yesterday without issue, so im praying thats the fix,, but if not ,, the voltage lowering is the next thing i will try... as recommended by Tom's hardware..

Also i play Warships, and Rift actively also,, without black screen problems and good FPS,, just this game is a real problem,, so im suspecting its game engine related...

Edited by Squirtoe, 08 February 2016 - 12:26 PM.

[IraqiWalker]

Squirtoe, on 08 February 2016 - 12:24 PM, said:

this is pretty much what you have to do to fix r290 black screen! except memory speed instead..

Im actually just trying 1200 memory speed right now dialed down from 1250,, and i played for a few hours yesterday without issue, so im praying thats the fix,, but if not ,, the voltage lowering is the next thing i will try... as recommended by Tom's hardware..

Also i play Warships, and Rift actively also,, without black screen problems and good FPS,, just this game is a real problem,, so im suspecting its game engine related...

That's not a suspicion, it is engine related.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Eaerie, on 08 February 2016 - 11:42 AM, said:

careful with the Nvidia cards, i run a 970 and had to actually throttle my GPU clock speed down slightly and also lowered my powel limit a tad to prevent the occasional screen lock, which seems to be an issue with nvidia cards and the cryengine that MWO runs on. Still testing if that is a permanent fix though, have only run a dozen matches so far but so far so good.

What cpu and what was it clocked at before?

[Eaerie]

My system is:
Intel i7-4770
GeForce GTX 970
16gigs of ram

Never had any issues running MWO until i threw the GTX 970 into it. Afterwards i did some searching on forums and came across a post about issues concerning the GTX 970 and the cryengine (most of them were focused on the Crysis 3 game, but its the same engine) I downloaded MSI afterburner and started doing some monitering and it seems that whenever the GTX 970 goes into "boost" mode it would blue screen the game. So after more reading a couple suggestions were to throttle the card back a little and/or drop the power limit a little to prevent the card from going into boost.

So far so good. Ran another half dozen matches this morning with no issues.

[Oldbob10025]

[Karamarka]

R9 290 is WELL ABOVE what is required for 1080p, I could run MWO at 4k on a 290 tri-x (A 290 with factory overclock/aftermarket cooling nothing else). In fact, while my r9 290 tri-x is on warranty right now, I'm playing solid 60fps with a spare 6970 and 4670k at 1080p

It's 100% the CPU. MWO don't play nice.

I repeat. NOTHING TO DO WITH VIDEO CARD.

Edited by Karamarka, 10 February 2016 - 05:45 AM.

[xWiredx]

It's the CPU. It's very obviously the CPU. Does anybody ever read the hardware subforum before chiming in on the performance issues people have? AMD has terrible IPC compared to Intel. We've tested this to death already.

The settings that are most likely causing your woes, OP: particles, shadows, environment. They produce lots of draw calls, thus choking the CPU.

If you want anything above low or medium for the particles, shadows, and environment settings, you're going to need to put that CPU into 5GhZ territory.