Warframe Twiddling Its Thumbs - Idling Instead Of Using Computer Resources.

[BrazilianJoe]

I have done a little experiment with Warframe.

 

I have played a game with the following profile: 

 

Game Mode: Solo

Tower I Survival

Warframe: Trinity

 

Resolution: 1366x768

Graphics settings: 

 

vsync: off

reflections: on

adaptative exposure: on

HDR: off

ambient occlusion: off

geometry: low

particle system: medium

shadow: low

texture: medium

aniso: on

antialias: FXAA

DoF: on

Motion Blur: off

Bloom: off

color correction: on

dynamic lightning: on

shadows: on 

constant weapon trail: off

weapon FX: on

 

Graphic Mode: DX9

Game Binary: 32 bits

Multithreading: on

 

My computer specs are as follows: 

CPU: Intel 4700MQ

GPU: Nvidia 765M 2GB VRAM

Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz

Storage: 1TB Samsung EVO 840 SSD

 

 

While I was playing, the FPS was oscillating between 20 and 40 FPS. 

Monitoring my GPU with Nvidia Inspector though, demonstrated that my GPU was being taxed around 30% on average, with occasional dips to ~20% or below, and never rising above very rare spikes of 50%.

 

My CPU was likewise not being taxed that much. It was oscillating around 16% with occasional spikes to 20%. (It was the aggregated result, not per-core).

 

One would think that the game would AT LEAST try to reach 60FPS. with SOLO gameplay, the network loop is not supposed to heavily impact the game performance. 

 

It seems that the game is not doing what it is supposed to do, taking advantage of the hardware available to give the player a fluid performance. 

 

Instead it is idling waiting for I DON'T KNOW WHAT. 

 

Taxing less than 50% of the hardware available. If I crank up my resolution The game gets unplayable on e.g Survival. 

 

Yes, I am sure I am not playing with the integrated Intel 4600 GPU. That GPU can't do decent FXAA performance with everything in low and disabling most graphical stuff. I know the difference.

 

In the image below, you have windows' system monitor beside nvidia inspector. You can tell by the Nvidia inspector the moment I extracted from the Survival. Both CPU and GPU were way undertaxed. 

 

 

SECOND TEST: I have disabled multithreading to get a picture of the game running on single thread. 

On the second image, you will see an orange line representing the Warframe.exe CPU consumption. 

The result is the same as before. I have idled before activating the Survival, and fps hovered around 25-30 fps.

 

 

 

SIDE NOTE: I could only get decent small life support drop rate on the large 2 story round hall with a tree in a hole in middle. 

Even then, it was barely enough to be able to accumulate 2-3 large capsules. That's in a forma'ed 6 polarity frame + forma'ed 6 polarity Amprex for maximum crowd destruction. Yeah, survival life support drops ARE a problem right now, the latest changes were a bad nerf. 

 

 

 

 

 

SECOND TEST: 

 

The rightmost graph, again, is the GPU graph. you can tell the portion of time when I was inside the survival mission. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIRD TEST: 

 

Disabled multi-threaded rendering. 

Removed RAM Cache App.

 

Entered a T1S

 

Didn't start Survival, idled on Void 

(Stalker appeared, killed it :) ) 

Staring at the ceiling while standing on water. 

 

FPS oscillated between 41 and 53fps, GPU usage at less than  50%

CPU usage per-thread (Warframe): 

#1: ~8%

#2: ~4%

#3: ~0.6%

#4: ~0.3%

#5: ~0.15%

... (more threads with smaller and smaller CPU time).

 

On Liset the game goes upwards of 80 FPS with Vsync off. 

 

I will reenable multithreaded rendering and see how it changes the landscape. 

 

It doesn't really seem to be an "extraneous process interferes with Warframe" issue though. 

 

 

FOURTH TEST:

 

I have turned off more apps than Warframe has any right to ask me. 

 

I stopped: 

 

Logitech Gaming Software (mouse gaming profiles & stuff)

Google Drive Sync

SkyFonts (Google's Fonts sync app,  work related)

Adobe CC background app - keeps Adobe apps updated and syncs files to Adobe Creative Cloud. 

Nvidia Geforce Experience

Google Chrome

 

Game settings changes: 

Enabled multithreaded rendering (all in the name of potential performance).

 

The game still oscillated around 45 fps. 

 

CPU was taxed around 36% with occasional dips to 25% and brief spikes to 45% as teh character did its idle animations (my guess is the Syandana translucency taking the majority of the screen has an effect)

 

Game threads:

 

#1: ~7% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 5% to 9%

#2: ~7% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 5% to 9%

#3: ~4% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 2% to 6%

#4: ~1.5% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 0.5% to 2.5%

Others: 0.15% or less. 

 

Same testing methodology as before.  

 

Entered a T1S and looked for an angle with the most scenario to be rendered before activating the alarm, then idled about. 

 

So far I have no evidence that there would be any app interfering with Warframe.

 

It seems to idle for "long periods" in-between frame renders or simulation loops, even with VSYNC OFF, not taxing the CPU, GPU or RAM nearly enough, and not giving the player the performance which should be possible to extract from the hardware.  

Edited February 13, 2015 by BrazilianJoe

[Letter13]

There's something very bizarre going on there, especially when my game idling (with Vsync off) hits the 60 FPS range, and about 40 FPS when playing, and I'm using a i5 CPU and a GeForce GT 640M. Hardware specs wise, I shouldn't be getting better results than you with worse hardware.

 

Do you get different results when running on 64-Bit and DX11 mode? Your computer is clearly 64-bit capable and DX11 capable, and both of these options should improve overall graphical performance and quality of the game.

 

Here are the settings I use:

Graphic Mode: DX11

Game Binary: 64-Bits

Multithreading: On

 

Vsync: On

Local Reflections: Off (supposedly this is very taxing)

Adaptative Exposure: Off (supposedly also taxing)

HDR: On

Ambient Occlusion: Off

Geometry: Medium

Particle System: Low

Shadow: Medium

Texture: High

Anisotropic: On

Antialias: None

DoF: On

Motion Blur: off

Bloom: On

Color correction: On

Dynamic lightning: On

Shadows: on 

Constant weapon trail: off

Weapon FX: on

 

Network related operations shouldn't affect your FPS at all; your GPU should be cranking out the highest FPS it can up to the limit set by Vsync (or more if the Vsync limit is higher or turned off).

 

Addendum: I use a specialized GPU virtualization/boosting software called VirtuMVP which allows the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics to work with/supplement my GeForce GT 640M and vice versa. I use it on my Desktop as well with phenomenal results. This may account for why I might be getting better results with worse hardware. Highly recommend it if LucidLogix ever sells it again; currently they're not selling it and only allow trial downloads from the download page for it.

[MillbrookWest]

Why does your GPU drop to 0% core usage 4/5 of the way down the graph?

 

85 degrees is getting hot. What is it's frequency when you run the game?

 

Also, why the insanely high memory usage?

 

NOTES:

If you right click on teh task-manager graph, you can get a read out for all 'cores' instead of a overall core usage. IMO, it's more useful that way ;)

[BrazilianJoe]

The game is using around 1.1GB RAM in 32-bits mode. 

 

I can't play the game on DX11 because of microstuttering. It's really annoying and makes the game unplayable, because the action keeps decelerating and accelerating every second. As such the player can't predict very well enemy position and use precision weapons. It's a jarring experience which is not enjoyable at all. 

[MillbrookWest]

Are you rendering a video? You have usage on all cores, and really high memory usage.

 

You probably have something going on with your CPU and/or RAM.

 

Why is your RAM so high? Are you running many background processes? While they may not be resource hogs, having many background processes could cause conflict if they're after the same bit of windows as Warframe.

 

EDIT:

Under the assumption you have the warframe process selected. That yellow line represents how much of the CPU is being used for Warframe. You're using next to nothing for warframe yet your CPU usage remains constant. Whatever process is using the CPU should be stopped.

 

Or, if it's a single program, you can try and change it's affinity to using only core #3. If you have a CPU bottleneck, this should help by forcing it to one core. If this doesn't hellp, then whatever it is is trying to interface with the same windows process as Warframe.

Edited February 13, 2015 by MillbrookWest

[BrazilianJoe]

Not too many background process. Just Google Chrome & a few pedestrian stuff. Google Drive, Adobe CC, iCloud, Steam, Skype. 

 

No heavy operations like video rendering. 

[MillbrookWest]

Not too many background process. Just Google Chrome & a few pedestrian stuff. Google Drive, Adobe CC, iCloud, Steam, Skype. 

 

No heavy operations like video rendering. 

What are you doing in Adobe CC? Moreover, is Adobe running any background file processing (i think they call it "optimizing")? Is Adobe CC installing one of the adobe programs?

 

You have really high RAM usage. Something on your system is doing work that requires CPU time.

 

EDIT:

For RAM reference:

 

23 Tabs open in google chrome.

2 Uniengine benchmarks running simultaneously

Warframe running at the settings you listed

 

And i still can't even get close to my 8GB RAM usage. I only got to 5.1GB.

 

Whatever is eating your RAM, may be the culprit.

 

Also note: Even though the screenshot shows 58FPS in Warframe, i was getting ~50FPS average. Pay attention to the GPU usage, it's not maxed. Nor is my CPU running at 100% either. The bottelneck in my case is Windows'.....bookkeeping (let's call it that for arguments sake o_O)

Edited February 13, 2015 by MillbrookWest

[BrazilianJoe]

It's just the adobe creative cloud sync  background app, not photoshop or anything. 

 

The RAM is just caching the disk, that's why it's not showing as free. Free RAM is useless RAM, you might just as well uninstall it. There's nothing wonky at it. 

 

I have Google Drive, Google Chrome, OneDrive (disabled sync since I don't use it), Hangouts, Razer Comms, & those little helper apps for the audio card, logitech mouse, Killer Network monitor, just little stuff. 

Edited February 13, 2015 by BrazilianJoe

[MillbrookWest]

You should try running Warframe without any additional configurations to your set-up. Try to test it as stock as you can get it.

 

Your CPU is doing something when warframe wants to use it. As i say, the yellow line in the graph you posted shows that.

Disable your RAM cache if you can, go into task manager and close any open programs, and try testing it again.

 

I can't check right now, but im certain in DX9 mode you shouldn't get core load distributed out as evenly as you have, warframe should be mostly relegated to a single core. ergo, why is your CPU usage so high?

[BrazilianJoe]

You should try running Warframe without any additional configurations to your set-up. Try to test it as stock as you can get it.

 

Your CPU is doing something when warframe wants to use it. As i say, the yellow line in the graph you posted shows that.

Disable your RAM cache if you can, go into task manager and close any open programs, and try testing it again.

 

I can't check right now, but im certain in DX9 mode you shouldn't get core load distributed out as evenly as you have, warframe should be mostly relegated to a single core. ergo, why is your CPU usage so high?

 

Well I have disabled my superspeed ramcache - I even uninstalled it to make sure it wouldn't affect the system. It was back from the HDD days, it made a difference. With the SSD I shouldn't feel a performance hit (hopefully).

 

The two process eaters constantly runnin are svchost.exe (Windows) and Google Drive Sync.

 

Google Drive Sync constantly eats up a slice of processing time. I use it for work, it usually oscillates between 16% and 3% CPU time (I believe it's a single core though). At times it just idles and disappears from the guilty party (most CPU eaters). I can test without it running. It's a hassle to go about turning necessary services off an on, but for testing purposes it's valid. 

Edited February 13, 2015 by BrazilianJoe

[BrazilianJoe]

Made a third test, updated OP. 

 

Using Process Explorer to watch per-thread processing usage. 

[BrazilianJoe]

One more update: 

 

I have turned off more apps than Warframe has any right to ask me. 

 

I stopped: 

 

Logitech Gaming Software (mouse gaming profiles & stuff)

Google Drive Sync

SkyFonts (Google's Fonts sync app,  work related)

Adobe CC background app - keeps Adobe apps updated and syncs files to Adobe Creative Cloud. 

Nvidia Geforce Experience

Google Chrome

 

Game settings changes: 

Enabled multithreaded rendering (all in the name of potential performance).

 

The game still oscillated around 45 fps. 

 

CPU was taxed around 36% with occasional dips to 25% and brief spikes to 45% as teh character did its idle animations (my guess is the Syandana translucency taking the majority of the screen has an effect)

 

Game threads:

 

#1: ~7% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 5% to 9%

#2: ~7% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 5% to 9%

#3: ~4% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 2% to 6%

#4: ~1.5% CPU time, occasionally ranging from 0.5% to 2.5%

Others: 0.15% or less. 

 

Same testing methodology as before.  

 

Entered a T1S and looked for an angle with the most scenario to be rendered before activating the alarm, then idled about. 

 

So far I have no evidence that there would be any app interfering with Warframe.

 

It seems to idle for "long periods" in-between frame renders or simulation loops, even with VSYNC OFF, not taxing the CPU, GPU or RAM nearly enough, and not giving the player the performance which should be possible to extract from the hardware.  

[MillbrookWest]

Hmmm.

 

Try this:

 

-Boot into Warframe via the launcher.

-At the login screen alt-tab out.

-Open up Process Explorer

-Create a column showing Priority

-Sort by 'Priority'

-Change Warframe priority to 'High'

-minimize Task Manager

-Hop back into Warframe and try getting into a mission

 

Note: I had to try a couple of times as first few attempts caused Warframe to crash when bringing back  its window

 

I'm still certain something running on the CPU is the problem, either a program or a Windows service. A few posts ago i asked about the 0% GPU usage. This would normally coincide with an engine stall due to the CPU not being ready to feed the gpu....however, i don't know where you experienced that in-game. Or what was going on when it happened.

 

EDIT:

By sorting the processes out by 'priority' you should be able to see all the processes with high permission than warframe. It should just be Windows related stuff.

 

To check your components, try running a benchmarking tool.

Cinebench for your CPU

http://downloads.guru3d.com/CineBENCH-11.5-download-2475.html

^Will come with a bunch of results already, run the CPU test and make sure your CPU scores gets the same score as the one shown.

 

MSI Kombustor for GPU

http://www.geeks3d.com/20140917/msi-kombustor-3-5-0-gpu-burn-in-stress-test-opengl-opencl-benchmark/#dl

^Should give you a real time read out of GPU temps, clock, VRAM, etc.

 

Make sure your parts are doing what they should be doing.....especially the CPU.

If it's your GPU, then i would say heat is the issue. While the chip should run at 85 degrees, you can't guarantee there isn't a driver limit forcing lower performance.

Edited February 14, 2015 by MillbrookWest

[BrazilianJoe]

MSI Kombustor does not run on my computer, don't know why. 

 

Cinebench never fails when running. It gives a GPU performance a bit on the low end of the video card performance, but still inside the range of the reported results. 

 

The CPU performance is a bit below, but just a little. 

 

I have tried to run the game with higher priority and it didn't seem to affect the results. The game still runs below the expected performance and with uneven frame  rates. 

 

If I disable ShadowPlay though, the game performance improves, but the game becomes very unstable. I have texture glitches and crashes very frequently.