Does NS2 play well with AMD?

RisingSun · November 2013

*Fix down below* AMD CrossFire Fix

Specs:
Cpu: AMD FX-9590 4.7GHZ (5.0 GHZ TURBO) 8-CORE AM3+
MoBo: GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AMD 990FX SLI/CROSSFIRE DDR3
Memory: GSKILL 8GB DDR3 1866 RIPJAWS-X MEMORY
Video Card: AMD RADEON HD 7990 6GB GDDR5 PCI-E 3.0
HD: Samsung Evo SSD
Monitor: BENQ LED 24" 1MS XL2420TE
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Desktop: 1920x1080 120hz

NS settings:
Res: 1920x1080
DirectX 11
High textures
Everything else is on low or off when i can select that.
I am bouncing between VSync or "maxfps 118" to smooth things out and get rid of tearing and micro stutter
All mods removed.

Just bought a new rig and i was all excited to jump on after playing NS2 on a gaming laptop since alpha. After a couple of AMD video driver not responding, i re-clocked my video card to default and uninstalled a beta driver in favor of the latest stable release. With everything finally stable i jumped in to a game on Docking. Any fight around maintenance specifically i would drop to 30 frames and a slide show would ensue. My temp on my video card remains around 60c-70c and i cant find a reason for this awful performance drop. Marine start will give me a worse dip with all the tech in it. Before i blame NS2 (which would be easy to do) what might i be doing wrong on my end. The 7990 is technically a crossfire setup just built on one card. Could this just be my bad luck? Thanks guys and i appreciate any help.

p.s. Running around veil in an empty server with the above settings got me no drops at all. I stayed at a constant 120 (Vsync on) no matter where i went or how fast.

Update: I went into my catalyst settings and made a profile just for NS2. I put everything to App decides and Texture Filtering Quality on Performance. Under CrossfireX Mode i changed the value to AFR friendly. In explore mode i place a RT, drifter, crag, shade, whip, and shift in maintenance on Docking. Running around as a skulk i never dipped below 120. Frames were smooth and i even up it to high textures with no drops. Either the CrossfireX mode was the problem or i am missing the marine aggressors/alien defenders.

Something i didn't think about is could it have been the server's fault? Gorge Hut hasn't had the best performance when i would play there before. Could crappy server performance effect my FPS?

Nordic · November 2013

A little tip. Use the command in console "r_stats" and it will show you what your bottleneck is.

I have a 7970, and the 7990, even if not crossfired should not be your bottleneck. Ns2 loves single threaded performance which is what amd lacks. Although that is true your 9590 is has a high clock and I would think it would do better than that at 4.7ghz or higher. Looking at some reviews it would appear I might be wrong.

Also what cooler do you have. That 9590 puts out a lot of heat. If it gets too hot it will throttle.

First thing I would do is play a few games with the r_stats command. It will show you the bottleneck. I would also check that your cpu isn't throttling, if it is your clock speed will drop, dropping your fps. You can check this by running a stress test like prime 95 while monitoring clock speed and temps with the program realtemp. If you are throttling then let us know and we can try to figure out how to stop that.

coolitic · November 2013

Probably not too well with an AMD CPU but the gpu should be fine.

You should still be able to play the game, but the cpu could cause a couple of bugs but I doubt they would be serious.

RisingSun · November 2013

james888 wrote: »

A little tip. Use the command in console "r_stats" and it will show you what your bottleneck is.

I have a 7970, and the 7990, even if not crossfired should not be your bottleneck. Ns2 loves single threaded performance which is what amd lacks. Although that is true your 9590 is has a high clock and I would think it would do better than that at 4.7ghz or higher. Looking at some reviews it would appear I might be wrong.

Also what cooler do you have. That 9590 puts out a lot of heat. If it gets too hot it will throttle.

First thing I would do is play a few games with the r_stats command. It will show you the bottleneck. I would also check that your cpu isn't throttling, if it is your clock speed will drop, dropping your fps. You can check this by running a stress test like prime 95 while monitoring clock speed and temps with the program realtemp. If you are throttling then let us know and we can try to figure out how to stop that.

Liquid cooling on the CPU, so im good there. I'll try R_stats and report back. Thanks for the help

OuchOfDeath · November 2013

Crappy server performance won't affect your FPS. I'm pretty sure your issue is the crossfire setup. Other people have reported issues with it before as well.

Couple of things to try: disable crossfire completely, try the dx9 renderer. Also there's no reason to change things like texture filtering to performance in Catalyst. It won't have any effect on your FPS.

draktok · November 2013

Don't listen to coolitic, he clearly is just spewing nonsense because your chip shouldn't have an issue. I was running 560ti and phenom II x4 @ 3.2ghz and it ran mostly 45-60 frames until the worst of fights that would dip it to 30fps on average. You shouldn't even be coming close to those low of numbers with the processor It's very possible ns2 does not agree with crossfire / sli, however. That is the case more often than not in a number of games. Back int he day when I had two 8800gtx's, i pulled better numbers in WoW and a few other choice games at the time disabling my sli and eventually removing the second card because of weird issues with SLI. It would bear no surprise to me if people still run into these issues, especially with indie studios like this.

Nordic · November 2013

draktok wrote: »

Don't listen to coolitic, he clearly is just spewing nonsense because your chip shouldn't have an issue. I was running 560ti and phenom II x4 @ 3.2ghz and it ran mostly 45-60 frames until the worst of fights that would dip it to 30fps on average. You shouldn't even be coming close to those low of numbers with the processor It's very possible ns2 does not agree with crossfire / sli, however. That is the case more often than not in a number of games. Back int he day when I had two 8800gtx's, i pulled better numbers in WoW and a few other choice games at the time disabling my sli and eventually removing the second card because of weird issues with SLI. It would bear no surprise to me if people still run into these issues, especially with indie studios like this.

That might be something to try there. Disable crossfire and try, although this sounds like a cpu issue.

I too played on a 3.8ghz phenom for a bit and had similar fps to what draktok describes.

DarkLaunch357 · November 2013

draktok wrote: »

Don't listen to coolitic, he clearly is just spewing nonsense because your chip shouldn't have an issue. I was running 560ti and phenom II x4 @ 3.2ghz and it ran mostly 45-60 frames until the worst of fights that would dip it to 30fps on average. You shouldn't even be coming close to those low of numbers with the processor It's very possible ns2 does not agree with crossfire / sli, however. That is the case more often than not in a number of games. Back int he day when I had two 8800gtx's, i pulled better numbers in WoW and a few other choice games at the time disabling my sli and eventually removing the second card because of weird issues with SLI. It would bear no surprise to me if people still run into these issues, especially with indie studios like this.

Indeed his CPU is fine, but about your own CPU not being an issue for this particular game... if it was a few years ago i'd agree, but time has come you should seriously consider upgrading from Phenom II to the FX, though. Even your 560 Ti will pull more frames with more CPU headroom. 5 year old tech won't make anything happy these days. I upgraded from the X6 1090T @ 4.1 GHz to the i7-990X, and then to the i7-4770K and they were the best decisions I ever made aside from buying my GTX TITAN.

I have the same motherboard as the OP, and thanks to james888 I now know that the 9590 got a price drop, so I back out of my word

@RisingSun Does Catalyst allow you to disable CrossFire on the dual GPU cards nowadays? This wasn't possible with the HD 5970 I had a few years ago, but disabling CF will likely fix your problem.

Nordic · November 2013

DarkLaunch357 wrote: »

I have the same motherboard as the OP, back then bought it to be ready for Vishera but quite frankly it's a disappointing processor now that I got accustomed to the i7's raw power... and to drop $900 on a 9590 that will get simply vaporized by a much cheaper 4930K, it's just stalled in my drawer.

Cpu is actually $370. It actually performs very well and is very comparable to the 4930k in everything but single threaded applications. It takes a 5ghz 220w amd chip to compete with 3.4ghz 130w intel chip. Should get your information correct first. I don't know why I am even saying this. This is a support thread.

DarkLaunch357 · November 2013

$370? So AMD finally got real and started charging a fair amount for that little bugger, gonna take a look at that then! Thanks man, guess I know what i'm picking for Christmas, provided I can find one here in Brazil

Last I checked they were still on the 900 buck realm, and since AMD touted it as their "limited edition" part I thought it would never really drop in price. My motherboard may see some use now... hope it doesn't disappoint! Power really isn't concern to us enthusiasts after all, but an unfair price, hey if I was a millionaire i'd not mind either

it's some pretty cool hardware isn't it, such a drag having nothing to use with it. what i'm mostly interested in is Piledriver's very complete (with exception of AVX2 sadly) instruction set.

http://i.imgur.com/o74CqBa.jpg

draktok · November 2013

DarkLaunch357 wrote: »

draktok wrote: »

Don't listen to coolitic, he clearly is just spewing nonsense because your chip shouldn't have an issue. I was running 560ti and phenom II x4 @ 3.2ghz and it ran mostly 45-60 frames until the worst of fights that would dip it to 30fps on average. You shouldn't even be coming close to those low of numbers with the processor It's very possible ns2 does not agree with crossfire / sli, however. That is the case more often than not in a number of games. Back int he day when I had two 8800gtx's, i pulled better numbers in WoW and a few other choice games at the time disabling my sli and eventually removing the second card because of weird issues with SLI. It would bear no surprise to me if people still run into these issues, especially with indie studios like this.

Indeed his CPU is fine, but about your own CPU not being an issue for this particular game... if it was a few years ago i'd agree, but time has come you should seriously consider upgrading from Phenom II to the FX, though. Even your 560 Ti will pull more frames with more CPU headroom. 5 year old tech won't make anything happy these days. I upgraded from the X6 1090T @ 4.1 GHz to the i7-990X, and then to the i7-4770K and they were the best decisions I ever made aside from buying my GTX TITAN.

I have the same motherboard as the OP, and thanks to james888 I now know that the 9590 got a price drop, so I back out of my word

@RisingSun Does Catalyst allow you to disable CrossFire on the dual GPU cards nowadays? This wasn't possible with the HD 5970 I had a few years ago, but disabling CF will likely fix your problem.

Hey Dark, I appreciate the advice and I actually just two days ago purchased a Z87 board with the i5 4670k so I am gaming with the big boys now

IronHorse · November 2013

Have you tried different catalyst driver versions?

Though, i bet the FPS increase you are seeing is from AFR.. at the cost of some input delay (same with dx11 - any reason why you're not using DX9 fullscreen, the recommended setting?)
Do AMD cards have any visualization of crossfire utilization while in game like nvidia does? If so, that'd be worth a look

DarkLaunch357 · November 2013

@draktok it's epic isn't it? with time you'll be more and more amazed how the difference is night and day even though number wise they look pretty similar lol. expect some 5x improvement overall

draktok · November 2013

It's very very nice, yes

RisingSun · November 2013

IronHorse wrote: »

Have you tried different catalyst driver versions?

Though, i bet the FPS increase you are seeing is from AFR.. at the cost of some input delay (same with dx11 - any reason why you're not using DX9 fullscreen, the recommended setting?)
Do AMD cards have any visualization of crossfire utilization while in game like nvidia does? If so, that'd be worth a look

Dx11 gets me 15+ frames, so I never bothered considering it as a problem. I'll have to disable crossfire, which I hate doing, and try with that setup. I should have guessed my system, though pretty up there, would fail at NS2 =\ might have to go back to the craptop just to be able to play or wait for NS3 =(

RisingSun · November 2013

Update: Disabled Crossfire and i still drop to a 20 frame slide show in any heavy combat or at random times alone... I am also in DX9, no improvement.

edit: here are some screenshots of r_stats with a low framerate drop.

Marine Start: I cant get a lower fps no matter where i go or how fast/what is going on around me.

Heavy firefight:

No one around:

Just killed one skulk:

Fire fight good-ish:

Fire fight bad:

Do these stats help diagnose at all?
@ouchofdeath
@ironhorse
@james888

RisingSun · November 2013

update: Below is a screenshot of my logs from using MSI After Burner and reading it with RivaTuner.

Game 1 - No XFire

Game 2 - XFire

Game 3 - No XFire with a fix my buddy had me try:
Disabling ULPS download here
*edit* it seems im retarded or my settings didnt take to test this disabling the ULPS WITH XFire on lol. Another update soon.

WOW, the disabling of the ULPS might have FIXED IT!!! As you can see, a BIG difference in frames and drops. This is AWEEEEEESOME also has a fun marine game. It is so nice to be able to track.

@Obraxis (alien enemy)
The post that talks about disabling ULPS: here

i still have some low drops later game which should NOT happen with my setup, but a huge improvement.

I'm still looking for the cause of the drops. It seems that my video card is not to blame at all. When i get the drops i have no spike in either memory use or gpu use. Now, time to look at the CPU...

IronHorse · November 2013

Whoa.
Nice job diagnosing the issue and thank you for documenting it so well for others

joederp · November 2013

RisingSun wrote: »

I'm still looking for the cause of the drops. It seems that my video card is not to blame at all. When i get the drops i have no spike in either memory use or gpu use. Now, time to look at the CPU...

For reference, I am running an fx-8320 overclocked to 4.2ghz so roughly around the 8350 performance, and my game runs great except for some minor micro-stutter aka 'hitching' here and there when a texture loads or is re-scanned for consistency checks (see Samus droids threat on hitch remover.. should be fixed soon). I get 160-200 fps in ready room / marine start, and around 100-120 throughout the game. Late game I might sometimes see drops to 60-70 but never gets low enough for me to complain.
And my video card is not that new, its an AMD Radeon HD 6850 1gb stock clock speeds.
Ram is 8gb gskill sniper running faster than stock timings (doubt this matters)
Windows / page file on a 64gb SSD, NS2 on a 7200 rpm SATA disk.

Your chip from what I have read is basically the same as mine except massively overclocked? Something like 220 watts of power? That is insane! I was forced to buy a water cooler to keep MY chip cool during prime95 tests. I cannot imagine how you are able to keep yours cool. What is your water cooler setup? Have you monitored your core temp during a game? Mine stays around 45-48 ºC, I consider 70C "overheating".

An electrical engineer / fellow pc geek friend once explained to me how overclocking processors is all fine and dandy if you only go to within the ranges that chip was designed to use, however once you start to get outside that chips range, strange things can start happening. Signal paths can get out of sync or something which can actually degrade the chips performance and cause issues. Some chips have been known to actually score higher on benchmarks when they were at the cusp of their OC range compared to just over. Not sure if this is possible with your chip but its worth looking into.

RisingSun · November 2013

@joederp Thank you for the info. I will have to be as thorough with my CPU as I was with my video card. What program do you recommend for recording CPU temps like after burner?

Cooling:
CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit 240MM w/ XSPC Rasa 750 RS240, Dual Fan(CPU & GPU Liquid Cool Capable, Extreme Overclocking Performance + Extreme Silent at 18dBA)(All Venom OC Certified)

You are spot on about OCing though. I have a 4.7 "boosted" to 5.0 ... Crock of crap. I disable boost and oc to a flat 5 and NS blue screens after 5-10 minutes. I just need to find a way to utilize more than 2 cores because as you know, my single core performance blows donkey testicles.

I think my steam friends will be happy when I'm finally content lol. All those entering NS messages. Lol

Latest play through I never dip below 80 in heavy combat and with maxfps set 2 under my refresh rate (118) I have all but eliminated my tearing and microstutters (I don't dare vsync because I'll be at 60 all game except picking the commander lol)

Update - it appears ATI has an incomplete frame pacing technology that meters my GPUs, slowing them down to not cause massive frame drops. Problem is this technology only works in directx11 (thanks @ironhorse messed me up before I began lol)

Tldr: Not my CPU. Amd is developing better drivers. Also i am getting a 20-30+ frame improvement NOT running Afterburner =D

Nordic · November 2013

If your temps are good, and I would check, bump up your voltage a bit and see if your stable at 5ghz. Just a suggestion if you want the 5ghz omg speed. Its fun.

RisingSun · November 2013

That is what i was thinking was wrong with my OC. I didnt want to touch values where i didnt know the safe range :P Research weekend.

joederp · November 2013

I personally like to use Speedfan http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php for my CPU temp safety as you can configure it to perform an action like shutdown the pc when it gets too hot or flash a window in your face etc. For monitoring temps under load, I just ran prime95 and watched the temps in speedfan. It only takes 5-10 minutes to know if your cooling is capable or if it will be overpowered by the CPUs heat output. With the stock air cooler my cpu would get to 60ºC in less than 1 -2 minutes and 68 within 4 minutes.. not even close to capable. With my liquid cooling setup (zalman lq320 120mm radiator single fan) I am now around 58 C during a stress test which is acceptable. I would suspect with your setup you might be better off dialing down the overclock slightly as your excessive heat could cause issues with the CPU, memory timings etc. You may notice the game runs better if you back everything down to 'safe' clock speeds VS 'omfg 6ghz lawls' clock speeds.

As for the finding with the GPU, that sounds like it is your issue with the frame drops. Good luck!

DarkLaunch357 · December 2013

joederp wrote: »

I would suspect with your setup you might be better off dialing down the overclock slightly as your excessive heat could cause issues with the CPU, memory timings etc. You may notice the game runs better if you back everything down to 'safe' clock speeds VS 'omfg 6ghz lawls' clock speeds.

He's running a FX 9590, his mentioned clocks are stock for his CPU, and that's some good 220W of "specified" TDP so I wouldn't be surprised to see this CPU chugging up to 280-300W under very heavy load either... but OP has that covered.

DarkLaunch357 · December 2013

joederp wrote: »

I would suspect with your setup you might be better off dialing down the overclock slightly as your excessive heat could cause issues with the CPU, memory timings etc. You may notice the game runs better if you back everything down to 'safe' clock speeds VS 'omfg 6ghz lawls' clock speeds.

He's running a FX 9590, his mentioned clocks are stock for his CPU, and that's some good 220W of "specified" TDP so I wouldn't be surprised to see this CPU chugging up to 280-300W under very heavy load either... but OP has that covered.

Does NS2 play well with AMD?

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