18 replies to this topic

[flying-kestrel]

Hi everyone,

I've just thrown together a new computer to use for various purposes, including MWO. It's new-to-me, to be exact; the CPU is a little old and slow on single-threaded performance by today's standards.

I'm used to playing MWO on my laptop, where it runs at a rock-solid 35-55 FPS depending on what's going on. On this new machine, the FPS varies so wildly it's not even funny. In the testing grounds, I get 100+ FPS on whatever detail settings I have. In game, it's barely 25 FPS...

GPU utilization is pretty low; with the frequency pegged to even 40% maximum the utilization isn't even close to 100%. So the GPU isn't the bottleneck... for reference, it's a ASUS ROG RX 470 O4G.

The CPU should be fine for MWO but is certainly the weakest point; it's a Westmere E5649 (2.53GHz), same architecture to a i7-970 but clocked lower (970 runs at 3.2GHz). Seeing as the minimum requirements for MWO are listed as a Core 2 Duo at 2.66GHz, and given the uarch improvements of Nehalem over Penryn . . . should be very comfortable. Case in point: CPU utilization on each core never spikes above 70% while in-game and is sitting at a comfortable 40% most of the time.

Memory shouldn't be an issue, given that this machine has triple-channel DDR3, and lots of it. I guess the fact that it's registered ECC RAM could be a problem given the extra access latency?

Disk I/O is slow (I haven't upgraded the HDDs yet) but that really shouldn't affect run-time FPS much. Plus it's really not even being accessed except during load times.

I'm not terrifically familiar with the process of optimizing settings in MWO, or games in general. Clearly something odd is happening due to the utilization numbers, but . . . does anyone have a suggestion?

- ethereal

[Metal Oxidado]

Hi Ethereal.
That CPU has 6 cores / 12 threads, right? Have you tried disabling hyper threading?
Six threads its enough and HT can sometimes hurt gaming performance.

Edited by MalditoPedazoDeMetal, 30 January 2017 - 05:45 PM.

[xWiredx]

You're definitely CPU-bound. Kick down particles, shadows, and environment settings and overclock the living hell out of that thing if you can.

[darqsyde]

I second xWiredx, overclock that CPU as much as it/you can stand.

[flying-kestrel]

Hm, good point. It's actually a dual-socket machine and I've been running it with HT disabled (should have mentioned that, sorry!) but spread across both sockets. I'll also try disabling one socket and see if that helps, just in case the kernel scheduler is being stupid about where it's putting threads.

Also, this thing runs stupidly cool most of the time, so I'll see what I can do about OC'ing it. Thanks for the feedback!

[Dragoon20005]

interesting to see a Dual Socket System running MWO.

double check that your are running DX11 and not DX9

also be sure to run the 64 bit client.

yes it may sound dumb but i seen some guys online in battle complaining about crap frame rates on a semi decent PC until i ask them about DX11 and 64 bit client.


with that out of the way

this is the number one reason for crappy frame rates on MW:O

sh*tty programing and implementation of the Cryengine



Ok here is where it get interesting

ethereal visage, on 31 January 2017 - 07:00 PM, said:

Hm, good point. It's actually a dual-socket machine and I've been running it with HT disabled (should have mentioned that, sorry!) but spread across both sockets. I'll also try disabling one socket and see if that helps, just in case the kernel scheduler is being stupid about where it's putting threads.

Also, this thing runs stupidly cool most of the time, so I'll see what I can do about OC'ing it. Thanks for the feedback!

before you disable the second CPU,

use MSI Afterburner and make the app display all the 12 cores Usage on the side of the screen. followed by GPU usage.

let the app also record the average and lowest and peak frame rates. And compare to the CPU load and GPU load to see the pattern.



Once done that

see if you can do any OC on the Server grade mobo, because if memory serves me correctly

FSB OC is hard locked unless you are using X58 boards.


RAM speed and latency somewhat affects this game and other games running Cryengine but not by much in a really fast system.

the RX 470 is a decent GPU should be enough for 1080P High gaming


See if you can pickup some nice X58 boards on ebay

but there is one legendary board which is super rare and was used for the World Records OC is the EVGA Classy Super Record 2 aka Classified SR-2 which is a dual xeon socket motherboard.

Even a single 6 core Xeon at 4GHz OC should be plenty for most games with that GPU combo.

[xWiredx]

Dragoon20005, on 31 January 2017 - 11:25 PM, said:

Even a single 6 core Xeon at 4GHz OC should be plenty for most games with that GPU combo.

There's a 30-35% difference between the Nehalem arch and the Haswell arch, so anything CPU-bound like MWO is probably subject to a slightly stiffer FPS penalty on such an old system. Even at clocks like 4.5GhZ, OP would need to turn down particles, shadows, and environment settings. Most other games should be relatively okay, though.

[Dragoon20005]

xWiredx, on 01 February 2017 - 10:28 AM, said:

There's a 30-35% difference between the Nehalem arch and the Haswell arch, so anything CPU-bound like MWO is probably subject to a slightly stiffer FPS penalty on such an old system. Even at clocks like 4.5GhZ, OP would need to turn down particles, shadows, and environment settings. Most other games should be relatively okay, though.

this is the interesting part regarding Arch since we are on the topic

recent benchmarks of older CPU shows the Sandybridge i5 2500K can still keep up and in some cases beat the modern Haswell i3 and even matching the new Kabylake i5-7600K thou the Kabylake was on stock clock.

if you are still rocking the SandyBridge CPUs like the i5 and i7

you are still OK with most games with a nice GPU upgrade to like the GTX 1060 6GB or the GTX1070

but yes the new Kabylake CPU should be your next upgrade path.

[Sideshow031]

Dragoon20005, on 01 February 2017 - 06:54 PM, said:

but yes the new Kabylake CPU should be your next upgrade path.

I mean, even skylake would do, and prices are bound to drop on 6th gen stuff after a little while. the performance differences between kaby and Sky are... well, lacking. compared to the leaps and bounds of years past, there's not a whole hell of a lot to say for it. good for future proofing, sure, but if you're on a budget, an OC'able board and processor would do you 250? maybe? you can get solid OC's on stuff thats a single generation old without breaking the bank.

[Dragoon20005]

Sideshow031, on 01 February 2017 - 08:09 PM, said:

I mean, even skylake would do, and prices are bound to drop on 6th gen stuff after a little while. the performance differences between kaby and Sky are... well, lacking. compared to the leaps and bounds of years past, there's not a whole hell of a lot to say for it. good for future proofing, sure, but if you're on a budget, an OC'able board and processor would do you 250? maybe? you can get solid OC's on stuff thats a single generation old without breaking the bank.

http://pcpartpicker....&sort=d7&page=1

looking at the prices of the i5 7600K and i5 6600K shows them pretty much the same

the extra cost will prob come from the Z270 boards which features more M.2 slots and other stuffs.

yes the IPC gains from Skylake to Kabylake is almost 0%

but prob the kabylake CPUs seems to OC much better.

kinda the similar case with Haswell to Haswell Refresh which has a better TIM

[Darksim]

So, I've already read through some of these posts from others, and I am having super bad FPS problems - as in single digits during brawling. All settings are to absolute minimum, AA off, and tried both full & windowed mode with different resolutions. Even minimum resolution somehow produces same frame rate. I have 20GB RAM, i7 8 core 3.4 GHz, 2.7GB ATI video card, and everything in the background [Win7] is turned off....even went so far as turning off Windows services like antivirus, security center, print spooler - kept trying things! I need to know how to fix this, please.

[Tarl Cabot]

What is missing in this thread is questioning if the user had changed Power Options from Balanced to High Performance due to how Windows manages system components in Balanced, such as core park, etc. When AMD released their newest CPU Ryzen, that is something AMD pointed out afterwards that Windows Power Option needs to be set to High Performance from the default Balanced.

Darksim, what is your system's exact specs?

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 30 April 2017 - 04:21 AM.

[Blunt_Object]

I've actually had the same thing recently , prior to the recent patch and windows updates i was running 80-120 fps
(i7 65700k 4.5ghz, gigabyte 1070, gigabyte z170x ) unfortunately it's taken a complete dive since patch/updates kicked in and am struggling to hold 50-60 fps with it dropping and running at 35-70 during the game and then bouncing to 80-90 at end screens.
Used to be able to run Vhigh settings and now stuggling to hold medium/low.

[Lizardman from Hollywood]

Its your clock speed. Mwo loves fast clocks above all else. My r7 1700 OC to 4.0 with a gtx 1080 OC gets me worse fps then my buddy with a i5 6600 OC and a gtx 1070. But only in MWO. I trash him on just about every other modern game. Maybe one day PGI will optimize MWO but im not holding my breath. I fully expect MW5 to go multiplayer first, esp if it is better optimized. And thatnway PGI can double dip us on mechs.

[Tarl Cabot]

Quote

prior to the recent patch and windows updates i was running 80-120 fps

A few months ago a windows patch/update had reset some players Power Options back to Balanced. You did not note it but have you double checked that your Power Options on whether or not it is still set to High Performance?

[xWiredx]

Could also be drivers. I know I've had some pretty inconsistent performance with those 'incremental' updates they've been doing for new game releases from Nvidia (but that doesn't mean Nvidia is the only guilty party).

[Dragoon20005]

Windows 10 "Creators Update" have reported to have various bugs and affect end users and business owners

so there is a possibility they affect the performance of your PC as well

the game patches are more game files for new mech models lately and hardly any patches to fix performance

its akin to adding more floors to an unstable foundation, less stable and more prone to crashing in worse cases.

[LT. HARDCASE]

Darksim, on 29 April 2017 - 04:16 PM, said:

So, I've already read through some of these posts from others, and I am having super bad FPS problems - as in single digits during brawling. All settings are to absolute minimum, AA off, and tried both full & windowed mode with different resolutions. Even minimum resolution somehow produces same frame rate. I have 20GB RAM, i7 8 core 3.4 GHz, 2.7GB ATI video card, and everything in the background [Win7] is turned off....even went so far as turning off Windows services like antivirus, security center, print spooler - kept trying things! I need to know how to fix this, please.

What is a 2.7GB ATI card?

[Dragoon20005]

LT. HARDCASE, on 07 May 2017 - 05:13 PM, said:

What is a 2.7GB ATI card?

hes prob reading from the DX11 file

the program will read both the dedicated VRAM and the system swap RAM for the IGPU part

Edited by Dragoon20005, 07 May 2017 - 05:27 PM.