I actually noticed this during beta 4, but it was the first time I noticed buildings, on my new laptop, so I thought they just needed some optimizing, which would be done for the release.
I get a constant max framerate (limited to 90 in my case, for example) over all the map, on a bare ground, units for example are ok. But as soon as a small 3D object enters the field, it decreases. A tree in the corner? 45 fps. A city (not a big one, just the first settlement) visible? 15 fps.
I tried to change the various settings, deactivated soft lighting, AA, shadows, resolution, it's still doing the same. It works good on the cloth map, without a problem, though, as there are no such elements.
Now I would understand such thing on my older laptop, but I'm surprised to see this on the new one. Specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 720 @ 1.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~1.6GHzMemory: 8192MB RAMVideo Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
So I'm guessing there is somehow a problem with drivers (though latest ones from ATI), or at least some incompatibility somewhere. Because the objects are nice, the cell shading effect too, but it's hardly something to bring this computer to its knees.
ps: I understand that a game like this doesn't need to run at 90fps. But 15-20 is actually unpleasant on the long term.
Edit: To make a complete (more or less) analysis, I tried at a high and low configuration, similar effects:
LOW Settings:
- Video Configuration
- Over a city: 20 fps
- Without objects: 138 fps
HIGH Settings:
- Over a city: 18 fps
- Without objects: 80 fps
So it doesn't seem to be related to the video settings. I also tried windowed, same.
It is really related to these 3D objects, as shown by these two other screenshots:
- Full zoom, empty ground: 99 fps
- Same place, just a bit higher to have one tree in the view: 29 fps
So far, the only thing which seems to improve performance is to force the game to run only on one core (physical one, so two virtual cores on Core i3/5/7), as suggested by thebigJ_A in this answer.
It should be the other way around, clearly, so maybe it's giving a hint on where the problem could be. Note that this doesn't solve the performance problem, there is still a big decrease on framerate when passing on cities, but less than when the game is authorized to run on all cores. I noticed however that doing this since the 1.05 version makes the sound choppy, probably because it was expecting to run on a different core to begin with.
You can open it in Notepad or any other text processor.
Just throwing in here with you guys:
AMD Phenom II x4 945 @ 3.0ghz
VisionTek ATI HD4870 @ 512MB of RAM
Gigabyte GA0MA790GP-UD4H Mobo
G.Skill 4GB DDR2 @ 800MHZ RAM
Windows 7 64-Bit Ultimate
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI-Express
Game/Windows installed on a Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB 7200RPM drive
Other software (outside of generic Windows processes) that I *have* had running (not all at once, not every program everytime) includesL
Microsoft Security Essentials AV, Impulse, Pidgin, Dropbox, PeerBlock, WhatPulse, Last.fm, Virtual CloneDrive, Subsonic Music Server, Steam, Display Fusion Pro, Easy Tune, and ATI's Catalyst Tray.
Not sure what more is useful (you guys have dozens of debug.err's and half as many save files) but I can reproduce this exact bug in my game every single time. It's extremely frustrating.
Still not optimal but hardware mousecursor has improved performance quite a bit for me.
I hope so too
Wow! Changing the mouse cursor helped! Not much, but at least FPS is staying at around 10 now, instead of 3-5, meaning it's playable. Still not using any GPU though, but I'm pretty impressed that my crappy CPU can handle it this well all alone now Imagine how well it'll run when it's fixed
The GPU is being used as otherwise the frame rate would be seconds per frame not frames per second. The problem is it is just not being pushed as hard as it should be.
Well good to hear the problem is now clear I'm sure you guys will have it solved soon!
any news on a fix ? playing the cloth map is not as fun as I expected , and i still get the fog screen in battles
While setting the CPU affinity to one core gives a small boost to fps, it doesn't change gpu load, so I was wrong before.
It depends entirely on what is being shown on the map, and the inverse relationship previously stated in the thread appears to be the case.
Toggling hardware cursor on / off has no bearing on fps for me.
Just an update, I finished installing Elemental on my wife's PC and got the exact same results, little to no GPU load on the world map, 30-40% load in tactical battles, cloth, and editors. My wife's machine specs are as follows.
Intel E8400 DC 3GHz
3.5 GB RAM
ATI 4800 512mb
Win XP SP3
sub 10-19 framerates on world map, 50-70s elsewhere.
Is Stardock able to replicate this issue in house?
All due respect Neil why wasnt this problem noticed sooner? Im curious why it wasnt spotted during your soak testing...
I noticed poor fps rates during beta 4 and raised it as an issue... anyway im pleased and grateful you guys are looking into it. Keep up the good work.
I too bug reported this exact issue in Beta.
I also raised the issue multiple times during beta.
Not sure if you saw my earlier post about PNG vs DDS for the textures (buried a few pages ago now) but from the limited amount that I know about 3D animation PNGs don't have mipmaps while DDS can. DirectX uses mipmaps off the bat allowing the GPU to render without any interpretation which should in theory allow the GPU to handle all the graphic work. While a PNG needs to be converted before it can be used for graphic display (CPU I guess).
As many of the textures appear to be PNG files could this explain why the GPU only runs at a low percentage? That is, could the PNGs be being interpreted and run through the CPU before they are handed to DirectX, which in turn then access the GPU?
In my post I compared The Settlers 7 to Elemental and it had a good constant FPS and used 95% of the GPU. And it looks as though The Settlers 7 has more graphics to handle with fog and blurring thrown in.
any news ? or should we start to panic and hit the refund bottom ( just joking )
Same issue for me.
Intel Q9550 2.4GHZ
Nvidia GTX470
Corsair 4GB RAM DDR2 4-4-4-12
Win 7 64
Loading and generating mipmaps for the png's isn't something that is done every time it is drawn, it's only done when the texture is loaded into memory and once it's in memory it's all being done on the gpu side.
Absolutely abysmal performance. I am not even going to list my specs because I can play every game released in the last 5 years on maximum settings. Yet not this game? It's definately to do with the cities because I have no problems on the cloth map or tactical map, the problem starts when the city gets build up
So it sounds like they're zeroing in on the problem. That's cool. I can wait a few days. (Though I really would like to be playing )
Maybe the best way to solve this issue is to find people that don't have the issue. Is there anyone out there who gets good fps when viewing cities and or other 3D objects...
Just a confirmation from me too.
Picture: http://tinyurl.com/3829uvj
Debug.err: http://tinyurl.com/39oo9xy
I play this game with my humble ATI 5970 on my AMD 965 BE X4
My computer have been completely re-installed.
I tried catalyst 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8
And it seem my GPU'S are used at 0% after the construction of my city.
I get about 10 to 15 fps with all the eye candy disabled fullscreen or not.
I might try the 10.5a they are quite popular and stable for a catalyst driver.
this really is horrible, a great game completely ruined, i'd want to "hit the refund button" too, if something like this wasn't fixed. Here are my specs:
AMD Phenom II x4 945 @ 3.0 Ghz
Win7 64 bit
2 gb ram
Gigabyte Nvida GeForce GTX 460 256-bit 1GB DDR5
maybe this can help some, I just put that graphics card in today, before that I had just an ATI Radeon 4670, and performance seems exactly the same on both. I wouldn't want to play on the cloth map, but it still doesn't seem to go fast there when I'm zoomed out. A little better, not much. this game must be really amazing that I still find myself wanting to play, even spending a good hour or two before getting fed up with the perforamance.
I have this problem on both my laptop and desktop.
both use win 7 x64 pro,
both have i7 cpu and 8 gig ram
laptop uses nvidia m330 1gig ram video card, desktop uses gtx 285 1gig ram video.
game is unplayeble until this is fixed..
Would like to add that I'm facing this issue as well on my Alienware M11xR2 (core i5-520UM, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 335M). Using the 258.96 optimus drivers so verified that the 335M is indeed kicking in when this game is running.
Getting 8-10fps over a city and 40+fps over empty land or the fog of war areas. Turning up or down the gfx settings does nothing for me. Setting the CPU affinity also does nothing.
Getting frustrated with the choppy frame rates so I didn't progress very far.
Sorry to ask this. I'm not accusing anyone here, but are you playing the original game or using the original .exe and .dll? I ask this because I remember a lot of people complaining of graphical problems in Bioshock 2 on 2k Forums and it turned out to be a bad crack.
Be honest people. This could save Stardock from a lot of unnecessary work.
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