10 replies to this topic

[Jorro]

Performance drops: symptoms, diagnosis, remedy

My Spec:
Phenom II 555 BE 4 cores @ 3,2 GHz (no overclocking)
4 GB Ram
ATI Radeon HD 5750


1.) Symptoms:

The problems startet about 3 patches ago,
I made this little chart how the performance was:


_________| High | Medium | Low
---------------------------------------------
MecLab___| 60 | 60 | 60
---------------------------------------------
IDLE_____| 40 | 50 | 60
---------------------------------------------
Action____| 15-20 | 20-30 | 30-40
---------------------------------------------
FPSDROP | 4 | 5-6 | 5-9
---------------------------------------------

MecLab .... FPS in Menu / Mechlab
IDLE ...... FPS in the first few seconds of a match
Action .... well, you know what I mean
FPSDROP ... <- THIS!!! is what made the game unplayable for me


Each round the same problem: i start with the IDLE fps,
when everybody moves out I get the "Action" fps,
and at a Random time I got the FPSDROP for 10-30 seconds, then back to "Action" for 1-3 Minutes, then again FPSDROP (if I survived that long).

FPSDROP occured independent of whats on my screen, it happend in brawling (which led to dying) as well as on plain areas with no other Mech or smoke or whatever visible.

I never had a Ctd, one time i had the "yellow screen" bug and one time the "minimap not rotating" bug.



2.) Diagnosis:

Here is what i tried:
.) delete "Cache" folder .... no improvement
.) reinstall the game ....... no improvement
.) install newest drivers ... no improvement
.) install older drivers .... no improvement
.) enable / disable vsync ... no improvement
.) force 4 threads ......... no improvement
.) modified user config ..... improves IDLE and "Action" but still same FPSDROP
.) overclocking to 3,9 GHz .. improves IDLE and "Action" but still same FPSDROP
.) DISable 2 cores (2working) reduces fps ~50%, pain to play but no FPSDROP
.) DISable 1 core (1 working) reduces fps ~20%, playable but rare FPSDROP
.) disable Cool'n Quiet ..... no improvement
.) force max. CPU freq. ..... no improvement

through all these tests i monitored CPU temperature, and it never exceeded 55° Celsius.

Here some interesting Info how MWO scales on my multicore CPU:
2 cores: 2x 100% load, CPU is limiting everything
3 cores: 3x 90% load, CPU is almost limiting
4 cores: 4x 60-70% load, CPU is not limiting



After all of that i accidently watched my CPU frequency during the game: in Menus it stayed low, and ingame it was at max (3,2 GHz) but at the same time I had a FPSDROP the CPU freq dropped too!
Even when I forced the frequency to 3,2 Ghz it dropped to about 2,5 GHz at the same time the FPSDROP occured, and recovered to 3.2 GHz when my "Action"-fps came back.
I looked at my CPU temperature: still between 50 - 55° Celsius, far from critical.



3.) my remedy:

The only thing I could remember that overrides CPU frequency is the "thermal throttling" setting in BIOS. For all who want to try this BE WARNED!!!
THE FOLLOWING CAN DAMAGE YOUR SYSTEM if things go really wrong.
"thermal throttling" is a mechanism that should safe your CPU from taking damage from overheating. So, unless your CPU cooling is insufficient, this should do nothing.
In my case this did something, even though my CPU temperature was far from critical.

So i deactivated "thermal throttling" in the BIOS and thats it. No FPS drops any more.

If you try this you should alway monitor you CPU temperature! Else you might get crahes, lockups or even damage your CPU.


I want to add that I could not replicate this strange behaviour with any other game, benchmark or software. Demanding benchmarks like "Unigine Heaven" run for hours without any problems.

[Snowblack]

Just to freak you out...

CPU Name: Intel® Core™2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
CPU Speeds: 2133
Physical CPUs: 1
Virtual CPUs: 2
Video Card Description: ATI Radeon HD 5670
VRAM: 1024 MB

clean game without configs the only thing I did was add more ram to the game (win 7 32 bit problem) to solve memory allocation error.

My fps mechlab 50fps Low res but there is only about 8fps difference in high
Idle 35fps
Action 15-25fps
drop 7-8fps

Its funny that you have same issues as me but your specs are supperior to mine, but u still get the fps drops. Its in the game mostly as you noticed.

But If i had your specs in my PC I would expect MWO to run like a mo.fo and *** smooth as silk (unless there are some net problems) wouldn't you agree. Must be frustrating. I am a bit frustrated but i should be silent because Im a bit underspecced and its a miracle that it actually runs on my system.

Id love to try out your remedy to improve the game but im afraid to fry my preacious...

Edited by Snowblack, 07 December 2012 - 12:28 PM.

[Jorro]

Based on the steps I did you could do some testing without risking your hardware.
You need these things:

- a tool that monitors your CPU frequency
- a tool that monitors your CPU temperature
(for me there came a nice little program with my mainboard, but there is plenty of freeware for this purpose)

Next you set your windows energy profile to "high performance" so it should force your CPU to run at full speed. (check this)

Then you fire up Mechwarrior online, in windowed mode so you can see the temperature and the frequency while playing.
Play a few rounds and watch both temperature and frequency closely.

Case a)
Temperature does not exceed critical values (70° Celsius is critical, everything below 60° is OK)
but Frequency changes (drops) during game
-> we have a winner! this is a good sign my remedy might help you too

Case
Temperature exceeds critical values.
-> no matter what frequency says, you have a thermal problem, mount more heatsinks
or clean your CPU cooler, maybe some dust is the cause.
DON'T touch the "thermal throttling", this keeps your CPU from getting fried.

Case c)
Temperature is nice and stable, Frequence is at maximum all the time
-> well i fear my solution won't help you out.

[Quad Ace]

I also had this issue when running in anything but "High Performance" power mode.

[Snowblack]

Thx guys... I try what I can. Im going to squize everything out of my PC...

[plaguebreath]

Not a solution to my problem, happy you solve yours thx for the effort.

[Jaz]

Tried everthing in the OP except the BIOS changes....


I have a low FPS issue... With the system i am running i shouldn't have any issues, every other game I play has no issue all running 60 FPS. Only MWO has an issue.

During the game MWO Client is only using 20% of the system resources and my frame rate drops to 5 to 12 FPS. That is on high settings, on low settings with everything turned down it runs arround 20 FPS what the hell is going on?? Please help me.

System Specs

AMD FX - 8350 - 8 core 4.00 GHZ

16 GB of Ram

2x Radeon HD 7870 2GB cards running crossfire

Windows 8


I have more than enough power.. the games just not using it.. i have set the game as high priority.

(Shrug) not sure what to do now.

Thank a Bunch
Jaz

[Proteaus]

This performance drop has been a issue since the mid sept patch.Pre mid sept patch this program ran lag free at about a steady 25-30 fps which is playable. Post mid sept patch it was unplayable on my high end dual core. I believe that was the patch they installed the micro transactor and hard coded the min graphic settings . Basically making it so those of us that needed to , couldnt turn off the eye candy rendering the game a lagfest.

[Silmaril]

Jaz, on 09 December 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

Tried everthing in the OP except the BIOS changes....


I have a low FPS issue... With the system i am running i shouldn't have any issues, every other game I play has no issue all running 60 FPS. Only MWO has an issue.

During the game MWO Client is only using 20% of the system resources and my frame rate drops to 5 to 12 FPS. That is on high settings, on low settings with everything turned down it runs arround 20 FPS what the hell is going on?? Please help me.

System Specs

AMD FX - 8350 - 8 core 4.00 GHZ

16 GB of Ram

2x Radeon HD 7870 2GB cards running crossfire

Windows 8


I have more than enough power.. the games just not using it.. i have set the game as high priority.

(Shrug) not sure what to do now.

Thank a Bunch
Jaz

I am in a similar situation. Switch out your 8350 for a 8150 @4.6 and the graphic cards for crossfire 7970s and you have my rig. I tried everything, one card, two cards, with OC and without. I OC'd everything including HT and NB...using liquid cooling and a total of 9 case fans..to no avail. MWO simply needs some more optimization and they are working on it.

[HeroNemisis]

I had the same issue. I solved it with k10stat by clocking all p-states on my processor to the highest one and enabling processor control. Worked like a charm. I wonder why it unloads the cpu randomly in gameplay otherwise? I noticed it would drop to the p6 state intermittently during game when I would get super low fps. Even trying to force processor control of the highest processor state didnt work and I had to resort to making every p state the same. Now I am happily overclocked at 2.6 ghz (from 1.6) on my a8-3500m quad ( I built a custom cooler). FPS high 20's to 40's depending on level. Never drops below 20. This is from 6 to 18 fps stock. Killer improvement. oh, and I did have the same cpu frequency drops stock.

Edited by HeroNemisis, 10 December 2012 - 03:47 AM.

[steelblueskies]

try setting power state for an intel core cpu to 99%min 99% max.

this disables turboboost modes.

why?

because even if there is no thermal issue, turboboost cannot keep the cpu at the turbo state indefinitely, and must at some point drop to normal rated frequency at least briefly before turboing again.
the less turbo applied, the longer it can stay at that level, but as mwo is cpu hungry and now using more cores, dropping say 400mhz across four cores every so often borks the crap out of everything, even if the resulting frequency is still well above required.

the bit i cannot figure out is why using the stock only speed with turboboost disabled leads to ~3fps average *GAIN* over having it on, while reducing the dips or drops severity.

this is seemingly an especially hard and fast truth in mobile systems, be they core i5 or i7(so far only have sandy bridge users test this out and comment) turbo cycling to standard rated speed, not below, and with stable therm levels..
note throttlestop can give you cpu frequency and temp logs, while allowing soft disabling of turbo/throttling, and in many systems allowing fiddling with the different performance levels and states. mainly good for killing bd_prochot calls in mobile rigs, and having a good plain text timestamped log for the system.