FPS Slow Downs

[Tonka]

Salute All, hope you are all well.

I haven't flown very much since the first patch came out, mainly due to me getting huge fps drops whenever i engage in any form of combat.

I've tried altering settings, deleting the cache etc, and i have even gone as far as deleting the whole IL2 folder and re-installing from scratch via steam.

I can fly around and watch the furball's, but as soon as i approach them to try and engage in combat, i get a big fps drop about 75% of the time.

FPS are not bad when flying around, 30+ most of the time, but i am down to seconds per frame when the enemy is close. Of course, i then get picked off or i collide with the ground as i try to anticipate where i'll be in the next frame!

My system is getting on a bit, 3.2 Ghz Phenom II, 8 Gb Ram @ 1333Mhz, and a GTX 280, but i can't fathom why i can fly around and watch the action ok, but not get involved.

So, is anyone else getting the big slow down's, and can anyone suggest anything i could try to prevent this from happening?

Cheers!

[III./ZG76_Keller]

If you haven't already, you should start turning down graphics settings.

I hate to say it, but a hardware upgrade is probably needed; your GTX 280 is holding you back.

[Tonka]

Already tried turning down everything, even with all settings on low, i get decent fps while aimlessly flying around, then no fps when trying to get near the action! I didn't have the problem with non beta version too, that version just used to crash when the memory leak tried to allocate more than 3.25gb.

No spare money to upgrade the GPU yet, but i find it hard to believe that a GTX 280 can't run this game on low settings. I'm sure i read about someone using an 8800 and not having any major problems.

You're right though, an upgrade is needed, but i was hoping for a magic setting that will help me out for now.

Cheers!

[Dutch]

Poosmells Tonks. As an old mate and co-crew member this is depressing news.

I'm in no way a tech-head as you well know, but what exact game settings and screen res are you running?

Turning off ssao and aa and using the csaa setting in nvidia control panel works wonders if you've got the new drivers and they work with your card. I seem to remember you always flew with trees off anyway (they were slapping me in the face regularly as your bomb-aimer).

A 280 isn't that long ago. Mine's a 570 and works fine as long as there isn't too much flak about on overall 'high' settings. We shall overcome. :thumbsup:

[ATAG_Septic]

Already tried turning down everything, even with all settings on low, i get decent fps while aimlessly flying around, then no fps when trying to get near the action! I didn't have the problem with non beta version too, that version just used to crash when the memory leak tried to allocate more than 3.25gb.

No spare money to upgrade the GPU yet, but i find it hard to believe that a GTX 280 can't run this game on low settings. I'm sure i read about someone using an 8800 and not having any major problems.

You're right though, an upgrade is needed, but i was hoping for a magic setting that will help me out for now.

Cheers!

I recently put together a machine for a friend with a GTX260 and it runs the game quite well on medium settings. It has a four core i7920 though and I suspect the CPU is slowing things down for you. I only base this on stuff I've read at 1c about the AI routines slowing down a monster PC. Apparently (and he has posted compelling evidence) the AI is all on one core, which might explain your problem?

Is there any chance you could try a conservative overclock and see if it helps? It's free performance as long as you're careful of course :)

Good luck old bean,

Septic.

[Tonka]

I've just had a fiddle around in the nvidia control panel and the ini files.

I made the framerate a little better, but buggered up the water textures in the process!

I monitored CPU and GPU load while flying, and its definitely my GPU bottlenecking me with my current settings. GPU load is up around 95%, while CPU load is ~ 75% of one core. If one looks at the fillrate figures etc for different GPU's, the 280 isn't all that far behind mid to high end new stuff, so it must be a lack of processing power.

Settings are all on low, except texture quality, model detail, visual effects and damage decals, which are all medium, and kind of have to be. With the model detail and visual effects on low, i get the horrible broken mirror in the Spit's and no flak clouds.

I don't mind overclocking my CPU, although i'd rather do it in the winter, but have not done so for now. I might think again about this if i see the same problem with furball framerates.

Oddly, i don't see an fps drop with Spitfires emitting steam through a damaged radiator, or from the dust when other planes are landing.

I'll try again tomorrow, and hope to find a 110, they are usually the worst culprit for me. Thanks for the tips so far, i'll keep you posted.

:salute:

[Dutch]

i get the horrible broken mirror in the Spit's.

This is probably a small thing, but I turn the mirror off completely as part of my cockpit drill. It's a notorious frame rate hogger. Turn it off tonks.

[Tonka]

Oh yes, i do Dutch. What i meant was, if i set the model detail to low, the Spitfire's (and maybe others, haven't checked) have a horrible low resolution broken mirror, which you can't turn off by pressing M. With the model detail on medium, the mirror works normally, i.e you can can press M and the mirror disappears.

Mirror off is part of my cockpit checks too, somewhere in between Start, and oh shit, open the radiator quick!

[Dutch]

Ah, sorry mate. So are you only having these problems with the beta patch whereas it was ok before?

[ATAG_Torian]

The devs of CloD somehow managed to create a sim that sucks more resources than any first person shooter or RTS game (eg the Total War series). The GTX280 was a great card in its day. Being 3 generations old now however means it's going to struggle with CloD.
They came out with 1GB of vRam and there is a good post in the forum about the performance at various vRam levels. 1GB will struggle at anything more than low to medium settings.
You didn't mention what monitor resolution u normally run the sim at. Obviously the higher the res the more power u need. You are using a 64bit OS aren't u (I never assume anything anymore)?
Shadows, vsync and ssao off will also improve fps on lower end rigs (check that vsync is also off in the nVidia control panel).
Did u build your rig or was it shipped pre-built ? The reason I ask is that the thermal paste on the cpu may be worth replacing with quality paste if it was a pre-built system. Old stock thermal paste can become quite chalky and inneffective over time. Has your rig had a good clean recently? Internal dust buildup on heatsinks can reduce cpu/gpu efficiency or even kill them altogether if bad enuff.
Other more simple things like ensuring u have at 10-15% of your hard drive space free. This gives Windows space to move files around and is important to facilitate defragging which is worth doing every now and then unless u have an ssd (never defrag an ssd). Shutting down unnecessary background processes/applications that suck cpu and ram. Many folk have so many useless programs that start up when Windows boots and they don't even know they are running in the background. Go to Start and in the search box (Win 7) type in msconfig and hit enter. This will bring up the System Configuration utility. Go across to the Startup tab and see how many boxes are ticked. These are all applications that are starting up everytime u boot and most of them may well be unnecessary and just suck resources. Is anything set to auto-update? I make sure anything that needs updating is set to manual so that I choose when it updates. Windows might be installing updates while u are gaming, that will really mess with performance. Some anti-virus programs will do real-time scans on on running programs. There should be an option to create exceptions so it will leave CloD alone while u are using it. Some all encompassing programs like Norton's are well known system hogs and should be uninstalled from a gaming rig imho.
Anyway, there's a few things to look at if u haven't already.

[Tonka]

As far as i can remember Dutch, i had some slow down's but not as bad i have been experiencing recently.

I am running native screen res Torian, 1920x1080, so i am somewhat limited by fill rate here, but i must stress that i have lowered my settings enough to generally fly around, so general frame rate is not an issue, it is just that i was getting horrible laggy stutters when trying to engage in combat, very similar to what used to happen just before a launcher crash, pre beta patch's.

System is self built, and i hate to point this out to someone who is trying to help, but having dust in a heatsink will not reduce the efficiency of any processing unit. If its stays below its its thermal trip temp, efficiency will be the same for all temperatures. (assuming all other things remain equal, clock speed, vcore, etc) AS5 used all round here, temps are not an issue.

Windows was recently re-installed, and the system is running well with every other app/game/sim i throw at it, within reason settings wise of course.

Again, it was the sudden dramatic drop to seconds per frame when approaching combat situations that was annoying me, not general system responsiveness. Anyway, fiddling with the nvidia control panel seems to have helped. I think using the in game V-sync might have been giving me the stutters, as i have not experienced them while using the nvidia adaptive V-Sync with triple buffering, yet. Time will tell.

Cheers.

[Dutch]

I don't know if you might have missed this thread a while back Tonka, but it certainly improved things for me;

http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/showthread.php?1430-New-beta-Nvidia-driver-301-24

The use custom sttings option provided here is very good at smoothing stuff out with aa and ssao off.

[ATAG_Torian]

System is self built, and i hate to point this out to someone who is trying to help, but having dust in a heatsink will not reduce the efficiency of any processing unit. If its stays below its its thermal trip temp, efficiency will be the same for all temperatures. (assuming all other things remain equal, clock speed, vcore, etc) AS5 used all round here, temps are not an issue.

Windows was recently re-installed, and the system is running well with every other app/game/sim i throw at it, within reason settings wise of course.

Again, it was the sudden dramatic drop to seconds per frame when approaching combat situations that was annoying me, not general system responsiveness. Anyway, fiddling with the nvidia control panel seems to have helped. I think using the in game V-sync might have been giving me the stutters, as i have not experienced them while using the nvidia adaptive V-Sync with triple buffering, yet. Time will tell.

Cheers.

I'll stand by my heatsink comment as I have seen too many improvements in rigs after a good heatsink/fan clean particularly on choked gpu's. It's hard to know what level of knowledge a poster has to start with so I like to cover the basics. I hear what u are saying with the fps drops approaching combat. Being a problem since the patch would indicate something from their end. I'm not getting the same issues but my rig includes a 3.6Ghz Intel quad, GTX580 with 1.5gig and 24gig of 1600 DDR3 ram. Have u tried a slightly lower monitor res? I still think that whatever they are doing with CloD is making hard for older gpu's to keep up.