Does my FPS look right? Nvidia settings correct?
By
Akaiku,
Posted on: 2009-10-02 15:36 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I think it's too low.
I'm running:
Intel Q9300 2.5 GHz
8 GB of RAM
nVidia GeForce 9800 FX
Windows 7 x64
And I have 60 FPS in CoH...and I can have tons of resources to do many other stuff.
I'd suggest turning all the manual nVidia settings off and set them in CoH. Let CoH decide the graphics settings...and then if it fixes it, then you know where the issue is.
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Sounds about right. Not at my CoX machine right now, but I run a 3.0 Q6600 rig with a GTX280 @ 2560 x 1600 with all eye candy on and see about 25 fps on average. 8GB RAM, was on Vista 64 now on Win7 64.|
Originally Posted by Nazgul9
Greetings.
I've recently returned to this game after a couple years and I'm trying to sort out the performance of my system. I understand that the graphics in City of Villains has been updated from the level that City of Heroes is at and so its a bit more demanding graphically...so I should expect a bit of a hit. In City of Villains, standing on a given rooftop and surveying the building laden horizon and the terrain (With no players, or monsters, or water in view) I get around 29-30 FPS. My system is as follows: Intel Q6600 OC'd to 3.33 Ghz EVGA GTX295 @ 1920x1200 8 Gigs Memory Windows Vista 64 Does 29-30 FPS sound about right to you? As far as my Nvidia panel settings go....I'm running the 190.62 drivers and currently I have everything set to the global 3d defaults for City of Heroes. I've read Joot's guide here to get some ideas on what I might set or tweak and I had some questions about those Nvidia settings if anyone happens to know. I guess I'm not very good at benchmarking as when I try different options...I never see much of a difference in game. Joot's guide suggested setting Triple Buffering to "on" if you've got VSync on. So I tried setting that on. For "Antialiasing Mode" Joot suggested leaving it at the "Let the application decide" but I was wondering what it does if I set it to "Enhance the application setting" and then set the anti-aliasing setting to 16x or higher? Is there much bang for buck there? Will it improve COH much? I can't seem to see much difference but I don't know what I'm looking for either. What are your thoughts on "Antialiasing Transparency". Is Multisampling or Supersampling worth it? I seem to remember Supersampling being a pretty heavy hit in some games. How about "Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias". Further down in Joot's guide I read a suggestion to set it to "Clamp". I tried that...but again...I don't seem to see much of a difference in FPS or quality. You know how it is though...unless you know what to look for....sometimes you just can't see it. Any suggestions or advice would certainly be appreciated! Thanks everyone  |
Note that CoX cannot/doesn't take advantage of SLI so having a 295 is more like having a single GPU in CoX performance.
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What resolution? The lower the resolution the higher the frame rate, generally speaking.
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Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
I think it's too low.
I'm running: Intel Q9300 2.5 GHz 8 GB of RAM nVidia GeForce 9800 FX Windows 7 x64 And I have 60 FPS in CoH...and I can have tons of resources to do many other stuff. I'd suggest turning all the manual nVidia settings off and set them in CoH. Let CoH decide the graphics settings...and then if it fixes it, then you know where the issue is. |
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1680 x 1050.
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
What resolution? The lower the resolution the higher the frame rate, generally speaking.
But I doubt that'd cut the FPS in -half-.
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The differential in resolution is about 1.3x or 77ish percent however you want to look at. Really depends on what level of eye candy you have off or on too.|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
1680 x 1050. But I doubt that'd cut the FPS in -half-. |
The biggest impact AFAIR is antialiasing (mode), followed by DOF I think. After that its a matter of small things that add up, including all the high rez textures, bloom and particle counts, water rendering etc.
Pretty hard to say if anything is out of whack unless you're doing an Apples to Apples comparison.
Thanks for the replies fellas.
To clarify...
I've got all the eye candy turned on/cranked in the in-game options (With the exception of particle physics which I just have on 'high' and not 'very high').
In City of Heroes I run up near 60 FPS with the same settings. Maybe Bright Shadow was referring to his FPS in CoH and not CoV. If not....then I must be doing something very very wrong 
Its in City of Villains that I get the 29-30 FPS I mentioned previously.
Thanks for the info about SLI. I looked up SLI in their NCSoft support interface and it said that CoH supports SLI....I guess they didn't actually say they support it "Well" *chuckle*. At least now I know why the GTX295 seems to be dogging a bit.
Now...I keep trying that "Enhance the application setting" for "Antialiasing Mode" in the Nvidia options panel for Anti-Aliasing and then setting it to 16x....I turn on Multisampling for "Antialiasing Transparency"....and I set "Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias" to Clamp....nothing seems to really make much of a difference. Seems like no matter what I do...I get between 28-32 FPS. I'm not sure if any of those options even "Do" anything.
I have 60 FPS both in CoH and CoV. I actually play red side a thousand times more often.
As for what game settings I run at, I set everything to maximum, except:
World Detail, which is at 100% default,
Character Detail, which is at 100% default,
and Particle Physics, which is at medium.
As you don't have a PhysiX card, I'd suggest you turn Physics to medium as well.
Then, as I stated previously, the first step in your troubleshooting (in my opinion) would be disabling all the 'nVidia enhancements' and settings, and letting the game take charge.
If you still have the low FPS, then one by one, tweak a setting, test the game, tweak a setting, test the game, rinse and repeat, until you can reproduce the issue again. That would tell you exactly what's wrong.
I get 60FPS 90% of the time with everything completely set to the highest settings with the in-game options at 1920x1200. Certain areas in cap and grandville cause me to drop into the 40-50FPS range at times.
AMD X4 Phenom II 955 BE (OCed to 3.6ghz)
Nvidia 275GTX
4 gigs DDR3
Your video card is definately a little better than what I have, but my CPU is much more powerful. CoX is very CPU intensive, but I would imagine your Q6600 should be good enough to get more than 30FPS when you're just standing around. Some of the areas redside do cause a lot more stress on the hardware than blue, so theres nothing to worry about there.
Thanks kindly Bright Shadow and SevereCalamity. I really appreciate the help and the numbers for comparison.
Well...looks like I've got some troubleshooting to do then. I'm glad I asked for some help or I may have never known and sat there cursing at this for a time.
I'll follow your advice, set all the Nvidia options to the defaults and I'm going to try the settings that you posted you were using and see if that gives me comparable results.
Here goes....
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I'd peg your respective CPUs as being pretty close actually...some benching can be found here.|
Originally Posted by SevereCalamity
I get 60FPS 90% of the time with everything completely set to the highest settings with the in-game options at 1920x1200. Certain areas in cap and grandville cause me to drop into the 40-50FPS range at times.
AMD X4 Phenom II 955 BE (OCed to 3.6ghz) Nvidia 275GTX 4 gigs DDR3 Your video card is definately a little better than what I have, but my CPU is much more powerful. CoX is very CPU intensive, but I would imagine your Q6600 should be good enough to get more than 30FPS when you're just standing around. Some of the areas redside do cause a lot more stress on the hardware than blue, so theres nothing to worry about there. |
Note that Quad core CPUs are a bit of a mismatch for CoX, as it only supports 2 threads. Offloading non CoX tasks to a third CPU/core generally helps but dual cores usually overclock (a lot) better, which usually give the duallies an edge.
I certainly would be nice to have a thread with benchmarks about CoX instead of relying on outside reviews, which *never* benchmark CoX.
Either a demo playback or various areas in zones would be something interesting to see how CPUs and GPUs perform and what optimizations would be best for them.
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Mine's a Q9300. Not over-clocked, at 2.5 GHz. And I can run CoH and Fallout 3 both at the same time, and CoH would still have 60 FPS (even red side, in teams), and no lag on Fallout 3, along with a browser, messanger, and a bunch of other tiny apps.
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
I'd peg your respective CPUs as being pretty close actually...some benching can be found here.
Note that Quad core CPUs are a bit of a mismatch for CoX, as it only supports 2 rendering threads. Offloading non CoX tasks to a third CPU/core generally helps but dual cores usually overclock (a lot) better, which usually give the duallies an edge.
I certainly would be nice to have a thread with benchmarks about CoX instead of relying on outside reviews, which *never* benchmark CoX.
Either a demo playback or various areas in zones would be something interesting to see how CPUs and GPUs perform and what optimizations would be best for them.
For a Quad Core, CoH/CoV is not really CPU intensive.
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To be fair, 3D Mark and the like aren't the best for comparing real-world in game performance - http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2....0.5,1403.html. If you look at actual gaming and the FPS achievable between the two CPUs, you'll see that the phenom is ahead by 15-25% FPS or more in some cases. The gap widens as resolution and settings are increased. The phenom's architecture is just really well done for gaming. I believe Intel's I5 is supposed to be the main competitor for the phenom, for price and performance. Since the Phenom games almost as well as the I7 in most cases, at 40% less cost when factoring in the motherboards (600 bucks vs. 360)|
Originally Posted by PumBumbler
I'd peg your respective CPUs as being pretty close actually...some benching can be found here.
Note that Quad core CPUs are a bit of a mismatch for CoX, as it only supports 2 threads. Offloading non CoX tasks to a third CPU/core generally helps but dual cores usually overclock (a lot) better, which usually give the duallies an edge. I certainly would be nice to have a thread with benchmarks about CoX instead of relying on outside reviews, which *never* benchmark CoX. Either a demo playback or various areas in zones would be something interesting to see how CPUs and GPUs perform and what optimizations would be best for them. |
Also, I agree about the dual core and overclocking. My old C2D E6420 was overclocked from 2.14ghz to 3.6ghz and honestly I can tell no difference in CoH between that CPU and my current one. Obviously, since CoH doesn't use all 4 cores, anything past a dual core is useless until you consider outside sources. Such as Bright Shadow playing Fallout 3 and CoX at the same time
Which honestly, isn't a bad idea. But just because CoH doesn't use more than 2 cores, it doesn't mean that 2 of my 4 cores of my phenom aren't faster than my old E6420. At the stock 3.2ghz, the phenom is quite a bit faster than my old C2D at 3.6. However, that at 3.6 ghz is a bit faster than the Q6600 at 3.33ghz considering the use of only 2 cores.Perhaps I should have clarified more. I do think his Q6600 should be capable of playing at 60FPS at most times, I believe I said that. I was just trying to make clear that judging from his other hardware, his CPU would be his bottleneck if choosing between that and his video card.
Also, we did have a demo flying around these parts a couple years ago that we used to test hardware. BillZ, Mid-Forever, Houtex, myself and some others I may be forgetting were testing out different CPUs, Video Cards, drivers, overclocking, etc. on CoH. Because of how intensive the game was for the time, we were always trying to find ways to get better performance. With a modern high-end machine, 60FPS is pretty easy to obtain now.
Nazgul, do you use any special toggles that generate an aura? Certain intensive toggles do drain my FPS while jumping around oustide. Having the super jump circles as well as Shadow Fall can drop my FPS to as low 30-40FPS while jumping around outside. Inside, I never drop below 60FPS. Just standing around outside, never below 40-50 but most of the time I stay around 60. This is villainside only, blueside nothing ever drops me below 60.
For most mid range and higher end CPUs now CoX won't be CPU starved, regardless of number of cores. I think the new AMDs have the best bang for the buck right now, especially if your primary game is this game.
With regards to frame rates and benchmarking, I have noticed that the fps upon starting the game is much smoother and higher than later on. This can have a noticeable effect on game play. I usually start off in the 40-50fps range just logging in, but as time goes on, zoning, TFs etc., the frame rate will slow.
During heavy action I do notice fps as low as the low teens, say when herding more than 20 or 30 mobs in itf or ship raids. If I do crash during those times and relaunch the app, the frame rate starts back in the high 30s (in the same area where I had crashed out).
FWIW, I think this slowdown may be due to settings in my Nvidia driver interacting with CoX, since I also get a memory leak that slowly accumulates, crashing out usually once past 1.5GB.
Only two other people I know have this (that I team with regularly), and both of them have Nvidia cards. Too bad I'm too lazy to find out what is leaking. Maybe one of these days.
Thanks again Pum Bumbler, Calamity, & Shadow
So here are the results...
As mentioned previously....I set all the Nvidia settings back to their 'global' defaults (i.e...let the application decide) and removed any custom settings I had applied. Then I went into the Villain-side game to the same rooftop I was on before with the same scenery. Its a good spot in Cap Au Diable as there is no water in sight, players don't seem to wander by much, there isn't much activity, and aside from the day/night cycles that screw up my benchmarking...as long as its daytime....everything is 'fairly' stable. Not exactly scientific, but close enough for government work
In the game options, I set mine to exactly what Bright Shadow posted earlier.
World Detail, I set back to its 100% default from the 200% I had it at.
Character Detail, I set back to its 100% default,
and Particle Physics, back to medium from its previous setting of 'high'
I left my resolution at 1920x1200.
Sure enough...those few changes in the game-options are what did. Instant 50-60 FPS. So it appears its that world detail thats most likely the big culprit.
Anyhow....I like my eye candy so I'll just have to set those settings back up to max again and then live with any FPS penalty.
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Nope....I left all the toggles/travel powers/etc. etc. off. I even 'posed' my toon in the exact same position each time I took a reading and took a few visual 'cues' from his surroundings so that I could position his 'view' pretty close to the same each time.| Nazgul, do you use any special toggles that generate an aura? Certain intensive toggles do drain my FPS while jumping around oustide. Having the super jump circles as well as Shadow Fall can drop my FPS to as low 30-40FPS while jumping around outside. Inside, I never drop below 60FPS. Just standing around outside, never below 40-50 but most of the time I stay around 60. This is villainside only, blueside nothing ever drops me below 60. |
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| FWIW, I think this slowdown may be due to settings in my Nvidia driver interacting with CoX, since I also get a memory leak that slowly accumulates, crashing out usually once past 1.5GB. |
Antialiasing Mode to "Enhance the application setting"
Antialiasing setting to "16x"
Texture Filtering Negative LOD Bias to "Clamp"
Triple Buffering to "On"
Went back in the game, same place, same conditions....and I just don't notice any difference either in FPS or visual quality. Its so hard to tell though.
Yup. Your slow-down was the World Detail. That is the most intensive game setting. It's basically how far the game 'renders' for you in the game.
Character detail isn't really significant.
And Particle Physics only starts eating on your resources when you're in big combat scenes.
Personally, I like World Detail at 100%. I find at 200% to be a little full of 'clutter', and I don't like the FPS cost.
But my personal suggestion to you, seeing you like the eye candy, is to set it to 150%. That way you'll sit around 40 FPS or so. Anything above 35 frames per second is not really noticeable to human eye anyways. So by setting it to 150% you lose minimal eye candy, but have enough FPS to handle large out-door teams!
Well if you posted a CoHHelper report we would have seen that earlier.
You can turn Character Detail and Physics back up. Character detail simply changes when Player and NPC models shift from detailed to simple. It saves a few polygons but I haven't ever noticed an area where that changes framerate one bit. Physics may do a bit more math but there isn't that many instances where physics is used.
World Detail determines how far you can see (until the fog). CoV is chock full of objects, way way more than CoH, and if they can't be simply tossed away because they are to far from you they will be fed eventually to your video card, even if they end up behind six other things. The Z buffer gets quite a workout in CoV.
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Something I noticed is that city on my current drivers (191.07) doesn't like to actually spin up the card. It runs at idle clocks causing my 285gtx's to get 30 or so fps constantly. Might check your clocks when city is running.
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Greetings.
I've recently returned to this game after a couple years and I'm trying to sort out the performance of my system.
I understand that the graphics in City of Villains has been updated from the level that City of Heroes is at and so its a bit more demanding graphically...so I should expect a bit of a hit.
In City of Villains, standing on a given rooftop and surveying the building laden horizon and the terrain (With no players, or monsters, or water in view) I get around 29-30 FPS.
My system is as follows:
Intel Q6600 OC'd to 3.33 Ghz
EVGA GTX295 @ 1920x1200
8 Gigs Memory
Windows Vista 64
Does 29-30 FPS sound about right to you?
As far as my Nvidia panel settings go....I'm running the 190.62 drivers and currently I have everything set to the global 3d defaults for City of Heroes. I've read jg0001's guide here to get some ideas on what I might set or tweak and I had some questions about those Nvidia settings if anyone happens to know.
I guess I'm not very good at benchmarking as when I try different options...I never see much of a difference in game.
Jg0001's guide suggested setting Triple Buffering to "on" if you've got VSync on. So I tried setting that on.
For "Antialiasing Mode" jg0001 suggested leaving it at the "Let the application decide" but I was wondering what it does if I set it to "Enhance the application setting" and then set the anti-aliasing setting to 16x or higher? Is there much bang for buck there? Will it improve COH much? I can't seem to see much difference but I don't know what I'm looking for either.
What are your thoughts on "Antialiasing Transparency". Is Multisampling or Supersampling worth it? I seem to remember Supersampling being a pretty heavy hit in some games.
How about "Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias". Further down in jg0001's guide I read a suggestion to set it to "Clamp". I tried that...but again...I don't seem to see much of a difference in FPS or quality. You know how it is though...unless you know what to look for....sometimes you just can't see it.
Any suggestions or advice would certainly be appreciated!
Thanks everyone