Framerate Drops? High Cpu Loads? Cpu Overheating? This Might Fix It! (Cpu Core Unparking)

[Letter13]

Hey everyone,

 

It seems like a lot of people are starting to experience some performance issues with the game, and I thought I'd make a thread to address said performance issues as well as provide what seems to be a way to fix it (as well as improving your system's performance for games other than Warframe too).

 

The (possible) culprit, spoilered because it's a bit lengthy.

CPU Core Parking

 

In Windows 7 (and Windows 8) there's a built-in feature to the OS called CPU Parking; this feature is designed to balance the power load and decrease power consumption by your CPU by limiting core activity. For normal (non-gaming) use this has no effect on applications and performance, however for high-power computing as well as gaming (especially since more games are being designed for multicore machines) this is tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot; in some cases it's tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot and then dipping said foot in a vat of infectious bacteria. This is because physical (and logical cores if hyperthreaded) are parked and unavailable for use by multithreaded applications designed to run across multiple cores, and forcing a multithreaded application designed to run on multiple cores to only run on a single physical core causes a multitude of performance issues due to how threads are scheduled as well as how the CPU handles all of the extra processing (it can make your CPU overheat!).

 

Warframe's multithreaded rendering option is specifically designed to drastically increase performance on multi-core machines, however if it's enabled and Warframe only has access to 1 physical (and/or logical) core due to the others being parked, then you will likely suffer some pretty severe performance issues (one user's PC was blue screening because the PC force shut down due to one of their cores overheating). To fix this, your cores need to be unparked.

 

Unparking your cores is easy, and it can solve a multitude of performance issues you might be having, there's a nifty how-to guide Here, or you can follow the guide on this thread.

 

How to Unpark your CPU Cores

    1. Download the Unpark CPU Utility and unzip it somewhere (like your desktop)

    2. Run the .exe file as an administrator (right click > run as administrator)

    3. Click "Check Status" and wait for it to complete (image below)

 

    4. Click "Unpark All" after the check finishes if any status reads "Parked"

 

    5. You're done!

        5a. Make sure you have "Multithreaded Rendering" enabled in the launcher!

              5aa. Enable Threaded Optimization/Multithreading in Nvidia/AMD GPU control panels!

 

Give Warframe a try afterwards to see if this helped improve your performance or solve performance issues you may have been having.

 

Multithreaded rendering will yield a MUCH better performance boost if your cores are unparked.

 

If this worked (or didn't) work for you, please feel free to comment on this thread.

[Yazeth]

On win8 64bit, do i even need to unpark?

 

Probably, since I'm also on win8 64bit.

[FaintestAura]

Not much of a difference for me sadly. Running windows 8. But thanks anyway

[Letter13]

This didn't help at all, my system is pretty solid too.

 

But thanks.

Not much of a difference for me sadly. Running windows 8. But thanks anyway

It's a bit hit or miss. If your machine has high enough specs then you won't see much of a difference. Are your machines fairly high spec?

 

I experienced absolutely no changes. I had three parked cores. I was hoping unparking them would take off heat from my video card like Crackle's case, but it didn't and it still has to be underclocked to prevent overheating. No difference in fps too.

Like I said, it's a bit of a hit or miss depending on what sort of hardware you have. What sort of GPU do you have? And is it a laptop or a desktop?

 

On win8 64bit, do i even need to unpark?

No one *needs* to unpark their cores, but if your cores are parked then unparking them can sometimes result in a performance boost. Windows 8 does park cores, so if you unpark your cores then you may get a bit of a boost while playing.

[ColonelKatana]

I only got 2 cores popping up when I did Check Status; other people are saying they got 3. Does this make a difference?

Specs are:

Processor: Intel® Core i3-2370M CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40Ghz

Installed Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB

System Type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

Laptop BTW

Edited August 18, 2014 by ColonelKatana

[Kethus]

Like I said, it's a bit of a hit or miss depending on what sort of hardware you have. What sort of GPU do you have? And is it a laptop or a desktop?

It's a Lenovo G560 laptop using NVIDIA GeForce 310M video card.

[Letter13]

I only got 2 cores popping up when I did Check Status; other people are saying they got 3. Does this make a difference?

Specs are:

Processor: Intel® Core i3-2370M CPU @ 2.40GHz 2.40Ghz

Installed Memory (RAM): 4.00 GB

System Type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

Laptop BTW

It shouldn't make a difference, the number is sometimes a bit weird in how it detects cores; I know that the i3 has 2 physical cores and 2 logical cores (basically dual core with hyperthreading), so it's possible that both were being parked and the quad-core machines (i5 = 4 physical cores and 0 logical from no HT, i7 = 4 physical and 4 logical) park 3 but leave 1 core as always unparked/unchangeable. this is just a guess on my part, but it doesn't mean there's anything horribly wrong with your computer (for an i3 it should only display a maximum of 2 because logical cores' parked status depends on the physical core they're tied to). If anything it's weirder that 4-core machines display 3 instead of 4.

 

It's a Lenovo G560 laptop using NVIDIA GeForce 310M video card.

That would explain it. The GeForce 310M is a VERY low grade graphics card that's only really suitable for videos and very light (Non-3D) gaming at best, and the processor is an i5-520M, which is a first generation i-series so in terms of architecture and performance it isn't exactly super great. It's a 2-core processor with hyperthreading (it was essentially an i3 with hyperthreading).

 

Hate to say it but an upgrade might be in order.

[Ambisyon_Ni_Batman]

Didn't see any improvement on my end. Still runs around 40-70 fps. Maybe it's not that noticeable since the game already runs smooth before unparking my CPUs.

 

However, windows explorer did restart during the unparking process. I don't know if that was intended. Might as well put it in the 1st post so people won't freak out when they got an error about Windows Explorer havng an error and needs to be restarted. I'm using Windows 8 btw

[jjpdn]

For me, it just improved my performance by 10 FPS. 

But that's pretty good.

Loads at 60 FPS, while in game is ~30 FPS with drops to 18.

Finally playable,

Edited August 20, 2014 by jjpdn

[EmbedFire]

For me, it just improved my performance by 10 FPS. 

But that's pretty good.

Loads at 60 FPS, while in game is ~30 FPS with drops to 18.

Finally playable,

Are you playing max details? You have to play on very old machine then...

 

Here:

AMD X2 5600

8GB Ram (no dual channel, don't ask me why)

GeForce 9800GT 512 GDDR3 || DirectX 10

nVidia Drivers v340

Did everything like in tutorial, and It works like a charm (50-60fps) on max details (but anyway there is too much blur so i quickly turned off some stuff)

This thread should be placed in News I think... devs are trying to coordinate game for low-end PC where without this trick I had 20fps only... few clicks and I don't worry about optimisation

Edited August 20, 2014 by EmbedFire

[SteelBlade17x]

Multi-Threading don't work for my sys. But this did improve and stabilize the frame rate.  

 

On a different topic, i would like to ask if anyone noticed very smooth frame rate for 2 days before Warframe Gamescom Live stream?

[zavienh5]

how did i never see this thread...

[mrhat.lf]

              5aa. Enable Threaded Optimization/Multithreading in Nvidia/AMD GPU control panels!

Where do you go for AMD?

[Letter13]

Where do you go for AMD?

No idea. I only have Nvidia cards.

 

It's probably somewhere in the Catalyst Control Center though.

[Project-Faolchu]

Also another method if you do not like to rely on programs is this Works for Windows 7 (for sure - potentially others) if the cpu option is not displaying under power Management:

- Go to Regedit 
- Find this key:-  " 0cc5b647-c1df-4637-891a-dec35c318583 " 
- Within this key, there is a value called:  " ValueMax " 
- This value represents the % number of cores the system will park - the default 100%  ie:  all Cores are potentially park-able 
- Change the value from 64 to 0 so the " ValueMin "  and  " ValueMax " are both zero 
- You will have to find the key a few times and repeat the process for each time it is found - the number of instances will depend on the number of power profiles in your system.

 

If you really want, you can dl the program to confirm that un-parking has taken place. 

I just did these changes to my little brothers computer as he was lagging during some loads and used the program to confirm it.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Marfoir-Faolchu

[ss4chris]

gonna try this. 3 of my cores parked. now unparked. maybe this will solved my times game freezing frames dropping and loud cpu :(

[DarkSlayer220]

Will this help fix those sudden freezes in game like during the loading screen or a random time in the Liset? I haven't gotten any lags just freezes.

Nope. Sometimes the Loading Screen still freezes. It happened to me last night, but this application can help your game run smoother, my PC runs it 20-40 fps but then I use this thing I got 30-50 fps it kinda helps me alot. Go try it. :D

[Liqier]

I will try it thx.

[Neko-Yumi]

Doesn't work for me,still having framerate drops

 

=> Check my recent topic.

[PrivatHansi1]

multithreading tho ♥

[SigweardStoneFist]

Nope. Sometimes the Loading Screen still freezes. It happened to me last night, but this application can help your game run smoother, my PC runs it 20-40 fps but then I use this thing I got 30-50 fps it kinda helps me alot. Go try it. :D

Will this help fix those sudden freezes in game like during the loading screen or a random time in the Liset? I haven't gotten any lags just freezes.

 

Those sudden freezes when loading mostly occurs when joining matches that are already going on.

I thought it had something to do with scripts and creating objects, aswell to gather information that runs on the same time.

 

Loading in multiplayer games goes likely this way:

 

first part:       Awaiting connection

second part: connecting

third part:      Loading scripts, information, player data, creating objects.

fourth part:    Creating your character

fifth part:       Finishing load procces

 

 

--------

 

@Letter13

 

Does unparking your cores make application use more logical processors or just CPU cores?

Everyone seems to say different about this.

[Letter13]

Does unparking your cores make application use more logical processors or just CPU cores?

Everyone seems to say different about this.

Sort of. Logical processors don't *actually* exist (they're just hyperthreading). Each physical core is addressed two logical cores (one designated "physical" which acts as the address of the whole core and one as "logical" which is sort of like a secondary core used for improving parallelization through simultaneous multithreading). Basically every physical core has an additional logical core assigned/dedicated to it.

 

The status of the physical core (Parked/Unparked) also affects its logical core; so if a physical core is parked then an application is barred from both that physical core and the logical core assigned to it.

 

So by unparking the physical cores, you are allowing the application to have free access to both the physical core and its associated logical core. In that sense unparking does both; it allows the application to use more logical and physical cores.

 

Here's an image explaining how parked status affects programs:

[(PSN)iLikePie44]

Did it, but didn't do the 5a. and 5aa. Should I? or Do I HAVE to?

Edited September 1, 2014 by (PS4)iLikePie44

[SigweardStoneFist]

Sort of. Logical processors don't *actually* exist (they're just hyperthreading). Each physical core is addressed two logical cores (one designated "physical" which acts as the address of the whole core and one as "logical" which is sort of like a secondary core used for improving parallelization through simultaneous multithreading). Basically every physical core has an additional logical core assigned/dedicated to it.

 

The status of the physical core (Parked/Unparked) also affects its logical core; so if a physical core is parked then an application is barred from both that physical core and the logical core assigned to it.

 

So by unparking the physical cores, you are allowing the application to have free access to both the physical core and its associated logical core. In that sense unparking does both; it allows the application to use more logical and physical cores.

 

Here's an image explaining how parked status affects programs:

 

Thanks.

 

I have installed that program and a bit confused there.

The program says that all those cores were parked.

 

Whilst resource monitor only said this:

 

CPU0

CPU1 Parked

CPU2

CPU3 Parked

[Himmelberg]

Already knew about this tool a year ago, I've used it, seems to work fine, wasn't having FPS issues in warframe anyway since my PC has more than enough power to run it, mainly been using it to get solid 60 in more taxing games like BF4 or Crysis3.
 

But I've noticed one thing, though I'm not sure if I'll get my answer here...

Anyway, I'm using an intel i7-4770K, (that's a quad-core with 8 threads) when unparking, it only seems to detect 2 physical cores(?) I'm not actually sure if this is normal or not, is it supposed to detect 2 when I have 4, or not?

I have another PC with i5-2500K, it's also a quad-core, but this time it detects 3 instead of 2 or 4? I'm a bit perplexed in this situation, so I'm hoping to get an answer if possible...

 

 

Screenshot of 2 cores being detected (i7-4770K)

Not that this screenshot helps or anything...

Edited September 1, 2014 by double0gamer

[SigweardStoneFist]

Already knew about this tool a year ago, I've used it, seems to work fine, wasn't having FPS issues in warframe anyway since my PC has more than enough power to run it, mainly been using it to get solid 60 in more taxing games like BF4 or Crysis3.

 

But I've noticed one thing, though I'm not sure if I'll get my answer here...

Anyway, I'm using an intel i7-4770K, (that's a quad-core with 8 threads) when unparking, it only seems to detect 2 physical cores(?) I'm not actually sure if this is normal or not, is it supposed to detect 2 when I have 4, or not?

I have another PC with i5-2500K, it's also a quad-core, but this time it detects 3 instead of 2 or 4? I'm a bit perplexed in this situation, so I'm hoping to get an answer if possible...

 

 

Screenshot of 2 cores being detected (i7-4770K)

Not that this screenshot helps or anything...

 

 

Same here.

 

Having a "intel core i5 2410M" with 2 cores and 4 logical processors.

The program detected 4 cores.

 

Since the program search in the regedit for values only and edit those values only, I don't think there's something wrong.

 

 

Might be that your physical cores both count as 4 physical cores.