Low FPS on a good graphics card

[There is no Spoon]

I am getting low fps, about 26-30 FPS on my pc even after turning down AA, lowering my screen res to 1600x900, and disabling SSAO. Anyone know what can easily boost the FPS here? Any graphical settings that are performance hogs? Or is it just the fact this game is still poorly optimized?

My specs are i7 4800 HQ Quad core processor
GTX 860M 2 GB
and 8GB of CPU RAM

[Disky]

Game is CPU bound (assuming your GPU can handle whatever res you have selected), so you can turn down civilian population to help CPU side a little..

[Jeroen]

Originally posted by disky:

Game is CPU bound (assuming your GPU can handle whatever res you have selected), so you can turn down civilian population to help CPU side a little..

No, it most definitely isn't, at least not for my pc.
I have an i5 4670K@4.4Ghz, 16GB Ram and 2* R9 290.
I run the game at 2560x1440, with all settings turned on, population density max, I get 24 FPS.
Cpu load is 40%, Gpu is 100%. Turning SSR off, FPS goes up to 35, gpu still at 100%. Setting quality to low and turning off all other options, including developer options like hdr, the framerate now is about 63 FPS in the same spot I get 24 FPS with high quality. So there's that, but the game doesn't look beautiful anymore. Cpu still at 40%, gpu at 100%
Lowering resolution to 1920x1080 further improves the framerate, but for me it looks horrible on my 27" monitor (I'm crazy that way... :) )

[brbrbr]

hardly can call "mobile GPU" like 860m as "Good" hardware. you had more than enough RAM for game and adequate for game CPU, but you GPU... and using NB for any kind of serious gaming... presume some disapointments by itself. so perhaps its unavoidable to tone-down GFX settings a bit. as for SSAA its best quality(especially properly-implemented) of AA so it gives hard time even to my R290x, sometimes. and when you crank-up anything else, enforce AFx16 and etc.. ets look really ... beauttiful. especially if you disable built-in in both vendores "optimisations", like textures LoD dither steppy and botdepth/dither of content.

[There is no Spoon]

Originally posted by brbrbr:

hardly can call "mobile GPU" like 860m as "Good" hardware. you had more than enough RAM for game and adequate for game CPU, but you GPU... and using NB for any kind of serious gaming... presume some disapointments by itself. so perhaps its unavoidable to tone-down GFX settings a bit. as for SSAA its best quality(especially properly-implemented) of AA so it gives hard time even to my R290x, sometimes. and when you crank-up anything else, enforce AFx16 and etc.. ets look really ... beauttiful. especially if you disable built-in in both vendores "optimisations", like textures LoD dither steppy and botdepth/dither of content.

If I can run Shadow of Mordor on medium to high with 50-60 FPS and GTA V on high for 50-60FPS, then Id say my card is pretty damn good and if it can run those games at a high framerate with medium to high settings then it sure as hell should run this on high with a stable framerate

[Disky]

@Jeroen

A few things

If your cpu shows 40% that could well be maxed. Unity isnt very well multithreaded* so it executes a bunch of tasks one after the other , not necessarily on the same core so no single core might report 100% and the total wont ever reach 100% or even 50% on quad core)

But if SSR disabled goes from 24 fps to 35 fps then you are probably gpu bound (like I said assuming your res isnt too high you will be cpu bound, I guess any card can eventually find a res that limits it) you have 2 290's but one one is running I assume (given our previous conversations about full screen mode) Note SSRR is very expensive per pixel, all though I'm suprised it hurts a 290 that much even at your 1.4K res (Also disabling SSRR will have a very slight reduction in workload on cpu but its only half a ms or so, less on your 4.4Ghz machine)

You could do an experiment where you put all the good settings on, but slowly drop the res, at some point the frame rate will stop going up, at that point your now cpu bound rather than gpu bound, at that point what's your gpu load say is it now <100%.

Mike.

btw Nvidia 750 takes 18 ms to run SSRR at 1080p, so if we guestimate your gpu to be 3x as fast at SSRR but your doing 1.7x as many pixels that gives your SSRR time as 10.2 ms

so if your running at 24 fps thats 41.6 ms take away 10.2 ms = 31.4 ms which is about 32 fps but you get 35 fps so I guess your card isnt quite getting 3x the performance of a NVidia 750.

doing the math the other way you went from 24 fps to 35 fps so from 41.6 ms per frame to 28.6 your SSRR at 1.4K res is taking 13 ms




* putting it mildly

[Disky]

@iostrafan actually Jeroen could well be right, try switching off SSRR thats the real gpu killed (see my reply above)

[Jeroen]

I disabled all options, even all developer options, and went back to 1920x1080.
The gpu is at about 73%, cpu around 58%.
Framerate at this spot is 59 FPS (vsync is off).

This is a screenshot:
http://imgur.com/a/WmVcQ

So, yes, it seems indeed that the game is cpu bound. Using another engine than Unity is not an option right before release, I take it? :)

[Jeroen]

Originally posted by disky:

@Jeroen

If your cpu shows 40% that could well be maxed. Unity isnt very well multithreaded* so it executes a bunch of tasks one after the other , not necessarily on the same core so no single core might report 100% and the total wont ever reach 100% or even 50% on quad core)

* putting it mildly

That's very disappointing to hear, because it leaves me to wonder how much your team can optimize this game without switching game engines....

[itsmydamnation]

i have an 3770k @ 4.3 with a 290 tri-x and i am getting around 70 FPS with everything maxed.... game is 100% GPU bound for me

http://users.on.net/~rastus/sat-reign.png

[brbrbr]

Originally posted by lotrofan15:

If I can run Shadow of Mordor on medium to high with 50-60 FPS and GTA V on high for 50-60FPS, then Id say my card is pretty damn good and if it can run those games at a high framerate with medium to high settings then it sure as hell should run this on high with a stable framerate

thats would b goog point, especially in case of good example/reference to comparison/refer.
but for SoM or GTAV case - they can't be used in such way, cuz both are "terrible console ports" and ..d up in number of ways. all im just trying to say: "try slightly reduce GFX settings ingame". all mobile(with "M" suffix at end) GPU's had Very smaller number of texture units and shaders count. its physics - you can't stick/pack too powerful GPU in notebook, untill someone figure out how to properly power/feed and cool-down/heat-dissipate that things, which is none of vendors care to do/invest in R&D about.

[Jeroen]

Originally posted by itsmydamnation:

i have an 3770k @ 4.3 with a 290 tri-x and i am getting around 70 FPS with everything maxed.... game is 100% GPU bound for me

http://users.on.net/~rastus/sat-reign.png

Nice, but now try running SR on 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 instead of that small resolution you have there :p
And don't use the intro level, I get better framerates there as well.
Use for instance the same spot I was in, to get a beter comparison. I was in The Grid on Musk Circle.

I have the ASUS R9290-DC2OC-4GD5, which has the same specs as your 290 tri-x.

BTW, it still can be cpu bound, your i7 has 8 cores (4 + 4HT) so if Unity scales with the number of cores, than it has more time to feed the gpu, which results in the gpu at 100%, making it gpu bound as well as cpu bound (because of crappy Unity engine).

[Jeroen]

Originally posted by brbrbr:

Originally posted by lotrofan15:

If I can run Shadow of Mordor on medium to high with 50-60 FPS and GTA V on high for 50-60FPS, then Id say my card is pretty damn good and if it can run those games at a high framerate with medium to high settings then it sure as hell should run this on high with a stable framerate

thats would b goog point, especially in case of good example/reference to comparison/refer.
but for SoM or GTAV case - they can't be used in such way, cuz both are "terrible console ports" and ..d up in number of ways. all im just trying to say: "try slightly reduce GFX settings ingame". all mobile(with "M" suffix at end) GPU's had Very smaller number of texture units and shaders count. its physics - you can't stick/pack too powerful GPU in notebook, untill someone figure out how to properly power/feed and cool-down/heat-dissipate that things, which is none of vendors care to do/invest in R&D about.

Well, if those games are 'terrible console ports' then it just shows that his NB can handle those games just fine at good framerates. A 'terrible console port' usually is poorly optimized and has bad framerates. So you're contradicting yourself, imo.

[brbrbr]

Originally posted by Jeroen:

A 'terrible console port' usually is poorly optimized and has bad framerates. So you're contradicting yourself, imo.

not especially and not always. its just consist 3 things: 1. its terrible. 2. its console. 3. its port. and no, they may had and usually had "decent framerate". just becaise nothing in them to slow down put, yet. thats how/why they made, to b able to run on those devices.
in you case - plying with GPU drivers options usually helps(both mobile NV and AMD chips can notably speed up, in result). but generally, expecting to run in par with desktop in games, where desktop chips really chalennged in "all turned on" preset - quite naive, bro.

[Jeroen]

@brbrbr:
I get what you're trying to say.
And as OP already stated, he did try to lower settings, as did I.

The OPs main question remains, why does this game perform so bad in comparison with seemingly more demanding games like SoM and GTAV?
What can be done in his specific case, short of buying a new pc, to get his framerates to an acceptable level?
It's a simple question, the answer can even be, "nothing can be done, your system doesn't meet the minimum requirements", which would be sad, but honest.

/edit:
Before we get the answer "nothing can be done, your system doesn't meet the minimum requirements", OPs system is faster than the recommended specs.....
Which raises the question in me to the devs, what is the expected framerate on the recommended system? And the minimum system? On what resolution and with what settings?

[Jeroen]

@lotrofan15
Disable SSR, that one really is a performance hog. And disable AA.
Set the overall quality to low.
Most other video options, like SSAO and shadows, didn't do much for me within the same quality setting.
I don't know what the quality setting difference is between low, medium and high. Low gives more FPS, high less FPS.
Try disabling some settings in the developer options, there are some that also influence the framerate like godrays and hdr, but not so much as SSR.

Basically, turn everything off for best framerate.
Then enable things one by one until the framerate becomes unacceptably low.