Any general tips how to further squeeze out performance besides lowering everything in the options menu? Console commands, profiles, drivers, tweaks? I'm not even bothered by playing on lowest possible since the only real noticeable "uglyness" comes from staring at stationary pixels while standing still less than a 1m from it.
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?
<!--quoteo(post=2014037:date=Nov 7 2012, 10:19 AM:name=Svenpa)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Svenpa @ Nov 7 2012, 10:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014037"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any general tips how to further squeeze out performance besides lowering everything in the options menu? Console commands, profiles, drivers, tweaks? I'm not even bothered by playing on lowest possible since the only real noticeable "uglyness" comes from staring at stationary pixels while standing still less than a 1m from it.
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Currently CPU is the biggest bottleneck for the game, the higher the Ghz the better. (GHz being more important than the number of cores if I remember correctly)
<!--quoteo(post=2013641:date=Nov 7 2012, 05:30 AM:name=Visor1)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Visor1 @ Nov 7 2012, 05:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2013641"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I myself have a new i5k @ 4.2 with a single 560ti with every setting turned off or lowest setting on 1920 res and I never go below 60fps on a 18 man sever normally 80/90 in combat. There was another thread about sli profiles for NS2 from memory it recommended using the dishoured profile to get 99% scaling. Since you're getting worse fps then me take a look ingame using r_stats to see if you're GPU is at 0ms waiting time or 10+. IF it's over 0 you're getting some GPU bottle necking going on which shouldn't be happening if your sli is working properly. To give you some idea my GPU is at 8ms waiting time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
well my fps stay about 90 in normal fights too, but crags especially seem to kill my fps when theres more than one. So are many exoskeletons firing at once.
I checked your command, it says about 10 MS next to the FPS but the GPU waiting time is between 2-5.
<!--quoteo(post=2014170:date=Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM:name=PvtBones)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PvtBones @ Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014170"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Currently CPU is the biggest bottleneck for the game, the higher the Ghz the better.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All else being the same, yes. IPC is very important(sandy bridge with all but one core disabled is about 3x faster clock for clock than a pentium 4)
<!--quoteo(post=2014170:date=Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM:name=PvtBones)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PvtBones @ Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014170"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->(GHz being more important than the number of cores if I remember correctly)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Adding a second core is a huge improvement. Adding a third and fourth, not so much.
<!--quoteo(post=2014037:date=Nov 7 2012, 04:19 PM:name=Svenpa)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Svenpa @ Nov 7 2012, 04:19 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014037"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Any general tips how to further squeeze out performance besides lowering everything in the options menu? Console commands, profiles, drivers, tweaks? I'm not even bothered by playing on lowest possible since the only real noticeable "uglyness" comes from staring at stationary pixels while standing still less than a 1m from it.
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cpu became less important during the beta.
i got an intel q6600 @ 3.2 ghz and a radeon 4870 gpu and i am gpu bbottlenecked.
<!--quoteo(post=2014188:date=Nov 7 2012, 11:19 AM:name=TripleZero)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TripleZero @ Nov 7 2012, 11:19 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014188"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->well my fps stay about 90 in normal fights too, but crags especially seem to kill my fps when theres more than one. So are many exoskeletons firing at once.
I checked your command, it says about 10 MS next to the FPS but the GPU waiting time is between 2-5.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Easiest way to get that down to zero is lower the texture to low and see how you go. 2-5 is good but does it stay at that when you have multiple exo's firing? I don't have any problems with multiple exo shooting and I'm willing to bet it's the texture detail setting or the experimental streaming setting that's causing it for you. You could also try just running NS2 with just one card and see if it makes any difference.
<!--quoteo(post=2013228:date=Nov 6 2012, 05:09 PM:name=Gigaus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Gigaus @ Nov 6 2012, 05:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2013228"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Uh huh, right....I'm not going to get into it, mostly because I juse want an answer, but I'm going to assume you're just talking out your rear end when you say that. I never said, at the beginning, I said early on, and if I did, I meant half way through, I.E. the beginning of when you're supposed to start optimizing....Optimization is a long process, not an 'oh, we're gonna sit down and do it in one go', no, it tends to go on along side actual development, to avoid....THIS. You optimize section by section, and yeah, it slows thigns down deving wise; But it's more effecient to say...Line up each piece of the puzzle, before you put it all down? It's unrealistic to try and optimize a large game, like this, all at once, at the end, 'think someone said it earlier, 'it's far too difficult to go through every line of code to sort out what are probably small bugs.' There is not perfect optmization formula or plan, but trying to optimize it at the end, and close to a release date....Well, games have done it; They didn't live to see anything passed their inital launch though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Yeah, I'm sorry, but even if you are a programmer, you're not an experienced one.
Programmers generally try to design things during the production phase in a logical, common-sense-performance kind of way. ie, don't do something incredibly dumb like write and read a small file to the hard drive on each tick, and block the main thread with it. Otherwise, if you look for any Stack Overflow question headed with "performance" (ie, Does String.Compare or ApacheStringUtils.Compare perform faster? Has someone profiled them?) is going to get the same answer: "It doesn't matter yet." Most attempts at optimizing a game or engine before it's looking to be at its 85%/95% mark are going to be pretty futile, especially if you have a small testbed and no QA lab. (Protip: UKE had a testbed of just themselves! Alpha testers, frustratingly enough, became their QA to detect such issues). Instead, you bring the game close to feature-completion, and then you profile and stress-test it as much as you can. Maybe you figured drawing particles would be your biggest drawback, and that you were forming notebooks full of design patterns to optimize it; but then you start to realize the graphics cards optimize that part themselves and you wouldn't gain a single frame (per second). Then you find that lighting is the phantom killer, and start working on a new mapping feature to optimize levels for all their lighting patterns (A feature that might have been thrown away if things were more in-flux! Maybe at one point they decide "This lighting strategy looks bad and ruins framerates in all games that have tried it. Let's drop it for this one instead.")
Oh, and I don't know if this is a surprise to you, but rumor has it that many previews of console games shown at E3 are actually running on very specialized PCs; development computers that have 3x the necessary hardware, and can run far better than consoles can. They just haven't reached the full optimization step yet.
Comments
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Currently CPU is the biggest bottleneck for the game, the higher the Ghz the better. (GHz being more important than the number of cores if I remember correctly)
well my fps stay about 90 in normal fights too, but crags especially seem to kill my fps when theres more than one. So are many exoskeletons firing at once.
I checked your command, it says about 10 MS next to the FPS but the GPU waiting time is between 2-5.
All else being the same, yes. IPC is very important(sandy bridge with all but one core disabled is about 3x faster clock for clock than a pentium 4)
<!--quoteo(post=2014170:date=Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM:name=PvtBones)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PvtBones @ Nov 7 2012, 11:41 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2014170"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->(GHz being more important than the number of cores if I remember correctly)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Adding a second core is a huge improvement. Adding a third and fourth, not so much.
Also, which is most important for NS2, the CPU or the GPU?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Cpu became less important during the beta.
i got an intel q6600 @ 3.2 ghz and a radeon 4870 gpu and i am gpu bbottlenecked.
I checked your command, it says about 10 MS next to the FPS but the GPU waiting time is between 2-5.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Easiest way to get that down to zero is lower the texture to low and see how you go. 2-5 is good but does it stay at that when you have multiple exo's firing? I don't have any problems with multiple exo shooting and I'm willing to bet it's the texture detail setting or the experimental streaming setting that's causing it for you. You could also try just running NS2 with just one card and see if it makes any difference.
All settings off/low textures medium. The game was pretty laid back, aka, my team absolutely blew and we got steam rolled.
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
51206, 843435, 19, 154, 60.711
Specs:
Win 7 64
AMD FX-6100 4.0 GHz
Mushkin Enhanced Redline 4 GB DDR3-1600
Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950 1 GB
OCZ Vertex Plus 60 GB SATA II SSD
Yeah, I'm sorry, but even if you are a programmer, you're not an experienced one.
Programmers generally try to design things during the production phase in a logical, common-sense-performance kind of way. ie, don't do something incredibly dumb like write and read a small file to the hard drive on each tick, and block the main thread with it. Otherwise, if you look for any Stack Overflow question headed with "performance" (ie, Does String.Compare or ApacheStringUtils.Compare perform faster? Has someone profiled them?) is going to get the same answer:
"It doesn't matter yet."
Most attempts at optimizing a game or engine before it's looking to be at its 85%/95% mark are going to be pretty futile, especially if you have a small testbed and no QA lab. (Protip: UKE had a testbed of just themselves! Alpha testers, frustratingly enough, became their QA to detect such issues). Instead, you bring the game close to feature-completion, and then you profile and stress-test it as much as you can. Maybe you figured drawing particles would be your biggest drawback, and that you were forming notebooks full of design patterns to optimize it; but then you start to realize the graphics cards optimize that part themselves and you wouldn't gain a single frame (per second). Then you find that lighting is the phantom killer, and start working on a new mapping feature to optimize levels for all their lighting patterns (A feature that might have been thrown away if things were more in-flux! Maybe at one point they decide "This lighting strategy looks bad and ruins framerates in all games that have tried it. Let's drop it for this one instead.")
Oh, and I don't know if this is a surprise to you, but rumor has it that many previews of console games shown at E3 are actually running on very specialized PCs; development computers that have 3x the necessary hardware, and can run far better than consoles can. They just haven't reached the full optimization step yet.
i suppose this is funny.