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.

[Mc_Clane]

Done!, but the game performance is still not as good as before U14

Edit: even by lowering the graphycs to the minimum

Edited September 2, 2014 by Mc_Clane

[Abenoki]

Where do you go for AMD?

 

AMD doesnt have that option in settings so dont worry about it, Thread optimizations are done either automatically or in software outside the driver for AMD (i forget, and would depend on preGCN or not as they work differently)

Edited September 2, 2014 by Echoa

[Abenoki]

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

Everyone seems to say different about this.

 

Cores essentially just dont go to bed, which means they dont have to be switched on before executing a task. The switch on process can cause a delay when threads get shifted to that core so if it is always awake you dont have that delay while the core gets up from a nap. The system can always use the cores/logical cores, it just has to throw water on em first :P

 

 

Quick defenition of Core Parking and why it causes performance issues

 

Core parking is a C6 sleep state used to conserve power by switching  cores off/on dynamically as load requires (kind of like speedstep adjusts frequency based on load). Windows tends to be a bit aggressive with parking so it leans toward off more for power saving which causes execution delays because the core has to be removed from sleep. This is debatable as to if it is a benefit because of the whole "race to idle" argument but thats a whole other thing entirely and depends on how fast the CPU can wake from sleep.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Echoa

[Wills3y]

unparked 3 of 4. ill let you know it worked when i get out of work. 

[SigweardStoneFist]

@Letter13

 

 

Currently have some problems for windows 8 for my lil bro.

 

When I want to unpark the cores in windows 8 and reboot the system.

Windows 8 automatically puts 2 cores into parked mode and then the fan requires a sht ton of energy.

When I don't unpark the cores, Windows 8 marks all the cores as unparked.

[Abenoki]

@Letter13

Currently have some problems for windows 8 for my lil bro.

When I want to unpark the cores in windows 8 and reboot the system.

Windows 8 automatically puts 2 cores into parked mode and then the fan requires a sht ton of energy.

When I don't unpark the cores, Windows 8 marks all the cores as unparked.

If they're all marked as unparked sounds like you're fine. I use a utility that add it to the power options to enable or disable core parking. There are other utilities you can Google them. Give another a try and see if it works out better. Edited September 2, 2014 by Echoa

[Wills3y]

performance certainly increased. still crashing out during high activity mid game. im starting to think its just my graphics card.

 

 

 

could intel turbo boost technology be playing a factor? 

Edited September 2, 2014 by Wills3y

[Abenoki]

performance certainly increased. still crashing out during high activity mid game. im starting to think its just my graphics card.

 

 

 

could intel turbo boost technology be playing a factor?

No you want turbo boost on, check your system error logs and applications error logs to see if you get an error that can point you to the problem. I'd give instructions but I'm on my phone and not at home.

[Wills3y]

 

No you want turbo boost on, check your system error logs and applications error logs to see if you get an error that can point you to the problem. I'd give instructions but I'm on my phone and not at home.

 

Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

 

i've looked into the amd support.... unfortunately there are quite of few possible problems. im going to start with the easy ones haha. thanks for the help

[Abenoki]

 

 

 

Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

 

i've looked into the amd support.... unfortunately there are quite of few possible problems. im going to start with the easy ones haha. thanks for the help

 

 

Yea, w.e it is is GPU releated so GL, and NP ask for help any time.

 

 

edit: potential solution for your issue

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1656824/atikmdag-sys-error-bsod-startup.html

Edited September 3, 2014 by Echoa

[Glitchesarecool]

Hello everyone, I have followed the guides here about unparking but it doesn't seem to affect my CPU temperature. It's been a problem since U14 came along. What does, however, is the PhysX effect slider. I have a GTX 660 and have it set in the control panel that the GPU should be doing the PhysX calculations. However, from playing with it in the game settings, it appears that turning PhysX on causes my CPU temperature to jump 4-5 degrees. I'm curious about why this is happening if I have designated that PhysX calculations should be happening on the GPU and not the CPU, and also why adjusting the particle effects (from high to low) doesn't seem to affect the temperature. 

 

Running an AMD FX-8320 for my CPU if that's an important bit of information.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Glitchesarecool

[Abenoki]

Hello everyone, I have followed the guides here about unparking but it doesn't seem to affect my CPU temperature. It's been a problem since U14 came along. What does, however, is the PhysX effect slider. I have a GTX 660 and have it set in the control panel that the GPU should be doing the PhysX calculations. However, from playing with it in the game settings, it appears that turning PhysX on causes my CPU temperature to jump 4-5 degrees. I'm curious about why this is happening if I have designated that PhysX calculations should be happening on the GPU and not the CPU, and also why adjusting the particle effects (from high to low) doesn't seem to affect the temperature. 

 

Running an AMD FX-8320 for my CPU if that's an important bit of information.

What is your temp? 4-5 degree jump@ 50c isn't bad, at 80c it is lol

[Glitchesarecool]

What is your temp? 4-5 degree jump@ 50c isn't bad, at 80c it is lol

Oh not nearly so bad, I'm topping out at 61c at worst, it used to run at ~55c on load. It's just simply higher than it had been prior to U14 and I don't like it approaching 65.

Edited September 6, 2014 by Glitchesarecool

[Abenoki]

Oh not nearly so bad, I'm topping out at 61c at worst, it used to run at ~55c on load. It's just simply higher than it had been prior to U14 and I don't like it approaching 65.

Do you have a gigabyte or MSI mobo with turbo core on? That's not that weird a temp for an FX 8core if you have turbo core on. Turbo core puts the Vcore REALLY high sometimes because AMD cpu don't switch core voltage as quickly. My FX 8120 rig with turbo hit 70c periodically because turbo would put the Vcore as high as 1.5v at times. If you have anything short of. Corsair h100 cooler I'd say you're fine temps wise.

[takeshiblue]

is 5a and 5aa necessary cause you completely lost me there sorry for my lack of knowledge when it comes to this.

[Glitchesarecool]

Do you have a gigabyte or MSI mobo with turbo core on? That's not that weird a temp for an FX 8core if you have turbo core on. Turbo core puts the Vcore REALLY high sometimes because AMD cpu don't switch core voltage as quickly. My FX 8120 rig with turbo hit 70c periodically because turbo would put the Vcore as high as 1.5v at times. If you have anything short of. Corsair h100 cooler I'd say you're fine temps wise.

 

I have an ASUS M5A99X Evo R2 mobo. I don't think I have any kind of equivalent settings, but I'll double check if anything is on. My cooler is a GeminII M4 for the sake of it being WAY quieter than the stock one, and because the EVO 212 just barely doesn't fit in my case by literal millimeters. 

 

It's just a running temp that I don't prefer considering most other games rack it up to 55 at worst, but if that's what Warframe is gonna do, I'll be fine with it.

Edited September 7, 2014 by Glitchesarecool

[AlchemistMute]

Unfortunately, this didn't work. All of my cores were packed, and when I unpacked them, the FPS didn't change at all. There are still tons of lag spikes.

[takeshiblue]

same.

[SanguineSavant]

So I've got an Acer Predator I got cheap since it was the last sales model they had in. It was a great deal and I've enjoyed nearly half a decade with it. I remember when I first tried warframe out it ran very smoothly with a couple hindrances from latency here and there, but around update 14 it started to struggle and run as well as it did when I first downloaded it. I simply assumed this old machine of mine was running out of gas.

Then I tried this. You have revived an old friend from visiting the home here, Letter13, the difference when I run the game now is night and day. Pat yourself on the back, you've made a man and his machine very happy today.

[Grahnz]

Dieing to try this when i get the chance, why isnt this stickied? ;;

[Grahnz]

One thing i will ask though, is this safe to do on a low spec INTEL I3 Laptop?

[Yazeth]

Dieing to try this when i get the chance, why isnt this stickied? ;;

 

It was. Idk what happened though.

[Letter13]

One thing i will ask though, is this safe to do on a low spec INTEL I3 Laptop?

Yes.

 

 

It was. Idk what happened though.

I don't know either. Will ask

[Evelyn.]

Great job on the info and help, got a question though, how do we do the opposite? Multithread isn't working, cpu load is below 15% most of the times (8 threads here) while gpu is screaming its head off.

[Letter13]

Great job on the info and help, got a question though, how do we do the opposite? Multithread isn't working, cpu load is below 15% most of the times (8 threads here) while gpu is screaming its head off.

What's your CPU and GPU?

 

These are signs that your CPU is not the cause of low framerates. Rather it's likely that your GPU is the culprit (try updating your Nvidia/AMD drivers based on the GPU you have).