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.
Just to confirm, if you save a game and restart elemental and load that save game, the performance remains about the same?
Also does anyone have a save game which makes their pc run in single digits fps and if so could they upload it somewhere and provide a link please. This will help with tracking down the root issue.
>175
I dont think the Intel X3100 is strong enough for this game..
Just uploaded it. The save.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SN7QE0XS
Yes. I load up my last saved game, and poor fps. I then exit back to windows, reload, and still exactly the same fps.
to Shunmaha
yeah i know its an old laptop but they said it would run fine on a net book so thats why i got the game. maybe later i'll buy a new one.
Here is my savegame, just starting out and the FPS go down to single digits as soon as I build a town and explore the surrounding area. I get the same FPS when loading the savegame.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XW71BS0G
Alright... I'm going to do a detailed report on my system's performance issues in hopes that the info that I give you is helpful in solving this as quickly as possible...
First of all, my latest debug.err:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9170386/debug.err
Secondly, besides the general performance issues, I'm also having issues with spell effects disappearing, sometimes working something not.. and I've also seen the name of my cities change visibly on the 3D map to that of a nearby enemy city. Once I build something, it changes back. I've seen this issue since the beta.
Here's a save game where I get 8 FPS viewing my biggest city:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9170386/joe.EleSav
This screenshot shows 8 fps viewing this city:
Cloth map 42 fps... better obviously but still kinda low considering there isn't any 3D:
44 FPS on a piece of empty ground, again better but should be higher:
Afterburner view: note the GPU and GPU memory usage... it's as if it's only using a quarter of the GPUs processing power...
The crazy performance lost from Beta 4 to release was fixed by the 1.05 patch. Great Work.
The other things folks are pointing out may well be true, but it's back to Beta 4 playable.
Maybe on your system but not mine and not others... what's your FPS when viewing large cities?
I don't have any numbers as I don't have FRAPS installed. I assume that's the only way to get actual frames per second.
Come to think of it, every game should have a FPS display to enable.
Don't really need a save from me - start any game, plant city, poof, fps gone. Once the cities get even remotely large (or more than one city is on screen), fps <10.
With the most recent patch, the crashes have considerably worsened to the point where it's unplayable. Loading crashing half of the times. And ever so often the game crashed on me, playing my random continent game.
Also... sorry to say but the performance is abysmally bad. I don't know where the performance get, because visually the game is nowhere near that detailled that it would justify such a slow performance.
My comp: WinXP (SP3), Dual Core 2.2 Ghz, Nvidia 7950 with 512 MB Graphics RAM, 4 GB RAM
I would say a game with such graphics SHOULD run smooth, but it doesn't. It's a CHORE. And tbh, it makes me feel a bit cheated. I was so bored, so I bought the game at launch day, and now I can't play at all. I hope you work on crashes and really good performance soon. :/
EDIT: My graphic settings
1680 x 1050
AA off
limit framrate: 60
gfx: disable depth of field
texture: 1024 x 512
shadow low res
ground cover: numerous x2
unit scale: proportional
font smoothing
stylized lightning
softness: 75
Ok here is my debug file: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S3HY2WGO
EDIT 2: ok I saved a new savegame, restart and the game now runs, for now, without a crash and a slightly better performance.
i cant play sandbox I made a game , with huge map 8 opponent and the game started at 1 fps , after that i tried again only now i can only see white screen or fog ^^, and cloth map also look all white on a side note even if y press escape i still get 1fps unlike the campaign were i can start it play it until I make first city then frame drop to 15 but if I press escape on campaign to see menus and stuff my fps go up , same with cloth map or if I don't see a city , that as far as I go since it just too slow and sluggish for my likeness ,
That's all well and good, I'm the one who found it after all, but a 30% increase on 10 fps is still only 13fps. Why isn't the game using our GPUs properly? Is there anything else we can do on our end to improve it until you guys get a fix? Thanks for all your hard work, btw. Very few other game company's I've seen give this kind of support.
Just throwing in my 5 cents. First I thought that my computer just sucks but after reading these I think there's something wrong. I'm going on around turn 400, so there's pretty much town everywhere. On 3d map fps is 10-14 as long as town can be seen. Cloth map jumps to 40+. Even though the fps is so bad, the game doesn't seem to be putting my computer to much work, fan speeds and temps stay low, there's free ram to be had and so on. Changing settings doesn't really affect the fps at all.
Win7 64bit
core2duo e6550 2,33 ghz
3 gb of ram
ati radeon hd4870 with catalyst 10.7
I've ran it in 1680x1050 fullscreen and 1440x900 window with no AA, DoF, low shadows and 2x ground cover.
The performance keeps lowering the longer I play, eventually I will start losing sounds, sometimes even movement animations from tactical combat. Soon after these symptoms I will get the out of memory crash to desktop.
I'd just like to throw in that I am also having the same sort of performance issues when cities are on screen. Similar system configuration to others that have been posted. Just puttin' in out there.
Here's a save of mine where it gets really bad for me in terms of FPS: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6015557/105.EleSav Tons of cities and late game (just before I won actually Cloth map to the rescue!)
It's really not linked to the save. I tried several times with new games, the only factor is the fact of displaying a small object, like said in the OT.
And really linked only to the regular map, because for example, the building editor is smooth, even though it features about the same kind of object as what lowers the performance in the regular map. The map editor, however, same problems.
Frankly I just hope this really is a bug and not how Elemental is supposed to run.
Any luck replicating the issue at Stardock? Or are we just seeing things?
Been doing a bit of comparative testing with MSI Afterburner:
Elemental. Uses around 15 to 20% of the GPU with spikes up and down. Frame rate less than 10 for 3D, around 50 for cloth map.
Battlefield BC2. Uses a steady 20% of the GPU. Frame rate at 35fps.
Victoria2. Uses between 20% and 60% of the GPU. Frame rate at steady 60fps.
Star Ruler. Uses 12% of the GPU. Frame rate steady at 70fps.
The Settlers 7. (I guess this would be a similar game graphically). Uses a steady 95% of the GPU. Frame rate at around 35fps no matter pan or zoom factors.
I'm betting that what-ever UbiSoft have done differently is what Stardock will need to do as well (except their DRM thanks!!!!!). Their game files are not open for viewing.
I'm wondering if the problem be that the 3D mapping is being done with PNGs rather than DDS format? Does DirectX handle PNG format?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1460579/i-thought-dds-files-were-meant-to-be-quick-to-load has some info. Clutching at straws but I was surprised to see PNGs being used for the texture mapping - not that I do much of that sort of work.
Same issue here, on 3D map fps goin' down...
DualCore E8500 @3,16Ghz
Nvidia 9800GT 512MB
2 Gig RAM @800Mhz
Win7 32
latest driver
Additionally with activated AA I got to wait up to 3min, when entering combat, just playing without AA, but that can't be the philosopher's stone...
I don't know if this is related, but I randomly went into a tactical battle with a super-Sovereign who had something like 14 movement
When I clicked on him in the tac battle, his 'movement grid' covered the entire map, and my fps *nosedived*, like into spf instead of fps.
I just wanted to post I have exactly the same video card as the OP and have exactly the same problem. I don't know if the game is even using the video card, but I do know that it's dumping a massive load on only one of my quad cores...
The cloth map is fine and smooth. But the game starts to chug otherwise, and that flat-out shouldn't happen. I can run games like Bad Company 2 and Crysis smoothly; I just can't fathom what I'm seeing on screen in Elemental being enough to stagger my rig.
[edit] Have done a test and discovered that, according to catalyst, Elemental is causing zero GPU activity. Wtf? That just can't be right... except that it is, since catalyst reports 90%+ activity when running other games.
Elemental isn't even using the GPU. No freaking wonder it chugs. And yes, I have the 10.8 drivers (tried with 10.7 too, same results).
I'll add my 2 cents to the list. I know I don't have a powerhorse gaming rig, but surely I was expecting my Acer 8730G to run Elemental without any problems. I'm running Starcraft 2 on medium graphics settings on 1920x1080 resolution without a problem no matter how crowded the screen is.
I don't have any framerates to report, but Elemental runs just really jerky. It's getting worse and worse as I progress through the game. I got so frustrated that I quit yesterday. Reloading doesn't improve the low performance.
I've tried lowering the resolution and all graphical settings. Besides that the game looks really ugly then the low performance is still there.
My system:
Acer 8730G LaptopVista 32-bits (Sp2)4 GB memoryIntel Core2Duo P7450 (2x2.13 Ghz) processor Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT - 1GB DDR218,4" screen with standard 1920x1080 resolution
Latest nVidia laptop drivers.
I'll ask this. Have you guys reproduced this over there at SD? From what I've read here, the game doesn't use the GPU at all unless you set affinity, and even then, it's only using a portion. So it seems to me, who admittedly has little specific understanding of such things, that for some reason the CPU is doing all of the graphics calculations, or most of them w/ affinity set. How does that happen for some of us, but not all? What's different about us?
Is everyone here using ATI? (I'm tired and don't feel like reading back through the whole thread.)
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