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Problems with FPS and max settings (TERA mostly)
Hello y'all.
From another post of mine elsewhere.
Originally posted by NBlitzI have a Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition sitting at 3.7 GHz. I bought it on December 2010 so I've had the whole of 2011 up to now to try it out on many different games and I'm not happy with its performance. I don't know what else to do so I after reading about people's experiences with the 2500k I thought about switching over.
But now there's IB coming up.
Should I get a 2500k now, skip IB and wait for Haswell?
Or should I just skip SB and get IB instead?
Not sure if I'm OT as this is a question related to the IB as linked above.
Originally posted by QuizzicalTry turning the game to low graphical settings and see if it's smooth. That often doesn't reduce the processor load by much.
It could be a case of overheating. What are your CPU and GPU temperatures while playing the game?
I tried turning down my graphical settings but it has no effect on my FPS. In, for example, Velika I've seen my FPS drop to anywhere between 15 and 20 FPS and as soon as I reach a quieter spot in the city my FPS jumps back up to 30-ish.
Outside and in some places it's around 50 to 60.
Since lowering my settings had no effect on my FPS I just kept everything on max, for the eye-candy.
In my Engine Control Center I left everything on default.
To answer your question, Quizzical.
My GPU temperatures don't go over 65°, usually staying sub 60° while under gaming load (Arctic Twin Turbo II).
As for my CPU temps...I don't know, tbh. I have Core Unlock enabled all the time so temperature readings won't work.
I have a Noctua NH-D14 installed, so I was never in a rush to measure my CPU temps. I can disable it and try running Prime95 or another game, if that'll help in any way.
I don't know what else to add except that I'm at my wits' end. Everytime I ask someone who boasts nice FPS with everything on max in TERA, they say they have an i5 2500k...or sometimes it's been an i7 2600k. GAH!
Originally posted by QuizzicalWhy aren't you happy with the performance of a Phenom II X6? It's a pretty capable processor, and if you've got some workload that it can't handle, it might be the sort of workload that no processor on the market can handle. For example, EverQuest 2 at max settings with a perfectly smooth frame rate.
Every other game ever since I can remember, has underperformed on my system compared to other systems with similar or less than a similar configuration.
In the newer games (e.g. Skyrim) I can't enable AAs higher than 2x as it'll cripple my FPS, with everything else on max. I want max eye-candy darn it! And not need to replace for another two years. That's all.
So again I ask: Should I get a 2500k now, skip IB and wait for Haswell? Or should I just skip SB and get IB instead? Or is my CPU good enough to run these games at max settings and I just newbed out somewhere with my config?
/longwinded
My specs
Cooler Master HAF 922
Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000
Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition, cooled by a Noctua NH-D14 (see pic below).
Two Corsair XMS CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB.
Sapphire HD6950 (@6970) 2GB (see pic below) cooled by an Arctic Twin Turbo II.
OCZ Petrol PTL1-25SAT3-128G 128GB for my games.
OCZ Agility 3 SATA III 2.5" SSD 120GB for my Windows 7 Home Premium
Comments
It wouldn't hurt to post your entire system specs--including your power supply, case, motherboard, etc.
Your situation sounds a lot like someone I helped on the Champions Online forums. He couldn't get the game to run well, even at minimum settings. It turned out that his processor heatsink was completely caked in dust, and severely overheating. It responded by cutting back the clock speeds severely, which accounted for the poor performance. Fixing the overheating fixed the problem entirely, without requiring him to buy any new hardware.
I'd start by undoing the processor overclock, and then measuring your CPU temperature under heavy loads. You might also want to get CPU-Z to track the clock speeds. If your processor is downclocking to 1.6 GHz or some such, then you just have to figure out why and get it to stop doing that.
I don't think that a new processor is the way to go here. There's probably a much cheaper (possibly free!) fix.
Tried a CPU benchmark to see how it runs?
What GFX card do you have? It really affect the performance in most game a lot more than the CPU. You processor is not the best you can have but it is still pretty good, I think the problem is elsewhere.
We really need a full system speccs to say much more.
I was just wondering in, addition to sys specs, what software (other than games) do you have installed?
How much, (if any) crap, is running, that may be bogging things down?
It would be nice to have a thermal idea of the CPU, and case temps, with the machine running normally? Perhaps CPUID-HW
monitor.
Which makes me think running CPUID-CPUZ, just to see the RAM, CPU, are running at the right levels/volts.
None of these are likely, but, these numbers along with system specs, would give a good snapshot of the system, and that it is
actually running "As Advertised." A base line.
See the world and all within it.
Live a lifetime in every minute.
I updated my OP with my system spec.
"There's probably a much cheaper (possibly free!) fix."
I would love nothing more!
Try undoing the processor overclock first. The stock base clock on a Phenom II is 200 MHz. Undo the processor overvolt, too. A Phenom II X6 1090T should have plenty of performance for TERA even at stock speeds.
Was the CPU-Z screenshot taken at idle, or was that at load? Because that's nowhere near what the clock speed should be at load. I want to see the CPU clock speed and temperature at load.
On it. If I manage to log back into Windows I'll post the test results. Removing overvolt worked but the damn thing will not underclock. Even spazzing out and not wanting to boot into Windows so it automatically overclocks itself after every reset.
I let Prime95 run for about 15 minutes and these are the results I got from CPUID HWM.
It's bedtime for me, if you need me to run anything else I can do it tomorrow afternoon after I get back from work.
CPU now at stock settings.
Those temps are good - very good, particularly if it's running at 100% load. You sure you were measuring while Prime95 was running, and didn't just start the program after you quit running Prime95? Temperatures drop immediately drastically when you take the load away, and then slowly will decay away to the steady state no-load temperature.
Fully loaded, I'd expect the CPU to get closer to 60C, and you have a max recorded value of 41C (which sounds about right for a CPU just coming off full load). In the 30's (and as high as 40's) C is pretty typical for idle temps. The minimum temps look like a computer just booted up, as they are very close to what I am assuming is your room temperature (unless you live in a freezer or something), that or we are seeing a lot of temperature skew in your thermocouples, and just need to add to all the readings to get more accurate temperatures.
AMD lists the "Max Temperature" for the Phenom II X6 as 62C CPU temp (not individual core temp) - it doesn't say if that's the throttle temperature or TJMax (where the CPU will auto-shutdown) - with the over clock you could have been easily approaching that, although things look good with stock voltages and clocks.
Maybe try the game again this weekend during the beta with stock clocks and see how it goes.
I actually had similar issues with TERA on my Phenom X6 1090T although I was running stock settings @ 3.2GHz. My framerates were horrendous, usually in the 20s and 30s even as low as 15 in Velika. I went into my BIOS, and selected this automatic overclock tool which OC'd my processor to 3.7GHz and my RAM to 1666MHz, and my framerates nearly doubled in any given location. Before I logged out, I was getting around 20 FPS in the area I was questing within. Upon rebooting my PC and logging back into the game, I was getting double that around 40-50 FPS and around 28-40 FPS in Velika.
The day after I ran the auto-OC tool, I began getting a few "IRWL_Not or Less Equal" BSoD, which forced me to drop back down to stock settings. After realizing that TERA was unplayable in stock settings, I went back into the BIOS and this time I manually upped just the multiplier to "I think it was" 18.5x where I could get back to 3.7GHz. After doing so, I ran Prime95 and saw no errors (though I did not run it for hours). I thought I was in the clear as I went three days without seeing a BSoD; however, I got one in the fleet center while playing SW:TOR which made me drop back down to stock settings even though, according to HWMonitor, the stress test never saw my CPU go over 60 degrees Celcius. When playing TERA, I never saw it jump above 51 degrees. Could increasing the voltage a bit fix my problems as I'm not sure overheating is the issue, though I do need to clean my heatsink.
I did some snooping around, as this is curious.
Reportedly, TERA is not very multithread aware. Which is interesting, because it's using a very multicore aware engine (Unreal 3). There is no definitive information, but the best I could glean is that it's leaning heavily on one core, and can sort-of utilize a second core.
I see a lot of X6 people posting similar things too - not so much X4 users though, which is interesting. More than likely it's an optimization problem with that specific CPU. There are a few Intel Core i5 SB users as well, although not as many as X6 users.
Also keep in mind it's BETA software - it may have debugging and other code that is affecting the performance. Do leave feedback with En Masse though, so they can look into it.
I found one instance where running the game on Vista 64-bit had dramatically better performance than Windows 7 64-bit - but that same case was also running different versions of AMD video driver (also on a 6950) - so it could have been the video driver.
There's also a "AMD Dual Core optimizer" tool that can be installed, and may have some effect on the game. It used to be recommended back when Dual Core CPU's where new and almost every game was single-core optimized, but I don't know if it will do anything for TERA or not - worth a shot though.
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/3116-amd-dual-core-optimizer.html
on your gpu everything should be controlled by your game when it is clickable option,if it is clickable and it is controlled by your gpu disable it most of the time those feature arent very well supported,in game if you enable aa or af ,then diable everything else related to shader and shadow!if you disable aa and af enable shader and shadow stuff!,view distance and wide angle play a major role! so be conservative!as for processor?you wont notice big change go hard core on gpu instead!cpu is only making a difference if you stream a lot,(athene,swifty,towellie etc)you dont stream?dont bother with changing cpu!
Different engines tax different parts of hardware differently. AI is notoriously CPU bound. Physics is often CPU bound (as to offload it to GPU's right now requires locking into specific vendors). Sound processing is almost always done on CPU (it's not a huge load anymore, but it's still there).
For instance, Skyrim is heavily CPU dependent. It doesn't take much in the way of video cards to bottleneck on the CPU.
Here's some benchmarks; Same graphics options, just the CPU changed out. FPS scales pretty directly with CPU IPC performance:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skyrim-performance-benchmark,3074-9.html
Several other games are in the same boat, especially RTS/turn-based sims games where the maps get huge and there are literally hundreds of units to have AI processed for. Civilization series comes to mind, Starcraft II comes to mind (and here's a link proving it):
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/blizzard-entertainment-starcraft-ii-benchmark,2611-9.html
Unreal 3 engine that TERA is based on, for instance, leans on the CPU for Physics (Karma Physics engine).
It's not just about the GPU for games: yes, GPU helps a lot, but you can't just neglect the CPU aspect either. That being said, the 1090T isn't a slouch as far as CPU performance goes.
That will be next week for me, as I'm in the Netherlands playing the EU version of TERA.And I had the opposite. I was running with the thing overclocked and with turbo boost meaning it could go as high as 4.1GHz according to the BIOS.
It would be funny if my results were the complete opposite of yours. I also play other games in between so I'll be checking Skyrim in a few if I have time left before I need to head out the door.
If nothing helps by next week then I'm willing to jump over to any other config that has no/less problems overall while running these newer MMOs.
Frogster for me.
After flashing my videocard I think it can be called a 6970, no? What I haven't done for TERA but have e.g. for Skyrim, is try different drivers...As performance for TERA on my system was always the same ever since I can remember trying it back in Q1 2011.
My CPU is not listed as supported, but I'll look into it a bit before downloading.TERA's been out in Korean for a year now so it's not really beta software. The North American "beta" is nothing more than a sales pitch.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
Well, I think there is obviously some sort of compatibility issue (God I hate AMD products) between the game and our 1090Ts. I shouldn't have to overclock to 3.7 just to get a playable framerate, and even before the overclock, I noticed in the starter island and in other areas that in one spot I could get 60 FPS then I'd immediately drop to something like 30-40 when I moved to a slightly different location. I'm not exactly talking about moving somewhere in front of a giant wall either. I wouldn't think positioning my camera or moving in such a way would reduce my FPS by half.
Ironically, what doubled my framerate in TERA gave no appreciable change in SW:TOR.
SWTOR runs more or less the same on my i7 920 with a 6970 as it does my C2D 2.5Ghz with nVidia 320M graphics... sure, I have to turn the options off on the C2D system, but the game doesn't look that different and runs more or less well (except space battles, those are unplayable on the C2D).
My friend has a Llano-based gaming PC, and the results are similar. He complains about his performance, but his is pretty similar to mine minus shadow effects. Not bad considering 1 he only spent about $600 dollars building the thing.
Problem isn't your hardware its the game, its the games programming. Most MMO are notorious for only pushing 1 core, yet each new generation the hardware requirements go up. Considering core strength has not gone up by much until recently, the bottleneck is most likely a badly coded game. Also you should be using 1600mhz memory with a Phenom II 1090T,
i have the AMD 1100t and im pretty happy with it. i have it manually overclocked to 3.7. but i too was having some slightly underwhelming performance and occassional BSOD issues. i updated my motherboard's BIOS and cleared this all up. see if you have an update for yours. mine solved RAM compatibilty issues.
i also have a 6950 2gb videocard and the newest 12.3 drivers gave me a nice little bump too. i havent played TERA yet though.
OK.
I'm running my CPU at stock settings now.
If that doesn't help (next weekend) then I have to
fool around with the GPU drivers and maybe one will stick. That would mean it wasn't the CPU after all.
give up, screw the hassle and jump over to Intel.
I already had the latest BIOS.
Did I miss anything? Any other ideas? Thank you for the suggestions/help so far.
The problem is in all honestly a combination between the game engine and your processors lack of decent IPC. The hexa core Phenoms are fine for heavily multithreaded applications but they are lower clocked than most of the quad core counterparts and in games this usually results in lower performance.
TERA is more than likely only using one or two cores, it might apply a load to more than 2 but it's unlikely to be much at all.
I would recommend you overclock the processor slightly and note any gains you get and find a happy medium with it.
I dont know how wrong or right what Im about to say is. But I cant help but wonder how much of your performance problems, might be a six core issue, rather than an AMD issue.
Having said that, I would still expect your rig to do very good, in some games, which doesn't seem to be the case.
I have no experience with flashing GPU's. Ive heard that flashing either works, or breaks the card, I wonder how accurate that is?
Is it possible to flash a card, and it not break, but mess it up somehow, so that it works, but not as well?
I wonder if running 3D mark, would give any clues? Again Im guessing.
As to your original question, if it were me, I'd wait fot Ivy, and fart around with what I have in the mean time, and try to find the problem, to occupy my time.
EDIT, while writing this reply I see some answers were posted, the six core. Well then, in that case , if it were me (and I understand your not me) I would grab a hot quad that worked with my motherboard, now. Enjoy the better performance, and when IVY launches, ask myself if I really want to change.
See the world and all within it.
Live a lifetime in every minute.
One thing to consider is that if poor performance is caused by some weird bug that you're running into, then replacing hardware might not fix it.
If Bluehole/En Masse can't get TERA to run well on a Phenom II, then there isn't going to be a very big market for their game.
If the problem is that the game is single-threaded, then the issue is single-threaded performance, not IPC. IPC is Instructions Per Cycle, or roughly how well a processor performs per clock cycle. Doubling IPC will have the same effect on performance as doubling the clock speed.
IPC isn't part of the official tech specs of a processor, but varies wildly from one program to the next. You can say, we ran this program for this length of time, and executed this many instructions in this many clock cycles, so the average IPC was such and such. But the number you get for a given processor will vary wildly from one program to the next, and can also vary with some factors such as the memory configuration.
Still, it tends to be the same processors that offer better IPC from one program to the next. The reason I say that Sandy Bridge offers much better IPC than Zambezi is that in most particular programs, it does. If you have a program that very heavily exploits FMA4, which Zambezi has and Sandy Bridge doesn't, then Zambezi may well offer much better IPC than Sandy Bridge in that particular program.
I'm going to blame TERA then. Getting my pitchfork and torch.
I was curious which system they recommend. What they mean by "recommended" I suppose is maximum settings with many NPCs and PCs on screen, right?
TERA - System Requirements
What are the system requirements for TERA?
If you want to know if your computer can run TERA just check your specs against the minimum and recommended system requirements below.
The minimum system requirements for TERA are:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHZ/AMD Athlon64 3200+
GPU: Geforce 7600GT/Radeon X1600XT
RAM: 2GB
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7
Hard Drive: 25 GB
DirectX: 9.0c or higher
The recommended system requirements for TERA are:
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E6750 2.66GHZ/AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
GPU: Geforce 8800GT/Radeon HD 3870
RAM: 2GB+
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7
Hard Drive: 25 GB+
DirectX: 9.0c or higher
Man...
Recommended doesn't necessarily mean MAX settings - it means the game will look good and should run on mostly high settings. Often games will have settings that push above and beyond their "Recommended" settings, for people who have faster computers, or for future proofing (so the game looks even better and not as dated on hardware released a year or two from the game release).
Minimum would be all settings and resolution at their very minimum, Recommended floats a bit. Given that the Unreal 3 engine has been out for a long time now, and has been ported to every device and kitchen appliance, I would expect the game to have relatively modest Recommended requirements, but scale very aggressively upward.
It could be just that you need to tweak a few settings down from Max - if that is what you are trying to do. It could be something like "Particle Physics - Max" or "SSAA x32" that's doing it, and dropping it to Medium clears everything up - I don't know if that's even a setting in the game, just an example.