naz
06-18-2011, 01:32 PM
Hi guys
I'll just throw this out there with curiosity that perhaps someone else is experiencing the same issue...and/or if it of some help to the devs in identifying a potential issue.
I have a dual GPU video card (ATI 5970). I have been primarily playing the game in Pseudo full screen mode (vsync off) as I traditionally got considerably better performance. FPS of well into the 60s/70s over water, and a solid 40+ over land (not including over London unfortunately). I had tried various combinations of in game settings but I could basically run the game with most settings maxed/high in Pseudo mode (to be fair, reducing many setting really did not seem to have much impact on FPS).
I have also done a fair bit of testing with Full screen though as I tried the various tweaks such as using xfire profiles under RadeoPro etc as outlined in various threads on this board. I got a good 10 FPS increase using various RadeonPro xfire profiles when viewing the black death track but that increase did not seem to reliably transfer over to gameplay
One of the problems I was having in full screen was a degradation of performance. however, it was not so much a gradual performance drop, rather a sudden hit to FPS that, once occurred, would continue for the remainder of the game session, irrespective of whether I continued the same mission, restarted it, or started an entirely different mission.
In other words, once the "magical" point occurred where the FPS would drop from say a nice 50-60 (using v-sync in Full screen to stop the track IR tearing) to 20-30 over land/water, it would remain at that lower level even if i restarted a mission from scratch. So I would now have considerably less performance in the exact same point in the exact same mission where previously I had very good performance in the same game session....so eventually I just stuck with Psuedo mode for the solid, stable performance.
I have now installed the new 11.6 ATI drivers and unfortunately they have reduced my Pseudo mode performance to 30-40 FPS over water..high teens to 25 or so over land. These are general figures, there is a lot of spiking of FPS so take these numbers with a +/- 5 or so proviso.
I have since been trying Full screen mode again with the new drivers, and each mission begins with a good solid FPS of 50-60 over either land or water. Initially it seems that xfire is kicking in and using both of my GPU's (both are being used at full clocks and at 60% or so). So now things are reversed in that I initially get noticeably better performance in Full screen mode as opposed to Pseudo mode
However, at some point,the old Full screen mode problem returns in that the FPS again suddenly plummets down to the levels I would be getting in Pseudo mode as I outlined above. Given the similarities in FPS between the suddenly "reduced" FPS in Full screen mode to those of Pseudo mode, it makes me wonder if the game's xfire support is somehow broken and at some stage in any given mission, something "happens" that breaks it, or disables it, and then the game thereafter only utilizes one of the GPU's on my card? The afterburner Monitor shows that both GPUs are still being used at 60% or so however, so whilst both GPUs still are apparently being utilized, the ingame performance seems to suggest otherwise?
I can't now pinpoint an exact repeatable instance where if i do "X" the FPS will instantly reduce, it just happens without notice and at different times each time I play. It usually happens quite quickly if starting a mission over land as opposed to one over water (where I have been able to go an entire mission with good FPS on the rare occasion!).
One thing that will always kill the FPS however is if i hit ESC when flying and the hit "restart" .. that will always restart the mission with the low FPS numbers. As i said, however, the main thing is that it happens whilst in a mission itself as well.
Apologies for the length of this post, I just am trying to provide as much background in case something rings a bell for anyone else or the devs. i have mentioned this degradation issue in the RadeonPro threads, but thought it may be worthwhile posting here now (simply because the 11.6 drivers made me realize the similarities between the FPS numbers I now have with Psudo mode and True full screen once the FPS degradation kicks in).
Anyway, there you go. :)
I'll just throw this out there with curiosity that perhaps someone else is experiencing the same issue...and/or if it of some help to the devs in identifying a potential issue.
I have a dual GPU video card (ATI 5970). I have been primarily playing the game in Pseudo full screen mode (vsync off) as I traditionally got considerably better performance. FPS of well into the 60s/70s over water, and a solid 40+ over land (not including over London unfortunately). I had tried various combinations of in game settings but I could basically run the game with most settings maxed/high in Pseudo mode (to be fair, reducing many setting really did not seem to have much impact on FPS).
I have also done a fair bit of testing with Full screen though as I tried the various tweaks such as using xfire profiles under RadeoPro etc as outlined in various threads on this board. I got a good 10 FPS increase using various RadeonPro xfire profiles when viewing the black death track but that increase did not seem to reliably transfer over to gameplay
One of the problems I was having in full screen was a degradation of performance. however, it was not so much a gradual performance drop, rather a sudden hit to FPS that, once occurred, would continue for the remainder of the game session, irrespective of whether I continued the same mission, restarted it, or started an entirely different mission.
In other words, once the "magical" point occurred where the FPS would drop from say a nice 50-60 (using v-sync in Full screen to stop the track IR tearing) to 20-30 over land/water, it would remain at that lower level even if i restarted a mission from scratch. So I would now have considerably less performance in the exact same point in the exact same mission where previously I had very good performance in the same game session....so eventually I just stuck with Psuedo mode for the solid, stable performance.
I have now installed the new 11.6 ATI drivers and unfortunately they have reduced my Pseudo mode performance to 30-40 FPS over water..high teens to 25 or so over land. These are general figures, there is a lot of spiking of FPS so take these numbers with a +/- 5 or so proviso.
I have since been trying Full screen mode again with the new drivers, and each mission begins with a good solid FPS of 50-60 over either land or water. Initially it seems that xfire is kicking in and using both of my GPU's (both are being used at full clocks and at 60% or so). So now things are reversed in that I initially get noticeably better performance in Full screen mode as opposed to Pseudo mode
However, at some point,the old Full screen mode problem returns in that the FPS again suddenly plummets down to the levels I would be getting in Pseudo mode as I outlined above. Given the similarities in FPS between the suddenly "reduced" FPS in Full screen mode to those of Pseudo mode, it makes me wonder if the game's xfire support is somehow broken and at some stage in any given mission, something "happens" that breaks it, or disables it, and then the game thereafter only utilizes one of the GPU's on my card? The afterburner Monitor shows that both GPUs are still being used at 60% or so however, so whilst both GPUs still are apparently being utilized, the ingame performance seems to suggest otherwise?
I can't now pinpoint an exact repeatable instance where if i do "X" the FPS will instantly reduce, it just happens without notice and at different times each time I play. It usually happens quite quickly if starting a mission over land as opposed to one over water (where I have been able to go an entire mission with good FPS on the rare occasion!).
One thing that will always kill the FPS however is if i hit ESC when flying and the hit "restart" .. that will always restart the mission with the low FPS numbers. As i said, however, the main thing is that it happens whilst in a mission itself as well.
Apologies for the length of this post, I just am trying to provide as much background in case something rings a bell for anyone else or the devs. i have mentioned this degradation issue in the RadeonPro threads, but thought it may be worthwhile posting here now (simply because the 11.6 drivers made me realize the similarities between the FPS numbers I now have with Psudo mode and True full screen once the FPS degradation kicks in).
Anyway, there you go. :)