Low FPS and CPU/GPU usage.

[Bocchi]

Hey there! I started to play CTA again, and was taking some shots at skirmish (which seems to be where the problem happens the most), and I'm noticing some very bad performances.

The game starts at 60 FPS, but after some units are brought in, the game fall from 60 to even 18 FPS. I used MSI Afterburner to check the performance further, and CPU usage wouldn't pass 50% in any core, but worst of all, GPU usage would remain at 30% or lower. Disk usage is also at around 10%, and I have 6 GB of ram free while the game runs.

I've tried the story mode, and while the low usage problem persist, I can at least reach 60 fps most of the time.

I also tried to play with zero mods, but the results are the same.

How can I fix this?

My Specs:

-I3 8100
-GTX 1660
-16 GB RAM
-Windows 11

[J12_Such_WoW]

There's a performance setting somewhere when you start a online game, just set it minimum

[J12_Such_WoW]

Call to arms runs fine on 4 cores, I used to run it on a i5 7600 and that was fine, the main bottleneck was my graphics card at the time which was a 1050ti and then a 970. That was my experience anyway. Although since Windows 11 is in play that is about a 10% performance reduction on the CPU side of things so... eh.

[J12_Such_WoW]

I agree with everything you just said, but I'm just saying that 4 cores is fine for Call to Arms, not great in general, but fine for this game nonetheless.

[J12_Such_WoW]

Well, doesn't matter to me if Windows 10 isn't going to be updated anymore, I don't intend to be upgrading unless Microsoft gets their act together (which they won't), I'll just be running arch/linux for all my internet related things.

As for the performance related things for Windows 11, it's mostly due to the hardened security that causes these performance issues. Generally for modern PC's it's about a 3% decrease in performance in benchmarks for a fresh install, but 10% is the top end of how much Windows 11 decreases performance.

[Bocchi]

Late update, but after a lot of testing, I managed to find a solution. I tried every single setting on the game, having little to no performance gain, and the same problem happening the longer the game went on multiplayer with bots... until I disabled MSAA.

I don't know what's wrong with the MSAA in this game (I use MSAA in other games just fine), but as soon as I disabled it, the game's performance returned to what it used to be.

[J12_Such_WoW]

Originally posted by Bocchi:

Late update, but after a lot of testing, I managed to find a solution. I tried every single setting on the game, having little to no performance gain, and the same problem happening the longer the game went on multiplayer with bots... until I disabled MSAA.

I don't know what's wrong with the MSAA in this game (I use MSAA in other games just fine), but as soon as I disabled it, the game's performance returned to what it used to be.

Very good! The GEM engine is getting old, so it can be funky, in fact I remember that x16 anisotropic filtering was removed because it reduced performance quite a bit for not much gain in visuals (I still don't agree with outright removing it, but eh).

Might pay to check and change some of the NVIDIA control panel settings for Call to Arms to see if any of those make a difference when MSAA is on.

[Bocchi]

Thank you for the tip! I sometimes forget that this is also an option.