-1-Gabe-1- wrote:I did that test,,setting affinity to 1 of my two cores and I did see a lower framerate..I know it sounds odd but I tested it several times since the las PR release.
Another test that I did was so set the priority to it's highest,,which improved my fps by 10-12 frames,,The bitter side of it is that the sound gets choppy and breaks up a lot,,even though I use a Creative sound card,,not a new model,,but it does its job well..
It could be that other processes running on your machine are using the same core that you set PRBF2.exe to use, with the result being them stealing a portion of the cycles. What I did here to minimise that was to set other applications that use any significant degree of CPU, like PRLauncher, Process Hacker, etc, affinity to use other cores to ensure PRBF2.exe was getting the most it could.
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Anyhow, no work today, so did a load more faffing about. F'ing long-winded, and boring as hell, but FWIW:
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# map pr load hangar gpu
m ramiel 0981 32s 155fps 95% 0981 map loaded in 0981, high settings
n ramiel 1036 43s 67fps 41% 0981 map loaded in 1036, high settings
o ramiel 0981 28s 205fps 93% 0981 map loaded in 0981, low settings
p ramiel 1036 39s 172fps 78% 0981 map loaded in 1036, low settings
All are Ramiel STD map, local server. I used the 0981 version map as PR 0981 wouldn't know how to handle the 1036 version ARF faction (couldn't be arsed messing to get it to work).
"m" - PR 0981, high video settings, position inside a hangar set looking a particular direction.
"n" - PR 1036, high video settings, same position inside hangar. Increased loading time, big fps drop, and GPU under-utilisation by comparison.
"o" - PR 0981, lowest possible video settings (for 1036 - 2,2,2,0,0,1,1,1).
"p" - PR 1036, lowest possible video settings (for 1036). Increased loading time, moderate fps drop, moderate GPU under-utilisation.
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# map pr load repaircrate gpu
q ramiel 0981 21s 257fps 93% 0981 map in 0981, low settings, no statics
r ramiel 1036 32s 252fps 92% 0981 map in 1036, low settings, no statics
s ramiel 0981 29s 163fps 96% 0981 map in 0981, high settings, no statics
t ramiel 1036 40s 69fps 40% 0981 map in 1036, high settings, no statics
I removed all staticobjects (buildings, walls, etc) from the map for the next tests to eliminate them as an influence (except for the U.S. repair station which I used as the test point location).
"q" - PR 0981, low graphics settings.
"r" - PR 1036, low graphics settings. Increased load times again, but fps is not far off the PR 0981 result.
"s" - PR 0981, high graphics settings.
"t" - PR 1036, high graphics settings. Very big fps drop here, with typical increased load time.
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# map pr load repaircrate gpu
u ramiel 0981 28s 205fps 95% 0981 map in 0981, high settings, no objects
v ramiel 1036 39s 82fps 38% 0981 map in 1036, high settings, no objects
Went further by stripping all movable objects from the map (vehicles, bipods, etc).
"u" - Lean & mean 0981 reference.
"v" - Same map in PR 1036. Very big fps drop, with usual longer load times. Hmm, what's going on? Surely with all these objects removed we should be boiling the cause it down pretty soon?
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# map pr load repaircrate gpu
w ramiel 0981 27s 208fps 95% high settings, no objects, no overgrowth
x ramiel 1036 38s 83fps 38% high settings, no objects, no overgrowth
Removed all overgrowth from the map (trees, bushes, etc), too. Enviroment is almost totally empty now other than for terrain, a few rocks, and basic ground texturing.
"w" - ok...
"x" - PR 1036 - So, huge fps drop again. Why?
I noticed something odd happen. As I approached the single, lone object remaining on the map - the U.S. repair station being used as the reference point - I noticed the fps drop out all of a sudden. Move away, or look away, and fps comes back up, move closer it drops out. I ran some more tests between versions to be sure:
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PR 0981, high graphics settings, repair station up close = gpu load 96%
PR 1036, high graphics settings, repair station up close = gpu load 40%
I didn't record fps in the above, but the general result is about the same as for tests "w" & "x" above.
Ran the same test using low graphics settings:
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PR 0981, low graphics settings, repair station up close = gpu load 94%
PR 1036, low graphics settings, repair station up close = gpu load 94%
OK, so some graphics setting is causing a huge fps drop when close to objects. To cut a long story short, the switch point turns out to be the 'Level of Detail' (LOD) point (if you want to call it that) where shadows on objects start to be rendered by the engine. It's about 50 metres from the object at a guess. Every time the object come into range, fps took a nose dive.
So, I ran a bunch more tests, one for each shadows config setting:
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PR 1036, vehicle_depot_us lod point, shadows off, gpu: 94%, 248fps (no switch point)
PR 1036, vehicle_depot_us lod point, shadows low, gpu: 38%/94%, 84fps/233fps
PR 1036, vehicle_depot_us lod point, shadows med, gpu: 38%/95%, 85fps/234fps
PR 1036, vehicle_depot_us lod point, shadows high, gpu: 38%/95%, 83fps/228fps
The two values between the "/" separator represent the difference in measurements between the switching point where shadows become enabled/disabled. What becomes apparent here, is that at any shadows setting beyond "off", CPU utilisation appears to take a big hit, causing fps and GPU utilisation to drop out. There was practically no difference as far as performance figures go between Low, Medium, and High settings. Only switching shadows off completely cured it, when using PR 1036. What's odd though really is that the only object on the map is this single U.S. repair station, so it's not like there's tons of shadows to calculate here, just a single object consisting of crates, cammo net, etc. So it just seems that as soon as shadows become enabled at all, irrespective of complexity, there will be this big CPU hit accompanying it, at least based on what I saw here in these tests.
Anyway, that's as far as I've got. I guess I need to look at how PR 0981 acts with shadows now at this point, as it might be significantly different judging by some of the results seen above.
BTW, I'm not saying this is the cause of people's problems here at all, just that it could explain part of it, at least here where I'm seeing these big fps differences between versions. This lot won't mean anything to anyone already running all low graphics settings, with shadows set to "off", but still having fps problems. But for anyone playing with shadows enabled having fps trouble, it could be worth try running without them to see if things improve much.
I've been meaning to get around to doing it for weeks, just been a bit busy with things here though.
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