Testing and game improvments

[Sudako]

today i have spent a good portion of it changing my system clocks and watching how the game swap memory during different events.

 

ill start off with the system specs that i am using for the testing.

 

Intel 5930k
asus saber tooth x99
corsair lpx 2666 ddr4 c as 15
Evga gtx 980 ti sc x2
creative sound blaster ZxR
intel 750 2.5 inch ssd
phanteks enthoo primo SE green and black
xspc raystorm cpu block
xspc rx 480
Xspc ex 480
Xspc ex 240
x2 Ek acetal full cover titan x blocks
x 14 bits power revolver rigid compression fittings
x4 xspc 90 rotary fittings
1 xspc male to female g1/4
1 alphacool male to male 90
1 bits power valve
xspc photon + d5 combo
x16 phobya eloop 1800 rpm
x2 phanteks own hubs
evga supernova 1000 p2

 

 

Second will be the system settings that do not change at all during the testing.

Nvidia drivers 361.75

ram set to 2800 cas 15

all fans of the system set to 1250 rpm

pump 3500 rpm

windows 10 pro

monitoring software for temp CPUID HWMonitor/ EVGA percision X

GPU's locked to powerstate @ 1101 Mhz

GPU vram set to 3505 x2 7010 Mhz

CPU cache multiplier locked to 36

CPU voltage 1.350 volts

 

Here is where the testing started. Using mushins tower as a reference for nothings else around and base FPS and memory usage.

ram used 1.635  gigs no matter the settings used in the in game options. changing the resolution or texture resolution did not change this.

started by changing the number of cores i allowed for the game to use at any one time. in mushins tower i was able to stay @ 120 FPS at all

times all the way down to 2 core with hyper threading off. Second thing i started to do from there was to change the clock speed of all cores

of the system ranging from 3.6 Ghz to 4.9 Ghz only changing the multiplier as to not change the ram settings.  No matter the change in clock

speed the FPS did not change inside the mushins tower. I will start to go lower on the clock in next round of testing. All in game sliders set to 5

then checking opt. for combat. to get rid of shadows and  post processing.

 

Test site # 2 was in the misty woods with 50+ bots going from terror to terror.

Started off with a clock speed of 4.5 across all cores. This is where we start to see some stress and the FPS drop below 120. With all 6 cores 

and hyper threading enabled. We see client.exe executing 101 threads total from start up to this point and a work load on 11 of the 12 threads

well inside the fight  I saw an average FPS of 67 here. The next terror is done with 4 cores 8 threads we see the average FPS drop a bit here

we get an average of 48 FPS on this test. Followed by 2 cores 4 threads on this test we get a much larger hit we go all the way down to 18 average

FPS. This is when i start all over again after disabling hyper threading. With 6 cores we see we get an average of 42 FPS followed by 21 FPS with 4

cores and 2 cores @ 5 fps but major stutters. 

 

Testing at this point moves to 4.9 Ghz.

 Same process of following the bot around killing terrors with 6 cores 12 threads i saw and average fps of 72. @ 4 cores 8 thread i saw 51.

@ 2 cores 4 threads I saw 23 FPS. Hyper threading disabled for next 3  test. @ 6 cores 6 threads 47 FPS @ 4 cores 4 threads 25 FPS and

@ 2 cores 5 FPS major stutters.

 

Testing for 3.6 Ghz. this is the boost clock of alot locked processors for ivey and haswell.

@ 6 cores 12 threads 58 FPS, @ 4 cores 8 threads 39 FPS and @ 2 cores 4 threads i saw 12 average FPS

@ 6 cores 6 threads i got a FPS of  36 @ 4 cores 4 threads 16 and @ 2 core 2 threads the image was frozen for  5+ seconds at a time.

 

Ram useage of  all 3 test above was between 2.45 and 2.53 GB.

 

Now this is the part where i investigate the FPS spikes i get well out in the open world. Well running around or fighting in pirate area's fps

randomly drops for 1-2 seconds by 20-30 %. It was annouying  the hell out of me so i started keeping logs on this and every time it happens 

seems to be when the game is dropping one texture from ram and loading a new one. It might be my SSD saturating the PCIE bus and eating up 

some of the cpu cycles well it swaps the memory ill have to further investigate this. Its very similar to some of the old problems with diablo 3

with slower hard drives and swapping textures because of the adressing is to limited for the textures that the game is using. This being said the biggest

improvment that could be made to the game for preformance would be a true large address aware or a 64bit client.

 

I hope that others can join in of this topic and test across a larger set of systems to try and help finding out the best ways to get the most out of the game for every one.

[Vau]

there are major optimization problems. characters attacking around you should not tank your fps like it does. all the spell effects going off dropping frames is legit. just simply having attacks happen tank the fps means something is wrong. i can raid with tons of people around me in any other game and its fine, the system requirements for this game are not insane, i can play fallout 4 at 60 fps on high most of the time but i cant run a dungeon in this game without my computer taking a crap on itself. all it takes is 5 or more people attacking. the calculations for other peoples attacks should not effect the load your cpu has by that much. the game should have never been released like this considering there recommended system requirements. not to mention the goal of any MMO is to make the game accessible to as many people as possible to maximize potential profit. do you think people dealing with constant fps drops and freezes in group content are dropping dollars on this game lol.

 

also this game has a major texture streaming issue. i get those freezes as well, and the thing that does not make sense is im only using 480mb of vid ram out of 2 gigs. instead of preemptively loading assets in the background it seems to just wait until your ontop of it then thrash your hard drive without even using all the resources available. i really wonder what the loading screens are for if they dont even load all the needed assets into memory....

 

overall the experience is very underwhelming because of this and i know it can run much better because i have messed around on the chinese server before us launch and that client runs much better. the people who ported the game ruined it and they have not even responded to any of the threads about these performance issues, and even give misleading information to people who put in tickets for support, like your internet sucks lol. but hey those costumes are important! they cost money!     

 

i do appreciate the time you took to make this post however, ive spent alot of time benching and monitoring my system while this game runs too. you just gotta realize that it shouldn't need what its demanding. the game is not that pretty, the game is not loading any more assets than any other game out there, and in combat other players attacks should be calculated on there own computers and checked by the server, it shouldent spank your cpu like it does :/ not to mention if there is one thing the engine they chose is good for is texture streaming that does not cost to much performance. sure its not always pretty but most games using the engine have no issues streaming in textures.    

[Victorion]

As long as we´re talking PCIe x 16 which is common and standard for any "newer" pc - saturating the PCIe bus for an MMO is unlikely.

 

I read someone that BnS only utilize up to 2 cores/threads. So either your results are incomplete and misleading or I´ve gotten wrong info.

 

However I did - unlike you - get a FPS increase from overclocking my cpu on my pc.

 

You have a great pc, but a quite overkill for a game that doesn´t use the potential of it. 6 core/12 threads, sli 980TI, premium liquid cooling gear etc. I get similar frames on a single card setup, with a sandy lake chip clocked @ 4.7 Ghz and an old 660TI card slightly overclocked. I didn´t even overclock rams on that pc.

 

Great report, but I doubt BnS use more than max 4 threads and as long as you´ve gotten 8 GB ram, a good overclocked cpu and solid gpu, then you won´t see further FPS increase. Obviously temps needs to be within acceptable margins. SSD greatly helps with loading times, and installing the game on a separate SSD apart from windows may help a few fps (at most).

 

[Sudako]

10 minutes ago, Victorion said:

As long as we´re talking PCIe x 16 which is common and standard for any "newer" pc - saturating the PCIe bus for an MMO is unlikely.

 

I read someone that BnS only utilize up to 2 cores/threads. So either your results are incomplete and misleading or I´ve gotten wrong info.

 

However I did - unlike you - get a FPS increase from overclocking my cpu on my pc.

 

You have a great pc, but a quite overkill for a game that doesn´t use the potential of it. 6 core/12 threads, sli 980TI, premium liquid cooling gear etc. I get similar frames on a single card setup, with a sandy lake chip clocked @ 4.7 Ghz and an old 660TI card slightly overclocked. I didn´t even overclock rams on that pc.

 

Great report, but I doubt BnS use more than max 4 threads and as long as you´ve gotten 8 GB ram, a good overclocked cpu and solid gpu, then you won´t see further FPS increase. Obviously temps needs to be within acceptable margins. SSD greatly helps with loading times, and installing the game on a separate SSD apart from windows may help a few fps (at most).

 

guess i had forgotten to mention the resolution that i was using well testing.   3440x1440  also it is clearly using more then 2 threads  ill try and pull out a 1080 screen so i can do testing on it but   dont have any 1080's hooked up at the moment. the only way to get the second card to kick in is to run in true fullscreen which requires alt+enter at the same time. Also the PCIe isnt the bottle neck that i am seeing but when swapping out textures  in ram the intel 750 will do this at such a rate that it deprives black and soul from CPU cycles for  just a moment. the SSD i have runs @ a much faster speed then even 2 ssd's in raid 0.

[Sudako]

when reading it can hit 92% cpu usage on 1 thread

[Sudako]

 

Just now, Victorion said:

Yeah that´s important too. Why don´t you just scale down your resolution to 1080p on that monitor? I mean for testing purposes, it´s tolerable for a shorter time yeah?

 

I know Intel 750, which is slightly faster than my 950 Pro. But your scenario is unlikely. sabertooth X99 has 40 lanes and bns won´t stress that much data to put your m.2. drive for even a splitsecond unless we´re talking pure loading screens where fps doesn´t matter. I am guessing it has more to do with bad optimization and somewhat the textel rate on the gpu.

the problem if i go down to 1080 for testing  SLI is disabled because i cant run in fullscreen

[Victorion]

8 minutes ago, Sudako said:

guess i had forgotten to mention the resolution that i was using well testing.   3440x1440  also it is clearly using more then 2 threads  ill try and pull out a 1080 screen so i can do testing on it but   dont have any 1080's hooked up at the moment. the only way to get the second card to kick in is to run in true fullscreen which requires alt+enter at the same time. Also the PCIe isnt the bottle neck that i am seeing but when swapping out textures  in ram the intel 750 will do this at such a rate that it deprives black and soul from CPU cycles for  just a moment. the SSD i have runs @ a much faster speed then even 2 ssd's in raid 0.

Yeah that´s important too. Why don´t you just scale down your resolution to 1080p on that monitor? I mean for testing purposes, it´s tolerable for a shorter time yeah?

 

I know Intel 750, which is slightly faster than my 950 Pro. But your scenario is unlikely. sabertooth X99 has 40 lanes and bns won´t stress that much data to put your m.2. drive for even a splitsecond unless we´re talking pure loading screens where fps doesn´t matter. I am guessing it has more to do with bad optimization and somewhat the textel rate on the gpu.

[Victorion]

It shouldnt matter much for BnS anyways.

 

Did you do some testing 1 card vs sli?

 

I am betting SLI will have negliable benefits compared to a single 980TI - at least in BnS.

[Sudako]

and once again the problem isnt the lane being taken up but the CPU cycles being taken away from BnS. And the game is constantly swaping out textures because the adress table  is too small for all the different costumes and spell effects

[Sudako]

 when at 3440 byt 1440 the sli takes the game from 85 to 120 FPS.  at 1080 in windowed i'm at 120 at all times on a single card  unless  i start seeing a swapp in ram

[Vau]

there are multiple reports of windows 7 running the game smoother than windows 10 with virtually no fps drops though. wouldnt windows 7 have a smaller address table, or the same size with 3gb enabled?

 

this in not so true anymore with the combat issue they introduced i don't think. but it could account for the texture streaming fps drops.

[Sudako]

 also here are the PCIe speeds by generation you put in a pic of 1.0

 

 

                                                                                         PCI Express link performancePCI Express
1.0 8b/10b2.5 GT/s2 Gbit/s (250 MB/s)32 Gbit/s (4 GB/s)
2.0 8b/10b5 GT/s4 Gbit/s (500 MB/s)64 Gbit/s (8 GB/s)
3.0 128b/130b8 GT/s7.877 Gbit/s (984.6 MB/s)126.031 Gbit/s (15.754 GB/s)
4.0 128b/130b16 GT/s15.754 Gbit/s (1969.2 MB/s)252.062 Gbit/s (31.508 GB/s)

[Sudako]

windows does not do the adressing for the game the game has its own adressing that it can do which is a 32 bit table maxing out  around 2.6 GB

a 64 bit table can adress to 16 GB at once you can increase the adressing table for some games but making the program large adress aware meaning that it then know that it can address further

[Sudako]

So here is something new that i am seeing  Bns is now over riding windows and allowing itself to hit 100% CPU usage on 1-2 cores. Here lie a problem if you allow the processor to use 100% it cant accept any new instructions until it has finished that set. This is why since window vista windows limits program to about 95% cpu usage per core so new instructions can always interrupt if they are more important.

[Victorion]

2 minutes ago, Sudako said:

So here is something new that i am seeing  Bns is now over riding windows and allowing itself to hit 100% CPU usage on 1-2 cores. Here lie a problem if you allow the processor to use 100% it cant accept any new instructions until it has finished that set. This is why since window vista windows limits program to about 95% cpu usage per core so new instructions can always interrupt if they are more important.

 

Bottomline is BnS could use a major optimization.

The bright side of it is, that goldseller spam greatly reduced. Maybe they couldn´t live with the FPS hits too :D

[Sudako]

so here was a quick run with the bot army for a test one CPU useage and when cpu spikes started a stutter or freeze.