Desktop Maxwell Throttling Issue? Utilization Very Low

[pyr0ball]

I'm having a severe throttling issue on my desktop. What I've noticed is that as the GPU demand goes up (when the graphics requirements should increase, e.g. Void) the GPU utilization and FPS both drop, while in situations that require very little GPU demand (e.g. on board the Liset), the utilization and FPS appear uncapped.

 

System details:

Windows 8.1 Pro x64

EVGA nVidia GTX 970 ACX2.0 SC x2 SLi @ 1448mhz OC

Running latest drivers (353.30 currently, started observations back at 348.xx)

i7-3770K @ 3.8ghz (unparked)

32GB DDR3 1600mhz

Acer HN274H 120hz Monitor @ 1920x1080/120hz

 

Warframe settings: 

Borderless Fullscreen (due to multi-monitor setup)

vSync off (for test case, usually I use nVidia Inspector to limit FPS to 120hz)

DX11 only

x64 client

AntiAliasing OFF

All other settings set to High

 

Test case examples:

 - On Board Liset:

  *FPS 350-450 (when no vSync/Framelimiter)

  *GPU Utilization: 86/90%

  *GPU Temps: 68/71°C

 - In Void:

  *FPS: 45-75

  *GPU Utilization: 38/45%

  *GPU Temps: 55/59°C

 

I've been struggling with this issue for a few months now, and have a lot of data and test points to go from, but the ones above are a good example of what I'm seeing. What I don't understand is why the GPU utilization is going down when it aught to be staying high and keeping a higher framerate. I've heard of some pretty heavy throttling issues with the Maxwell GPU's, but I did some vBIOS tweaking that should have eliminated that as a factor, and the GPU temps are never at a threshold they would start throttling as far as I can tell.

 

Another weird point is that this issue does NOT seem to happen on my laptop's Maxwell GPU (970m), which runs at 2880x1620 and gets solid 60+ FPS all the time, even in void, with the same settings as above, except the Fullscreen

 

Is this a warframe optimization issue? Is it an nVidia optimization issue? Where should I start poking?

 

Thanks in advance

 

-Pyr0ball

Edited July 13, 2015 by pyr0b4ll

[pyr0ball]

I got some screenshot examples of the issue.

 

Here's an example from in the Liset, where utilization is high as well as framerate:

http://i.imgur.com/G2ebp4u.png

 

The blue highlight is where I was loading in, and the red highlight is the high GPU utilization while in the Liset.

 

Now here's a screenshot in the Mercury relay:

http://i.imgur.com/Qoj49JB.png

 

Blue highlight is while I was in he Liset, the two little dips are the loading screen and when I skipped the cinematic, and the red highlight is from the cinematic sequence up til I was in the Relay itself. 

 

Note that the FPS has dropped from 300fps down to 60fps, and the utilization is down from 60% to 25%. Now in all my years of gaming I've never once seen this behavior apart from in Warframe. Usually FPS drops occur when the GPU is getting over-saturated and can't keep up, but in this case, the FPS is dropping because the GPU isn't being used to it's full potential. 

 

Throw me a bone DE!

[Somb3rBivalve]

Yeah I take your point that you probably should be reaching your laptop's performance if not more. The one thing I can think of right off the bat is that you have a multi-monitor setup (by that I believe you mean warframe itself is being played across multiple monitors right?). If that's the case, then try playing on one monitor and see if it's better because warframe has had lots of issues with multiple monitors in the past.

[MillbrookWest]

Throw me a bone DE!

I'm not DE, but the GPU isn't the only hardware that determines your Frame rate. Warframe is very CPU limited. If you push your CPU overclock a little higher, i'd imagine you'd then see a few more (not much) FPS in similar situations.

 

Your CPU must prepare a frame whereafter the GPU can render it. It complies shaders, finds assets etc. etc. 

 

The fact you can go into your Liset and run at 300+ FPS when nothing is around to be rendered should kind of indicate where the bottleneck is. 

Better coding on DE's part should better performance, thanks to the consoles, it seems like PC's are finally getting that treatment.

[Nep_Blanc]

Warframe Has same issues on my system and it is a Beast, thing is warframe never fully utilizes my CPU nor my GPU.

In the liset it does utalize fully but according to a game dev I know they have limited the engine due to the easy pc to console port they use.

So there is a reason why it does this, and this should be optimized for pc and optimized for console independently.

They should have optimized the engine like the CryEngine and that fully uses your GPU and a fair part of your CPU for AI and other miscellaneous things for the game.

 

A nice addition they could do and I said this earlier in other posts, so like if a friend is joining your session and you are the host, your computer needs to calculate all graphics and on top of that all AI movements and hitscanning. This is performance demanding and demands a part of your cpu.

So my idea is that distribute a part of the mobs to other players and make them also calculate and detect hitscan and commit this to the host and other players, on this way it is a bit more network demanding but will make the game more smooth even if you have a lagging host, because the clients could detect and decide to take over a part of the hosting to make the mobs more snappy than totally letting it do by the host.

I know this is hard to do but it is possible and some games that do not have dedicated hosting for their games also do this  to make lag and load better overall.

 

Things they also could do is utilize more gpu gram that is available I have seen games using more and performing better.

 

I know that the main portion of warframe has bad computers and uses laptops that are not meant for gaming but this is not an excuse for bad performance on High end gaming rigs.

 

 

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

Edited July 17, 2015 by TheRoaringLion

[Nep_Blanc]

Yeah I take your point that you probably should be reaching your laptop's performance if not more. The one thing I can think of right off the bat is that you have a multi-monitor setup (by that I believe you mean warframe itself is being played across multiple monitors right?). If that's the case, then try playing on one monitor and see if it's better because warframe has had lots of issues with multiple monitors in the past.

Its not a laptop Read OP's specs these are full blown Desktop versions and would never fit inside a laptop.

Also he threw his laptop in there but that is not the case also my laptop has similar load graphs and same frame rates overall.

Even with lower specs it behaves the same.

 

As you will see they have similarities and differences in specs but still perform generally the same.

I have tested this also, did not make screenshots but it is remarkable that this happens.

 

My laptop specs:

 

CPU

Intel Core i7 4710HQ @ 2.50GHz

Haswell 22nm Technology

 

RAM

16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz (11-11-11-28)

 

Motherboard

LENOVO Lenovo Y50-70 (U3E1)

 

Graphics

Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)

Intel HD Graphics 4600 (Lenovo)

2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M (Lenovo)

 

 

PC specs:

 

CPU 

Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz

Haswell 22nm Technology

 

RAM

16,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz (9-9-9-24)

 

Motherboard

MSI Z97 GAMING 5 (MS-7917) (SOCKET 0)

Graphics

W2253 (1920x1080@60Hz)

hp f1723 (1280x1024@60Hz)

hp f1723 (1280x1024@60Hz)

Intel HD Graphics 4600 (MSI)

4095MBNVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (MSI)

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

Edited July 17, 2015 by TheRoaringLion

[Somb3rBivalve]

Its not a laptop Read OP's specs these are full blown Desktop versions and would never fit inside a laptop.

Also he threw his laptop in there but that is not the case also my laptop has similar load graphs and same frame rates overall.

Even with lower specs it behaves the same.

 

As you will see they have similarities and differences in specs but still perform generally the same.

I have tested this also, did not make screenshots but it is remarkable that this happens.

I understand that it's not a laptop. What I meant is that his desktop should reach his laptop's performance, if not more. Sorry...bad wording on my part.

[-KingDain-]

Game settings high but only voids dps down problem ( Min 40 FPS Down.Normal FPS 60) .The problems started the last 1 month.I'm just down fps in void. the only problem warframe game. other games no problems.   

 

Today I did a test. I dropped all settings. again fps down 40-50 only in void. :d we do not have problems in the game 

Edited July 17, 2015 by -BlueShark-

[MillbrookWest]

They should have optimized the engine like the CryEngine and that fully uses your GPU and a fair part of your CPU for AI and other miscellaneous things for the game.

 

The Cryengine, Frostbyte engine, Unreal Engine 4, AnvilNext Engine; They are all designed from the ground up to be multithreaded aware.

 

Warframe is still a very single threaded game, as evidenced by it's support for DX9, as such things in warframe still happen to some degree of linear order.

 

To give an example (a bad one, warframe isn't like this at all), In a single threaded application, if your CPU got stuck moving an enemy from position X to position Y, the entire game would have to wait until that process had completed - Nothing else could happen until the enemy unit had been moved. The GPU couldn't render any new frames since no jobs were being queued for it to work on by the CPU. Only once the enemy unit has been moved, can the rest of the code execute and queue up jobs for the GPU to work on (amongst other things).

In a multithreaded system, if that same enemy got stuck processing on the main core, you could offload code that wasn't dependant on the enemy's results to the next core (and any other core the system had). So while the enemy might still get stuck, you might still be able to walk around and do things without having to wait for the enemy to finish moving.

 

To put this into perspective, if your render thread runs on the same core as the aforementioned stuck enemy; when he gets stuck on a system not multithread aware, the render thread gets stuck too. In this example, you are CPU limited, with the CPU bottlenecking your GPU since it can't supply the information needed for it to render successive frames.

 

So in the case of the OP's GPU usage, the CPU isn't able to supply enough data to feed the GPU. It is getting stuck doing other things and the GPU is having to wait for it. That's not an indication of a bad CPU, it merely points out that the code is...at it's limits (i guess you could say?)

 

IMHO (and this is my opinion) the base engine and code for Warframe hold it back. Ironically for high-end PC users. Warframe being coded for console makes the PC version perform better. DE being able to work on optimizing for the consoles should mean better performance for PC's since multithreaded coding is almost a necessity for consoles.

[Nep_Blanc]

The Cryengine, Frostbyte engine, Unreal Engine 4, AnvilNext Engine; They are all designed from the ground up to be multithreaded aware.

 

Warframe is still a very single threaded game, as evidenced by it's support for DX9, as such things in warframe still happen to some degree of linear order.

 

To give an example (a bad one, warframe isn't like this at all), In a single threaded application, if your CPU got stuck moving an enemy from position X to position Y, the entire game would have to wait until that process had completed - Nothing else could happen until the enemy unit had been moved. The GPU couldn't render any new frames since no jobs were being queued for it to work on by the CPU. Only once the enemy unit has been moved, can the rest of the code execute and queue up jobs for the GPU to work on (amongst other things).

In a multithreaded system, if that same enemy got stuck processing on the main core, you could offload code that wasn't dependant on the enemy's results to the next core (and any other core the system had). So while the enemy might still get stuck, you might still be able to walk around and do things without having to wait for the enemy to finish moving.

 

To put this into perspective, if your render thread runs on the same core as the aforementioned stuck enemy; when he gets stuck on a system not multithread aware, the render thread gets stuck too. In this example, you are CPU limited, with the CPU bottlenecking your GPU since it can't supply the information needed for it to render successive frames.

 

So in the case of the OP's GPU usage, the CPU isn't able to supply enough data to feed the GPU. It is getting stuck doing other things and the GPU is having to wait for it. That's not an indication of a bad CPU, it merely points out that the code is...at it's limits (i guess you could say?)

 

IMHO (and this is my opinion) the base engine and code for Warframe hold it back. Ironically for high-end PC users. Warframe being coded for console makes the PC version perform better. DE being able to work on optimizing for the consoles should mean better performance for PC's since multithreaded coding is almost a necessity for consoles.

warframe is no single threaded game, you know that multithreaded rendering is there right?

and Those games are not multithreaded at all they just do not need the CPU power to render the graphics they fully use the GPU

 

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

Edited July 17, 2015 by TheRoaringLion

[MillbrookWest]

warframe is no single threaded game, you know that multithreaded rendering is there right?

and Those games are not multithreaded at all they just do not need the CPU power to render the graphics they fully use the GPU

 

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

As i pointed out, my example was just that, an example and not indicative of Warframe at all. I also didn't say is was a single threaded game. I stated it was very single threaded, implying it still relies on a single main thread for most of it's work even though it is multithreaded. There is a difference.

 

However, just because the option is there does not make it a native option. DX9 can run multithreaded also, however the overhead is massive to the point where you might as well not run it as such. DX11 is natively multithreaded aware, and as such, devs can activate the flag for the graphics API to take advantage of more cores. The way the core warframe engine runs, is still the same in DX9 and DX11. Meaning it is not truly multithreaded as a CryEngine of Frostbyte engine is, as it is still coded to support DX9. Which is a single threaded API (mostly).

 

When DX9 is removed from the launcher, along with the 32-bit client, perhaps we can assume that Warframe has a fully multithreaded renderer. Until then, consider the example as an example of the type of stall stopping the GPU from rendering successive frames - It is doing other tasks and as such can't feed the GPU enough data.

 

Also, irrespective of how many cores you use, all the information you move off to successive cores needs to be synchronised before completing the job, this is why DX11 still leans on its main thread even though it can use more. 

[pyr0ball]

Wow this blew up while I wasn't looking!

 

Yeah I take your point that you probably should be reaching your laptop's performance if not more. The one thing I can think of right off the bat is that you have a multi-monitor setup (by that I believe you mean warframe itself is being played across multiple monitors right?). If that's the case, then try playing on one monitor and see if it's better because warframe has had lots of issues with multiple monitors in the past.

 

For clarification, I do have multiple monitors, however I restrict my gaming to one and run that at 120hz, 3D sterioscopic is disabled

 

Warframe Has same issues on my system and it is a Beast, thing is warframe never fully utilizes my CPU nor my GPU.

In the liset it does utalize fully but according to a game dev I know they have limited the engine due to the easy pc to console port they use.

So there is a reason why it does this, and this should be optimized for pc and optimized for console independently.

They should have optimized the engine like the CryEngine and that fully uses your GPU and a fair part of your CPU for AI and other miscellaneous things for the game.

 

A nice addition they could do and I said this earlier in other posts, so like if a friend is joining your session and you are the host, your computer needs to calculate all graphics and on top of that all AI movements and hitscanning. This is performance demanding and demands a part of your cpu.

So my idea is that distribute a part of the mobs to other players and make them also calculate and detect hitscan and commit this to the host and other players, on this way it is a bit more network demanding but will make the game more smooth even if you have a lagging host, because the clients could detect and decide to take over a part of the hosting to make the mobs more snappy than totally letting it do by the host.

I know this is hard to do but it is possible and some games that do not have dedicated hosting for their games also do this  to make lag and load better overall.

 

Things they also could do is utilize more gpu gram that is available I have seen games using more and performing better.

 

I know that the main portion of warframe has bad computers and uses laptops that are not meant for gaming but this is not an excuse for bad performance on High end gaming rigs.

 

 

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

 

Your explanation here makes a lot of sense on the surface, however it doesn't account for my laptop's performance being better than desktop.

 

 

The Cryengine, Frostbyte engine, Unreal Engine 4, AnvilNext Engine; They are all designed from the ground up to be multithreaded aware.

 

Warframe is still a very single threaded game, as evidenced by it's support for DX9, as such things in warframe still happen to some degree of linear order.

 

To give an example (a bad one, warframe isn't like this at all), In a single threaded application, if your CPU got stuck moving an enemy from position X to position Y, the entire game would have to wait until that process had completed - Nothing else could happen until the enemy unit had been moved. The GPU couldn't render any new frames since no jobs were being queued for it to work on by the CPU. Only once the enemy unit has been moved, can the rest of the code execute and queue up jobs for the GPU to work on (amongst other things).

In a multithreaded system, if that same enemy got stuck processing on the main core, you could offload code that wasn't dependant on the enemy's results to the next core (and any other core the system had). So while the enemy might still get stuck, you might still be able to walk around and do things without having to wait for the enemy to finish moving.

 

To put this into perspective, if your render thread runs on the same core as the aforementioned stuck enemy; when he gets stuck on a system not multithread aware, the render thread gets stuck too. In this example, you are CPU limited, with the CPU bottlenecking your GPU since it can't supply the information needed for it to render successive frames.

 

So in the case of the OP's GPU usage, the CPU isn't able to supply enough data to feed the GPU. It is getting stuck doing other things and the GPU is having to wait for it. That's not an indication of a bad CPU, it merely points out that the code is...at it's limits (i guess you could say?)

 

IMHO (and this is my opinion) the base engine and code for Warframe hold it back. Ironically for high-end PC users. Warframe being coded for console makes the PC version perform better. DE being able to work on optimizing for the consoles should mean better performance for PC's since multithreaded coding is almost a necessity for consoles.

 

Shouldn't a core on my CPU be saturated if a single thread is bottlenecking? My overall CPU usage is sitting between 15-21% and a single core never really goes above 60% utilization.

Edited July 18, 2015 by pyr0b4ll

[pyr0ball]

OK I just did a little test for the sake of consistency and accuracy in my statements. 

 

On desktop I'm seeing a drop in performance from 300fps down to roughly 60fps in Relay using a desktop class CPU (i7-3770K)

On the laptop I'm seeing a drop in performance from 90fps down to roughly 70fps in Relay using a laptop class CPU (i7-4710HQ)

 

As far as my hardware knowledge goes, mobile cores are usually not as beefy performance wise as desktop ones, and Intel has really abstained from increasing performance between Sandy Bridge and Haswell, instead opting for greater energy efficiency. So what's mindboggling to me here is that I'm seeing an 80% drop in performance on desktop between Liset and Relay, and only a 23% drop in performance on a LAPTOP, with a lower performance CPU, and a SINGLE GPU that has roughly the same equivalent performance as a GTX960, while simultaneously pushing roughly 13% more pixels per second (pixel percentage math below)

 

Desktop: 1920x1080@120hz = 248,832,000 pixels per second 

Laptop: 2880x1620@60hz = 279,936,000 pixels per second

 

I get what you all are saying about Warframe being CPU dependent, but something is wrong with these numbers

[-KingDain-]

we are having problems. Bad Nvidia Optimization. Only Void FPS Down Problem 40-50. 

[Nep_Blanc]

Wow this blew up while I wasn't looking!

 

 

For clarification, I do have multiple monitors, however I restrict my gaming to one and run that at 120hz, 3D sterioscopic is disabled

 

 

Your explanation here makes a lot of sense on the surface, however it doesn't account for my laptop's performance being better than desktop.

 

 

 

Shouldn't a core on my CPU be saturated if a single thread is bottlenecking? My overall CPU usage is sitting between 15-21% and a single core never really goes above 60% utilization.

I have similar utilization and thing is it Is Multithreaded, the main calling thread will take more load overall but still will not oversaturate the CPU.

So that bottleneck is ruled out.

I think Warframe runs more stable while you use more pixels but that is rather weird, at least try to run your pc at that resolution.

There is a way to do this virtually so it downsamples your game.

Here a forum post about it: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

I am going to try this out, hoping it gives me more stable frames.

As for sandy to Haswell and Ivy only performance from Sandy to Ivy has improved Haswells only overclock better and overall run cooler(Resulting in more performance but not more performance based on architecture).

 

 

As i pointed out, my example was just that, an example and not indicative of Warframe at all. I also didn't say is was a single threaded game. I stated it was very single threaded, implying it still relies on a single main thread for most of it's work even though it is multithreaded. There is a difference.

 

However, just because the option is there does not make it a native option. DX9 can run multithreaded also, however the overhead is massive to the point where you might as well not run it as such. DX11 is natively multithreaded aware, and as such, devs can activate the flag for the graphics API to take advantage of more cores. The way the core warframe engine runs, is still the same in DX9 and DX11. Meaning it is not truly multithreaded as a CryEngine of Frostbyte engine is, as it is still coded to support DX9. Which is a single threaded API (mostly).

 

When DX9 is removed from the launcher, along with the 32-bit client, perhaps we can assume that Warframe has a fully multithreaded renderer. Until then, consider the example as an example of the type of stall stopping the GPU from rendering successive frames - It is doing other tasks and as such can't feed the GPU enough data.

 

Also, irrespective of how many cores you use, all the information you move off to successive cores needs to be synchronised before completing the job, this is why DX11 still leans on its main thread even though it can use more. 

It may seem not being Multithreaded to you but it certainly is I checked core allocation from warframe and only one core was more utilized a bit and that was it it had a difference of only 10/15% not a big deal this is perfectly normal.

Did you try to run Warframe single Threaded? If you did you will see one core fully saturated and the rest is idling, so your story is a bit different in real life cases.

It supports lower based systems because warframe has other older Engine parts left, dedicated to low spec systems, object oriented programming makes this possible.

So in case we choose for multithread and other API we choose for an other renderer(Engine part) so it runs more optimized with those settings with the given computer that supports this.

 

I will post Screenshots later with the correct tests and results.

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

[MillbrookWest]

Shouldn't a core on my CPU be saturated if a single thread is bottlenecking? My overall CPU usage is sitting between 15-21% and a single core never really goes above 60% utilization.

Not necessarily, all jobs need to be synchronised before completing. I know this is wrong to do, but imagine you have 5 cores, One core delegates workloads and synchronises, 4 cores each work on 1/4 of the screen (getting data, compiling shaders etc.) When a core finishes its job, it sends it to the 1st core to synchronise. If one core takes a little bit longer synchronising, the frame slows down, but does not stop. Core 5 (being the dominant worker thread) wont be saturated as jobs are still outstanding. It can still issue AI jobs, game logic jobs, etc. to the free cores while the slow core finishes.

 

This is a very crude example (Like super crude), but it gives an idea of how code working across multiple cores could slow down across the CPU as jobs get synchronised by the main thread.

Note: A core doesn't need to be 100% saturated to be considered "busy".

 

It may seem not being Multithreaded to you but it certainly is I checked core allocation from warframe and only one core was more utilized a bit and that was it it had a difference of only 10/15% not a big deal this is perfectly normal.

Did you try to run Warframe single Threaded? If you did you will see one core fully saturated and the rest is idling, so your story is a bit different in real life cases.

It supports lower based systems because warframe has other older Engine parts left, dedicated to low spec systems, object oriented programming makes this possible.

So in case we choose for multithread and other API we choose for an other renderer(Engine part) so it runs more optimized with those settings with the given computer that supports this.

 

I will post Screenshots later with the correct tests and results.

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of Shadow Lords

You don't seem to understand that im not saying Warframe is single threaded. No where have i said this. I don't know why you perpetuate this point :/

Saying it's still very single threaded =/= It is single threaded.

 

This is my system, and this is what Warframe ran like a while back (DX11 + Multi-threaded rendering, All settings on max)

 

DESteve even posted a shot of what warframe looks like and it shows a primary thread as it's main worker thread:

Thread 1 = Fully saturated

Thread 2 = Mostly saturated

Thread 3+ = Very little activity

 

The code is obviously not fully utilising successive CPU cores because the engine is not coded to do so.

 

Point of all this is that DE's code doesn't fully take advantage of high end systems with lots and lots of cores. There are bottlenecks that stall the process and subsequently lower the maximum attainable performance level.

 

This should be obvious:

Laptop Max FPS 90. This is all the GPU can attain with little to render.

Desktop Max FPS 300. This is all the GPU can attain with little to render

 

Enter a stage with actual code to process (NPC's moving around, players interacting with stuff, talking to each other, dancing, jumping off walls and other such tomfoolery)

Both GPU's effectively equalize.

 

CPU utilization stays similar on both PC's.

 

DE have said that coding for console will make the PC version a better game. There is little to do outside waiting for DE to improve their code. DX12 should help with the render pipelines and should give high end players a little boost as that practically makes the render pipeline fully mulltithreaded.

[-KingDain-]

I hope they fix UPDATE. Really annoying

[pyr0ball]

Update from DE Support! In my support ticket, they suggested I try a hotfix from nVidia: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3698

 

Not sure why it's relevant since it's labelled as a fix for Sony Vegas, but I'm gonna try it out when I get home tonight.

 

 

 

This should be obvious:

Laptop Max FPS 90. This is all the GPU can attain with little to render.

Desktop Max FPS 300. This is all the GPU can attain with little to render

 

Enter a stage with actual code to process (NPC's moving around, players interacting with stuff, talking to each other, dancing, jumping off walls and other such tomfoolery)

Both GPU's effectively equalize.

 

CPU utilization stays similar on both PC's.

 

DE have said that coding for console will make the PC version a better game. There is little to do outside waiting for DE to improve their code. DX12 should help with the render pipelines and should give high end players a little boost as that practically makes the render pipeline fully mulltithreaded.

 

I did consider that implication, however what didn't make sense about it to me is that my laptop is still getting better framerates in the stage where there's a lot of code to process. Let's ignore the GPU differences for this instance and focus only on the CPU's, since we've determined that the graphics capabilities of either system are not ever being completely saturated by Warframe:

 

Here's a hardware benchmark comparison between the two: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4710HQ-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770K/m11499vs1317

 

Here again is the framerates observed on both systems at the same location (mercury relay) during the same time of day:

Desktop: 1920x1080@61hz = 126,489,600 pixels per second

Laptop: 2880x1620@70hz = 326,592,000 pixels per second

 

I think the pixels per second is probably more related to the GPU, so I'll just do the percentage comparison between framerate. That works out to a 13% increase in performance with a CPU that should be performing 20-30% slower than the desktop.

 

I realize programming isn't as cut-and-dry as these numbers, I just wonder why this is happening.

 

 

 

I have similar utilization and thing is it Is Multithreaded, the main calling thread will take more load overall but still will not oversaturate the CPU.

So that bottleneck is ruled out.

I think Warframe runs more stable while you use more pixels but that is rather weird, at least try to run your pc at that resolution.

There is a way to do this virtually so it downsamples your game.

Here a forum post about it: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076

I am going to try this out, hoping it gives me more stable frames.

 

Oki I'll give this a try as well. Is this similar to GeDoSaTo actually. As a matter of fact, I may not need to use this utility at all. My monitor displays a 4K signal input, which is basically hardware downsampling.

 

I'll give both a try and post results

[dagla]

I also have the same issue(?) with my gtx970 and 4690k, and I've seen a couple of these threads pop up time to time here with people on the same specs reporting very low resource usage on both CPU and GPU, yet to find a fix. I'm not saying the game doesn't run playable, but it just feels awkward in gameplay to have these framerate drops from hundreds to below 50, and often it constantly stays at a lowered framerate until the end of the mission with no relation to what is happening on the screen. I can look at a wall from up close and I'd get the same FPS as when looking at 3 dudes obliterating 20 enemies with spells. And the graphics settings don't even affect the framerate, there is only a minor difference between all low dx9 and maxed dx11. its not overheating or driver or OS issue.

 

FPS just drops to hell in some situations, especially in Void but not always when hosting. Using maxed settings minus blur+DoF with 8800gt down to 5 FPS, HD5770/gtx460gtx650TiB to around 10-15, gtx570 to 25, with gtx970 to around 45). Is there even a computer that is able to keep it above 60 at all times?

[Aexrael]

I'm having a severe throttling issue on my desktop. What I've noticed is that as the GPU demand goes up (when the graphics requirements should increase, e.g. Void) the GPU utilization and FPS both drop, while in situations that require very little GPU demand (e.g. on board the Liset), the utilization and FPS appear uncapped.

 

System details:

Windows 8.1 Pro x64

EVGA nVidia GTX 970 ACX2.0 SC x2 SLi @ 1448mhz OC

Running latest drivers (353.30 currently, started observations back at 348.xx)

i7-3770K @ 3.8ghz (unparked)

32GB DDR3 1600mhz

Acer HN274H 120hz Monitor @ 1920x1080/120hz

 

Warframe settings: 

Borderless Fullscreen (due to multi-monitor setup)

vSync off (for test case, usually I use nVidia Inspector to limit FPS to 120hz)

DX11 only

x64 client

AntiAliasing OFF

All other settings set to High

 

Test case examples:

 - On Board Liset:

  *FPS 350-450 (when no vSync/Framelimiter)

  *GPU Utilization: 86/90%

  *GPU Temps: 68/71°C

 - In Void:

  *FPS: 45-75

  *GPU Utilization: 38/45%

  *GPU Temps: 55/59°C

 

I've been struggling with this issue for a few months now, and have a lot of data and test points to go from, but the ones above are a good example of what I'm seeing. What I don't understand is why the GPU utilization is going down when it aught to be staying high and keeping a higher framerate. I've heard of some pretty heavy throttling issues with the Maxwell GPU's, but I did some vBIOS tweaking that should have eliminated that as a factor, and the GPU temps are never at a threshold they would start throttling as far as I can tell.

 

Another weird point is that this issue does NOT seem to happen on my laptop's Maxwell GPU (970m), which runs at 2880x1620 and gets solid 60+ FPS all the time, even in void, with the same settings as above, except the Fullscreen

 

Is this a warframe optimization issue? Is it an nVidia optimization issue? Where should I start poking?

 

Thanks in advance

 

-Pyr0ball

 

Apologies if you already tested this, I skimmed the thread.

Have you tried testing with a single monitor attached and regular fullscreen?

[Aexrael]

i5-3570K @ 4 GHz

8 GB mem

Samsung 840 Evo 500GB

EVGA 970 GTX reference/stock /w 353.62

Windows 10 Pro 10240

BenQ XL2411T 120 Hz (Lightboost enabled, 10% Strobe brightness)

 

Game Settings

1920x1080

Fullscreen

16:9

 

Nvidia PhysX On

Runtime Tessalation On

Local Reflections On

HDR On

Adaptive Exposure On

AO On

Geometry Detail High

Particle System Quality High

Shadow Quality High

Texture Memory High

AF On

AA High (SMAA), MFAA enabled in Nvidia Control Panel

DoF Off

Motion Blur Off

Bloom Off

Color Correction On

Dynamic Lighting On

Character Shadows On

Constant Weapon Trail Off

Weapon Elemental FX On

 

Other Nvidia Control Panel settings

Texture Filtering Quality - High Quality

Multi-Display/Mixed-GPU acceleration - Single Display Performance

Maximum pre-rendered Frames - 1

 

 

Saryn T1Ext solo run

 

Data captured with Fraps Benchmark tool, from beginning of map until beginning of extraction animations before mission summary is displayed.

 

VSync On

Frames: 16387 - Time: 169156ms - Avg: 96.875 - Min: 49 - Max: 121

 

VSync Off, Framerate Limiter 120 FPS

Frames: 17895 - Time: 168672ms - Avg: 106.093 - Min: 47 - Max: 129

 

VSync Off, Framrate Limiter Off

Frames: 22167 - Time: 205204ms - Avg: 108.024 - Min: 32 - Max: 263

 

Three separate missions, so some variation is to be expected.

[taiiat]

it's probably a good idea to disable SLI and see if that makes any difference.

[Nep_Blanc]

it's probably a good idea to disable SLI and see if that makes any difference.

oh this is going to help?

Sorry sli has no factor in this.

 

 

 

Chao, The Roaring Lion Warlord of ShadowLords