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.
Hm. GPU-Z and the task manager alive while Elemental is running tell me this:
GPU load remains at 0%. CPU Core0 is at ~50% load, core1 at 0%, and core2 at 40%. These drop to 0% (because Elemental.exe drops to 0%) when I alt-tab out - (ATI card- Elemental dies instantly with the 'Invalid DX call' message). If I alt-tab at the main menu for example (doesn't cause the game to die) and set Elemental.exe's affinity to one core, once I enter the game world that core's load becomes 100% and the others 0%, and the GPU's load goes up to ~30%. FPS increase by roughly 30%.
Ergo: When the game can run free with several CPU cores it spreads the load somewhat unevenly and doesn't seem to utilize the GPU. If chained to one CPU core, it starts utilizing the GPU and maxes the one core and runs faster. (Phenom ii X3 710 & ATI HD4870). (And this, as mentioned, on an unsupported config - ie XP 32bit sp2, but the issue at hand seems not to care about such things.)
Tried running with no autostart objects (there were alot) - no difference. Tried updating cats to newest - no difference.
Photos: -GPU load- the red specs in the second pic represent around 30% load.
1: CPU affinity not specified
2: CPU affinity set to core0. The tiny red specs of GPU load are ~30%. FPS increase due to this or CPU workings?
Same problems. I'm used to ArmA though so I just man up and take it
Specs:
i7 920 @2.66
9GB DDR3 1366MHz RAM
HD 5870
OR
i5 540 m @2.53 GHz
4 GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM
HD 5650m
I'm running the game here on a i5-750 (quad core), and an HD5850 ATI card, windows 7 64 bit, 4 gb of memory.
I'm also getting a much lower framerate then what I should be getting when stuff starts filling the game, such as a town.
Hey boss. Go install FRAPS and then re-do your screencast. I want to see dynamic framerates. I'm guessing that is how everyone else is saying I get 10 FPS when zoomed in. I'm seeing the same problems as everyone in this thread. My system is uber enough to play Sins smoothly at 1920x1200 with everything maxed out.
Windows 7 x64
Intel Q9550 quad core @ 2.8GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia GTX280 (1GB VRAM)
Your Q9550 cpu is one of the ones which will gain from the manual process affinity setting. Set it using taskmanager to core 0 and 1 and you should get an increase of about 30%.
Future builds should automatically detect this and handle it for you.
Yea my system runs sins fine on maxed settings. I also run Crysis on high with very little problem.
Intel® Core™ i7 740QM Quad Core Processor, 1.73GHz (2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6M Cache)
3GB RAM
1G Nvidia Gefore 260M
I have q6600 @ 3.2 Gh so i guess it qualifies as an older type, but setting cpu's affinity to cores 0 and 1 did not improve the performance whatsoever.
In further testing it seems sometimes windows is putting things on the right cores and sometimes it is not. When it is doing the right thing there seems to be a small (~5% gain), but when it does it incorrectly you gain much more. Exactly why it sometimes makes the wrong choice is something we are still looking into.
But Neil, how does that explain the problems for us with two or three cores (and for whom changing affinity settings does not help)? Fact is, it appears the GPU is not doing much if anything at all.
I too am wondering this
Just checked as well, Elemental doesn't get a performance boost when I switched my Intel 2.8GHz QC to single affinity, nor is it using my ATI 5800 2GB graphics card at all. While Elemental is running, ATI Control Center reports 0% GPU activity.
Personally I think there is an issue thats causing the game to be 100% cpu bound which is why the GPU is fairly idle.
I think you hit it right on the nail. That would def cause some major fps issues.
Throwing my lot in with this bunch. The game is running really choppy, it's not terrible, but it's enough to be annoying. I did some GPU-Z logging to assist in trying to track the problem down, but first here are my system specs (in a nutshell):
AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz
4GB (2GBx2) DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24-2N
AMD DirectCU Top/2DIS/1GD5 5850 1GB
Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 AMD 890GX
Win7 Ultimate 64-bit
What I did was start GPU-Z logging, then started up the game and played as normal with the exception I did a lot of moving around the map zooming in and out to get a good log of GPU load under various conditions, I played for about 10mins. After reviewing the log I noticed that my GPU clocks (core and memory) both increased to full speed when I started up the game like they should when a 3D app is being run, but the GPU load stayed @ 0% except for four times when it spiked up to ~25%, but each spike lasted less then 1 second each. So, basically it seems that the game isn't using the GPU the large majority of the time, if at all.
Hope this info helps. If there is any additional info needed, or if anyone would like me to do some more testing I'm more then happy to help.
Maybe some of Core i5/i7 configurations get boost, when setting affinity to single CPU, due to Turbo Boost tehnology. If other cores are prevented from being used, CPU will overclock remaining core and give more power to the game.
This, on the other hand, doesn't exist on older Intel, as well as AMD machines.
Would you mind setting the affinity to one CPU core and see if that affects GPU load, as it did for me?
I'd guess your FPS increase when you do that, 'cause they do for me.
Firstly I must take this opportunity to congratulate everyone involved in producing this game, from Mr. Frogboy to the rest of the dev. team and not forgetting the beta testers, this really is an amazing game….
However the shine of this brilliant game is being taken away from me, with very poor performance, I really struggle with FPS. On a busy map I average at around 4-8 fps which makes it difficult to scroll around the map. I reservered judgment until I tried the new patch, and in fairness I have not noticed any performance improvements.
I have completely re-installed windows to get rid of any virus etc, I have internet security switched on, but this never effects other games.
Is there anything else I can do to try and improve performance? For example could I lower the screen resolution and some upscale the picture to fit the screen, im not sure how to go about that though…
I have the video settings set at low.
Anti anlising is turned off
Shadows on low res
Ground cover low
I have a low Mid range Acer Laptop which is not even a year old, my specs are:
Core2duo 2.4ghz
ATI HD 4670 1GB
4GB Mem
Windows 7
To add to this, note that the issue happens really only when displaying these particular 3D objects. GPU load is ok the rest of the time, but as soon as you display a tree or a part of the city, the GPU load goes to 0% (when it should logically be opposite), so the correlation is clear.
The 100% cpu bound is not obvious though on my i7, it rarely going more than half of one core (only the pair cores are used). It is however going to 100% when forcing it to one (two virtual) core only.
I did some tests with debug version of DirectX and i have observed the debug log with DbgView application. I have compared the log output of Elemental with log of Sins of a Solar Empire.
The Sins had this line included:
Direct3D9: (INFO) :======================== Hal HWVP device selected
This is fine and it means hardware vertex processing is enabled. However, i did not see this line in Elemental. Instead the last info line was actually this:
Direct3D9: (INFO) :======================== NullRef SWVP device selected
Sins had this line too, but it was immediately followed by HWVP line. Too me it seems Elemental (at least on my computer) is using DirectX in software mode. Of course, i could be wrong.
I hope this helps a little.
So it seems we got the problem pointed out. Now it's up to Stardock team to fix it.
It did seem to run slightly smoother w/ the game running on only 1 CPU core, but nothing major, and still nowhere near where it should be. The CPU activity seemed to remain the same running w/ affinity set to 1 core as it did w/ all 4 available, and that was 1/ the 1st core maxed out, and the other 3 not being used by the game.
As for the GPU-Z log after the change, I did notice that the GPU was slightly more active after I forced the game to only run on one core. This time, w/ only one CPU core running the game, the GPU load still stayed @ 0% for the majority of the time, but it was also more active as sporadically the GPU load would go anywhere from 0-5% for a couple seconds at a time which was different then w/ 4 cores available, and still had spikes up to 25% now and then as before.
I guess I should also mention I'm running on Win7 Ultimate 64-bit.
Core i5/i7 processors use turbo boost on their own. Lets say for some reason elemental is using just one core. Then it will auto put that one core to your turbo boost max. Changing the affinity would only help old multi-core processors due to them not having turbo boost technology i would believe.
I have an i7 no matter what i do i get the same fps (1-5fps). Here is a link to my debug log. I put it in my own thread but this seems to be the thread to join in on.
http://pastebin.ca/1924764
My post from the low performance thread. During lunch I installed the new ATI drivers CAT 10.8, there was no change in performance. I'll mess with it some more after work.
I have the same issue. I've tried all the video settings they seem to make no change at all in the FPS. Zoomed in my small city averages 15 FPS, zoomed out right before it turns into the cloth map I average 5 to 8 FPS, this is with only two small cities in view, no units on the map. This is with crossfire running, turning crossfire off made no change in FPS. I don't know if this is a driver issue (CAT 10.7) or game issue. The latest game update didn't help performance. My laptop (more like desktop replacement) is Asus W90vp, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2Ghz) overclocking makes no change, 2X ATI 4870 512MB crossfire, 6 GB memory, Windows 7 64bit.
I have the same issue. I've tried all the video settings they seem to make no change at all in the FPS. Zoomed in my small city averages 15 FPS, zoomed out right before it turns into the cloth map I average 5 to 8 FPS, this is with only two small cities in view, no units on the map. This is with crossfire running, turning crossfire off made no change in FPS. I don't know if this is a driver issue (CAT 10.7) or game issue. The latest game update didn't help performance.
My laptop (more like desktop replacement) is Asus W90vp, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000 (2Ghz) overclocking makes no change, 2X ATI 4870 512MB crossfire, 6 GB memory, Windows 7 64bit.
Aha...weird that it should differ from my system. Still, could be how the CPU is handled by the OS / possible multi core drivers one may have installed. Though Fandango seems to have an i7 that behaves like my phenom ii x3 in this regard. I'll check if GPU load shows any lifesigns depending on what is viewed on the map, if core affinity isn't set, though I doubt it as I've scrolled over the map quite a bit previously and it's been dead as a doornail.
Nice to see some that GPU load went up a bit after you set CPU affinity to one core though.
Dejancrn: Interesting find. Would be cool if a Stardocker could comment upon it.
>>>>Quoting p22, reply 140Maybe some of Core i5/i7 configurations get boost, when setting affinity to single CPU, due to Turbo Boost tehnology. If other cores are prevented from being used, CPU will overclock remaining core and give more power to the game.This, on the other hand, doesn't exist on older Intel, as well as AMD machines.>>>> Core i5/i7 processors use turbo boost on their own. Lets say for some reason elemental is using just one core. Then it will auto put that one core to your turbo boost max. Changing the affinity would only help old multi-core processors due to them not having turbo boost technology i would believe.
The thing is that for some reason game runs with low CPU utilization when all cores are active, around 30-50%, the more cores the less. But with one core it gets 100%, which would trigger turbo boost, giving effectively more processor power, with one 100% utilized overclocked core, then with multiple cores with very low utilization.
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