Terrible performance on high end system - is SOE aware?

I haven't seen any posts from SOE addressing performance since OMFG came out. I know that they are still working on it. But I wonder that they know that people are really having problems with it.

My system:

• Intel i7-4930k
• Nvidia GTX 670
• 16GB 1600MHz RAM
• Crucial M500 960GB
• Sea Sonic Platinum Series 520W

I tried a lot of things in order to find out if anything on my system is affecting performance. So far I know:

1. Hyperthreading doesn't affect performance
2. RAM clock doesn't affect it
3. According to the game my graphics card isn't limiting me
4. The number of threads isn't limiting me (obvious) - CPU load is at 25%
5. The programs running in the background have no effect
6. Temperatures are okay
7. There is more than enough bandwidth available

The only thing that affects performance is the clock speed of my CPU. If I overclock it from 3.6GHz to 4.2GHz performance is still bad but not as bad as at stock speeds. This is a hint that the game is poorly optimized.
Here are some numbers I got during Cobalt prime time:

The average FPS are around 70 which would actually be okay. The problem is that there are longer passages where I have 40 or less FPS. I noticed that aiming becomes unrelieable especially in tanks when the FPS are that low.
Another problem which is pretty obvious is stuttering. You will easily see the spikes in this graph. While some of them are due to loading the map, which is okay, some of them happen during normal gameplay. There doesn't seem to be any reasons why it keeps doing that.
I avoided explosions and rocket pods during the benching period. This is simply because the performance during these effects is simply unplayable and this should be a common fact. 20 FPS and lower are not uncommon.
Attached to the post are my settings. Of course I run ultra (what else?). Disabling shadows and lowering particle effects significantly increases FPS. But while it makes the game look like crap it also isn't a perfect solution. Frame drops are still a problem. And during the last server smash even with these settings the average performance was rather bad. 30 FPS sound okay but in this engine it is has a remarkable negative affect on gameplay.
So what is SOE's stance on my described problems. Are you aware and when are we going to see more performance updates?

Code:

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Hey

I found out that shadows use alot of CPU (Bcoz if i enable it then die FPS-Meter shows me [CPU])
I have turned the shadows off. I gain +20 fps when i do that.
ParticleDistanceScale=0.650000 <- Decrease the Value to 0.35 (it shoud give you a few fps and i notice no difference)
RenderDistance=6000 <- Try 500 and increase until you notice an impact on your performance.

You can try my Config if u want.
Oh pls change the Res bcoz i Prefer 4:3

Code:

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EffectsQuality=3
TerrainQuality=2
FloraQuality=0
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Hope i did help you.
Kind Regards
Chris

Nothing new OP. It's been the case that the higher your Ghz the better the game plays for the last year. If you want to play the game smoothly at 1080p with all the pretty things turned on, you need at least 4.2Ghz, even then turning Shadows off is recommended simply because they are disproportionately resource intensive unless you have an insane overclock.

Also, Hyper Threading will most likely never affect PC gaming performance, as it is more useful for data processing like with Adobe.

The things I found to do (because I too play with certain things set to "Ultra") are:

1; Turn Fog shadows to "LOW" or "OFF"
2; Turn Ambient Occlusion to "OFF"
3; Turn smoothing to "OFF" unless you are getting severe FPS yo-yoing, in which case leave it on and turn ground clutter to "MEDIUM"

Sorry, but this is one game engine that's designed to last a few years. There are some features the game can perform with are turned off and not even in the settings menu yet, such as Volumetric Clouds and Partial Lighting Rendering, and as such you're going to need a couple of CPU generations to ramp everything up and not get an FPS dip.

you don't need to turn off shadows, there is almost no visual difference between high and ultra, but performance on high is much better.
Particles yes, difference between high and ultra is the same as low - ultra. But shadows you can use high and have good performance with no visual difference.

So the general consense seems to be that it is simply not possible to run the game on ultra without without FPS issues. That's a bummer.

The suggested changes (except for shadows down to High) seem to have a visible effect on graphics quality. The extreme FPS drops while being rocketed or when a sundy blows up still happen.

It makes sense to say that the CPU generation to run this game doesn't exist yet. But we are probably speaking about alf a decade here before we see anything like that in the upper mainstream segment. Other games also achieve an acceptable grade of performance. Why not Planetside? Why does it need to progress shadows and particles on the CPU? And why are there no performance updates lately?

I cant really agree with the whole engine is made to last argument... sure there are things there that require a lot of hardware power but Volumetric clouds isnt exactly a new thing, those arent even enabled and still the game isnt performing that well.

If we have to wait until Intel and CO brings us that much more powerful CPUs you might want to recruit your children because they are likely the ones who are going to have that kind of hardware in their computers when they grow up.

For a bit of perspective I have a i7 920, its probably 4-5 years old now but its still way up there with the newest shiniest CPUs in terms of power(OCed ofc). Fact is in the last 5 years there has been little to no progress in terms of CPU speed, they add cores and stuff like that but for gaming thats not important so if we are going to wait for that to happen I think we will be sitting on this for a good while longer

I have a pretty old & non-overclocked rig (Core i5-750, 8Gb RAM, GTX 560 Ti 2Gb, HDD) but it could handle the game well at 1080p with most settings on high, flora off, shadows off, smoothing off, vsync on (on a 60Hz screen).

I always switch off shadows in competitive shooters, it makes it easier to spot enemies and the nights are not so dark.

Performance dropped after the notorious death screen patch last month, which also murdered the netcode.

Haven't been able to enjoy the game ever since that day laik if u crai evri taim.

The game ran better a year ago. Its not your pc. The game is just broken.

My mostly 4 year old PC runs this fine on Ultra at 1440p with Shadows, Flora and Particles low or off. I get 60fps most fights apart from large zergs and it drops to about 40fps.

Game is CPU bound, I have played the game on i7 @5Ghz, and the issues are still there, in fact there wasn't any notable difference @4.4GHz may be 1-2 fps at most.

I can play the game on ultra settings but you get horrible FPS spikes , put smoothing "on" gives me a tangible(subjective) latency, its going from 100fps flying, and then you a hit a busy area and your presented with a 20fps slide show. ( I'm running of an SSD),
I can run SLi (which is dis-abled because thats broken as well), G-Sync helps ( you'll never go back one you experienced it

I'm not a programmer, I'm just commenting as an end user, it can't be right that the performance is so variable and poor.


I'm a hardcore PC gamer, I've invested in my PC to give me the best possible experience, I love this game I really do.

Performance has a long way to go....

My guess is you'll want to look at what software and services are running.

Game is hugely demanding, saying that I rarely drop to below 30 these days, when I do its due to some weirdhitching bug and I have a 8350fx.

The only person I know in WASP who gets 60+ fps rain or shine has a 2 Xeon CPU system.

That being said, as I note, if somethings up, its likely not in the hardware but in the software running in the background. Even things like Chrome running in the background can seriously effect performance.

Weekend is over, the sun in the US has risen - so what does SOE say now?

Just an affirmation please.

Shadows off... why would anyone do that? Im very often saved by the shadows the light assaults / aircraft cast, and get to safety, before they bomb me.
The difference in performance between shadows off and shadows on medium are minimal, but you get the shadow "warnings" with shadows on medium, and alot prettier Visuals.

I personally wouldnt ever use lower than medium shadows, but i probably wouldnt use ultra shadows either, as the performance hit for me in huge battles is about 30% with ultra shadows, compared to high shadows.

Also OP, you dont mention if you have your cpu overclocked, but if you dont, then do it, as it will help you ALOT in this game.

Actually the opening post says that I have overclocked my CPU to 4.2GHz, resulting in a still bad performance.

SOE?

Bumping because I'd like to have an official response.

Hehe the official response can be found here
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/quick-note-on-optimization.49152/

oops, Nov 22, 2012 - so that is now 17 months ago..

But yes the official response is probably the same still, they know fps is too low and unstable, but they are working on it. My guess is the 64 bit is in focus these days as they tried to release it again, but then it crashed.

UPDATE:
My system changed a little and OMFG happened in the meantime.

• Dual Channel 16GB 1600MHz RAM -> Quad Channel 32GB 2400MHz RAM
• GTX 670 1006MHz -> GTX 670 1306MHz

During the following benchmark I did look several days for the craziest and most crowded fight and didn't avoid explosions or other effects. So contrary to my opening post this a WORST CASE scenario.



The performance is objectively better. Though it is hard to tell how much each change (GPU, RAM and OMFG) contributed. The drops under 20 are mostly gone. The stuttering is still there but not as noticeable.

This did change to the better. Input lag during low performance segments got significantly reduced.

So overall a lot improved but I still have to reduce shadows and particles in order to stay above 40 in those scenarios.

Id like to see what happens if you turn shadows Down from ultra, to high - shadows wont look as good in the distance, but it will consume ALOT less power on core 1 (aka higher fps).

Also, would it be possible for you to overclock that cpu higher?

Im wondering why you have such awful performance, cause that 670 shouldnt be the issue at 1080p... but im thinking that psu might cause an issue - i know my 4930k consumes over 200 watt (260 watt at peak load), when overclocked to 4,5 ghz, and that 670 will consume about 225 watt when overclocked that much + whatever other stuff you have in that pc.