What FPS should I be getting?

XzHiBiT · February 2013

MSI GT683R-242US
i7-2630QM @ 2GHz -> 2.2GHz
NVidia GTX 560M - 1.5GB GDDR5
15.6" 1920x1080p 60Hz Monitor
16GB DDR3 1333MHz
2x WD Black 500GB 7200rpm @ Raid 2+0
802.11g/b/n

And I am getting, with EVERYTHING off/low except infestation, using r_stats I get about 30fps... peak of 50fps in corners, low of 20fps in combat..... for EVERYTHING off, I would expect higher....

In Just Cause 2, open world, I get higher FPS with settings almost maxed, this seems like PISS POOR performance from this game...

Any ideas?

Kouji_San · February 2013

2.2Ghz is the culprit there, this game has a lot of its logic running in lua. Which needs sheer CPU horse power in terms of Ghz

Talesin · February 2013

Yep. The biggest bottleneck NS2 has on most systems is single-core performance. Multithreading isn't really used too much, so the large core-count is irrelevant.
Also, I find it a bit difficult to believe that you're using RAID 2. Next to nothing does, at this point; also as you only have two disks, '2+0' is a bit of a misnomer.

XzHiBiT · February 2013

Is there any intent to up the core usage? I believe it's a quad with 8 threads, it would be NICE to have that.... And since every processor being released from here on out will be multi-core, why isn't this game supporting that? Love the game, DO NOT love the gaming from it.

Kouji_San · February 2013

Programming for mutliple cores is harder and makes the code much more complex and prone to problems. Not to mention that multi-threading isn't a magic fix for performance either.

ScardyBob · February 2013

Sounds about right. NS2 is CPU hungry and laptop CPUs are typically less powerful than their desktop counterparts. You could probably get a few extra fps (or at least smoother gameplay) by running NS2.exe as high priority in windows or using a program like throttlestop to ensure your CPU isn't trying to downclock while running NS2 (this is what I do on my laptop).

FunkyMike · February 2013

i7 2630QM here.
Radeon HD 6850M
120Hz @ 1680 x 1080
Pretty much all low except texture.

~40fps .. higher in non combat, lower in combat

Kouji_San wrote: »

2.2Ghz is the culprit there, this game has a lot of its logic running in lua. Which needs sheer CPU horse power in terms of Ghz

This is a mobile CPU, it ramps up to 2.9. Please don't blame a good i7 for the games poor performance.

The game runs on 2 cores.

Try turning the resolution down to what I am using and infestation to Low.

Alt Tab when in game and set Priority of NS2.exe to High in Task Manager. .. This should boost the fps. (Don't ask me why please

There used to be a bug where the game decided to use the HD 3000 instead of the Nvidia GPU but it should be fixed. Double check to make sure.

Kouji_San · February 2013

I'm not blaming the i7, I'm blaming the lack of horsepower in terms of Ghz. Even a second or third generation iCore will only start showing performance increases at around 3Ghz preferably 4Ghz

SixtyWattMan · February 2013

Also the 560M isn't exactly a powerhouse.

Xarius · February 2013

I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP, I get an easy 80 in the RR with most settings off but as the game progresses I dip into the below 30s making it a pretty frustrating experience to sit through. I LOVE this game, I've played it for nearly 500 hours since early beta and in some patches my fps have definitely been better than in others. I'm glad they're still working on performance but I'm slowly starting to lose hope that I will ever be able to run this game properly on this machine.

My laptop has a I5-2450M CPU, my VGA is a GTX570M, 1.5 DDR5. I run games like BF 3 fluently, even in MP, on high settings.

I went from the highest laptop resolution to playing it on an external screen at 1440 * 900 and while that gave me more FPS at the start of the game, the dips were pretty much identical. Personally I find this to be quite peculiar, how is it possible that despite the lower resolution giving me a significantly higher base FPS (from around 50 - 60 to +- 80), the dips are still as bad???

FunkyMike · February 2013

ScardyBob wrote: »

Sounds about right. NS2 is CPU hungry and laptop CPUs are typically less powerful than their desktop counterparts. You could probably get a few extra fps (or at least smoother gameplay) by running NS2.exe as high priority in windows or using a program like throttlestop to ensure your CPU isn't trying to downclock while running NS2 (this is what I do on my laptop).

This is a good suggestion. Try Throttlestop just in case your manufacturer decided to be naughty with the throttling.

SixtyWattMan wrote: »

Also the 560M isn't exactly a powerhouse.

Rubbish. 6850m is weaker than the 560M and yet I get more FPS?

Xarius wrote: »

I'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP, I get an easy 80 in the RR with most settings off but as the game progresses I dip into the below 30s making it a pretty frustrating experience to sit through. I LOVE this game, I've played it for nearly 500 hours since early beta and in some patches my fps have definitely been better than in others. I'm glad they're still working on performance but I'm slowly starting to lose hope that I will ever be able to run this game properly on this machine.

Same here Xarius. I have been "trying" to play since alpha with huge strides made in beta. You pretty much explained my situation in your writing so I won't bother to repeat

.

Xarius · February 2013

Is there any danger in using throttle-stop? I may as well give that a try. My laptop's equipped with a turbo cooling button so I reckon I shouldn't be too worried about the possibility of overheating.

Talesin · February 2013

XzHiBiT wrote: »

Is there any intent to up the core usage? I believe it's a quad with 8 threads, it would be NICE to have that.... And since every processor being released from here on out will be multi-core, why isn't this game supporting that? Love the game, DO NOT love the gaming from it.

Because coding to use multiple cores isn't easy to do. You have race conditions to worry about, have to synchronize the core processing, trap for failures, and make everything far more fragile and complicated. It isn't just setting the 'UseMultiCores=Y' option in the headers. It doesn't intelligently spread the workload out over the cores. And when you have one main processing thread, primarily taken up by interpreting LUA, there's simply very little to really offload. The only AI is the drifter/MAC pathfinding after all, and a majority of the lighting is just handled by the GPU internally these days.

It will improve, and Max is working to utilize multiple cores more effectively. Just is going to take time for a while to come, yet.

FunkyMike wrote: »

This is a mobile CPU it ramps up to 2.9. Please don't blame a good i7 for the games poor performance.

Alt Tab when in game and set Priority of NS2.exe to High in Task Manager. .. This should boost the fps. (Don't ask me why please

Also, assign its processor affinity to only the last two cores; things like Flash and other 'dumb' processes default to dumping everything on Core 0 (or 1), and moving NS2 off that should help. Likewise, setting priority to High will help ensure the scheduler does not use that core for other things.
It really doesn't matter if you're on an i3, i5, i7, X2, X4, X6, or Core2Duo. It's only using a single core. Clockspeed is everything, as a result. i7 tend to run at lower clockspeeds to improve their thermal envelope (due to the number of on-die cores and a finite ability for the heatspreader to transfer), which CAN mean that the i7 will perform worse than a significantly older and/or lower-overall-performance CPU.

Kouji_San · February 2013

FunkyMike wrote: »

SixtyWattMan wrote: »

Also the 560M isn't exactly a powerhouse.

Rubbish. 6850m is weaker than the 560M and yet I get more FPS?

OP is probably running at the 2.2Ghz and not ramping up in turbo mode to 2.9. In the case of your res and graphics settings, you should be getting more FPS if you're running 700Mhz faster. As I've said before... Ghz are a bigger determining factor then a Graphics card. Unless you are running a really shoddy budget graphics card there is no reason you should be GPU bottlenecked.

I mean if I run at default speeds on my i5 2500K (3.3Ghz) I lose a lot of FPS compared to running it at 4.2GHz. I've also had this rig running with an older generation HD4850 512Mb and compared it to the current one a HD5870 1Gb. The overall FPS didn't change much on any setting apart from High. Which caused hitching due to lack of memory on the older card.

FunkyMike · February 2013

Xarius wrote: »

Is there any danger in using throttle-stop? I may as well give that a try. My laptop's equipped with a turbo cooling button so I reckon I shouldn't be too worried about the possibility of overheating.

Not really. All it means is that if there is an artificial block placed by MSI, it will override it allowing the processor to perform at the full 2.9 Ghz. It might get hot .. if it isn't getting hot already.

Good tip Talesin!! I will try setting the affinity today. The game does use the 2nd core or a thread for a VM which processes some LUA code I believe. I don't recall the specifics and don't really want to search the forums right now.

Edit: The Turbo cooling button worries me now. It could mean that this is a function to auto throttle your CPU. Try running the game without that button and with throttle stop. I would find out what exactly it does.

HP has a function called CoolSense that downthrottles CPUs. It could be akin to that.

Davil · February 2013

Xarius wrote: »

Is there any danger in using throttle-stop? I may as well give that a try. My laptop's equipped with a turbo cooling button so I reckon I shouldn't be too worried about the possibility of overheating.

Laptops are extremely prone to overheating and it really doesn't matter what you have for cooling it's going to get hot. Throttling is done because it's overheating to start with so yes stopping that would probably not be a good idea. Really using any laptop for gaming and expecting to have great visuals and smooth gameplay is just asking for a miracle for 99% of laptops.

As far as how many cores NS2 uses, that depends on how many threads and that is a function of the operating system assigning which threads to which cores. To be honest turning off hyperthreading in order to overclock another 500mhz is usually faster than leaving it on. NS2 does use several threads but it's limited by Lua and that's really the problem.

Xarius · February 2013

Really using any laptop for gaming and expecting to have great visuals and smooth gameplay is just asking for a miracle for 99% of laptops.

This is nonsense, like I said I can easily run most modern games on high or ultra. The GTX 570M is a powerhouse by laptop standards. NS 2 is really the only game so far that I have been struggling with and running it on lower settings simply doesn't do anything.

Also, assign its processor affinity to only the last two cores

Great tip! Going to try this later.

Edit: The Turbo cooling button worries me now. It could mean that this is a function to auto throttle your CPU. Try running the game without that button and with throttle stop. I would find out what exactly it does.

I have both a 'turbo performance' as well as a 'turbo cooling' button, I've tried running with turbo performance in the past and it didn't give me any noticeable FPS gain on NS 2. I'm guessing this is because it boosts my GPU and not my CPU. I combined it with the turbo cooling at the time, so I would take that the turbo cooling by itself won't do much either. I'll try it again though just in case.

SixtyWattMan · February 2013

FunkyMike wrote: »

SixtyWattMan wrote: »

Also the 560M isn't exactly a powerhouse.

Rubbish. 6850m is weaker than the 560M and yet I get more FPS?

Good thing I never said that the 6850m was better than the 560M.

Xarius wrote: »

Really using any laptop for gaming and expecting to have great visuals and smooth gameplay is just asking for a miracle for 99% of laptops.

This is nonsense, like I said I can easily run most modern games on high or ultra. The GTX 570M is a powerhouse by laptop standards. NS 2 is really the only game so far that I have been struggling with and running it on lower settings simply doesn't do anything.

Being a "powerhouse by laptop standards" is like winning the special Olympics, in the end you're still retarded. The reason your FPS doesn't change much is because NS2 is both unoptimized and very CPU bound.

Xarius · February 2013

Being a "powerhouse by laptop standards" is like winning the special Olympics, in the end you're still retarded. The reason your FPS doesn't change much is because NS2 is both unoptimized and very CPU bound.

The whole notion that laptops are still miles behind (and can't reliably run modern games on higher settings) when it comes to gaming is a little outdated to be honest.

I'm not saying they are on par with gaming desktops, not at all, but they're certainly not as terribly behind as they were several years ago. Some of us have no choice but to buy a gaming laptop, it's either that or giving up gaming entirely. But yes, let's be honest, this is more an issue of NS 2 being heavily unoptimised than it is these laptops being rubbish.

I get a reliable 50ish FPS on my current settings, if it wasn't for these drops to 15 - 25 FPS during lategame combat phases (with all them structures and whatnot) I'd be satisfied enough with my performance.

Polak · February 2013

Hey, i got GT683 4GB ram 560M oc 915 - core 1830 - shaders 1520 - memory ,all off, texturre high 1920x1080 getting 30-25~ in really heavy fights (20-24players server), on 6vs6 got 30+ late game in hive, but almost all time 40-50 in game

playable ;]

FunkyMike · February 2013

Yup Xarius that notion really is antiquated .. to be fair not a lot of people drop 1.5k on a good laptop!

Polak wrote: »

Hey, i got GT683 4GB ram 560M oc 915 - core 1830 - shaders 1520 - memory ,all off, texturre high 1920x1080 getting 30-25~ in really heavy fights (20-24players server), on 6vs6 got 30+ late game in hive, but almost all time 40-50 in game playable ;]

Polak. You might be able to save the day. Can you tell us if the MSI has some sort of throttle function to "cool" the CPU. Maybe OP left it on by mistake.

SixtyWattMan · February 2013

Xarius wrote: »

Being a "powerhouse by laptop standards" is like winning the special Olympics, in the end you're still retarded. The reason your FPS doesn't change much is because NS2 is both unoptimized and very CPU bound.

The whole notion that laptops are still miles behind (and can't reliably run modern games on higher settings) when it comes to gaming is a little outdated to be honest.

I'm not saying they are on par with gaming desktops, not at all, but they're certainly not as terribly behind as they were several years ago. Some of us have no choice but to buy a gaming laptop, it's either that or giving up gaming entirely. But yes, let's be honest, this is more an issue of NS 2 being heavily unoptimised than it is these laptops being rubbish.

I get a reliable 50ish FPS on my current settings, if it wasn't for these drops to 15 - 25 FPS during lategame combat phases (with all them structures and whatnot) I'd be satisfied enough with my performance.

No, laptops are still rubbish.

XzHiBiT · February 2013

So, I tried the affinity to the final 2 (6&7) cores, HUGE LAG..... frames stayed about the same (25-33) but it skips like a mother online. Also, I turned the infestation off (rich -> off) and the FPS got worse.... I'm in the process of building a monster desktop, and I give up on trying to better the laptop version.

That being said, I turned the res down to 1680x1050, but its not the native ratio of my monitor, so it looks weird. It also doesn't stretch. BUT! It did up the FPS to about 40 consistently.... I will settle for that, and call it a day....

XzHiBiT · February 2013

SixtyWattMan wrote: »

Xarius wrote: »

Being a "powerhouse by laptop standards" is like winning the special Olympics, in the end you're still retarded. The reason your FPS doesn't change much is because NS2 is both unoptimized and very CPU bound.

The whole notion that laptops are still miles behind (and can't reliably run modern games on higher settings) when it comes to gaming is a little outdated to be honest.

I'm not saying they are on par with gaming desktops, not at all, but they're certainly not as terribly behind as they were several years ago. Some of us have no choice but to buy a gaming laptop, it's either that or giving up gaming entirely. But yes, let's be honest, this is more an issue of NS 2 being heavily unoptimised than it is these laptops being rubbish.

I get a reliable 50ish FPS on my current settings, if it wasn't for these drops to 15 - 25 FPS during lategame combat phases (with all them structures and whatnot) I'd be satisfied enough with my performance.

No, laptops are still rubbish.

My laptop runs Crysis 2 @ 1920x1080 @ 30FPS on "Hardcore" and 50FPS on "Gamer".... so you are severely ignorant by saying laptops are rubbish....

Why NS2 can't is an issue with the game, not it being a laptop.

Kouji_San · February 2013

4-7 are logical threads, not actual hardware cores. Try core 2 and 3 instead. For using a lower res you could try 1600x900 or 1280x720, those are of the 16:9 variant similar to your monitor.

XzHiBiT · February 2013

Kouji_San wrote: »

4-7 are logical threads, not actual hardware cores. Try core 2 and 3 instead. For using a lower res you could try 1600x900 or 1280x720, those are of the 16:9 variant similar to your monitor.

I've given up trying to play it on my laptop, I'll just tolerate what the game (note: not my laptop) is capable of, and play it on my desktop when I complete it. It is just disappointing that something is plugging the game from running smoothly. Also, even if I turn up the detail options, it doesn't run slower.... hmm?

FunkyMike · February 2013

XzHiBiT wrote: »

So, I tried the affinity to the final 2 (6&7) cores, HUGE LAG..... frames stayed about the same (25-33) but it skips like a mother online. Also, I turned the infestation off (rich -> off) and the FPS got worse.... I'm in the process of building a monster desktop, and I give up on trying to better the laptop version.

That being said, I turned the res down to 1680x1050, but its not the native ratio of my monitor, so it looks weird. It also doesn't stretch. BUT! It did up the FPS to about 40 consistently.... I will settle for that, and call it a day....

Thanks for coming back to us XzHiBiT .. also try to turn Priority to high.

Either way. This is a good example of how the retention rate of this game is low. If X didn't have a desktop he would not have bothered playing this again or only in a limited fashion. And a lot of people that don't voice their concerns feel exactly the same way about this.

SixtyWattMan wrote: »

No, laptops are still rubbish.

Do you know the average Ghz rate for Steam users?

Kouji_San · February 2013

As we've mentioned before the graphics have close to no influence on the performance other then resolution to some extent and AO. That is if you are indeed running a lower end graphics card, which you are not.

Also it is indeed partially your laptop or rather the CPU running at only 2.2Ghz that's causing the lower FPS, this is based on many hardware specs we've seen come and go. It might be an iCore, but the lack of sheer brute force (<3Ghz, <4Ghz), to deal with the performance issues that are indeed still present and the fact that lua is will eat CPU cycles for breakfast.

XzHiBiT · February 2013

FunkyMike wrote: »

Thanks for coming back to us XzHiBiT .. also try to turn Priority to high.

I did, didn't seem to improve any, unfortunately.

Kouji_San wrote: »

As we've mentioned before the graphics have close to no influence on the performance other then resolution to some extent and AO. That is if you are indeed running a lower end graphics card, which you are not.

Also it is indeed partially your laptop or rather the CPU running at only 2.2Ghz that's causing the lower FPS, this is based on many hardware specs we've seen come and go. It might be an iCore, but the lack of sheer brute force (<3Ghz, <4Ghz), to deal with the performance issues that are indeed still present and the fact that lua is will eat CPU cycles for breakfast.

I looked it up, it has a 2.9GHz boost, not 2.2 as previously mentioned. It also has MSI "Turbo" mode for GPU, which supposedly boosts it, and I've never seen FRAPS indicate a FPS increase with that on. How can I force 2.9GHz boost on the i7? Anyone know?

Polak · February 2013

FunkyMike wrote: »

Yup Xarius that notion really is antiquated .. to be fair not a lot of people drop 1.5k on a good laptop!

Polak wrote: »

Hey, i got GT683 4GB ram 560M oc 915 - core 1830 - shaders 1520 - memory ,all off, texturre high 1920x1080 getting 30-25~ in really heavy fights (20-24players server), on 6vs6 got 30+ late game in hive, but almost all time 40-50 in game playable ;]

Polak. You might be able to save the day. Can you tell us if the MSI has some sort of throttle function to "cool" the CPU. Maybe OP left it on by mistake.

I dont know what mean throttle but my laptop got option to increase cooling (i dont use its too noise

) the only problems with my laptop are freez spikes and sometimes i feel like i got low fps but r_stats says 40-50.

I done ~10min fraps benchmark in late game Frames: 21592 - Time: 487831ms - Avg: 44.261 - Min: 5 - Max: 74 in fight 30-40

server 18players - 5fps probaly freez spike , getting most of them when spawing as alien or pressing E on Armor(100% short freez like 0.5s - 1s when click on armory for the first time in game).
My cpu got ~20ms gpu 0ms, changing the resolution dont give any effects same fps 800x600 as 1920x1080 maby only in ready room increase ;]

XzHiBiT · February 2013

Tried changing affinity to core 2&3, still stutters horribly and frames drop. Tried turning up priority too. I wish I could monitor CPU usage during gameplay, it is seeming the CPU is the issue.... sad that the game can't utilize the true potential...

What FPS should I be getting?

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