34 replies to this topic

[Kyle Polulak]

Low Framerate? Tell us about it here!

Please attempt to respond to the following questions in your responses:

• How had the patch generally affected your performance?
  
• Whether there are specific points in the game when your performance changes.
  
• What are your video settings, did you change them since last patch?
  
• Average FPS ingame and in the menus for previous patch and latest patch (Press F9 to see your FPS)
  
• System specs (You can include them in a [spoiler] [ /spoiler])
  
• Your advertised internet connection speed / Geographic location

[DustyLoft]

Another frustrating night of lag, and seems to be getting worse (or more frequent), but does not happen every round.

I often experience lag at the start of a round when surrounded by many (friendly) Mechs, moving away from their spawn points. It was particularly bad on River City tonight, spawning by the boat.

I also experience game-freezing lag when surrounded by 2 or 3 enemy light Mechs. Each time, my rapid demise is assured, and putting up any kind of effective fight is near impossible.

No issues encountered in Training Grounds.

When in Multiplayer, I was cruising around in a Locust @ 153kph on Tourmaline Desert tonight, and getting just under 40fps with nobody else around me. As soon as enemy Mechs start closing in, the game-freezing lag starts, and I inevitably die. I have seen others mention the 'Lag-Locust' phenomenon, so it sounds like it is not just me.

Playing in native res of 1920x1200@60Hz, fullscreen, V-sync enabled, Motion blur off, Very High settings, Damage Glow on. (I like to see the game at it's best).


System spec:

- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
- 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer RAM
- 2 x WD RaptorX 140Gb in RAID 0
- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 500Gb in RAID 1
- nVidia GeForce GTX460 1024Mb -- Driver version 331.58
- Abit IP35 Pro motherboard
- OCZ 1010W PSU
- 20Mbit cable (LAN) internet connection (Virgin Media)


I know my PC is getting on a bit now, but it used to play MWO perfectly until recently, with the above settings.

Client exe CPU usage when in game hovers around 50-55% (all cores combined), occasionaly spiking to 70-74% but never reaches 100%.

Previous patch MWO used 1.7Gb of RAM when in game and I still had 600Mb+ free. Latest patch, it was more like 1.5Gb in use, and I still had 1Gb free. But values fluctuate. MWO uses 500-600Mb when back in Mech Bay.

My ping is consistently around the 100 mark; no higher than 110. I'll need to check the average data throughput, but it is definitely not maxed out.

Location = UK (West Midlands)

Edited by DustyLoft, 30 October 2013 - 01:01 PM.

[Cest7]

Patch had no effect on performance, if not worse.

On a connectivity note, I just played a match with major server desync. mechs were popping around or standing still continuously firing. I was able to move around and shoot but not get any reg and experienced massive rubberbanding. (shortly before 2pm PST 30/10/2013)

Loading I drop to single digit FPS, during brawl im 10-20fps.

Lowest settings.

Menu FPS: 60.0 steady. Pre-drop 55-57fps. As soon as I get in game and look around it goes to 30-40. When mechs come on screen is when I get severe FPS drops (slideshow)

Specs

Spoiler

-----------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 10/30/2013, 13:59:46
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130801-1533)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: p6741f
BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/07/10 09:56:31 Ver: 6.09
Processor: AMD Phenom™ II X4 955 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 8184MB RAM
Page File: 5101MB used, 11264MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode



Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Dedicated Memory: 723 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Driver Build: 331.58 WHQL

Driver File Version: 9.18.0013.3158 (English)
Driver Version: 9.18.13.3158
DDI Version: 11
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail

25mbit down, 0.5mbit up Shawcable Vancouver B.c.

Edit- Date/Time/sp

Edited by Cest7, 30 October 2013 - 02:11 PM.

[xXButcherBlackXx]

Most maps seem to be somewhat better. Before the most recent patch the game would suddenly become unplayable during a match. I've been playing for a few hours now and Crimson Strait was the only map with major framerate drops and freezing; not to say that the other maps were perfect all of the time. It seems to happen randomly. My minimum FPS was 3, my maximum was 35(when looking down into cockpit, and my average is between 26 and 34 depending on the map. After the 12 v 12 patch, and again after the 3rd person view patch, performance went downhill. The game was flawless before these patches.

System Specs:

Spoiler

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
EVGA nForce 750i SLI Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad - Q9650(3.0Ghz)
2 x EVGA GTS 450 (Driver Version 327.23)
XMS2 4GB DDR2 Memory Kit @800Mhz
2 x 250GB Seagate Barracuda(Raid 0)
DirectX 11
Internet Connection: AT&T DSL with 20Mbps Down 1.5Mbps Up

Video Settings:

Spoiler

1920 x 1080 resolution with SLI and Physx enabled

Ambient Occulsion: Not Supported for this application
Anisotropic Filtering: Application-Controlled
Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correcton: On
Antialiasing Mode: Application-Controlled
Antialiasing Transparency: Off
CUDA - GPUs: All
Maximum pre-rendered frames: Use the 3D application settings
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Single display performance mode
Power management mode: Prefer Maximum performance
SLI rendering mode: Nvidia Recommended
Texter Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization: On
Texter Filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
Texter Filtering - Quality: Performance
Texter Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: Off
Vertical Sync: use the 3D application settings

Edited by xXButcherBlackXx, 30 October 2013 - 07:03 PM.

[James Pryde]

Very frustrating I have had several (about 40%) server connection lost problems since the patch. Have not had crash issues in over the last 10+ patches.

[DustyLoft]

Lag issues not as bad last night for some reason. Updated nVidia drivers again, but not convinced that really had anything to do with it. Some rounds better than others. Managed a couple of decent Light v Light fights, with only occasional screen freeze.

Saw a Cataphract with constantly firing AMS on Frozen City. Weird.

I now have a problem exiting the MWO client. It just sits there with a black screen, still using 200Mb RAM. Have to end task.

Also get buzzing / crackling noise after some rounds.

[Durant Carlyle]

DustyLoft, on 29 October 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

Another frustrating night of lag, and seems to be getting worse (or more frequent), but does not happen every round.

I often experience lag at the start of a round when surrounded by many (friendly) Mechs, moving away from their spawn points. It was particularly bad on River City tonight, spawning by the boat.

I also experience game-freezing lag when surrounded by 2 or 3 enemy light Mechs. Each time, my rapid demise is assured, and putting up any kind of effective fight is near impossible.

No issues encountered in Training Grounds.

When in Multiplayer, I was cruising around in a Locust @ 153kph on Tourmaline Desert tonight, and getting just under 40fps with nobody else around me. As soon as enemy Mechs start closing in, the game-freezing lag starts, and I inevitably die. I have seen others mention the 'Lag-Locust' phenomenon, so it sounds like it is not just me.

Playing in native res of 1920x1200@60Hz, fullscreen, V-sync enabled, Motion blur off, Very High settings, Damage Glow on. (I like to see the game at it's best).


System spec:

- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- Core2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
- 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer RAM
- 2 x WD RaptorX 140Gb in RAID 0
- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 500Gb in RAID 1
- nVidia GeForce GTX460 1024Mb -- Driver version 331.58
- Abit IP35 Pro motherboard
- OCZ 1010W PSU
- 20Mbit cable (LAN) internet connection (Virgin Media)


I know my PC is getting on a bit now, but it used to play MWO perfectly until recently, with the above settings.

Client exe CPU usage when in game hovers around 50-55% (all cores combined), occasionaly spiking to 70-74% but never reaches 100%.

Previous patch MWO used 1.7Gb of RAM when in game and I still had 600Mb+ free. Latest patch, it was more like 1.5Gb in use, and I still had 1Gb free. But values fluctuate. MWO uses 500-600Mb when back in Mech Bay.

My ping is consistently around the 100 mark; no higher than 110. I'll need to check the average data throughput, but it is definitely not maxed out.

Location = UK (West Midlands)

That's not lag. Lag is ping-related, and you're at the mercy of the internet for that. If your ping is fairly low and steady, decreased performance is your PC's problem.

The "Lag-Locust" happens when a player with a high ping takes a Locust out for a spin. Due to the differences between their ping and yours, their 'Mech isn't where your client says it is, so you miss a lot. When this happens, the Locust appears to teleport around, and does not smoothly animate like normal.

Your problem is called your frames per second (FPS) tanking when more 'Mechs are on screen. If you're only getting around 40 FPS when no one else is around, you're bound to chug along slowly in a slide show when combat starts. When they devs add more detail to the 'Mechs (which is something they tinkered with in the last couple of patches), your performance will get worse and worse.

You're going to need more CPU horsepower and GPU horsepower, especially since they will some day be upgrading to DirectX 11. I would bet money that overclocking your CPU and GPU (using free programs available on the internet) would increase your performance and alleviate your issues. They may not go away, but it would be much less of a problem. Whether your system could handle overclocking depends on your cooling setup. I'd start saving money for new hardware, if you haven't already.

DustyLoft, on 31 October 2013 - 07:07 AM, said:

I now have a problem exiting the MWO client. It just sits there with a black screen, still using 200Mb RAM. Have to end task.

Also get buzzing / crackling noise after some rounds.

I'd run the repair tool to see if that helps the exiting problem. It might also be a new memory leak problem with the client, exacerbated by your machine only having 4GB of RAM.

The buzzing happens when you are near a disconnected 'Mech. it will happen if somebody disconnects in the middle of a match and you go near their live 'Mech, but will stop if you destroy their 'Mech. It also happens at the EOR screen when players start disconnecting, but only if you are near the disconnected 'Mechs. This was introduced in the last patch, and they are looking into it.

[Vegetal Maldito]

Well, it happened before the patch, but I will post it here anyway.

I get massive FPS drops when "indoors", like the cave in forest colony, the railway tunnel in crimson straits, and most severely the underpass on upper city, river city.

During normal gaming, it runs fine at 25 - 30 fps. Weirdly enough, this problem only occurs indoors, the amount of mechs on screen doesn't have much effect on the framerate. When indoors, it drops to 12 - 15.

Specs:
AMD A10-5800K black edition quad core
Radeon 6670 2gb on dual graphics
6gb ram 1333
Windows 7 ultimate

I can post the rest if necessary. I know the ram is a bit low, and today I will address that. But this issue seems to be related to the way the engine in handling indoors anyway....

[DustyLoft]

Durant Carlyle, on 31 October 2013 - 08:18 AM, said:

That's not lag. Lag is ping-related, and you're at the mercy of the internet for that. If your ping is fairly low and steady, decreased performance is your PC's problem.

The "Lag-Locust" happens when a player with a high ping takes a Locust out for a spin. Due to the differences between their ping and yours, their 'Mech isn't where your client says it is, so you miss a lot. When this happens, the Locust appears to teleport around, and does not smoothly animate like normal.

Your problem is called your frames per second (FPS) tanking when more 'Mechs are on screen...

I admit my PC is old, and is in need of a major overhaul, but I'm not convinced it is ALL hardware related.

If your explanation is correct, then my PC would freeze EVERY time multiple Mechs appeared on my screen. This is not the case. I had plenty of perfectly fluid rounds with multiple Mechs on screen last night. When the screen-freezing starts, it can be happening whether or not I am looking at the Mechs, and therefore feels more proximity and ping related. 100 to 110 ping is not what I'd call low, but is about the best you can expect between the UK and US / Canada. If enemy light Mech pings are also high, I think this is the reason.

You mention the client sometimes struggles to update Mech positions e.g. with the Locust, and probably other fast Lights. Where does the bottleneck lie? It can't be my CPU as it has spare capacity when in game, as evidenced by looking at CPU graph. Same with LAN connection. There is also free physical RAM available, and very little swapfile usage. If I am purely at the mercy of the internet (my ping + people's ping near me), then I guess an upgrade would not really solve it.

I'll persevere and see if tonight is as lag-free as last night was.

Edited by DustyLoft, 31 October 2013 - 10:44 AM.

[SirDubba]

DustyLoft, on 31 October 2013 - 09:41 AM, said:

I admit my PC is old...

Hiya!
I had the same CPU before I upgraded a month ago. Best CPU I ever had. I recommend overclocking to 3GHz. It can do much more than that, but 3GHz is achievable with stock voltage or very minimal V-increase. Just increase FSB-rate from 266 to 333 (if I remember correctly) and leave voltage-settings to "Auto", also make sure to check and select correct RAM clocks. Auto-setting will give little bit more overvoltage than it really needs but it won't hurt Q6600. I ran it like that for over two years before tweaking more. That was one darn good clocker in it's time. I've managed very stable 3.3GHz (almost got 3.6GHz..but I had the highest VID and quiet cooler) but I've read about people with 4GHz on air.

With this cpu the performance increase is very noticeable. It could help with fps during brawls.
(This might not be useful information but even 3dmark11 gave ~3500 physics points @ 2.4GHz and ~4300 physics @ 3GHz, (or was it 4500...))

[John Branon]

I'm in Germany and since the patch I experience unusually high pings again. It is now between 200 and 500 instead of 130-150. I tried it every day since the patch and it has not gotten better yet.

[DustyLoft]

SirDubba, on 31 October 2013 - 10:22 AM, said:

Hiya!
I had the same CPU before I upgraded a month ago. Best CPU I ever had. I recommend overclocking to 3GHz...

Yes, it was overclocked when I bought it, to 3.13GHz iirc (FSB 348 x 9). It was fine for the first few months, but then it started BSODing like crazy at boot-up, so I took off the overclock, and never got round to re-stabilising it again, as everything I wanted to run ran perfectly OK... (until now).

I had a pretty good MWO sesh last night. Decent scores and kills, and only two laggy rounds. One on Terra Therma, fighting over a contested resource point. Then again, on River City at the resource point that is in the sea (can't remember it's name). Only two of us there; both Locusts, both with pings of 111. No action going on near us. We're not moving, just capping. I'm not even looking at the other Mech, just looking at the (stationary) buildings on the coast, then my frame rate suddenly drops to single figures for several seconds for no apparent reason. Weird. Something else is going on. I couldn't see any other apps eating up CPU resource in Task Manager. Nobody else in the house was using the internet. I'm stumped.

The client exited OK too (no black window), and I have not run the repair tool.

Like you though, I am thinking of upgrading pretty soon. All depends how much cash I've got left after moving house. Probably not much...

P.S. My 'ancient' rig is air-cooled with one of these...

http://img.tomshardw...tuniq_tower.jpg

Edited by DustyLoft, 01 November 2013 - 02:59 AM.

[SirDubba]

DustyLoft, on 01 November 2013 - 02:49 AM, said:

I'm not even looking at the other Mech, just looking at the (stationary) buildings on the coast, then my frame rate suddenly drops to single figures for several seconds for no apparent reason.

Well that is weird.. I used to have similiar fps-drops on rare occasions, but it was almost a year ago. Repair tool or running a fresh install could also help if these drops are caused by file corruption. Did work once for me. I can't think of anything else

[DustyLoft]

If I have another night like 30/10, then I'll try repair / re-install. Trying to avoid as will probably take ages.

Upgrading to 60meg cable internet at new house. Can't hurt... ;-)

[SirDubba]

I'm not sure but I don't think there is much difference between 20 and 60Mbit connection. Speaking about ping^^. And cable connections tend to have greater latency than ADSL. I moved to a city half a year ago and got myself 100/10 cable and I don't like it. (Used to have 24/1Mb ADSL) Download speed is awesome but whenever there are lots of people on the lines, pings get higher, higher than with ADSL located in the middle of woods.
Fiber would be nice but unfortunately I don't have that option here

Nowadays I have ping of ~124ms ingame, it has improved alot since closed beta. But hit detection/registering does not work properly. Might be because of inconsistency of my cable connection or different pings between players, I don't know but it is very disturbing and it is the most important issue I'd want to get fixed.

[Zeus X]

Performance feed back for MWO on a high end gaming machine.

I am currently running an WaterCooled AMD 8350 OC to 4.7Ghz Stable runs of OCCT and Prime95 for 48 hours with a eVGA Hydro Copper GTX Titan and 16GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum PC2133 and Corsair SSD's running a 1200 Watt SeaSonic PSU, all running on Windows 8 (All drivers up to date).

The problem I have seen since closed beta and two upgrades to my machine with full wipe and install, is that MWO will run at 120+ FPS during the start up of the match, but when the UI shows, MWO starts to dip into the 50's and on some of the maps it will even dip down into 10's while walking around.

I don't get FPS drops during fire fights all that much, but it does happen.

MWO is the "only" game I have these issues.

I have run the Crytek engine demo without problems, I play every other game with 100+ fps and everything on with out a hitch. I have tried stock config files and edited config files and even tried SweetFX to see if anything would make a difference.

I've heard that some people who have updated to the "latest" nVidia drive package have seen a boost in FPS, but that seems to be on older cards like the 400 and 500 series nVidia cards.

So I am at a loss at why MWO is the "only" game I have these issues. Also one last issue is, if I have been playing for about 4 hours with the same client load, is will not be able to use thermal or night vision modes as my FPS drops well below the 10's.

Picture for reference.

Edited by DCM Zeus, 01 November 2013 - 04:54 PM.

[NRP]

I get pretty severe frame rate drops (typically about a 20 FPS drop) when I look out at the horizon at the start of matches, and also when I swing my crosshairs from side to side. It seems most pronounced on Forest Colony and Frozen City, but it happens on every map. Furthermore, sometimes when I'm just walking in a map with nothing going on, I get these same severe FPS drops (60 FPS -> 40 FPS).

I even upgraded my GPU, but the problem described above persists. My system is pretty modest, but certainly not low end:

Windows 7 64 bit
i7 2600 (3.4GHz)
8 GB RAM
I was running an AMD HD7790 (2 GB), but I recently upgraded to an AMD HD7950 (3 GB). This is a fairly significant GPU upgrade, so I was a little disappointed that it didn't really help with the frame rate drops described above.

Edit:
I also downloaded and ran the Repair Tool. It didn't solve my problem.

Edited by NRP, 01 November 2013 - 07:36 PM.

[Frytrixa]

Ping increased from ~120 to ~150.

Location: Europe

[Durant Carlyle]

Frame rates do drop when looking at certain areas of every map, no matter whether there are 'Mechs on screen or not. It's been happening since I can remember. My drops are from about 80-90+ FPS to 60-70 FPS (yes, I have high-end hardware). I'm assuming it's some geometry or lighting or something that's more complex in one direction than the others, so it takes more CPU and/or GPU horsepower to process it, therefore performance goes down a bit.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

I am posting here as suggested in this Command Chair post: http://mwomercs.com/...67#entry2886867

• How had the patch generally affected your performance?

The performance seems fine, I just got "The session was lost." when I got disconnected from two matches. So I'm posting and ran the repair tool (No problems, it did standard cleaning). And I'm making sure that the graphics drivers are up to date.

• Whether there are specific points in the game when your performance changes.

There is rubberbanding / teleporting and the screen flashes black before going to the login screen with the message. Too often I get random rubberbanding, but two lost sessions in a row prompted me to post.

• What are your video settings, did you change them since last patch?

The settings are set to low, they have been the same since the last patch, I can double check on anything more specific if need be.

• Average FPS ingame and in the menus for previous patch and latest patch (Press F9 to see your FPS)

I didn't get a chance to check since I was dropped at the beginning of the match

• System specs

This is one of the PCs that I play MWO on.

Spoiler

AMD Phenom™ 9750 Quad-Core Processer 2.40 GHz
7.00 GB Ram
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
GeForce GTX 260 (might be able to swap with a different one)

• Your advertised internet connection speed / Geographic location

Used Speedtest.net Ping: 29ms Download: 2.08 Mbps Upload: 0.23 Mbps.


ATT I think has it listed at 3.00 Mbps.
In Chicago, IL

Hope that helps.

Edit: trying to see what's up with the offset text

Edited by Praetor Shepard, 02 November 2013 - 12:58 PM.