27 replies to this topic

[Dakkath]

So for the life of me I couldn't understand why my rig was playing this game poorly. 1920x1080 - Core i5 650, 8 gb of ram, GTX 560ti 448 core (780mhz/2010mhz).

Now I realize I am not in the upper tier of awesome-sauce rigs, but the rig is not bad either. It plays a ton of games good (Well now even better).

I did some digging around, mainly because my CS GO FPS would dip from 80's to 30's in firefights, and when you're trying to be precise on your aim it's terrible to have dips like that.


I came across a post where someone was mentioning the fact that you need to make sure your PCI Express video card is still operating on 16x bus-width. Holy crap!? That can change without you knowing?

Indeed it can, and that is very embarrassing for someone who has been in I.T as a Sys-Admin for 15 years.

Lo' and behold my PCI Express bus-width of my video card was at "1x" and not 16x. I promptly muttered to myself WTF-mate?!?

Stripped all motherboard overclocking tools, all video/lan/audio drivers, pulled power plug, CMOS battery and video card out. Cleaned video card contacts with an eraser, re-seated card, re-seated CMOS battery, reinstalled all drivers, rebooted and voila, we now have "16x" PCI bus width.

&TLDR: Check your PCI Express Bus Width with GPU-Z and fix it if it's not 16x.

What did this do for my MWO FPS?

1. I went from playing on all High settings with low shadows getting 30FPS (or lower on some maps) to getting up to 50-60FPS and higher.

2. I can now turn shadows on, and go to Very High and still stick around 50+FPS.

3. River City night no longer kills my FPS to sub 20's.


For CS GO? I went from ~70-80fps dipping into 30's on 'de_inferno' to all 150+ fps solid.
(I only gave this example because its a great indication of hardware WIN).

Edited by Dakkath, 07 May 2013 - 08:34 AM.
removed bad links

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Interesting, honestly did not know this could happen on its own.

[BladeXXL]

Hello dude ... didn't read the hint inside GPU-Z about power saving functions of the gpu cards and the PCIe link speed? ^^

"1x" tells nothing until you force your card to work in "high power state".

to tell ppl to reinstall drivers and Tools... tinker on the hardware for what? ... your missinterpretation ofthe bus speed? :-)

maybe i'm wrong and you really had a bad Installation ... but this is not the main case.

Edited by BladeXXL, 07 May 2013 - 12:31 PM.

[Dakkath]

BladeXXL, on 07 May 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

Hello dude ... didn't read the hint inside GPU-Z about power saving functions of the gpu cards and the PCIe link speed? ^^

"1x" tells nothing until you force your card to work in "high power state".

to tell ppl to reinstall drivers and Tools... tinker on the hardware for what? ... your missinterpretation ofthe bus speed? :-)

maybe i'm wrong and you really had a bad Installation ... but this is not the main case.

Yeah it switches from to v1.1 to v2.0 modes, but never have I seen my PCI Express card go from 16x to 1x bus width on its own. Even in power savings mode.

Currently when I am not playing games its at 16x 1.1 mode, when I am playing games its 16x 2.0 mode.

Now 1x to 16x is HUGE. I have read many reports of people re-seating their video card to get this to work properly, or in some cases your BIOS may have the setting to adjust (mine did not).


When you say this isn't the main case, I beg to differ. In my case this was the sole reason for my FPS drops and poor performance.

Whether it was a bad install of the video card (it shook loose somehow)? Or the drivers, that is yet to be determined.

I feel it's worth mentioning on here though for people that may have the same issues I do.

Edited by Dakkath, 07 May 2013 - 12:42 PM.
Edit

[Bad Karma 308]

Dakkath, on 07 May 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

Now 1x to 16x is HUGE. I have read many reports of people re-seating their video card to get this to work properly, or in some cases your BIOS may have the setting to adjust (mine did not).

I feel it's worth mentioning on here though for people that may have the same issues I do.

I've been mulling this over in my head since you originally posted this earlier today. Somehting not too unsimilar happened to a workstation in our care a few months back, though we never found the culprit. It intrigues me enough that I'm considering having one of my systems engineers do some deeper research on it. Could you provide a few of the links to the "people re-seating cards..."


Did you by chance do a BIOS update or move different cards in and out of those slots?


Either way, thank you, the thought that something like that could be changing autonomously hadn't really ever occurred to me. I think I'll put this my little bag of "fix its" for future use,

Edited by Bad Karma 308, 07 May 2013 - 05:45 PM.

[matux]

Bah I for some stupid reason want to know if it really was hardware or software that caused this because i just can't believe that it was set lower in the bios just by itself, or that it would pick to run at a lower speed just because it was not seated right

What motherboard are you using, are they in the exact same slots, have you removed any other PCI-e devices? Did it come with any tools or any video card tools that could change it?

[Dakkath]

Bad Karma 308, on 07 May 2013 - 05:44 PM, said:

I've been mulling this over in my head since you originally posted this earlier today. Somehting not too unsimilar happened to a workstation in our care a few months back, though we never found the culprit. It intrigues me enough that I'm considering having one of my systems engineers do some deeper research on it. Could you provide a few of the links to the "people re-seating cards..."


Did you by chance do a BIOS update or move different cards in and out of those slots?


Either way, thank you, the thought that something like that could be changing autonomously hadn't really ever occurred to me. I think I'll put this my little bag of "fix its" for future use,

Here is one of the links I googled earlier: http://forums.extrem...om/t351059.html
another about reseating CMOS battery: http://www.motherboa...d2deb0c731e35ec
Reseating the card (but didn't work for this guy). http://www.tomshardw...k-asus-en8800gt

This is what really got me checking:
http://banglagamer.c...-instead-of-x16


- Did not do a BIOS update, there hasn't been an update to my bios in years.
- Did not and have not moved the card out of its socket since it was first installed (except when I took it out for cleaning and troubleshooting this issue). The funny thing is, the card was screwed in place via the case screws-slot.

matux, on 07 May 2013 - 06:40 PM, said:

Bah I for some stupid reason want to know if it really was hardware or software that caused this because i just can't believe that it was set lower in the bios just by itself, or that it would pick to run at a lower speed just because it was not seated right

What motherboard are you using, are they in the exact same slots, have you removed any other PCI-e devices? Did it come with any tools or any video card tools that could change it?

Info for you:

- Gigabyte H55-USB3 REV 1 Socket 1156
- The BIOS has no ability for me to manually change (or automatically change for that matter) the PCI Bus Width.
- I did not and have not removed any devices recently; and there were no tools installed that changed this.
The only tools I used were the software overclocking tools from Gigabyte for this motherboard called Easy Tune 6, and the @BIOS Updater tool.


Very interesting problem. I have never encountered this before.

Edited by Dakkath, 07 May 2013 - 09:46 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

It would be interesting to have someone else who genuinely suffers from FPS loss unexplainably on a high end system check this and verify that they have the same issue.

[Tarl Cabot]

Had you done some overclocking of your system? This bug, from the posts I have seen has been around since 2005 or so.

http://www.techarp.c....aspx?artno=522

How To Fix The PCI Express x1 Bug
The reason why I wrote this article is simply because I have seen many whom had their motherboard's PCI-Express bus width stuck at x1 while overclocking. This is especially seen on the ASUS P5B series. So today, we are going to find out what will work and what won't, as well as their impact on gaming and HD video playback.

PEG Force X1" in the BIOS.

• 
  
  
  Set NB Vcore in the BIOS to 1.45 v or below.
  
• 
  
  
  Overclock or underclock the PCI Express reference clock (up to 15 MHz either way). More details here - PCI-E Reference Clock.
  
• 
  
  
  Set PCI Synchronization Mode to Auto. This is an important step.
  
• 
  
  
  Set PEG Link Mode to Normal (instead of Auto).
  
• 
  
  
  Installing the graphics card into a different PCI Express x16 slot. You can also use a PCI Express x8 slot as the performance difference between PCI Express x8 and PCI Express x16 is minimal.
  
• 
  
  
  New! Reseating the graphics card in the same PCI Express slot, taking care to blow away any dust in the slot. If you have a metal brush, you can try lightly brushing the contacts. There has been at least three reports of a PCI Express x16 card suddenly switching to x1 mode due to loose or oxidised contacts in the PCI Express x16 slot.
  
• 
  
  
  Switching the PCI Express Selector from x16 x1 to x8 x8. This partially fixes the problem by enabling PCI Express x8 but the performance difference between PCI Express x8 and PCI Express x16 is minimal.
  
• 
  
  
  Overclocking the CPU base frequency by 1 MHz (In ASUS motherboards, that means switching AI Overclocking to Manual and then changing the base frequency from 200 MHz to 201 MHz).
  Many thanks to all of you for your feedback, and congratulations on beating the PCI Express x1 bug! If you have any other tips on beating this bug,

do tell us!



How To Check If You Are Affected
Checking if you are affected is simple. Just use any system information utility, like CPU-Z or GPU-Z to check the PCI Express operating mode. Here are examples of CPU-Z and GPU-Z results for motherboards affected by the bug, and those not affected by the bug.

PCI Express x1 (Affected by the bug)

PCI Express x16 (Not affected by the bug)

In this motherboard, GPU-Z reported that the Bus Interface was PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x1. Similarly, CPU-Z reported that while the Max. Supported was x16, the actual Link Width was only x1.
In this motherboard, the Bus Interface was PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x16. Similarly, CPU-Z reported that the actual Link Width was the full x16.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 08 May 2013 - 06:56 PM.

[Davy J0nes]

Hello I am also haveing a FPS problem at times its fine for one second 50 - fps but then drops to 12 fps even 7 at times, I have tried many suggestions from the forums Power options set to high performance, and setting your Maximum processor state to 98%. Even went into my Nvida settings and made sure it was set to high-performance Nvidia processor. I have downloaded MWOrepair tool didnt help, messed around with window mode what did help some, I am at a loss and with the machine i am useing I do not belive I should be haveing to problem, specs are.....

Manufacturer Alienware.
Model M14XR2
Processor: Intel core i7 2.40Ghz
Installed memory 6.00 GB (5.88 GB useable)
Windows 7 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce GT 650m (yes it is updated)

Any input what could help would be great!

[Thomas Covenant]

Edited by Thomas Covenant, 09 May 2013 - 09:27 PM.

[Davy J0nes]

Gramrock, on 03 November 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

I created this file, hope it helps others too.

create a new file (doesnt matter which one).
be sure to enable file extensions for ur windows so u can rename it into a .bat or .cmd file.

put this in there

SET shaderpath="D:\Games\Piranha Games\MechWarrior Online\user\shaders"
SET gamepath="D:\Games\Piranha Games\MechWarrior Online\Bin32\"
 
rd %shaderpath% /S /Q
D:
cd %gamepath%
MechWarriorOnline.exe
exit

please notice I changed to D: because my game is located there so if you've installed it at c:\ just change the D:\ fromt the paths to c:\ and delete the D:

have fun playing

This helped a bit.

[Thomas Covenant]

Fanto said:

I really dont know what I am doing!

^(PM)

not making fun of you, but me


I don't know hardware

Edited by Thomas Covenant, 09 May 2013 - 11:35 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Fanto, on 09 May 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

Hello I am also haveing a FPS problem at times its fine for one second 50 - fps but then drops to 12 fps even 7 at times, I have tried many suggestions from the forums Power options set to high performance, and setting your Maximum processor state to 98%. Even went into my Nvida settings and made sure it was set to high-performance Nvidia processor. I have downloaded MWOrepair tool didnt help, messed around with window mode what did help some, I am at a loss and with the machine i am useing I do not belive I should be haveing to problem, specs are.....

Manufacturer Alienware.
Model M14XR2
Processor: Intel core i7 2.40Ghz
Installed memory 6.00 GB (5.88 GB useable)
Windows 7 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce GT 650m (yes it is updated)

Any input what could help would be great!

1st step to your resolution is admitting you are using a laptop

Fanto, on 09 May 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

Hello I am also haveing a FPS problem at times its fine for one second 50 - fps but then drops to 12 fps even 7 at times, I have tried many suggestions from the forums Power options set to high performance, and setting your Maximum processor state to 98%. Even went into my Nvida settings and made sure it was set to high-performance Nvidia processor. I have downloaded MWOrepair tool didnt help, messed around with window mode what did help some, I am at a loss and with the machine i am useing I do not belive I should be haveing to problem, specs are.....

Manufacturer Alienware.
Model M14XR2
Processor: Intel core i7 2.40Ghz
Installed memory 6.00 GB (5.88 GB useable)
Windows 7 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce GT 650m (yes it is updated)

Any input what could help would be great!

First step is to acknowledge that you are using a laptop and they can be different beasts than desktops. (really should start own thread but will work from this one right now).

Second step, provide more information about your particular issue. I see you saying that it is running at 50FPS then drops to 12/7FPS. What happens then? Does it stay at the low FPS until you restart the game or is it spiking up and down while in a combat drop?

[Catamount]

Fanto, on 09 May 2013 - 07:50 PM, said:

Hello I am also haveing a FPS problem at times its fine for one second 50 - fps but then drops to 12 fps even 7 at times, I have tried many suggestions from the forums Power options set to high performance, and setting your Maximum processor state to 98%. Even went into my Nvida settings and made sure it was set to high-performance Nvidia processor. I have downloaded MWOrepair tool didnt help, messed around with window mode what did help some, I am at a loss and with the machine i am useing I do not belive I should be haveing to problem, specs are.....

Manufacturer Alienware.
Model M14XR2
Processor: Intel core i7 2.40Ghz
Installed memory 6.00 GB (5.88 GB useable)
Windows 7 64-bit
Nvidia Geforce GT 650m (yes it is updated)

Any input what could help would be great!

As I noted elsewhere, your computer could be throttling either the CPU or GPU from temperatures. It not an uncommon issue with gaming laptops, and MWO is notorious for making hardware hot.
I'd grab a copy of GPUZ and Realtemp, both of which let you view clocks and temperature side-by-side.
Run the game in a windows, or in "Full Window" mode so you can switch over to them easily when the FPS tanks. See if your GPU is getting to or above 90C, and if your CPU is getting much above 80 or so, and see whether the clock speed on either has suddenly dropped.

Edited by Catamount, 10 May 2013 - 05:52 AM.

[Davy J0nes]

Hey again thanks for the feedback.

Tarl Cabot, on 10 May 2013 - 03:46 AM, said:

1st step to your resolution is admitting you are using a laptop

First step is to acknowledge that you are using a laptop and they can be different beasts than desktops. (really should start own thread but will work from this one right now).

Second step, provide more information about your particular issue. I see you saying that it is running at 50FPS then drops to 12/7FPS. What happens then? Does it stay at the low FPS until you restart the game or is it spiking up and down while in a combat drop?

The FPS does go back up into the 20s but to be honest it is very random, I dont have this problem when is comes to Farcry, or bioshock some of the other high end games but I have a cooling pad laying around I will try that, thanks again.

Catamount, on 10 May 2013 - 05:51 AM, said:

As I noted elsewhere, your computer could be throttling either the CPU or GPU from temperatures. It not an uncommon issue with gaming laptops, and MWO is notorious for making hardware hot.
I'd grab a copy of GPUZ and Realtemp, both of which let you view clocks and temperature side-by-side.
Run the game in a windows, or in "Full Window" mode so you can switch over to them easily when the FPS tanks. See if your GPU is getting to or above 90C, and if your CPU is getting much above 80 or so, and see whether the clock speed on either has suddenly dropped.

These "GPUZ and Realtemp" will try that out.

[Davy J0nes]

Ok so as soon as I used my cooling pad my FPS went up to 100! at times it does drop to 60! but hey i thought 60 was great, I never got 100fps before so thanks guys I guess it was getting to hot.

[Catamount]

Fanto, on 10 May 2013 - 01:03 PM, said:

Ok so as soon as I used my cooling pad my FPS went up to 100! at times it does drop to 60! but hey i thought 60 was great, I never got 100fps before so thanks guys I guess it was getting to hot.

Glad to hear things are running better. Your machine ought to live longer as well. Just make sure you run a bit of compressed air through the fans every once in a blue moon, too

[Davy J0nes]

Aw its always the simply things. thanks again I dont know why I didnt try that frist.

[HiplyRustic]

E8500, liquid cooled, @4.1 Ghz, stable @<50c under load
8 gigs hyperX RAM
1 gig 550 GTX Ti @ 990 Mhz, not overheating, at all.
Bus is properly at 16X 2

Vista 64, patched current, Nvidia 310.70 drivers

Someone explain why even the loading/mechbay screen loads that card to 99% BUT NOT ALL THE TIME. Sometimes the fps is just fine (NO, there is nothing else running...no browser, no other apps, nothing to explain why it's running fine and then drops like a stone) and then the performance just crashes. GPU Load is 0% until I launch the game, and if the fps is bugging the mechbay/drop-in screen itself immediately shoves the load to 99% once I log in.

When it's bugging:

-Pre-game load = 0% load
-Login prompt (not logged in) = 23% load
-logged in, mechbay window = 99% load, f9 shows 23-24 fps on this static screen
-ingame, 99%, 8-9 fps.

It is even loading the GPU to 99% with the screen minimized. Seriously?

Edited by HiplyRustic, 12 May 2013 - 09:34 AM.