Benchmark analysis part 1: over water. VRAM bottleneck ?

[Skinny]

Originally Posted by 15JG52_Brauer

By the way, what are you using to graph the framerates - is there a tool to grab it from the in game framerate counter or are you using FRAPS benchmark and then manually creating the graphs?

Manually is a big word, but yeah, just fraps+excel. I think charts are much more meaningful than average/high/low FPS especially with a game that lags randomly so often

[Skinny]

OK now I know why I missed the "memory used" entry in GPU-Z. It doesnt show with my videocard.

As point of reference, can someone run it while playing IL2 or some other game? Im actually wondering if it really is reporting texture memory and not just OS memory.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by Skinny

How could I have missed that. I actually had GPU-z running on my second monitor while benching, mostly to keep an eye on temps and load, I never noticed the "memory used".

Dont have time for elaborate explanation, but people should leave those affinity mask settings alone if you are using windows 7. You will not gain from it, you will only lose. Windows 7 scheduler is aware of hyperthreading, will not schedule one logical cores sharing physical resources unless all other cores are busy.

You were probably using your GPU-Z on your second GPU (if you have SLI)

Thanks for the tip regarding process affinity under Win7 I will try.

Apart from that, IL2FB usage (processafinity=6 )
GPU Memory used: 229Mb Mouahahahahahaha!




~S~

[CharveL]

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

[666th_Lange]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

MY GPU has 1280Gb RAM so it can still run smoothly but if the GPU has less then problems will start and you will have
to lower the resolution or the quality (grass, roads, shadows, etc, etc).

Just ran a little test myself after seeing your results. I have a GTX480 with 1536MB RAM and this is getting filled up to 1488 MB at lower game settings then yours.

[Skinny]

Originally Posted by CharveL

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

I certainly intend to rerun those tests after patches arrive, but for now they clearly indicate where the bottleneck is, at least on systems similar to mine.

I also think people are too optimistic about the result of those patches; I remember promises of patches to fix stuttering over cities in IL2 (especially with narrow FOV) , but ~10 years later the problem persists, even if hardware became almost 10x faster since.

Perhaps there is some low hanging fruit, like SLI support, that should be fairly easy to implement or fix, but they spent over 6 years developing this game. As Ilya posted elsewhere "Optimization has always been our top priority". Its unlikely in the next few weeks they will suddenly achieve miracle breakthroughs they couldnt achieve all these years.
I certainly hope to be wrong, but I wouldnt hold my breath.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by 666th_Lange

Just ran a little test myself after seeing your results. I have a GTX480 with 1536MB RAM and this is getting filled up to 1488 MB at lower game settings then yours.

Hi Lange,

That is interesting. Can you post some more details (resolution and your part of the conf.ini with the DX10 settings)?

[Flanker35M]

S!

I had MSI AfterBurner(latest beta) running while playing COD. Noticed that over water GPU usage was 98-100% and over land varied between 30-80% depending on what was visible(higher with water in sight).

Also overclocked my 6970HD from stock clocks 880/1375MHz to 900/1400MHz and the clock speeds did ramp up to that during gameplay. And also stayed there. When in splash screen or GUI the speeds dropped slightly, but in 3D they were constant. So works here.

My frame rate was around 45-80fps over water, even over 100fps when looking to sky. Over land I got 20-60fps average being around 35-40fps. Checked with game's own fps gauge. I run at 1650x1080 with low forest/buildings(+low building detail). Rest is medium except models High. Grass is disabled, roads/shadows on.

[335th_GRAthos]

Originally Posted by CharveL

Great work guys but to be honest, besides offering a bit of insight, I'm afraid a lot of the conclusions that could be drawn from your test might not be anything to hang your hat on.

With a slew of patches coming shortly, a lot of memory sucking bugs will be squashed and rendering optimized - apparently to a large degree - which means that people might make some premature hardware decisions based on what you're seeing.

As an exercise though it will be great to compare these with post-patch optimizations to get a better idea what the improvements bring.

What you are saying is very right CharveL.

But still, with my exeprience of 9 years flying this IL2 simulation, I bet that even after twenty patches, nothing will change in the big picture: Our PCs today have CPUs with power like hell, RAM in vast amounts, the only bottleneck is our graphic cards.
I have changed fifteen GPUs in the past ten years, it was always the same story (plus four sound cards - the sound chip was a bottleneck in the early years as well).

[666th_Lange]

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

Hi Lange,

That is interesting. Can you post some more details (resolution and your part of the conf.ini with the DX10 settings)?

Tried both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 (those are the only Full Screen resolutions i have avialable in COD) at LOW and HIGH settings. Both give same results in filling up VRAM but 1680x1050 is a lot smoother at LOW then 1920x1200 at HIGH which is normal.
I also used an FPS limiter with FPS limit to 30 FPS. Same there, VRAM got filled up entirely so i guess those which have more VRAM will have it filled too.

Config.ini: only tried Afinitymask (15) but didn't noticed much difference in performance, just like turning on hypertreading again (turned that off for DCS: A-10C), ingame AA is set to 8, but it still looks horribly jagged. I which somethig could be set with the nVidia Control Panel but unfortunally...