Something very interesting.

[Siggi]

After my rather beastly experience with the slide-show FPS in my campaign I decided to do some testing in QC.

I put all the sliders to 3. Initial FPS was a bit higher, but after a few minutes of combat they ground down to the same similar level as before on 55431 (around 28fps on average).

Put the sliders all on 1, ditto the above. Higher initial FPS, but ended up at the same average 28fps.

There were higher spikes, and the low spikes not so bad, but in general the average FPS after a few minutes of combat was no different on high sliders vs all 3 and all 1.

This could be something peculiar to my machine, so I'd ask and encourage everyone else with frustratingly erratic FPS to test too and post back here with their findings. I get the feeling something is badly wrong with the game, because I have this problem with no other game, but as I said, it could be peculiar to MY rig or setup.

 

[Winder]

Sounds weird maybe post your rig specs so you can compare with others otherwise your post is meaningless?

WM

 

[Siggi]

Thanks Winder, good idea.

Asus Maximus Formula II mobo
Q6600 OC to 3.2ghz
8800GTX graphics (750+mb RAM)
2gb 1066 Corsair Dominator RAM @ 711mhz for 1:1 ratio
FXi Sound
Corsair 650w PSU

 

[pilotsden]

We have a variety

Of people with the same problem within the boys of 60. These are high end machines with a virtual slide show. I was able to tweak mine but there were those who could not.

Pd

 

[Winder]

Of people with the same problem within the boys of 60. These are high end machines with a virtual slide show. I was able to tweak mine but there were those who could not.

Pd

We have high end machines middle range PCs and low end - used in both dev and beta - all were able to run satisfactorily - but again your post is meaningless too with out stats.

We have a section on our website that specifies typical slider settings on PCs in a range of powers.

I can easily lower eyecandy in the lower sliders settings if your rig is not up to it and will look at this in 1.3 - you get nothing for nothing.


Finally do make sure that you are not running campaign on Heavy Regional activity - that will load up your CPU irrespective of how good your GPU is and flatten the frames.

Low or Medium is recommended - heavy (up to 300 craft and vehicles) if you have something like what Pol runs - but mostly I would not recommend going past Medium until this years PC CPUs and GPUs come out.

WM

 

[LeBlaque]

Of people with the same problem within the boys of 60. These are high end machines with a virtual slide show. I was able to tweak mine but there were those who could not.

Pd

I leave the real diagnosis to Winder and crew, but for some reason Siggi's post struck a long-ago chord of some computer games with the following:

In computer science, a memory leak is a particular type of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed. This condition is normally the result of a bug in a program that prevents it from freeing up memory that it no longer needs. A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems (see below) and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program source code; however, many people refer to any unwanted increase in memory usage as a memory leak, even if this is not strictly accurate.

A memory leak can diminish the performance of the computer by reducing the amount of available memory. Eventually, in the worst case, too much of the available memory may become allocated and all or part of the system or device stops working correctly, the application fails, or the system slows down unacceptably due to thrashing. Memory leaks may not be serious or even detectable by normal means. In modern operating systems, normal memory used by an application is released when the application terminates. This means that a memory leak in a program that only runs for a short time is rarely serious.


Cases where leaks are much more serious include:

• where the program is left running, and consumes more and more memory over time (such as background tasks, on servers, but especially in embedded devices which may be left running for many years);
• where new memory is allocated frequently, such as when rendering the frames of a computer game or animated video (emphasis added).

Anyway, just wondering if this can be a contributor to the FPS problem. Appears that I'm acting in the capacity of the "FPS Knight"-- perhaps I should change my moniker.

Good to see an FPS issue unrelated to an ATI card.

Regards,
LeBlaque

 

[Siggi]

We have high end machines middle range PCs and low end - used in both dev and beta - all were able to run satisfactorily - but again your post is meaningless too with out stats.

We have a section on our website that specifies typical slider settings on PCs in a range of powers.

I can easily lower eyecandy in the lower sliders settings if your rig is not up to it and will look at this in 1.3 - you get nothing for nothing.


Finally do make sure that you are not running campaign on Heavy Regional activity - that will load up your CPU irrespective of how good your GPU is and flatten the frames.

Low or Medium is recommended - heavy (up to 300 craft and vehicles) if you have something like what Pol runs - but mostly I would not recommend going past Medium until this years PC CPUs and GPUs come out.

WM

Winder, the above doesn't account for my frames going through the floor as soon as I had a handful of enemy planes on my screen. It doesn't happen in QC, I can have six huns in view simultaneously without a hiccup. But in campaign it was a sudden slide-show, even after I transitioned from the group of them to just one.

I'm also not understanding why the sliders can be at all 5 and all 1 and both see the same average FPS after a few minutes of combat in QC. Different high and low spikes yes, but broad average the same. That just doesn't make sense to me.

I also see no difference in cloud or a/c detail regardless of their slider settings. Effects I'm not sure about, but no immediate difference sprang out at me between 1 and 5.

Terrain and scenery, big differences between 1 and 5.

I set everything to default in the config and started from scratch, pretty much back to where I started now. But with everything on default, including res at 800x600, same FPS as with all default except res at 1900x1200.

Is it possible the CFS3 engine is unable to take advantage of higher hardware specs beyond a certain point? I know that sounds unlikely, but something is very odd with this. With every slider set to 1 I simply don't see how I can get as low as 28fps as an average, and then see the same broad average with 55431. With 11111 I'm suprised I see less than 50fps EVER in QC. What's to render? And 12 a/c only in QC, what's the 3.2ghz CPU doing that causes such an FPS hit, if it is indeed the CPU, because the GPUs got bugger all left to do at 11111.

Yours sincerely, in abject mystification.

 

[Winder]

I leave the real diagnosis to Winder and crew, but for some reason Siggi's post struck a long-ago chord of some computer games with the following:

In computer science, a memory leak is a particular type of unintentional memory consumption by a computer program where the program fails to release memory when no longer needed. This condition is normally the result of a bug in a program that prevents it from freeing up memory that it no longer needs. A memory leak has symptoms similar to a number of other problems (see below) and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program source code; however, many people refer to any unwanted increase in memory usage as a memory leak, even if this is not strictly accurate.

A memory leak can diminish the performance of the computer by reducing the amount of available memory. Eventually, in the worst case, too much of the available memory may become allocated and all or part of the system or device stops working correctly, the application fails, or the system slows down unacceptably due to thrashing. Memory leaks may not be serious or even detectable by normal means. In modern operating systems, normal memory used by an application is released when the application terminates. This means that a memory leak in a program that only runs for a short time is rarely serious.


Cases where leaks are much more serious include:

• where the program is left running, and consumes more and more memory over time (such as background tasks, on servers, but especially in embedded devices which may be left running for many years);
• where new memory is allocated frequently, such as when rendering the frames of a computer game or animated video (emphasis added).

Anyway, just wondering if this can be a contributor to the FPS problem. Appears that I'm acting in the capacity of the "FPS Knight"-- perhaps I should change my moniker.

Good to see an FPS issue unrelated to an ATI card.

Regards,
LeBlaque

I always look for memory leak -and on my dev rig I do not see any evidence of such - but I will keep an eye on it.

We had the ATI FPS thread and I will now start a general FPS thread and so that way we can gain some consensus!

WM

 

[Dej]

Just a thought Siggi... is this occurring in all campaigns, i.e. for all pilots you've created, whether during the The Fokker Scourge or Bloody April or whenever?

I ask merely because one of the features of BHaH is that there's a lot going on that we don't see, and some times/sectors wil be quieter than others.

Of course, I don't know how that feature's implemented and it may be such that it couldn't make any difference whatsoever.

Nevertheless, in terms of thoroughness you should factor it into your checks... one never knows, especially as your originsl problem doesn't occur in QC, I think you said.

 

[Siggi]

Just a thought Siggi... is this occurring in all campaigns, i.e. for all pilots you've created, whether during the The Fokker Scourge or Bloody April or whenever?

I ask merely because one of the features of BHaH is that there's a lot going on that we don't see, and some times/sectors wil be quieter than others.

Of course, I don't know how that feature's implemented and it may be such that it couldn't make any difference whatsoever.

Nevertheless, in terms of thoroughness you should factor it into your checks... one never knows, especially as your originsl problem doesn't occur in QC, I think you said.

I have considered time and location, due to that being mentioned previously by somebody else. But even if it's the case, it would mean certain parts of the game are unplayable purely because more's going on than not. To be playable a rig needs to be able to handle the most extreme conditions the game can throw at it.

It may be that the solution for me is to tuck the game away somewhere safe and come back to it when the hardware has caught up and can munch it real good. I suspect that even the most powerful hardware available right now is borderline for what this game is capable of doing.

I may chuck a new CPU at it, and maybe not. I'm a bit leery of spending around £200 on a new CPU if it turns out to make little difference. To my mind a Q6600 at 3.2ghz should be roughly as good as an E8600 at 3.3ghz, but some gamers are saying the E's dual core is better suited to single-threaded games than a quad.

It's a bugger being at the bleeding edge and not quite being able to see over.

 

[C.Mo]

Q6600 @ 3.1, 8800GT Stock, 4Gig Ram , Windows7 beta and 60fps (Vsync on)
all the time flying (30 on the airfield).
So i think ur hardware is ok 4 the game.

 

[Siggi]

Q6600 @ 3.1, 8800GT Stock, 4Gig Ram , Windows7 beta and 60fps (Vsync on)
all the time flying (30 on the airfield).
So i think ur hardware is ok 4 the game.

Wow! Is Windows 7 responsible for that?

 

[77Scout]

I know little about hardware stuff, but I would be inclined to look more at your vidcard than the CPU. Vidcard possibly overheating?...fan working and clean?.

Do you know any one you can swap components with, like the vidcard and the CPU, to experiment?

 

[Siggi]

I know little about hardware stuff, but I would be inclined to look more at your vidcard than the CPU. Vidcard possibly overheating?...fan working and clean?.

Do you know any one you can swap components with, like the vidcard and the CPU, to experiment?

I have two 8800GTXs (one in use, one spare), both clean. No overheating as far as I can tell, there's always cool air blowing out of the case. And if a card overheats that badly one usually sees graphical corruption and/or freeze.

I'd like to get my hands on an E8600 though, to test before I buy. Not much chance of that though.

 

[Smokey]

I have to say I've been suspecting a memory leak myself. I have decent
frame rates but if I run more that one mission without rebooting the game
at some point crashes back to the campaign menu screen. If I run one
mission to a boot I've been ok.

My Specs:

Operating System

Windows 6.0.6001 6.0.6001 SP1 (Windows 6.0.6001 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1)
Original setup date: 1/17/2007
DirectX Version: 6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Swap file managed by Windows
File cache managed by Windows


Processor
(2)AMD #40fb2, 2417 MHz
201MHz external bus


BIOS
Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 01/03/2007


Memory

4096MB physical
90% free resources
4 memory slots, 0 free (1024+1024+1024+1024)


Video

Graphics Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS
Screen Area/Colors: 1280x1024 pixels, 16 million colors
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor


Drives

C:\ (NTFS) 295297MB total, 163424MB free
D:\ (NTFS) 9946MB total, 4582MB free
E:\ CD-ROM/CD-RW or DVD Drive
F:\ Removable
G:\ Removable
H:\ Removable
I:\ Removable

 

[rabu]

Seems to me that if it was a problem with OFF you would have a tremendous backlash of complaints from players by now.. Winder, approximately how many BHH are out there at this point.. hundreds, thousands? Anyway, we are seeing very few posts like Siggi's, so maybe something is wrong on Siggi's end and some of the others who are having problems?

 

[Barnstorm]

Siggi,
I you could, post screen shots of (or just list) your CFS3 config settings and your settings in Nvida Control Panel, so we can compare apples to apples. My system is not a robust as yours and I am getting better FPS performance. Between all the folks here, we can usually figure out most issues. Hang in there.
Like my dad used to say,
"A man will get used to hanging, if he hangs long enough".

 

[cptroyce]

Siggi- Have you tried setting the resolution size to the largest res in the config setup? As I posted earlier today, I am getting excellent FPS 45-75 (E8400 / 8800GT), Jumped up 20 FPS by increasing the res size.

Royce

 

[pied]

Just a thought, or an observation, those that have posted here all have 4GB of memory or more... I get 30 to 40 FPS average, maybe low 20s' occasionally with last seasons rig:

E6850 at 3.0GHZ
Gigbyte p35 MB
4GB DDR2 Ram
EVGA 8800gt (512 I think RAM)
XP SP3 with modification to allow 4GB RAM
NHancer running

Even at the lowest frames rates the simulation is smooth and playable.

I think that you could try more RAM...

PIED

edit: I'm running at 1650 by 1080 and am using quite a bit of filtering, both AA and AF using Nhancer settings.

 

[Siggi]

Thanks chaps, it looks to be sorted. The CPU was being throttled by the C1E in BIOS (similar to Speed-Step).