Not Using Full Gpu

[BabySasquatch]

I recently upgraded my video card to a 980ti and am now experiencing some issues with the game.  When ever im in a mission my GPU never uses max load, it always sits at about %50 load. This means some times i get 150 FPS and other times it dips down to 50 frames, but the load never changes, even when it dips to 50 frames. HOWEVER, as soon as i enter my ship, the load goes to %90 and 400+ fps.  Anyone have any suggestions on how to get my GPU load higher during missions.

 

GPU 980ti

CPU i7 4790k

 

 

Thanks for your help

[Gelkor]

Latelly i have been these strange hiccups in the game, especcially in the void, where in a normal room the fps stays at 150+fps, but the moment i exit the room and i go to bigger rooms the fps drop down to 80-90.

 

The game clearly needs some cpu optimization.

It doesnt matter if i'm soloing or i play with other people.

 

That's because it's spawning enemies. This is especially noticeable when you turn your camera away from doors that spawn (Enemies don't spawn when you are looking at where they spawn) and you will notice a quick dip in your FPS, when you turn around,VOILA: Enemies.

 

That's one of the reasons they changed Defense spawning to be a slow trickle of enemies instead of a batch spawn mechanic.  Hosts would get Framerate dives at the start of every wave as their CPU chugged out 40 enemies at once. Now, ostensibly, it's a slow constant drain on resources, and I think they were trying to have a pathing programming where spawned enemies would wait until enough spawned before they would march in, maintaining the "wave" feel.

[BabySasquatch]

I feel like i never had this issue with my old video card (AMD 280x). I was expecting the 980ti to blow it out of the water, and while the Crew and witcher run alot smoother on it, i feel like warframe is actually worse as i never noticed the frames drop low enough were i get some shutter.

[Gelkor]

I feel like i never had this issue with my old video card (AMD 280x). I was expecting the 980ti to blow it out of the water, and while the Crew and witcher run alot smoother on it, i feel like warframe is actually worse as i never noticed the frames drop low enough were i get some shutter.

 

I guess the question is how high was your framerate on the old card? If it was lower and you are CPU bottlenecked, you won't notice the dips as much as they will be much smaller, as if you have a card that can put out 200 fps, you'll notice when the bottleneck goes away and when it comes back.

 

Also, did you do a fresh reformat and OS install with the new card or just swap it in and add drivers?

Edited November 9, 2015 by Gelkor

[Abenoki]

I feel like i never had this issue with my old video card (AMD 280x). I was expecting the 980ti to blow it out of the water, and while the Crew and witcher run alot smoother on it, i feel like warframe is actually worse as i never noticed the frames drop low enough were i get some shutter.

Did you make sure to clean out the AMD drivers?

[BabySasquatch]

I guess the question is how high was your framerate on the old card? If it was lower and you are CPU bottlenecked, you won't notice the dips as much as they will be much smaller, as if you have a card that can put out 200 fps, you'll notice when the bottleneck goes away and when it comes back.

 

Also, did you do a fresh reformat and OS install with the new card or just swap it in and add drivers?

With my old card, i had V-sync on so it capped at 144. I never noticed it dip lower then 100 and i NEVER once had shutter.

 

Did you make sure to clean out the AMD drivers?

I did not reformat, just uninstalled all the AMD driver and used Display Driver Uninstaller to make sure everything AMD was gone.

Normally i would blame drivers but warframe is the only game that has had anegitive result.  Crew, and Witcher runs better.

[Abenoki]

With my old card, i had V-sync on so it capped at 144. I never noticed it dip lower then 100 and i NEVER once had shutter.

I did not reformat, just uninstalled all the AMD driver and used Display Driver Uninstaller to make sure everything AMD was gone.

Normally i would blame drivers but warframe is the only game that has had anegitive result. Crew, and Witcher runs better.

No you did the proper uninstall method, only other things to do would be a wipe and reinstall or uninstall and reinstall warframe. Also make sure that you have your cpu cores unparked and set to always run at max frequency. Edited November 9, 2015 by Echoa

[Omnimorph]

Hehe, I have to laugh at people complaining of a drop to 80 fps as a "hitch".  Back in my day *spits out wad of tobacco* we were lucky to get a top speed of 30-40fps at 640x480 resolution :)

[Yafilthy]

Hehe, I have to laugh at people complaining of a drop to 80 fps as a "hitch".  Back in my day *spits out wad of tobacco* we were lucky to get a top speed of 30-40fps at 640x480 resolution :)

i barely get 20fps at 800x600

[Kihana]

Hehe, I have to laugh at people complaining of a drop to 80 fps as a "hitch".  Back in my day *spits out wad of tobacco* we were lucky to get a top speed of 30-40fps at 640x480 resolution :)

 

I've still got my Voodoo2. That thing was awesome. It cost me an entire weeks pay. <reminisces about Quake Team Fortress>

[Omnimorph]

I've still got my Voodoo2. That thing was awesome. It cost me an entire weeks pay. <reminisces about Quake Team Fortress>

 

I was a Rendition Verite kind of guy.  Shame they fell by the wayside, the visual quality was excellent. 

 

Ah, my first online multiplayer experience in Quake!  The Dismal Oubliette :)

[K0bra]

Ok guys i recorded my CPU Load a couple of times while playing with loads of enemies like Draco,Void,Sechura,Triton.

Even when i get these fps drops my CPU is never over 30% Load.This game is not very CPU intense from my testing.Is that because i use Vsync? (For extremely CPU intense game try Warhammer Vermintide out.Thats extreme)

Ram was between 600-1200MB.

I dont have a so good GPU like the OP but i will check this next.I want to know why this game makes problems.

Edited November 10, 2015 by K0bra

[Abenoki]

Ok guys i recorded my CPU Load a couple of times while playing with loads of enemies like Draco,Void,Sechura,Triton.

Even when i get these fps drops my CPU is never over 30% Load.This game is not very CPU intense from my testing.Is that because i use Vsync? (For extremely CPU intense game try Warhammer Vermintide out.Thats extreme)

Ram was between 600-1200MB.

I dont have a so good GPU like the OP but i will check this next.I want to know why this game makes problems.

 

as has already been stated

 

cpu limited =/= puts CPU at full load and cpu cant keep up

 

an example of this is Vindictus which is incredibly CPU limited but hardly loads my CPU, its limited because it doesnt take full advantage of available CPU resources. 

 

warframe isnt threaded (as in hardware threads) enough to fully load an i7 for even an i5, but that doesnt mean its not CPU limited. You arent going to see 100% CPU load in any game unless it is specifically designed to do so and really you dont want to load the CPU to 100% unless you have to. Most games wont put my Xeon 1240v3 past 50% load.

 

thisll give you an idea of what the multithreaded rendering in warframe does http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opengl-directx,2019-6.html

 

alot of the game is still done on a primary thread (from what i know at least) which means physics, spawning, etc are all handled in serial and this is the limiting factor that makes the game CPU limited. DE knows this and are working on things, but its really not a simple process to split everything and keep it synced across cores as you still might end up waiting for one process to end because the current process is dependent on the others result. 

 

A good way to test if a game is CPU limited is to test how it reacts to overclocking, if the game runs faster the higher the clock then it is CPU limited, if it has little to no effect its not.

 

TL:DR CPU load isnt an indicator of CPU limited game thats a misconception 

Edited November 10, 2015 by Echoa

[qeuu]

cpu limited =/= puts CPU at full load and cpu cant keep up

 This is true.

 

 

warframe isnt threaded (as in hardware threads) enough to fully load an i7 for even an i5, but that doesnt mean its not CPU limited. You arent going to see 100% CPU load in any game unless it is specifically designed to do so and really you dont want to load the CPU to 100% unless you have to. Most games wont put my Xeon 1240v3 past 50% load.

 

thisll give you an idea of what the multithreaded rendering in warframe does http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/opengl-directx,2019-6.html

 

alot of the game is still done on a primary thread (from what i know at least) which means physics, spawning, etc are all handled in serial and this is the limiting factor that makes the game CPU limited. DE knows this and are working on things, but its really not a simple process to split everything and keep it synced across cores as you still might end up waiting for one process to end because the current process is dependent on the others result. 

I'm fairly sure Warframe is already multi-threaded for more than just the rendering. I just tested it on my I7 5820k with multi-threaded rendering turned off, and it was putting loads on 6 of my cores. Also there are CPU operations that take a "long" time, but are not hard to do. Something like this would result in the CPU waiting/sleeping until something finishes before it can continue.

 

Also in staying with the topic. I tested Warframe with my I7-5820k @4.3GHz with a GTX 770 and i get around 120-150 FPS most of the time, but it goes higher when there is less going on. Although with this my CPU load is ~25%, it isn't running all the cores in turbo but instead at 3.3Ghz and half the cores are parked, and my GPU usage is ~78%.

[Abenoki]

This is true.

I'm fairly sure Warframe is already multi-threaded for more than just the rendering. I just tested it on my I7 5820k with multi-threaded rendering turned off, and it was putting loads on 6 of my cores. Also there are CPU operations that take a "long" time, but are not hard to do. Something like this would result in the CPU waiting/sleeping until something finishes before it can continue.

Also in staying with the topic. I tested Warframe with my I7-5820k @4.3GHz with a GTX 770 and i get around 120-150 FPS most of the time, but it goes higher when there is less going on. Although with this my CPU load is ~25%, it isn't running all the cores in turbo but instead at 3.3Ghz and half the cores are parked, and my GPU usage is ~78%.

Getting load on all cores isnt unusual for any game as Windows will shift processes that aren't locked to different cores at different times because of load balancing. That said i cant say for certain to what extent warframe is threaded or not as i really don't know.

In refering to sync issues and threads waiting i was taking about some of the issues discussed here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.ii.uib.no/~eva/Presentations/MulticoreChallenge.pdf&ved=0CCAQFjAAahUKEwiJp7HA3ofJAhVM6mMKHUhgDZI&usg=AFQjCNFCmbfkuxqtvk-QqVJc2E8QbcINZw&sig2=HgLfFZkOCcLEkJ6FbjGsHw

That are challenges of multicore programing

Heres some more info on the challenges of programming for and utilizing modern multicore systems, its old but you get the idea

http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4312/

Ill admit not the best references but i had none on hand so did a quick Google

It'll be interesting to see in 10yrs how differently developers utilize available resources vs now. The age of parallel programming is now and more and more stuff is getting better at taking advantage of it as tools to do so get better and better

One example of a game that does this is Crysis 3, while most FPS aren't CPU heavy you see very little variation between AMD FX CPU and Core i7 CPU, even the quads doing well because Crytek really did a fantastic job with Cryengine 3. DE has been steadily improving Evolution and i hope to see it do the same with a rather even playing field at 4+ cores

Edited November 11, 2015 by Echoa

[qeuu]

I was interested in seeing if warframe benefits from more CPU cores. So I did some rough testing with multithreaded rendering on and off on, and restricting the number of cores warframe could use with task manager. These are my rough estimates based on looking at the FPS while playing a quick run through Telesto, Saturn.

 

Multithreaded Rendering Off

1 core                       55-100 FPS, 120 FPS max

2 cores                   100-150 FPS, 200 FPS max

4 cores                   100-150 FPS, 230 FPS max

2 cores  4 threads  120-170 FPS, 270 FPS max, 2 threads were parked

4 cores  8 threads  100-170 FPS, 210 FPS max, 4 threads were parked

6 cores 12 threads 130-180 FPS, 260 FPS max, 6 threads were parked

 

Multithreaded Rendering On

1 core                        70-150 FPS, 200 FPS max, plenty of shuttering and frame rate drops to 50-60

2 cores                    130-180 FPS, 300 FPS max

4 cores                    160-210 FPS, 360 FPS max

2 cores  4 threads   180-210 FPS, 300 FPS max, 2 threads were parked

4 cores  4 threads   210-240 FPS, 320 FPS max, 3 threads were parked

6 cores 12 threads  210-260 FPS, 380 FPS max, 6 threads were parked

 

I still think warframe has some multithreading going on since there seems to be an FPS boost by giving it more threaded with multithreaded rendering turned off.

Also there doesn't really seem like a reason to run without multithreaded rendering unless your CPU has 1 core.

 

Tests were run at 1920X1080 in borderless windowed mode, max settings with PhysX, tessellation, depth of field, and motion blur turned off.

 

 

Getting load on all cores isnt unusual for any game as Windows will shift processes that aren't locked to different cores at different times because of load balancing. That said i cant say for certain to what extent warframe is threaded or not as i really don't know.

This could be the case, although i don't know what processes could be running that load my all of my cores up to around 50%-60%, that only start when warframe is running.

 

 

In refering to sync issues and threads waiting i was taking about some of the issues discussed here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.ii.uib.no/~eva/Presentations/MulticoreChallenge.pdf&ved=0CCAQFjAAahUKEwiJp7HA3ofJAhVM6mMKHUhgDZI&usg=AFQjCNFCmbfkuxqtvk-QqVJc2E8QbcINZw&sig2=HgLfFZkOCcLEkJ6FbjGsHw
That are challenges of multicore programing

Heres some more info on the challenges of programming for and utilizing modern multicore systems, its old but you get the idea
http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4312/

I know about the issues associated with threading since I have tried to write my own multi-threaded programs.

[Abenoki]

 

I was interested in seeing if warframe benefits from more CPU cores. So I did some rough testing with multithreaded rendering on and off on, and restricting the number of cores warframe could use with task manager. These are my rough estimates based on looking at the FPS while playing a quick run through Telesto, Saturn.

 

Multithreaded Rendering Off

1 core                       55-100 FPS, 120 FPS max

2 cores                   100-150 FPS, 200 FPS max

4 cores                   100-150 FPS, 230 FPS max

2 cores  4 threads  120-170 FPS, 270 FPS max, 2 threads were parked

4 cores  8 threads  100-170 FPS, 210 FPS max, 4 threads were parked

6 cores 12 threads 130-180 FPS, 260 FPS max, 6 threads were parked

 

Multithreaded Rendering On

1 core                        70-150 FPS, 200 FPS max, plenty of shuttering and frame rate drops to 50-60

2 cores                    130-180 FPS, 300 FPS max

4 cores                    160-210 FPS, 360 FPS max

2 cores  4 threads   180-210 FPS, 300 FPS max, 2 threads were parked

4 cores  4 threads   210-240 FPS, 320 FPS max, 3 threads were parked

6 cores 12 threads  210-260 FPS, 380 FPS max, 6 threads were parked

 

I still think warframe has some multithreading going on since there seems to be an FPS boost by giving it more threaded with multithreaded rendering turned off.

Also there doesn't really seem like a reason to run without multithreaded rendering unless your CPU has 1 core.

 

Tests were run at 1920X1080 in borderless windowed mode, max settings with PhysX, tessellation, depth of field, and motion blur turned off.

 

 

This could be the case, although i don't know what processes could be running that load my all of my cores up to around 50%-60%, that only start when warframe is running.

 

 

I know about the issues associated with threading since I have tried to write my own multi-threaded programs.

 

 

Thats some interesting info, now how many times did you run it for that test and would you be able to do a test on response to frequency? If I could overclock I would but my GPU is also getting a little long in the tooth so someone with a better GPU would also be preferred.

 

Also theres no way for me to know what you know or not lol Idk you so putting the info there would be the safe route. 

Edited November 12, 2015 by Echoa

[qeuu]

I was only able to run each configuration once. I could do some tests at different CPU frequencies, but my GPU although fairly fast can't overclock at all. So i guess i could try underclocking it and seeing how much of an impact that makes.

Although if we want to properly talk about this we should make a new topic, and we do need a more consistent way of testing.

[Abenoki]

I was only able to run each configuration once. I could do some tests at different CPU frequencies, but my GPU although fairly fast can't overclock at all. So i guess i could try underclocking it and seeing how much of an impact that makes.

Although if we want to properly talk about this we should make a new topic, and we do need a more consistent way of testing.

 

Yea, Im interested to see how it performs under different CPU count/speed mostly you dont have to do the GPU but thatd be interesting also to see how GPU speed effects it. If you get to doing the tests and dont feel like putting the data together in a thread you can shoot me a message and Ill put one together.

 

Sorry for going off topic OP