Very Low FPS (10-15)
Spinster
Join Date: 2012-10-03 Member: 161389Members
Join Date: 2012-10-03 Member: 161389Members
Hey guys, I'll start off by posting my system specs (it's a laptop):
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M / Intel HD4000
CPU: Intel Core i7-3610QM @2.3GHz
6GB RAM.
1600x900 resolution
I'm running 64-Bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
Okay, so I launch the game, and immediately I notice that I'm getting low FPS in the menu. FRAPS tells me it's around 13 ish. I go into the graphics menu and disable all the extra effects and still I'm getting around 12-13 FPS in the menu. So I just think, whatever, might be a menu glitch, but when I'm in game I also get around 10-15 FPS, regardless of the graphics settings I have, which led me to believe it may be a CPU bottleneck, however my CPU exceeds even the recommended requirement I believe. I've done some looking around in the forum, and it seems no one is having the same issue as me. (Unless this is the pre-caching issue, which I have no idea what that is), sorry!
It's also worth noting that the first time I joined a server, the graphics were really, REALLY bad, like, HL1 standard, and the FPS was still low, and when I selected a team I crashed to desktop. But since then, the few times I've joined a server, the graphics still on low, they seem to be what I expect but still with low FPS.
What I think might be happening here is that it's using the inbuilt Intel HD4000 as the GPU rather than the 650M, but I've set it to default to using the 650M with steam. I've tried verifying the game cache through steam. I've yet to try reinstalling it, but I will if I have no success here. Thanks for your time :)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M / Intel HD4000
CPU: Intel Core i7-3610QM @2.3GHz
6GB RAM.
1600x900 resolution
I'm running 64-Bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
Okay, so I launch the game, and immediately I notice that I'm getting low FPS in the menu. FRAPS tells me it's around 13 ish. I go into the graphics menu and disable all the extra effects and still I'm getting around 12-13 FPS in the menu. So I just think, whatever, might be a menu glitch, but when I'm in game I also get around 10-15 FPS, regardless of the graphics settings I have, which led me to believe it may be a CPU bottleneck, however my CPU exceeds even the recommended requirement I believe. I've done some looking around in the forum, and it seems no one is having the same issue as me. (Unless this is the pre-caching issue, which I have no idea what that is), sorry!
It's also worth noting that the first time I joined a server, the graphics were really, REALLY bad, like, HL1 standard, and the FPS was still low, and when I selected a team I crashed to desktop. But since then, the few times I've joined a server, the graphics still on low, they seem to be what I expect but still with low FPS.
What I think might be happening here is that it's using the inbuilt Intel HD4000 as the GPU rather than the 650M, but I've set it to default to using the 650M with steam. I've tried verifying the game cache through steam. I've yet to try reinstalling it, but I will if I have no success here. Thanks for your time :)
Comments
So I thought. I can run games such as BF3 on medium-high settings with it dipping to 40fps in large fights, so I should be able to handle NS2 at least on the lowest settings.
Should, but these are Indie developers who had to release a 80% finished game because they needed the money, that essential optimization process never happened, but perhaps 6 months down the road, like Red Orchestra 2.
I'm afraid you will not get much of fps increase ingame with that processor though.
NS2 is very CPU hungry game.
You will never get more than 30fps~ average, if you sort out the video card issue (if it is the issue though..).
May be, as other said, when they start looking more into the optimization...
One thing I would definitely do is turn Off Ambient Occlusion. This typically costs about 10fps
My system is slightly different to his, but still a gaming laptop buyed for 2000 Euro in May 2012:
- CPU: 3rd. Gen. Intel Core i7-3610QM at 2,3 Ghz (4 Cores + HT) (Same CPU as OP)
- RAM: 16 GByte of DDR 3 (800 Mhz)
- Graphics: Onboard Intel 4000 and Nvidia GTX 670M with 1.5 Gigabyte of RAM
- Windows 8 x64 and Windows 7 x64
I tried NS2 three month ago with the same bad result of such a low fps of 10-15, even in 1024x768 with all effects disabled. I hoped this will be fixed until the release but today i tried it again and the same thing is happening. All actual games(BF3, Crysis 2, CoD MW, X-Com) run on my plattform in full HD without any problems. Only NS2 have this massive FPS drop.
<!--quoteo(post=2003136:date=Oct 31 2012, 09:52 PM:name=bHack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bHack @ Oct 31 2012, 09:52 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2003136"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm afraid you will not get much of fps increase ingame with that processor though.
NS2 is very CPU hungry game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think you dont really have a understanding of CPUs. Not only the Gigaherz matters also the number of cores and cache sizes. And with the i7-3610QM its a pretty actual and solid piece of CPU. <a href="http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/cpu/Intel+Core+i7-3610QM+Processor/review" target="_blank">Futuremark CPU Report</a>. To make a long story short, its should perform well.
<a href="http://imgur.com/GGY61" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/GGY61.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
<b>Fix found:</b>
Okay this did the trick for me. I defined in the NVIDIA Settings that he should use globally the NVIDIA card and not the INTEL. I couldnt find a programm entry for NaturalSelection, just Steam has one. So i set it globally. After that i could run the game in Full HD with medium settings at 45 FPS.
I dunno if the Engine needs to tell the OS that it should switch to the fastest graphics card.
No, you don't understand.
NS2 IS HUNGRY FOR GHZ. 4.5ghz will give you 70-80fps average.
3.4ghz - 50-60.
the lower you go - the lower fps will be.
That is how it is optimised for now.
mid end CPU OCed to 4ghz+ will outperform high end 3.4ghz CPU no matter what.
Tested and approved by many people, incl. myself.
PS I'm speaking about AVERAGE FPS. not the number you see when you first jump into the game and spawn lol. So it's a mix of battles/idle FPS. FPS will differ drastically in those situations. When you have 3 marine fighting 3 skulks and lerk, spores, hive, etc - your fps obv. will go down from what you get when you are defending RT from one skulks, etc.
I'm totally talking about 6v6 game. If we consider 10v10++ pub games, oh well. That's the other 'bad' story :)
<!--quoteo(post=2003307:date=Oct 31 2012, 11:07 PM:name=bHack)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (bHack @ Oct 31 2012, 11:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2003307"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->No, you don't understand.
NS2 IS HUNGRY FOR GHZ. 4.5ghz will give you 70-80fps average.
3.4ghz - 50-60.
the lower you go - the lower fps will be.
That is how it is optimised for now.
mid end CPU OCed to 4ghz+ will outperform high end 3.4ghz CPU no matter what.
Tested and approved by many people, incl. myself.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
After testing now with a fixed graphics card setup, you are right. In my setup the game is not even using 30% of my cpu ressources. So it seems that NS2 is not doing multithreading at all. That should be the root cause why Ghz is so important for NS2. But I didnt expect that programmers, especially game engine designers, didnt utilize the whole cpu power on a multicore platform. Yes i know, NS2 Core Developers are a really small team and they have to cut down the feature set somehow, but a good working multithreading support should really be implemented.
NS2 is very CPU hungry game.
You will never get more than 30fps~ average, if you sort out the video card issue (if it is the issue though..).
May be, as other said, when they start looking more into the optimization...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It has turbo boost technology and can go up to 3.3GHz, which should be fine.
<!--quoteo(post=2003295:date=Oct 31 2012, 09:03 PM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Oct 31 2012, 09:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2003295"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Basically, you'll want to do this except for Natural Selection 2:
<a href="http://imgur.com/GGY61" target="_blank"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/GGY61.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This has worked, thank you. I'm still only getting around 30-40 fps though, but thanks
Laptops with nVidia dedicated GPUs have to do the abovementioned steps to get them running at max speed :)
NS2 is very CPU hungry game.
You will never get more than 30fps~ average, if you sort out the video card issue (if it is the issue though..).
May be, as other said, when they start looking more into the optimization...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2630QM here...
If my processor can handle this than the 3610QM can.
Please refrain from dragging good processors into the dirt. It is not even funny anymore.
I might not be running the game on High with my 6850m and I do experience fps drops but I am currently getting roughly the same performance as OPs fixed settings.
It's very hungry because this game uses a LUA code. You can delete models, textures and etc, join to servers with default consistency check - anyway you will get a low amount of FPS.
<!--quoteo(post=2003327:date=Nov 1 2012, 03:15 AM:name=mino)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (mino @ Nov 1 2012, 03:15 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2003327"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->a good working multithreading support should really be implemented.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I read that for LUA code it's very hard to implement.
Improving lua code is one way to increase performance but not the only way. With all graphics down to the minimum settings and analyzing the debug monitor (type profile in console) I got around 80 FPS. The limit here is partly the LUA code but also the main game code from the spark engine. As far as I was able to see the rendering (generating of dx9 models e.t.c.) took more processing power the the LUA code.
Ofcourse this was a newly started explore mode with only 1 player in game, so I suppose more entities ingame could change this.
The profile option actually tels you at what precesize moment your GFX card is the bottleneck or the Processor is. I do believe improving things like the lua code can also increase performance, I however think that there is also a lot to gain in the spark enginge aswell.
AMD has some profiles that you can download to make sure it recognized NS2 as a GPU-using game. These were released in mid-October right before the game went gold. I haven't kept up so I don't know if they're currently integrated into the Catalyst drivers by default, but you can always just download the latest release and all non-standard application profiles along with it.
at the moment you need hell of a computer to get good fps (5ghz and very fast ram)
but this is going to change in this year, as its one of the only problems ns2 got.
No offence but that is like saying that the sky is blue. The game is unoptimized and of course a faster CPU will help.
Like I was saying.
If I am getting a performance with around 30-40fps with a LOWER GPU + CPU which are also both mobile chips- there is something wrong if OP is not getting faster performance than me.
Even after the right GPU is chosen. But yes .. as always performance increases are welcome.