Performance woes - 1920x1200 with 9600GT

[Helmut_AUT]

Hi Guys

Has anyone got a good handle on what the true performance bottlenecks for high-resolution graphics in A2 are?

The weird thing is that most of the settings have little to no impact. I get 20 avg. on my 9600GT at 1920x1200, and changing view distance, detail level or textures to low does little to increase that number.

OTOH some scenery will provide 30+, but near objects (Houses, Trees) it's always down to 20.

I can only assume it's the shading/post processing that truly bottlenecks the performance? Keygets shader "fix" at least gives me 5FPS in some situations, which are after all 20% more.

The 9600GT only has 64 shading units - I'm gonna try a "Green edition" (need the low wattage for my weak PSU) 9800GT with 112 SPUs and see if that makes a remarkable difference.

Also, I get the impression that on the larger Warfare maps, my CPU actually starts bottlenecking me (5000+ AMD). Would be cool if there was a good way to benchmark these bottlenecks.

[novatekk]

Hey Helmut,

For me the real bottleneck were the level of object detail and unfortunately the high screen resolution, I assume you really want to hold on to. Because I don't really want to have vehicles that are more than 20meters away to look like bricks, I wanted to keep the object detail on High or above.

Just like you did, I tried every possible combination but found out that turning my resolution to 1280x960 gave me the best results. I know this sounds like a low resolution but this allowed me to put everything on Very High except detail settings which is on High, the viewing distance on 3000m and fillrate on 100% and still get between 40 to 50 frames in dense areas and 60+ in small villages and fields.

Because of the smooth gameplay and high settings I really don't mind the "low resolution" anymore. In fact it looks better than having 1920x1200 with mediocre settings or even a fillrate below 100%. If there is any chance of lowering your resolution I would really recommend it, especially with the card you have now.

EDIT: Okay, I just read in another topic that you have a 27" monitor so I guess the 1280x960 thing is not really going to work out for you, still my advice would be to lower your screen resolution to say 1680x1050 (or something like that) at least to see if that really makes all the difference.

System: Core 2 Duo E6850 3 GHz, XFX 280GTX 1GIG, 4GB RAM (USE 3.5GB), WINDOWS VISTA 32BIT ULTIMATE

[Helmut_AUT]

Thanks for the input. I actually tried some 80% fillrate (which should have pretty much the same effect as a lower 1680x resolution) and the improvements weren't that great, just a few FPS.

I really love high-resolution gaming and anything less than native resolution looks really bad on that screen, so I'd rather turn down details and keep resolution. Maybe when FSAA is enabled, lower res might be an option.

What drives me mad is simple that I can't put a finger on what exactly is the problem in A2. Some situations actually give me +5FPS if I switch to "over the shoulder" which takes out the motion blur, which seems a clear indicator of a shading bottleneck.

In other situations this doesn't help at all.

I'm really curious to see if the increased shader power of the 8800GT will make a difference. Unfortunatly I use a pre-built brand name system with 3-year onsite warranty, generally very convenient but it means my choice of Power supply and thus graphics card is limited.

While the 9600GT and 9800GT are generally very close in performance, and the "green" edition actually runs lower clock speeds, I do wonder if more shaders can help a bit.

[Thr0tt]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73947

Try here it may help.

[novatekk]

Well, for me, 1680x1050 @ 87% fillrate looked and performed far and far worse than 1280x960 @ 100% fillrate.

But like you said, you really love the high resolutions so I guess that is a no-go

I do agree about the fact that with A2 just like in A1, it is really hard to put your finger on the problem. With A1, I had days where everything seemed to run ok and the next day, same settings, all felt sluggish. Let's hope that in the future they will replace the fillrate option with some proper AA, in the mean time good luck with your problem

[Spokesperson]

I don't get a significant difference in FPS when lowering my resolution. So I keep 1920x1200. I have another screen which is 1280x1024 but there's no performance difference at all. 3 FPS better or not even that isn't worth it.

[novatekk]

To Spokesperson: Giving your specs might actually help when discussing something like performance, also, a monitor is not just capable of displaying one resolution.

[Helmut_AUT]

I do agree about the fact that with A2 just like in A1, it is really hard to put your finger on the problem. With A1, I had days where everything seemed to run ok and the next day, same settings, all felt sluggish.

That's the kicker in the end: Even at 30+ FPS the game controls sometimes feel as "sluggish" as on 20. I seriously have no idea if I'm even truly suffering low FPS or just general slow input speed, but it just doesn't "feel" fast enough for my brain.

[Thr0tt]

Reduce everything in game to its lowest settings, keep Resolution to your screen res. reduce Fillrate to 0 (50% min I think), restart the game, it will look terrible but see if its still sluggish ?

[MadDogX]

Sluggish controls are usually caused by VSync+Triple buffering. It's best to force those off in your gfx driver control panel.