Low FPS in game, good in spectacor

bocieque · February 2012

Hi. I bought this game today. I have very low FPS when playing - 20-35. But when i am spectacor i got 50-75 fps. My spec:
athlon II x4 3.55GHz, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon 6850

GPU usage during game is about 20-25%, in spec 50-65%. This game had really that bad optimalisation? Or only I`ve got a problem?

zastels · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bocieque @ Feb 17 2012, 07:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904383"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Hi. I bought this game today. I have very low FPS when playing - 20-35. But when i am spectacor i got 50-75 fps. My spec:
athlon II x4 3.55GHz, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon 6850

GPU usage during game is about 20-25%, in spec 50-65%. This game had really that bad optimalisation? Or only I`ve got a problem?</div>

This is actually very interesting. Thanks for posting this on the forums, maybe some other people can see if it affects them too.

Your computer specs seem great. This game is currently in beta, you probably know that. The thing is, optimizations take longer to roll out than gameplay changes. If you check out the patch notes, you'll see the last two patches have really improved the games stability and performance on both client and server. It will continue to get better and better.

Some tips to try for better fps:

Open console with ~ key and type

r_fog false
r_atmospherics false
r_bloom false

Also drop your resolution down, as well as the graphical settings. Make sure you're observing what is improving your frame rate, and what does nothing.

Also, you can try opening task manager when in the game with shift + ctrl + esc, go to processes, right click on ns2.exe, go to affinity, and try limiting the game to 1 core, or just 2. See if that makes a difference. I'm on AMD as well, and a few patches ago this made the game much more smooth for me.

Also, consider measuring your performance in your own server, for the netcode in this game is not finalized and can cause performance like issues.

player · February 2012

Woah, if you're going to set affinities, use no less than 2 cores, or the game will suffer noticeably.

Kouji_San · February 2012

The game is doing a lot less during spectator, also a known thing the engine does currently

zastels · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Feb 17 2012, 08:02 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904389"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Woah, if you're going to set affinities, use no less than 2 cores, or the game will suffer noticeably.</div>

I think this is true, but only since gorilla when multi threading was implemented.

bocieque · February 2012

I try low details and res 1280x960, but still the same. I installed new drivers too. Eh... game is playable, but not comfortable. I will live with this, having hope for better performance ;)

MrYiff · February 2012

As Kouji said, as spectator your client isnt having to process as much stuff as if you were actively playing so your FPS will be a bit higher most likely.
NS2 is largely dependant on CPU rather than GPU power currently so driver changes (and even to some extent GPU hardware changes), wont have much impact unless you have a very old system.

zastels · February 2012

Does anyone know exactly what is not needing to be calculated in spectator? I think spectator taking less resources is probably the wrong assumption unless it was confirmed to be this way by the devs.

player · February 2012

There is no hud, no GUI (flash or Lua), no clipping-calculations (of the player), fewer traces (due to no clipping as well as no weapons-fire), arguably no prediction would be needed as it is no problem for the spectator to lag 1 update-frame behind of the players (therefor only needing interpolation, no extrapolation).

A lot more could be conjured up I would imagine.

zastels · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (player @ Feb 17 2012, 10:02 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904430"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>There is no hud, no GUI (flash or Lua), no clipping-calculations (of the player), fewer traces (due to no clipping as well as no weapons-fire), arguably no prediction would be needed as it is no problem for the spectator to lag 1 update-frame behind of the players (therefor only needing interpolation, no extrapolation).

A lot more could be conjured up I would imagine.</div>

These are small things. My line of reasoning is that I haven't experienced this effect in other games.

Kouji_San · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (zastels @ Feb 18 2012, 04:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904464"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>These are small things. My line of reasoning is that I haven't experienced this effect in other games.</div>
They are by no means small things in this game currently due to optimisations left to do! Also NS2 beta is not quite there yet, to be compared to other (released) games in terms of performance :)

A few build back, pre-19x, we found some serious issues with loads of things happening on screen completely bringing the tickrate of both server and client down to 0-10. Related to AFAIK, shooting, walking, collisions/hitboxes, damage done. Something a spectator does not have to process at all. The choke has been reduced quite a bit during the 19x builds, these still need more though. 19x has been kind to us though, UWE is getting this game into a very playable state :P

invTempest · February 2012

Like Kouji said, a players interactions with the world is not considered "small" by any means. When you are spectating you are essentially just viewing the world and not actually interacting with it so there is a big chunk of code that you don't have to run.

1dominator1 · February 2012

Performance will improve, I remember earlier on I couldnt even play the game it was so damn laggy (like 10 fps) Now it works quite well. Besides 25-35 is by no means unplayable, just not optimal. Try lowering res all the way and see if anything happens, although I suspect its networking.

Rokiyo · February 2012

Yeah I'm thinking player is on the right track here.

amiralawi · February 2012

I'm having the same problem. None of the suggest fixes worked - I am running 800x600 at lowest graphics settings, options turned off, and I am getting maybe 5FPS in game. Task manager shows that NS2 is chewing up my CPU. Spectator mode seems to run at normal speed unless I open up the score menu (tab).

Kouji_San · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (amiralawi @ Feb 18 2012, 04:20 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904474"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>I'm having the same problem. None of the suggest fixes worked - I am running 800x600 at lowest graphics settings, options turned off, and I am getting maybe 5FPS in game. Task manager shows that NS2 is chewing up my CPU. Spectator mode seems to run at normal speed unless I open up the score menu (tab).</div>
Wow 5FPs, what kind of CPU is that. If I had to guestimate it is ~2Ghz and maybe a Core2?

Rokiyo · February 2012

Interesting... That would suggest the UI is the bigger culprit here.

Kouji_San · February 2012

I've played the game with and without the HUD, the FPS didn't change, so it's not the marine/alien HUD visible during gameplay. The console however and the profiler are quite resource intensive --> When active, which they're not when actually playing the game ;)

amiralawi · February 2012

3.0GHz Core2Duo, which isn't exactly great but it's no slouch either. Slowdown for me appears to be related to HUD. Turning it off speeds the game up enough to be playable.

Mkilbride · February 2012

It's due to the damn LUA...

It was a good idea in theory and on paper it sounded great...not so in actuality.

My rig, while not something super amazing, is no slouch either. Pulling 99% GPU usage from my 470 at low resolutions, with medium / low graphics is pretty unacceptable, considering @ low it looks worse than many games from 2005 / 2006. And that is way worse, not just a little.

CPU usage is...pretty meh. 2500K @ 4.5GHZ and it can be around 20-30%...I'd like to see 100% personally, and then 99% GPU usage, but only if I'm hitting 80FPS @ high. Game, maxed out, at least with the current beta graphics, looks to be about 2008.

matso · February 2012

You can just turn on the profiler and compare (console command : 'profile'). In spectator mode, you are not running OnPredictMove which deals with all the calculations on how your input changes the world. As that's run x times every frame, where x is related to your latency and framerate (and to a lesser degree the server tick rate too), it means that higher framerate and higher latency leads to more CPU being spent per frame - its really hard to get high framerates because the amount of CPU you spend per frame increases. Doubling the CPU will not lead to a doubling of the framerate.

And yes, most of the CPU here is indeed consumed by lua. It's a lot better than it used to be, but still a bit away from where it needs to be.

Asraniel · February 2012

And its not really luas fault, if you write the same code in c++, its also going to be slow. Its mostly the fault of the prediction code. The upside is that you have a very good prediction, even with much lag and low fps (much better than other games).

bocieque · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (invTempest @ Feb 17 2012, 11:14 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904469"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Like Kouji said, a players interactions with the world is not considered "small" by any means. When you are spectating you are essentially just viewing the world and not actually interacting with it so there is a big chunk of code that you don't have to run.</div>

Yes i know that, when im spectacing FPS will be a bit more. But in NS2 difference is to big. 18-40fps - game, 35-70 - spec.

sonix1977nl · February 2012

In the end it doesn't matter if it's hard or if alot has to be done by the code. The simple fact is that the game is far from confortable to play for alot of players including me. And whether a game plays comfortable or not decides how popular it will be. The gameplay is astonishing, but is hampered by the low performance.

I'm curious as to how much performance improvement UWE thinks can be had in this game over the next few months.

arual · February 2012

UWE have already made it known, just yesterday in fact, that they have 2 developers working on optimising the game and that they have some ideas up their sleeve already. Just bear with it for now.

MuYeah · February 2012

I get a similar thing in the readyroom (as well as spectating). I'll have 100fps (it seems to be capped) in the RR then as soon as I join a team it drops to ~75-80.

Specs are i5 2500k @ 4.6GHz, radeon HD6870, 8GB ddr3, win7 64bit.

Zeno · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Asraniel @ Feb 18 2012, 10:16 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904515"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>And its not really luas fault, if you write the same code in c++, its also going to be slow. Its mostly the fault of the prediction code. The upside is that you have a very good prediction, even with much lag and low fps (much better than other games).</div>
Max said something about writing an own lua interpreter once...Sure it won't be in 1.0 (and probably not after that either) with only 2 programmers but I think it says that lua IS indeed a problem. Not that I understand much about programming but.....

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mkilbride @ Feb 18 2012, 09:31 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904503"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>CPU usage is...pretty meh. 2500K @ 4.5GHZ and it can be around 20-30%...I'd like to see 100% personally, and then 99% GPU usage, but only if I'm hitting 80FPS @ high. Game, maxed out, at least with the current beta graphics, looks to be about 2008.</div>
Look at MuYeah quoted below, he doesn't seem to have this problem. There's something wrong with your card, drivers or game files. I have an Ati 5870 paired with a weak CPU and I too get only low GPU load and the CPU is bottlenecking.
Edit: of course I use high settings.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MuYeah @ Feb 18 2012, 02:32 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904556"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>drops to ~75-80.

Specs are i5 2500k @ 4.6GHz, radeon HD6870, 8GB ddr3, win7 64bit.</div>
Poor old chap! Only 80fps? ;)

Yuuki · February 2012

Lua is around 20 times slower, but it also use less lines of code :

<a href="http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=lua&lang2=gpp" target="_blank">http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benc...a&lang2=gpp</a>

bocieque · February 2012

In console write that ive got radeon 5700. This was my last gpu. I uninstalled all drivers on safe mode ofcourse, than install drivers to Radeon 6850. But dxdiag still show 5700. But in another games i dont have any problems with this.

Washuu · February 2012

I was running your exact same setup, but recently upgraded to an Intel i5-2500k instead. Greatly improved my performance. I even had my Rana 440 unlocked to 4 cores also. I am guessing you might have done that too.

I believe I got the same FPS as you are getting, the Rana 440 just does not perform that well in this game. I wonder why~

player · February 2012

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yuuki @ Feb 18 2012, 03:51 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1904570"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'>Lua is around 20 times slower, but it also use less lines of code :

<a href="http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=lua&lang2=gpp" target="_blank">http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benc...a&lang2=gpp</a></div>
Alright let me stop you right there, this is not the way to compare how NS2 would've run in C++. Firstly, you have to remember NS2 is a _realtime_ application, so a fast response-time is very important, eg. while when measured over a longer period of time a Lua-variant might perform less worse (percentage-wise), it needs to be on the dot immediately in this game. Then there's also the issue with the garbage-collector, which again forms a real problem due to the (relatively) huge memory usage of a AAA-game like NS2, resulting in issues of stuttering which to this day still haven't been resolved completely. Last but not least, the NS2-scripts have continues interaction with the engine, which depending on how efficient you go about it, would involve at least some context-switching, which is costly, and if it were done in those benchmarks you posted, it would've absolutely wrecked Lua's performance-numbers.

Low FPS in game, good in spectacor

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