Low FPS Issues

I've had low FPS issues for a while now, and I chalked this up to beta etc, but other people with specs nowhere near mine say they do absolutely fine. So I ran some tests to see if I could figure out why. I haven't, but here is what I got so far.

Also I understand that sometimes with specific drivers/cards/hardware that there are just issues. I mean look at Rage, it was basically broken when it was released, but it got fixed up after some time, and by decent user profiles. At anyrate, I don't expect a fix anytime soon, but maybe this data will help in some way I dunno.


My specs:

I7 2600k Sandy Bridge OC'ed @ 3.8 GHZ (Liquid cooling)
16 Gig DDR3 g-skill sniper series
Raid 0 transfer rate at 320 gigs/sec (on par with ssds)
GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3P-B3
2 AMD 6970's in X-fire Oc'ed @ 1100/1550 (small oc) (I unlocked these)
12.10 CCC driver version(Most current)

GPU temps are stable around 74C (This is normal for all 6970's)

I understand you guys haven't supported xfire/sli from what I can tell. But this shouldn't be an issue really. Although support would likely increase my frames, and maybe other people's as well. I'm pretty sure you guys are looking into it, but I don't think you confirmed it was gonna happen.

All tests resolutions were 1920x1080
Also keep in mind that the numbers are not absolute, most of this was simply gotten by running around and killing shit in Merci Pools and Streams or Pyramid with the FPS graph open and me simply watching it. I did tests with My Cold witch, my summoner(i know summon skellys has issues), and on my LS shadow(go build of the week). Just to make sure it wasn't a specific spell/skill(again i know about skelly's)

Complete Max settings: with vsync off
140-160 FPS Standing in town
While fighting mobs it goes from 110fps with spikes every 5-10 seconds down to 4fps

Complete Max settings with Vsync On
50-60 in town
60 with spikes down to 4 while fighting

Complete Minimum settings vsync off
140-240 in town
200 with spikes down to 12

Complete Minimum settings Vsync on
same as max settings

Post processing- Decreases FPS by 10 on the upper bound, and 5 lower bound. - Expect when vsync is on the upper bound stays the same. And the FPS decrease is only seen when attacking/moving, not while in town

Shadows Decreased FPS by 20 upper bound, 10 lower bound

I enabled/incremented each setting 1 by 1, and none of them made any difference(AA, Filtering etc)

I tried doing these in Full screen and full screen windowed modes. No difference
I tried again with xfire disabled. No difference.

From experience, there's no way for me to play in a party of 3+ with max settings.
So I took a few notes while in a party of 5 with Min settings. I got 20-30 FPS, and spikes to 0 consistently.

Spikes occur every 10-15 seconds depending on skill usages etc.

---------------------------------

So I played around with my driver support program CCC. Forced AA on and off, Forced AF on and off - None of these changed anything major.

When tessellation was controlled by CCC I got 5 more fps, but there seems to be some frame skipping occasionally. When PoE controlled the skipping is less often.

I also tried using AMD's Alternate Frame Rendering and Optimize 1x1 in a custom profile, but I didn't really notice any difference here either.

Comparatively: These are my MINIMUM FPS in these games, max fps are a bit higher
Crysis 2 Max setting - 150 FPS dx 11 (shadows at medium)
Crysis 3 max settings -170 FPS dx10 (shadows at max)
Tf2 Max settings - 270fps dx10
Age-of-Conan - max settings 160FPS dx10 (shadows off)

I've only ever had to change setting during 25 man Raids in WoW, and even then it was only a few settings and in the 24man Raids in Age of Conan.

I'll run a 3dmark if you still need confirmation that my system is pretty top notch, and should be capable of handling PoE with no problems, and yet I have pretty serious/annoying problems.

-----------------

All in all the huge fps drops are a real pain, I don't think there's much else I can do barring getting new hardware which isn't going to happen soon especially since I've never had issues with other games. When RomeII comes out I might need to though :)

I can't really pinpoint when/why exactly the drops occur ie i dunno if its before or during spell/skill animation.

Screen Shots
Links to the fullscreen version. For some reason the preview has a slide bar so you can see the entire image, but the post does not have the same slide bar. You will notice that there are lag spikes, but they don't fully correspond with the FPS drops. I should also note that I don't normally get these kinds of lag spikes(at least these high of spikes) when I play normally, but for whatever reason taking screen shots made the lag spikes worse(maybe this was coincidental though)

http://i.imgur.com/SFUo3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/OT3Gw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tz19i.jpg

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler


Mark mentioned I should try checking monitoring my HDD activity: This is what I got

So I stood in town and ran around pyramids with max settings, vsync off, and I put a hdd overlay graph up next to the fps graph.

In both places I saw around consistent(or every other second) 10-290 kb and very occasional(once every few minutes) jumps to 1-2mb. This doesn't seem abnormal to me, but maybe I'm wrong?

I couldn't really tell if any of these 1-2mb spikes coincided with fps drops though, but that doesn't seem like it matters greatly since even in town I was getting the 1-2Mb rates.

Just to confirm this system was working, I ran a quick scan with my anti-virus, rates were in the 50MB range.

IGN: BoomFirez
IGN Alt: BoomDischarge
Last edited by RaistlinM#1095 on Dec 1, 2012, 5:39:23 PM
Last bumped on Jul 31, 2015, 5:37:37 AM
Although this does sound like a driver issue, why in the world are your temps so high.

Edit, also, have you tried disabling xfire? Which is known to be buggy?
Last edited by SL4Y3R#7487 on Nov 11, 2012, 1:52:35 AM
GPU's are known for getting hot when in use, especially when OC'd
hell my phone has a warning in the manual that it can reach up to 50 celsius

Have you tried running PoE in windowed mode with the task manager open to see if it is a process causing the spikes?
Last edited by Advent7011#6335 on Nov 11, 2012, 9:12:46 AM
Right. I get that gpus get hot, but I'm saying 85 is very hot for a game that doesn't push a gpu.

On another note, always have vsync on unless you have a 120 Hz monitor. In that case, if you can cap your FPS with CCC to 120, I would try that.

But honestly, I would disable xfire first and give it a go.
All those questions were answered in the original post.

But again, I did do all the the tests again with xfire disabled.

As for vsync, there are pretty specif rules as to when to turn it off, and pretty specific conditions on when you want it on.

When it is on it caps the refresh rate from your card, to that of your monitor, yes most monitors are running 60hz, and so you would get capped at 60fps. However, if your cards are not capable pushing out 60fps or more, then you effectively halve your fps. For double buffered games like PoE here is a crude drawing of what happens.



Here's a permalink since the pic kinda gets cut off
http://i.imgur.com/ISDNF.png
So if your card can only put out 50 fps, and you have vsync on, then your only going to get 30fps on screen.

This is why triple buffering is so important, but we don't have that option yet.

This is also why having vsnc OFF for PoE is typically better.

Vsync On for other games, typically triple buffered one, where your card can push out 100+ FPS and you get alot of screen tearing. Here's a pic of tearing.



Some games tearing isn't a issue, other games it's a big issue. When tearing isn't an issue, it allows your card to push out alot of extra frames that give you essentially a buffer from fps drops ie dropping going from 200 fps to 100fps isn't a big deal but going from 70fps to 40fps is.

Vsync On is also useful for people who have poor case ventilation, live in hot climates, or want to limit how hot their cards get. Since when a card is pushing out 200+ fps it uses alot more energy and get hotter then when you limit it to rendering 60fps.

IGN: BoomFirez
IGN Alt: BoomDischarge
Last edited by RaistlinM#1095 on Nov 11, 2012, 12:15:34 PM
Ummm

It says he has xfire enabled and I don't see his refresh rate anywhere.
"
SL4Y3R wrote:
Ummm

It says he has xfire enabled and I don't see his refresh rate anywhere.


Seriously you should read before posting.

In the OP:
"
I tried again with xfire disabled. No difference.


In my second post
"
But again, I did do all the the tests again with xfire disabled.


As for refresh rate, you never asked what the refresh rate of my monitors were, second it wouldn't matter since if you would actually read the post, I did tests with Vsync On and Off.
IGN: BoomFirez
IGN Alt: BoomDischarge
Last edited by RaistlinM#1095 on Nov 11, 2012, 2:23:31 PM
My bad. Missed the buried sentence. Have you tried asking in general chat.

I would doubt you're the only person using these drivers and card.

Have you tried switching your OC off?
This has been an issue for a while, the game is just complete shit in terms of optimization for now, not much we can really do about it.
One thing you could check would be to see if you're getting hard drive activity when the FPS drops happen. There is a known issue with some assets not being pre-loaded and causing stuttering when they load in game.

Even with raid0 throughput being high, the drives will still have to seek for smaller files which could cause stuttering (although I'd honestly be surprised if it is causing the drops you're describing).

Edit: Assuming it is a loading stutter, it should lessen the longer you're in an instance as the assets will only need to load the first time you encounter them. :Edit

We don't currently have a similar system to test with, so it's entirely possible that there is a problem we need to fix. We do hope to be able to test the game on more varied hardware in future and better optimize it. In the meantime if you find out any more information about this problem please let us know.
Last edited by Thomas#0000 on Nov 11, 2012, 8:42:46 PM

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