22 replies to this topic

[Firewuff]

I've loaded up a GPU monitor on my machine so I can see what was going on (running it on my second screen). I was getting heat problems leading to the card underclocking to maintain stability, and noticed something.

In the load screen, ANY PART of it and not just the mech lab the GPU is running at 98-100% all the time. THIS IS BAD! It causes the temp of my graphics card to rocket from 75deg celcius to 85 or 90+ on a hot day. This means my GPU is already smoking before the game begins and as it is a laptop it eats battery like nothing else if I'm not on power.

I believe that the code in the load screens, mech lab etc has uncapped frame rates and as there is very little to do it is rendering frames like mad. simply capping this would prevent the issue. Note this is a wild guess on my part but being involved in software development not an uneducated one.

Anyone else seeing this?

In game by comparison the GPU is topping out at 60% or less, I suspect because of the netcode and latency issues. but thats another ball game. Typically I'm getting 10-16 FPS on med settings.

For ref my machine specs are

Dell XPS 15
Graphics Nvidia GeForce GT 435M 2GB graphics. Video bios 70.08.19.00.5D

Driver version 306.97

Cpu Quad core i7 (Q740)
8G Ram

SSD hdd

I love the game and really appreciate all the effort the Devs are putting in. This is the first time I've actually MADE time to play a game in my busy life for (too many) years. Been playing MW games since mid 90 when I was at Uni and this is one of the best ever.

Thanks Guys, Keep up the great work.

[p4r4g0n]

Noticed this as well and have been scratching my head over the fact the GPU load is higher in the outside the match than in it. Having said that, CPU load while in match shoots up pretty dramatically while GPU load drops.

Have also noticed that at the login screen, FPS is at my maxed fps (60 for me) and once you log in it drops dramatically (drops to 30 - 34 fps for me) even if you haven't started doing anything?

Changing settings from Very High to Low gives me an fps difference of only about 5 - 8 fps which is pretty minimal. Using AMD Overdrive and increasing CPU from 1.7GHz to 2.5GHz does not improve fps either.

CPU, GPU and RAM load / usage hardly ever hits max (usually peaks around 90%) for me but can never get more than high 20s to 30 fps. Is this normal?

Have given up trying to tweak for fps improvement since I can only conclude its the software that's the problem.

Specs: AMD A8-3520M (Quad), 4GB DDR3 RAM, AMD Radeon HD6620G (integrated) + 7670M 1GB Dedicated VRAM

Edited by p4r4g0n, 30 November 2012 - 06:30 AM.

[Firewuff]

Here's a video with the interface and my CPU and GPU monitor widgets open next to it. Note the GPU temp skyrocket from 72c to 92 by the end of the vid. A little alarming

http://youtu.be/O1O_MPMC30A

[p4r4g0n]

You might want to edit the section which displays your user id and the number of keystrokes in your password

[Firewuff]

I did think about that but as a) my email is all over the shop an associated with my youtube account any way and the password is complex and c) not used anywher else, I'm not that worried. Besides I'll be changing it soon anyway ;-)

[Poppaukko]

Firewuff, on 29 November 2012 - 11:27 PM, said:

Here's a video with the interface and my CPU and GPU monitor widgets open next to it. Note the GPU temp skyrocket from 72c to 92 by the end of the vid. A little alarming

http://youtu.be/O1O_MPMC30A

That's quite hot even without the game.

My setup without the game running:



With the game running, in the mechlab:



Temperatures slightly rise, but that is to be expected because the clocks and voltage on both the GPU and CPU get higher.

[FrostPaw]

I can hear the fans on my video card spinning up fast when I'm in the mechlab, It's excessive for what the mechlab is, since they're working on a new version of the mechlab due in January, I presume we are stuck with overkill until then.

This isn't a new thing though, this has been a problem since forever, at least with my ATI card.

Edited by FrostPaw, 30 November 2012 - 05:47 AM.

[Flash Yoghurt]

I use a Radeon HD 3850 which is a pretty hot card even when not running full load, but the mechlab brings it up to nearly 100°C.

[Phoenix Alien]

I have more CPU than GPU issues, in mechlab and in game.

[ShiroTenshin]

Blow the dust out of your PC, that's the only issue it's heating that much.

Can't be lack of GPU/CPU power, otherwised it would be just low FPS.

get a air pressure bottle and remove all dust from your PC, that will lower your temps.

Or just go watercooling and no need to remove dust from your hardware components except the radiator.

My temps on 27" 120Mhz screen is at 62 celcius during game & launch, as for CPU 60ish aswell

Edited by ShiroTenshin, 30 November 2012 - 07:47 AM.

[Firewuff]

It's a laptop and most cards in a laptop run hotter. That is nothign unusual and blowing dust out will not help, it's always been like that since I got it out of the box.

The issue is the load screen should be usign 0% GPU when in the main screen and only a significant % when in the mech lab and changes are actually happening. The worst bit is the mech lab is ALWAYS being rendered behind the adds, you can see it bein pre-drawn when the game first loads and before the adds come up some times.

Forget the actual number on my machine, thats not relevent. My card doesnt get that hot in game so there is an issue here.

[Steel Will]

You probably have vsync disabled. Turn it on, or set a framerate limit like you can with MSI Afterburner. There really ought to be a hard fps cap on the mechlab though.

[Inveramsay]

The problem is that there isn't an fps cap, that is why my fps will shoot to over 5000 while loading.

I can't quite understand why this is a big problem though? Surely you should be able to run your gpu at full speed without overheating anyway. Besides, 90C isn't bad for a laptop gpu

The reason mech lab is running so badly is because the mech lab is actually a map in its own right with a menu overlaid it rather than a normal menu.

[p4r4g0n]

If you read the OP's first post, he's pointing out that there may be some really bad unoptimized coding in the mech lab component of the game. I tend to agree as I can't think of any conceivable reason why it needs to utilize the GPU so heavily.

[Steel Will]

Without any sort of framerate cap in place the game is just rendering as many frames as fast as it can, maxing out the GPU.

[Gargel]

Firewuff, on 29 November 2012 - 10:07 PM, said:

Anyone else seeing this?

In game by comparison the GPU is topping out at 60% or less, I suspect because of the netcode and latency issues. but thats another ball game. Typically I'm getting 10-16 FPS on med settings.

Yeah, Mechlab renders 60 frames per second for me, which uses up all the GPU of my Radeon HD4870.

About the game not "utilizing" all available GPU-power while in game (I know you said that's another ball game, but I want to explain why ), it's not because of netcode, latency, or the game code not properly using the GPU. It's actually because of a CPU-bottleneck.

How?

Well, if your CPU can only render 20 frames per second, that means your GPU will only render THOSE 20 frames. In fact, the GPU must wait for the CPU to finish a frame before it can process it. You can see how this can lead to the GPU not fully being used and you would then get a lower temperature and less utilization. You could probably raise almost all graphics options and still not see a lower FPS (That is, until your GPU becomes the bottleneck)

I don't know why.. but this game is a serious CPU-hog, much like Planetside 2. I really want to know what is requiring all that CPU-power. Physics? Particles? Probably. But what else, and why can't it be downscaled?

[Firewuff]

Unfortunately thats inaccurate. the CPU is not a bottle neck, mine is a quad core i7 and s not running hard, one or two cores are above 80% but he rest are only hitting 20-30%. It possible this game is badly threadded but I've seen analysis on the crytech engine which shows it is.

CPU is not rendering frames in any case, its only doing positional transforms and hit detections which is computationally simple, the data it needs to determine the position of mechs etc is coming from the netcode and that is a bottle neck......either way there needs to be a change.

If its using PhysiX to do destructions (which I doubt) then I could see the CPU being heavily utilised. Particles in game are all shaders so thats not CPU.

[Gargel]

Firewuff, on 01 December 2012 - 04:21 PM, said:

Unfortunately thats inaccurate. the CPU is not a bottle neck, mine is a quad core i7 and s not running hard, one or two cores are above 80% but he rest are only hitting 20-30%. It possible this game is badly threadded but I've seen analysis on the crytech engine which shows it is.

CPU is not rendering frames in any case, its only doing positional transforms and hit detections which is computationally simple, the data it needs to determine the position of mechs etc is coming from the netcode and that is a bottle neck......either way there needs to be a change.

If its using PhysiX to do destructions (which I doubt) then I could see the CPU being heavily utilised. Particles in game are all shaders so thats not CPU.

Yes, you have a quad i7, but it's clock speed is only 1.73GHz. Odd though that not all your cores are being used. Have you tried this fix?:

http://mwomercs.com/...ers/page__st__0

Also, (I will look it up later) I highly doubt that the coordinates sent from the server to our computers (the "netcode") is a bottleneck. We are talking about ~5kb/s worth of information being received here. Player positions are being computed on the server before we receive it, our clients are only rendering the actual Mechs'.

But yeah, the perfomance is subpar. Something is shady.

(Isn't positional transforms what particles are btw? As in, positional calculations, which can then be shaded by the GPU)

Edited by Gargel, 01 December 2012 - 06:35 PM.

[Firewuff]

data through put is one thing, yes its low, but latency is what I'm talking about. if my system can't start rendering the scene because it doent know where the mechs are because i'm on a 300ms ping that will be the issue. not so much about the total amount of data.

particles, depends on how they are implemented. if they are individual objects then the CPU does transforms. More commonly particles are things like smoke in the Volcano or sparks from explosions. In those cases the GPU shaders do all the work. THe CPU code sets up the parameters, x number of particles, these shading effects for them, this type of physics behaviour and the shader does ALL the transforms and rendering work, no CPU intervention at all other than to specify the camera postion. This is a bit of a simplification but generally correct.

[Rejarial Galatan]

I run the ATI Radeon R6770 HD card, and once the game fires up, my card heats up like mad. I see it ALWAYS post match on my CPUID of having attained nearly 190 F. BUT, once I turn the game off, it cools down to a standing 120F <give or take a few degrees> like right now, on the forums ONLY: 123F