Performance issues

[cybersyn]

I'm getting pretty subpar performance on an i7 6700k @ 4GHz, 16GB RAM and a 2080 Super on the Valve Index. The game is installed on my SSD. Even on the Low preset, I get framedrops in large and complex areas constantly (even Russell's room kills my fps).

My global resolution is at 100% and I've even lowered the headset to 80Hz. Any ideas?

EDIT: Upgrading my RAM completely solved the problem. It runs perfectly now.

Since Alyx is so well multithreaded the pipe from the RAM to the GPU needs to be larger than other games, which means that poor RAM will cause the stuttering during asset loading issue that I was suffering when I wrote this.

Upgrading from 1x16GB single channel DDR4 @ 2133MHz -> 2x8 dual channel DDR4 @ 3200MHz is what fixed it for me. Make sure dual channel is enabled on your RAM (if you only have single channel and the same issue you need to upgrade) and XMP couldn't hurt as well.

Now I can run the game at 90Hz comfortably on all Ultra settings with even demanding sections (like Russell's room during the hologram sequence) being locked to 90fps.

[SoulCake]

Huge props to FutureShock for finding out that upgrading to dual channels can solve the issue!

I had major lag/stuttering issues. Was getting an average of 77 fps @90hz, low fidelity, auto SS. Then i tried upgrading my 1x16 GB 3000Mhz DDR4 (latency at 16-20-20-38)which was running single channel, into 2x8 GB 3200MHz DDR4 (latency at 16-18-18-36) which is running dual channels. This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ solved it!

Now i'm getting a stable 90 fps @90hz, high fidelity and it feels great!

[Mike]

Marley The Buffalo Soldier eredeti hozzászólása:

I think I have discovered what is potentially causing performance issues for myself and potentially other folk here.

I likewise have been having issues with stuttering and texture pop in at close range and after running through a few levels where it was worse, I recorded a few observations.

• Some large open areas nearer the end had excessive stuttering compared with areas nearing the beginning.
  
• Stuttering usually happens with other active NPCs around
  
• A few of us have encountered problems like the menu screen glitching or aliasing on holograms

After getting fpsVR, I've been looking out for the orange and red frame timings indicating reprojection. What I have found is that my reprojection rates were hitting upwards to 30% when entering areas or situations with heavy particle effects.

Effects like, different enemy types all shooting, for instance: Combine and Antlions together, xen spores, Jeff , Menu particles and being in the shadow of the vault . What proved my idea that it was the particle effects was from an observation near the end of the game, spoilers BTW.

When in the Vault apartment, the ghost citizen, upon looking at him would instantly make my frame graph turn orange, looking away would subsequently turn it green again and back to orange when turning back. Walking up to the ghost citizen and sticking my head through him would send me to a red graph instantly and removing my head, it would return to normal. This was for every ghost I came across. I then proceeded to check areas with heavier particle effects for similar results and entering areas with spores or multiple active particles ( the big Antlion fights were really bad ).

I am thinking it might be a bug in the particle system which is overly taxing up our GPUs or potentially causing a memory leak which is causing the issues we are seeing, hence why folks buying more ram is reducing the issues but not removing them.

What do you think and can you replicate the results? :headcrab:


System specs for reference:

fpsVR Report:
App: Half-Life: Alyx HMD: Index (90.000 Hz, IPD 60.0)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (26.21.14.4575) CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor
Delivered fps: 86.32 Duration: 12.9min.
GPU Frametimes:
Median: 8.6 ms
99th percentile: 11 ms
99.9th percentile: 12.3 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 99.1%
CPU frametime:
Median: 2 ms
99th percentile: 3.2 ms
99.9th percentile: 5.5 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 100%
Max. SteamVR SS: 216%

https://imgur.com/a/RKl6FZ0

I noticed the same in my situation (i7 8700k @5gz + 1080ti, 16gb ram dd4 @3000mhz). I experienced drops in the same areas as You. Did You find any solution @Marley The Buffalo Soldier

[Marley The Buffalo Soldier]

Mike eredeti hozzászólása:

Marley The Buffalo Soldier eredeti hozzászólása:

I think I have discovered what is potentially causing performance issues for myself and potentially other folk here.

I likewise have been having issues with stuttering and texture pop in at close range and after running through a few levels where it was worse, I recorded a few observations.

• Some large open areas nearer the end had excessive stuttering compared with areas nearing the beginning.
  
• Stuttering usually happens with other active NPCs around
  
• A few of us have encountered problems like the menu screen glitching or aliasing on holograms

After getting fpsVR, I've been looking out for the orange and red frame timings indicating reprojection. What I have found is that my reprojection rates were hitting upwards to 30% when entering areas or situations with heavy particle effects.

Effects like, different enemy types all shooting, for instance: Combine and Antlions together, xen spores, Jeff , Menu particles and being in the shadow of the vault . What proved my idea that it was the particle effects was from an observation near the end of the game, spoilers BTW.

When in the Vault apartment, the ghost citizen, upon looking at him would instantly make my frame graph turn orange, looking away would subsequently turn it green again and back to orange when turning back. Walking up to the ghost citizen and sticking my head through him would send me to a red graph instantly and removing my head, it would return to normal. This was for every ghost I came across. I then proceeded to check areas with heavier particle effects for similar results and entering areas with spores or multiple active particles ( the big Antlion fights were really bad ).

I am thinking it might be a bug in the particle system which is overly taxing up our GPUs or potentially causing a memory leak which is causing the issues we are seeing, hence why folks buying more ram is reducing the issues but not removing them.

What do you think and can you replicate the results?


System specs for reference:

fpsVR Report:
App: Half-Life: Alyx HMD: Index (90.000 Hz, IPD 60.0)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (26.21.14.4575) CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor
Delivered fps: 86.32 Duration: 12.9min.
GPU Frametimes:
Median: 8.6 ms
99th percentile: 11 ms
99.9th percentile: 12.3 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 99.1%
CPU frametime:
Median: 2 ms
99th percentile: 3.2 ms
99.9th percentile: 5.5 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 100%
Max. SteamVR SS: 216%

https://imgur.com/a/RKl6FZ0

I noticed the same in my situation (i7 8700k @5gz + 1080ti, 16gb ram dd4 @3000mhz). I experienced drops in the same areas as You. Did You find any solution @Marley The Buffalo Soldier

Hi Mike,

Alas I am still having these issues with Alyx, i've tried reducing load from other applications (antivirus) and running in 80hz, but alas nothing. Waiting on a patch from Valve at this point. Played through Boneworks at 130SS and not a problem at max settings. Regarding your System, the only thing that might be the same as mine, are your parts ASUS?

[branus]

The game ran badly on my i5 6600/1060, so I bought a 2070 Super. Still ran badly! Then replaced the CPU with a 3700X and now it runs great! A i5 6600 (not overclocked, because not unlocked) is definitely not enough and a 6700 might not be enough either. On reddit there are a bunch of posts with people using exactly that CPU reporting similar problems. This game is heavily CPU bound.

[NiloticShadow]

pooplord eredeti hozzászólása:

The game ran badly on my i5 6600/1060, so I bought a 2070 Super. Still ran badly! Then replaced the CPU with a 3700X and now it runs great! A i5 6600 (not overclocked, because not unlocked) is definitely not enough and a 6700 might not be enough either. On reddit there are a bunch of posts with people using exactly that CPU reporting similar problems. This game is heavily CPU bound.

I'm also running the game on a 3700X and the issues have been there since the update. It seems like some people are lucky with their configuration and others aren't. Without a doubt it's bug caused by Valve. Could be a memory leak or something, not sure. I just think Valve has handled this poorly considering how a lot of us bought an Index just to play this.

[Marley The Buffalo Soldier]

Marley The Buffalo Soldier eredeti hozzászólása:

Mike eredeti hozzászólása:

I noticed the same in my situation (i7 8700k @5gz + 1080ti, 16gb ram dd4 @3000mhz). I experienced drops in the same areas as You. Did You find any solution @Marley The Buffalo Soldier

Hi Mike,

Alas I am still having these issues with Alyx, i've tried reducing load from other applications (antivirus) and running in 80hz, but alas nothing. Waiting on a patch from Valve at this point. Played through Boneworks at 130SS and not a problem at max settings. Regarding your System, the only thing that might be the same as mine, are your parts ASUS?

Hi Again,

Had a quick run through Alyx and I don't seem to have had as bad a performance hit as before. It seems Valve has patched some things in SteamVR so hopefully my performance will remain stable and you should check too!

[cadygreen]

Hi , I am also having stuttering issues later in the game. I running a MSI laptop and samsung odyssey + headset. I'm just getting back into computer tweaking after decades off, just to play Alyx. Could some smart persons look at my specs and performance graph during a rough stretch and see If I'm just hardware limited or have some other issue going on ? I've been trying to alter settings mentioned in this thread with no real results, maybe turning texture to low helped some.
Any info would be helpful :).

Thanks,

Curtis


MSI - GS Series Stealth 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti - 512GB SSD

From FPSVR:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Unknown) CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
Delivered fps: 53.92 Duration: 21.8min.
GPU Frametimes:
Median: 8.5 ms
99th percentile: >30 ms
99.9th percentile: >30 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 85%
CPU frametime:
Median: 4 ms
99th percentile: 16.5 ms
99.9th percentile: 25.1 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 96.2%
Max. SteamVR SS: 132%
Render resolution per eye: 1907x2390(by SteamVR settings, Max.) (HMD driver recommended: 1660x2080

[Iso-Didact343]

curtis869 eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi , I am also having stuttering issues later in the game. I running a MSI laptop and samsung odyssey + headset. I'm just getting back into computer tweaking after decades off, just to play Alyx. Could some smart persons look at my specs and performance graph during a rough stretch and see If I'm just hardware limited or have some other issue going on ? I've been trying to alter settings mentioned in this thread with no real results, maybe turning texture to low helped some.
Any info would be helpful :).

Thanks,

Curtis


MSI - GS Series Stealth 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti - 512GB SSD

From FPSVR:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Unknown) CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
Delivered fps: 53.92 Duration: 21.8min.
GPU Frametimes:
Median: 8.5 ms
99th percentile: >30 ms
99.9th percentile: >30 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 85%
CPU frametime:
Median: 4 ms
99th percentile: 16.5 ms
99.9th percentile: 25.1 ms
frametime <11.1ms(vsync): 96.2%
Max. SteamVR SS: 132%
Render resolution per eye: 1907x2390(by SteamVR settings, Max.) (HMD driver recommended: 1660x2080

Pretty much everything looks just fine to me. Is your RAM running in dual channel though?

[cadygreen]

CPU-Z says it is dual channel. Maybe add more memory? I never see it max out watching the little FPS gizmo.during play. GPU will sure climb into the orange during the bad spots, also CPU at times...

[Iso-Didact343]

curtis869 eredeti hozzászólása:

CPU-Z says it is dual channel. Maybe add more memory? I never see it max out watching the little FPS gizmo.during play. GPU will sure climb into the orange during the bad spots, also CPU at times...

No, you have enough ram and even if you didn’t, you could increase your virtual ram. Anyway, this game is surprisingly not that ram speed or ram capacity dependent. Since you are running in dual channel then your ram is fine. Are you playing the game at full low settings? Because your graphics card and cpu should be just fine. Some other simple things to try could be updating drivers, turning off SS autoscaling (which is specific to this game), or turning off ambient occlusion (which I’ve heard is not too much of a visual downgrade; you can only turn it off from imputing commands in the dev console).

[Mike]

Marley The Buffalo Soldier eredeti hozzászólása:

Marley The Buffalo Soldier eredeti hozzászólása:

Hi Mike,

Alas I am still having these issues with Alyx, i've tried reducing load from other applications (antivirus) and running in 80hz, but alas nothing. Waiting on a patch from Valve at this point. Played through Boneworks at 130SS and not a problem at max settings. Regarding your System, the only thing that might be the same as mine, are your parts ASUS?

Hi Again,

Had a quick run through Alyx and I don't seem to have had as bad a performance hit as before. It seems Valve has patched some things in SteamVR so hopefully my performance will remain stable and you should check too!

:headcrab:

Thanks, I wll also check today. I have Gigabyte MB and GPU.
Regarding particles and fog, I reduced their details in options and it helped a bit, but still there is improved strain on the system in certain situations. I also discovered some console comands that could further reduce quality/completely turn off these efects, but I didn't tested it ye.

[cadygreen]

Another dumb question. Should the Spectator HUD display be off also? Seems that would be an added tax on the GPU.

[*****sandravr82]

• Stuttering usually happens with other active NPCs around
  

Yes, noticed this also.

Strange Situation yesterday - i went into excessive Stuttering/Jittering in Chapter4, Scenario: where you find Grenades for the first Time ca. after 2 Minutes i decided to use a medi injection and NO JOKE after the Hand Animation Stuttering was fully BLOWN AWAY.

Crazy HL World

[Spiritbox]

FutureShock eredeti hozzászólása:

Brave Sir Robin eredeti hozzászólása:

Hello, I wonder if you could give me some advice? I have the exact same problem with frame drops in large and complex areas constantly ( including Russell's room) and this has been driving me crazy what the cause could be until I read your post. I have 2 x 8 Corsair - dual channel , DDR4 @3000mhz. Would you suggest that I should upgrade as well? Thanks inadvance.

Honestly not sure, I don't think it's your RAM because what you have now is better than what I have (just make sure it's actually running in dual channel and not single channel). I had to disable XMP because it was making my system unstable (I'll figure out the overclock values later) but even with my RAM underclocked below yours it still runs the game fine due to it being dual channel.

What are your other specs like?

Hello, sorry for the late reply. My specs are..

2 x 8 Corsair - dual channel , DDR4 @3000mhz.
AMD Ryzen 7 1700x Eight-Core Processor - 4.00 GHz.
SSD.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (Overclocked)
Oculus Rift CV1.

Thank you.

[cadygreen]

I've been troubleshooting my issues and its weird. The game runs fine until the GPU just pegs and FPS drops down in the 20's. I can usually just stand there and wait for it to pass after 10-30 seconds or so. Doesnt seem to matter whats happening in the game. I finished, uninstalled, re-installed ,and started over and its doing it at the beginning now. Didnt do it during beginning chapters on the first start. Only thing different is any behind the scene updates steam has done and updating my nvidia driver to the latest. Even trying the steamVR beta at supports request. Should I try to revert the GPU driver to something else? And if so what version? Steam support just gives me generic steps depending on who answers the help query..

Anybody else have this weird issue?

MSI - GS Series Stealth 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660Ti - 512GB SSD

Samsung Odyssey + WMR headset