13 replies to this topic

[Jammers]

Hi all,

I have been having major problems with FPS rates since I bought a new Alienware laptop back in August to play CBT of MWO.

I have tried everything, custom configs, speaking to IGP customer support (who were nice but couldn't help), Nvidia customer support (who were also nice, but couldn't help).

Now I'm using latest drivers (313.96), and my system specs are

Processor: Core i7-3610QM / 2.3 Ghz
RAM: 16GB
Video Card: Nvidia GT650m
Windows 8

I used to be able to get 45fps +, but recent patches have made this fluctuate wildly, so today I would start at about 28fps, and then drop down to about 8fps, which makes gameplay pretty poor. I don't have any other issues with other games, and can run everything on very high/ultra at good performance levels.

I know that nvidia released the geforce experience, but I'm getting the error below, and it's not letting me do anything, as you can see below



Would anyone on the forums be able to have a look at my Nvidia settings (below) and let me know how I should tweak them for best performance (not quality)? I've been pulling my hair out over this for the last few months, so any help would be appreciated!



Cheers

Jammers

[Tarl Cabot]

1. Set Power options to best performance.
2. Run a program that monitors CPU per core usage and speed. Does one core start to crank up, usage and heat?
Do the following to ensure MWO is using all cores.
[Fix|Updated]Poor Game Performance Solution{Nvidia/amd Users}


Disable turbo boost, using 98 or 97% as the cut off point. The reason is for laptops, the increased CPU speed is for only 2 cores then 1 core, as the system is not setup to supply power to all the cores. With other laptop users, when one core is pegged that core generates lots of heat which then the system slows down the CPU and kicks up the fans to cool it down.

3300 MHz (1 core)
3200 MHz (2 cores)
3100 MHz (3 or 4 cores)

Disabling Intel Turbo Boost - Tautvidas Sipavičius

[Sen]

Quote

[color=#959595]Disable turbo boost, using 98 or 97% as the cut off point. The reason is for laptops, the increased CPU speed is for only 2 cores then 1 core, as the system is not setup to supply power to all the cores. With other laptop users, when one core is pegged that core generates lots of heat which then the system slows down the CPU and kicks up the fans to cool it down.[/color]

First, you cannot "turn off" turbo boost in a modern notebook[which would be a BIOS option], nor would you want to. Second, it dynamically balances power and load to all cores/threads. This means that a program capable of using 4 cores will get the load dynamically balanced across all cores, and turbo boost will throttle up only as far as it's programming allows. Yes, this generates heat, but unless there is a defect in the cooling system [dusty fan, bad thermal paste job] cooling designs in modern notebooks can EASILY account for the generated heat. All you're doing is essentially underclocking your processor, which is going to have a NEGATIVE impact on your performance. How do I know this? I've actually tried playing with max power % in power options, and dropping it 5% resulted in a 5-7 FPS loss in mechlab. Of course, I know that my processor [3630QM] maxes around 72c with high performance and fan left on auto. Keep in mind, sandy and ivy bridge chips have a thermal threshold somewhere between 90 and 95c, so they can sustain temps of around 85c for hours without breaking a sweat. Granted, that's a little high for MY tastes, but it's within operational parameters.
As for the O/P performance issues, I can run Far Cry 3 with high settings on a GTX675m, Star Craft 2 doesn't even make my machine break a sweat. . yet I STILL get drop downs to 21 FPS or so, whether I'm on 1920 x 1080 max settings or 1024 x 768 on lowest. I've tried raising application priority, specifying cores, disabling everything under the sun. . no difference in performance. About the only thing above and beyond I can recommend is:

http://forum.cakewal....aspx?m=1861804
And I haven't actually gotten a chance to test the performance to see if there's a change, but the possible background theory is sound.

Best of luck, however ^^

[Jammers]

Nice one guys, I've adjusted the min/max processor states, and the threaded optimisation and the registry key for the cores, and next time I play the game I'll see if it makes a difference and share the results with you

Although I guess we'll just have to wait for the game to be optimised a LOT more :/ it's just a shame considering I don't have any of these problems with any other games, it's really putting a downer on my MWO'ing as I'm getting frustrated after a couple of games, and not playing it anywhere near as much as I would be (ie barely a day a fortnight, compared to daily (which is what I want to be doing)). I'll hold off buying any new MC now I've blasted through most of my founders credits until this is sorted.

I know that MWO is in a proper development beta, unlike the bull ***** beta's that a lot of other games say they are in, which is why I haven't left already, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where the game goes being a big battletech fan, but I bought this laptop specifically for MWO and spent nearly €1.5k on it (well it'll last me a few years!), and it's the only game I can't play :/ I know the game is being optimised for desktops, but this little 14 inch machine is the right weight and spec for me, so PGI and IGP, please sort this out!

I can hardly recommend this game to others, if they are going to be disappointed by it. One of my friends dropped nearly €2k on a laptop from the German equivalent of Alienware, and he's having similar problems, barely able to get above 25fps where he's used to 70+ for pretty much every other game he has installed on it. He's not as much of a fan as I am and he just switched to Hawken.

Before they dropped in the new Cryengine, I was on about 30~45fps steadily once the Nvidia drivers got updated to support MWO, but now ~25fps dropping to single digits as soon as anything happens on screen is killing the fun

[Tarl Cabot]

Turn off/disable/prevent it from being used (shrugs). Correct, for laptops bios does not allow Turbo Boost to be disabled directly. As well as when turbo boost does kick it the power and speed is applied eventually onto only one core, that is how laptops with Turbo Boost are designed. A few players themselves have monitored what happens when TB does kick in. Only one core receives the power, increasing its baseline CPU speed and generated heat during battle. Mechlab may not likely be the time for Turbo Boost to kick in.

This does not help stop the issue of when the FPS drops to 4FPS after several games, nor does it help if/when other programs kick in and hog the CPU, such as Windows Media Sharing program.

And so far at least 42 laptop (with turbo boost) users (that I am aware of) have seen their overall MWO gaming experience improve with this tweak.

Quote

http://news.cnet.com...0362882-23.html



excerpt:

For the Core i7-920XM, that maximum speed bin is 3.2GHz, not the 2GHz value which is marked on the part. In principle, the 920XM could run all of its cores at 3.2GHz all the time if enough power was available and if the heat sink could keep the chip cool. (This is why Turbo Boost isn't like consumer overclocking: the chip is operating within its design specifications at all times.)

In a laptop, the potential for quad-core 3.2GHz operation just can't be realized. Intel selected the 55W TDP specification for the 920XM because that's a practical limit for a laptop processor. Combine that number with the rest of the chipset, the memory, a high-end graphics chip, and a big high-resolution LCD panel, and the whole laptop might be consuming 80W-100W when running all-out.

If the 920XM were configured to run all of its cores at 3.2GHz, I estimate it would consume at least 110W of power for the CPU alone--completely untenable in a mainstream laptop. (Though it's true that some original equipment manufacturers make laptops using desktop Nehalem processors; they're just huge, heavy, and hot.)

So Intel calculated how much it has to slow down the 920XM in order to meet the industry-standard definition of TDP, which amounts to a worst-case real-world workload running on all four cores. (Maximum power is defined in terms of a worst-case synthetic "power virus," but since real applications aren't that brutal in their processing demands, maximum power is only of interest to chip and system designers.)
For the 920XM, that slowdown worked out to 2GHz, and that's why the chip is rated at that speed.

And this tweak has seen its usage across other games. It falls in the general spot like AMD Cool&Quiet or Intel's Speedstep or general windows power settings, many games do NOT play well when there are dynamic changes being made to the CPU and CPU speed on the fly during major game play.

As for Core Parking, it is an energy saving feature for when the system load is low, and we know that MWO utilizes the CPU more than the GPU when compared to other games. A link to a program that can alter how it works http://bitsum.com/ab...ore_parking.php but most of the threads I have seen have been concerning desktop systems, not laptops and how Turbo core works on them.

(shrugs) Jammers, these posts are here to be helpful. Ultimately it falls to you to do your own research and testing to determine the best results for you.

Edited by Tarl Cabot, 13 February 2013 - 06:29 PM.

[Tarl Cabot]

http://mwomercs.com/...mance-is-worse/

Just to keep it separated, in the above link the player went from a non-turbo cpu laptop to a newer turbo enabled laptop. By making the changes to the Power management, using 98% min/max he was able to improve his game play on the new laptop. There are other threads with similar results when the issue appeared to be the laptop's Turbo Boost then when this tweak was used much better game play.

Other threads...

http://mwomercs.com/...-low-fps-issue/

http://mwomercs.com/...ange-fps-drops/

[Sen]

Quote

Just to keep it separated, in the above link the player went from a non-turbo cpu laptop to a newer turbo enabled laptop. By making the changes to the Power management, using 98% min/max he was able to improve his game play on the new laptop. There are other threads with similar results when the issue appeared to be the laptop's Turbo Boost then when this tweak was used much better game play.

I remember the linked thread, it's what prompted me to start playing around with it on my under performing MSI GT70. At the time, I saw only performance losses when playing with affinity and max processor state, though i will concede that I was only monitoring CPU usage through task manager, which can be. . less than optimal.

Along the same lines, someone suggested disabling core parking [which has in the past caused additional microstutter] to solve FPS drop issues as well. I never got a chance to try it out, as last night I ended up having to completely format all my drives and reinstall [long story]. Even though I'd reinstalled MwO twice to no effect, and had started with a fresh install of Windows to begin with, for whatever reason THIS TIME AROUND I'm getting 10-15 more FPS, and there are no more spike drops [goes from 43 to about 33 under heavy rendering] Haven't changed anything, except I haven't yet moved Windows kernel into ram, disabled core parking, etc. Just installed, set power option to high performance, and tested. I'm starting to think PGI just builds it into the code to trigger randomly during install, just to mess with people's heads

I will, however, continue to play around with it and see what kind of results I get and report back.

Edit: PS:

Now that I'm thinking about it, I thought I'd toss out some comparison numbers from my desktop rig as some food for thought.

3930k @ 4.2
16 Gig DDR3 1600
2 x ATi 7950 Xfire [though obviously Xfire is not supported]

Fluctuates between 53 FPS and 41-43 FPS @ 1920 x 1080 Very high settings [runs the same @ 2560 x 1440]

Compared to:
3630QM
12 Gig DDR3 1600
GTX 675m [essentially a slightly upclocked GTX580m
Fluctuates beteween 43 FPS and 33 FPS @ 1920 x 1080 Very high settings

That should give some indication of how non optimized the current version of the game is, as well as how performance scales with hardware.

Edited by Sen, 14 February 2013 - 07:28 AM.

[TheFlayedman]

Sen your performance figures seem very low considering your rig, is that right that that you dont see higher than 53fps? on any map?

[Sen]

That is correct. In heavy combat it bounces around and usually hangs around 48-49 with some dipping. This is with 13.2 WHQL drivers.

At 6048 x 1024 frames drop down into the high teens/low 20s, JUUUUUST into the range where you get intermittent slightly laggy playback.

From what I've seen from these forums over the past 3 or 4 months, I'm not the only one that gets this kind of performance, so while I've looked into ways to increase performance, I haven't really tried to over analyze the situation against what is, after all, an almost completely UN-optimized game.

For the record, my wife's 2600k [4.2Ghz] machine with Xfire 6970s gets similar performance [performance is identical whether or not xfire is enabled or disabled]

This may very well change when they update directX, and had BETTER change when they implement Xfire.

Hence my original statement that the 650m isn't quite enough for MwO. Not that it SHOULDN'T run it, but as the code currently stands, performance in GENERAL is 2 to 3 tiers down from where it should be.

What blows my mind is, there seem to be exceptions to the rule. . and I'd LOVE to know what's different. . .

[TheFlayedman]

Well it sounds like you get worse performance than me and i have an i5 and a gtx 480 which are both not as high end as your rig

[Tarl Cabot]

I am running an I5-3570k OC 4.2ghz, 8gig memory and AMD HD7950 and W8. I run it at 1920x1080 and on med/heavy settings. 99% of the time it is pegging 60FPS, dropping to 55 or so during combat.

Now, as I have my system setup with dual boot, when I run the MWO on XP OS I easily lose 15-20FPS. I then wonder how anyone can play at such a low FPS as it is not smooth at all.

[Sen]

See, I run at 2560 x 1440 @ max settings, so it would stand to reason I'm a little bit below that.

I will say that Xfire is starting to make a difference as of the last patch, I mostly stayed in the mid 40s my last test match.

Got 4 kills, too

Raven <3

[Jammers]

Hi all,

Thanks for all of the really useful feedback. I have tried the various things outlined in Tarl Cabot and Sen's posts. I then installed MSI Afterburner to monitor things, but I think I have something here now. I didn't do any of the overclocking stuff at all, so it's in the default state.

So I have my max processor set to 98%, but since putting in MSI, I have been stable around 25~35fps on max settings and resolution for my laptop, even in a really intense firefight in the river city. I played about six matches yesterday, and all of the lines were steady enough, with no in-game dips like I was having before.

So I'll monitor this for the time being, and see if this sustains the performance, as if it does I think I've cracked it, and really appreciate everyone's help. MWO seems to be finally playable for me!!!!

Thanks so much!

Jammers

Edited by Jammers, 18 February 2013 - 01:41 AM.

[Jammers]

So the new drivers pick up MWO,

but keeping in mind

Processor: Core i7-3610QM / 2.3 Ghz
RAM: 16GB
Video Card: Nvidia GT650m 2GB


this is what I see

Edited by Jammers, 20 February 2013 - 03:11 PM.