Low FPS in cities on a high end PC

[The Stalker]

It's a performance problem in my IL-2 1946 (4.09m).

Although I have an Athlon 3800+ dual core at 2.00GHz, 2GB of RAM and an Nvidia Gt220 1GB (which should be more that enough) whenever I approach a large city in the game (eg. Berlin) my frames drop to 10-20 or worse. It makes ground attacks nearly impossible and it's annoying as hell.

I tried different settings but nothing helped, and it doesn't make much sense to play the game on medium settings with this pc. My guess is that it's an optimization issue, but I can't find the cause of this.

If anyone knows what might be causing this please help. It's such a great game and I should be able to play in on maximum settings without problems. I play single player on 1680x1050.

Thanks

[Letum]

The setting that will have most effect is "view distance" (top of the video options IIRC).
It is normal for cities to cause an FPS drop on high-end systems with a high view distance setting.

[KG26_Alpha]

Nvidia Gt220 1GB

Its a budget card and no good for what you are trying to do unfortunately.

A minimum Nv card these days for IL2 1946 to run full out in perfect mode or smooth city fly by's would be a 9800GTX/9800GTX+

I'm sure though others will soon tell you different.

PS:

Post your conf.ini contents here for a look at :)

.

[swiss]

Not sure if it's the card alone, and I also hate to tell you your system is not even mid end, sorry.

My experience was that a 4650 is way to weak for IL2, however the 260GTX is solely bought for this purpose was an overkill, a 9800 would have been enough.

I see the main prob in the CPU area - IL2 uses only one core, so a dual core will do no good, what you you need is a least one fast core, if I remember correctly the peak is somewhere around 3.0Ghz.

(I actually can confirm that, I got almost no fps gain when I switched from a X2 6000+@3.0 to a X4@3.6)

I did notice a difference from 4000+@2.0 to the above mentioned 6000+ though.


BUT: Even with with a 2010 $3k PC you will get the stutters over big cities, those are caused by to the old code the game is programmed in.


+1 on the config.

[kimosabi]

+1 on the old coding.

I play Rise Of Flight maxed out on my Q9550/3.7gHz, 5870 @ 1920x1200 and 8GB RAM and it runs perfectly at rock steady 60FPS(Vert sync) and IL-2 isn't anywhere near that over cities etc. It even dips to 10-15FPS sometimes over the largest cities, or areas where it has many ground objects/explosions. The game can't utilize the features of newer PC's. Especially not multicores.

[klem]

Stalker my current rig is similar to yours:

AMD 3800+ 2.0GHz, overclocked to 2.4GHz on my stock cooler (my Asus AN8SLi32 mobo makes overclocking fairly straightforward and I added a 120mm fan at the front of the case as it ran a bit warm).
2Gb RAM
2 x Nvidia 7800GTs in SLi mode.

The main differences then are:

CPU speed: IL-2 is heavily CPU dependent and going from 2GHz to 2.4GHz increased my framerates by around 10%

Video cards: Look at this
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-radeon-hd-6870-radeon-hd-6850,2782-7.html
your card is twelfth on the list. My Video cards are not really up to scratch now because of the newer maps and I have moved my graphics settings from Perfect to Excellent and am hitting around 20-30 on heavily populated airfields and 40-60 in the air.

Cities like Berlin are a problem for me too, running around 10-15fps worst case but mostly my fps doesn't drop below 20 over medium size cities. In the clear sky I am hitting 50-60fps.

Having said all that your rig isn't at all bad if you can live with your city problem and perhaps lower settings.

You could increase the CPU speed if you can - there are risks of course, mine will sometimes reboot when I close a graphics application or something that has been using high resolution images but NEVER during gameplay. Be warned though that O/C does carry risks. Another option is to try to buy a 2.6GHz (the top of the range) on ebay, around £100-£120 last time I looked. Of course that would mean changing some BIOS settings to a higher frequency.

You can drop in a higher spec video card, maybe having to change drivers, and that would almost certainly improve things a bit.

Something else that may help is FSAutostart, a utility that shuts down unwanted background Windows processes (you do shut down all other applications don't you? If I'm only gaming I even shut down all Antivirus stuff.).

As IL-2 uses only one core you can set it to use one particular core and set everything else possible to use the other. You can do this manually in Task Manager... Processes... but I use this:
http://edgemeal.110mb.com/SetAffinity/index.htm
with its link to the actaul utility file:
http://edgemeal.110mb.com/Files/Set_Affinity_II_1.041.zip

I set IL-2 to use "Core 1" (actually the second core) and everything that the utility/Windows will allow to "Core 0" (actually the first core). Some can't be put to one core. Note that you can set IL-2 to use Core 1 in the conf.ini file, use Notepad and look for

[rts]
;ProcessAffinityMask=1
mouseUse=2
joyUse=1
trackIRUse=1
DisableIME=0
locale=

remove the ; from ;ProcessAffinityMaskand set it to =1 for the first core or = 2 for the second depending on what you want to do. If the entry isn't there under [rts] simply add it.

If you are going to get SoW you need to be thinking about a new rig altogether but yours may run it at reduced settings.

Best of luck,

[LoBiSoMeM]

(I actually can confirm that, I got almost no fps gain when I switched from a X2 6000+@3.0 to a X4@3.6)

I do the same kind of upgrade, but I noticed clear gains in perfomance.

Not in pure average FPS, but in stress situations as MP with +50 people, flying over big cities, explosions and collisions.

If you use W7, realy best in MT than XP, you will see gains with more cores, even if IL-2 just uses one. Windows and all the other processes uses resources, and more cores improve performance. Just to fly IL-2 I can have Teamspeak, Freetrack, FOV changer, JoyToKey and more things running in backgroud, so, this kind of upgrade really improves performance!

IL-2 are "FPS friendly" almost all the flying, don't stress much modern VGAs, but isn't optimized for modern hardware, and in stress situations will run better with larger horsepower and more cores, even if IL-2 .exe are using just one.

[philip.ed]

My experience was that a 4650 is way to weak for IL2.

I run the game using a 4650, and I can achieve max-settings without any real FPS loss. It's a weak card, but for Il-2 I haven't had any real issues :D

[swiss]

I run the game using a 4650, and I can achieve max-settings without any real FPS loss. It's a weak card, but for Il-2 I haven't had any real issues :D

But you get crappy fps - mine were somewhere in the 30's, bd track will go as low as 1. :(

If you use W7, realy best in MT than XP, you will see gains with more cores, even if IL-2 just uses one. Windows and all the other processes uses resources, and more cores improve performance. Just to fly IL-2 I can have Teamspeak, Freetrack, FOV changer, JoyToKey and more things running in backgroud, so, this kind of upgrade really improves performance!

Like I said, I didn't notice any improvements - I always(and only) had FT and TS3 running in background.

I tried to measure gains with the black death track - only gave me 2 or 3 fps.

OS: W7-64U

[philip.ed]

Hmm, an average of 30-40 I'd say, and I find this smooth enough for me :D
Funnily enough, I have no issue around the cities....
But I would like a new system ;)

[The Stalker]

Thank you all for your response.

I figured that my pc was high end relative to the game (reading the recommended specs), of course it's not a high end generally.

The thing is, lowering view distance had a huge effect on performance in cities and it runs much better now, although the distant planes look a bit boxy now, but I'll live. Unfortunately I can't afford a new rig at this time.

[IceFire]

Thank you all for your response.

I figured that my pc was high end relative to the game (reading the recommended specs), of course it's not a high end generally.

The thing is, lowering view distance had a huge effect on performance in cities and it runs much better now, although the distant planes look a bit boxy now, but I'll live. Unfortunately I can't afford a new rig at this time.

IL-2 isn't really like a normal game. It'll suck up almost as much CPU, RAM and GPU/VPU processing power you can throw at it. Sort of like some of the professional editing software like FinalCutPro or Photoshop. Simulators will work alright on the recommended software but years later will be the time when they can be fully appreciated.

That said... I have a reasonably top spec system (Core i7 870, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a nVidia GTS250 with 512mb) relative to the highest performers out there currently and cities still drop my FPS. Part of the problem is engine related. It was explained by Oleg years ago and I can't remember what it was... but something to do with the core fundamentals of how the IL-2 engine references and draws objects means there are slowdowns even with the most powerful systems. Case in point was the Final Days benchmark track that was hanging around here last week - the best anyone got to date was 11 fps on the opening sequence. I got 9 fps. It's murderous :) At that point you can blame the engine rather than the PC.