Greetings, After many tries tweaking the game's configuration through UserOptions.ini I finally got to lower the graphic settings to become as sh-tty as Battlefield 1942, no eye candy, no anything. I ran MSI Afterburner to monitor my gpu temp. and usage, and I came up with the following results: With UserOptions.ini configured to the lowest settings: 40°C 65% GPU Usage 40 FPS in Warpgate / 30 FPS in normal fights (with slight drops) With graphics preset set to High in game: 40°C 60% to 75% GPU Usage 40 FPS in Warpgate / 20 to 25 FPS in NORMAL fights NORMAL FIGHTS! My CPU usage doesn't exactly exceed 28%, according to Task Manager (I don't have any CPU usage monitoring program) As for my system spec: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 650 Ti OC 2GB AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2ghz 4 GB ram I meet the recommended requirements for the game(except for the rams), this is the only game I am having issues with btw.. I would like some explanation because the game is unbearable and unplayable. I am playing with the lowest settings possible and my fps wont go up.
CPU bottleneck. Before you say "but it won't go above 28% usage," let me explain. Planetside 2 is very poorly optimized for multi-core systems. It will do about 85% of its work in one thread. Hence one of your cores will be around 90%+ while the others are at like 10% most of the time. This leaves you severely CPU-bound while your GPU takes a short vacation because there's little to do. The 28% you see is an overall average across all cores. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do about it beyond fiddling with settings and disabling shadows, which I see you've tried. 30fps in fights looks pretty standard to me for a 1090T at stock clocks. There's always the option of overclocking. The 1090T should be able to approach 4.0 with decent cooling, which will help a bit.
I wouldn't really risk clocking my cpu because of a poorly optimized game, hard to say though I really like this game and been waiting a lot to play it but I guess I will get back to my other games as this gets fixed. I might add that, my CPU is not bottleneck
First and foremost please use the alt+F FPS meter in game to determine where your bottleneck is. It will say [CPU] or [GPU] and that is the part causing the bottleneck. As for your GPU , start saving money for a new one that 650 is pretty low on power. It would serve you better as a dedicated physx card. Not that it is the worst card ever but in modern games it just don't have the A**. Things like post processing effects will kill your framerate on pretty much anything below a *60 series nvidia or a *850 series AMD. If you maximum resolution is 1280x720 - 1440x900 what I just said has no bearing on you due to resolution. Unfortunately for all AMD users the CPU is the bottleneck in this case. I feel your pain however, have the same issues at stock, and can tell you straight up, I own a 1100T, that you are not getting nearly the performance you could from that CPU. A bump to the 4ghz range should be pretty easy to do provided you have adequate cooling and your mother boards voltage regulators can handle the power requirements. I draw ~200 watts off the motherboard with my 1100T @ 4.2ghz according to hwinfo64. You are going to want a ASUS ROG board to even attempt to handle that kind of load, my M4A89TD-PRO did good for about 1.5 years like that and finally just started to give up. I keep it stock now and use it for a server. Well once my RMA's get back it will be the server again. With my 1100T at 4.2ghz it scores better then my 3570k did at 4.6ghz in every benchmark I have thrown at it except for PS2. That could all be false and caused by the CPU being bad, won't know until the new one gets here but I digress.
It isn't a graphically intensive game tbh. I know you can turn up the eye candy to make it look good but the main part of the game resides in your CPU. Its about calculating everything and everyone around you. The people you see and the ones you don't. The people flying. The people all around you even though you might not be facing that way you swivel so the game needs to know where those people are behind you. The footsteps, the cannons, rifles, grenades. The way all those projectiles are moving through the air. Stand back every now and then and take a look around you in battle and look at all the mathematics going on. Thats why your CPU is bound.
So one game scrapped out of my collection, it does say [CPU] by the fps counter.. oh well.. by the way, I just purchased the 650 ti, If I had the money to buy a GTX 660 I would have done so, but meh.. P.S.: If my CPU is bottleneck(obviously is), then SoE must remove it from the recommended requirements. cuz that is kinda harsh.
Recommended doesn't mean you'll get 1,230 fps. It means you can play effectively at 30fps which is smooth. It's a "recommended to have at least," not "recommended for the ultimate best performance."
Whoa...I bet that looked like a 1970s cartoon. Wait, some of you weren't even born then and might not get the comparison
Exactly, but you referred that my CPU is a bottleneck, so it should not be recommended for playing, if it wasn't for my GPU the game will never be playable if someone else had my CPU but a lower gpu than mine then he wouldn't even hit 30 fps.
You clearly are confused about the term bottleneck. Allow Wikipedia to explain: A bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources. The term bottleneck is taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width of the conduit of exit—that is, bottleneck. By increasing the width of the bottleneck one can increase the rate at which the water flows out of the neck at different frequencies. Such limiting components of a system are sometimes referred to as bottleneck points. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottleneck) Your CPU being the bottleneck just means that in this case your GPU is the more capable one. Whether you had a GTX650 or dual GTX690s you would still get around 30fps if your CPU cannot send more work for the cards to do. GPU power is in this situation irrelevant as long as it can produce the 30 fps required to keep up with the GPU. Beyond that it's literally sitting around. Having a worse GPU would only matter if the GPU, given infinite CPU power, would not in itself be capable of over 30fps. At that point it would introduce a GPU bottleneck as the GPU is the overall limiting component and would force your 30fps-capable CPU down to its own level of under 30fps.
Fair enough then. On a second thought I really like the concept of the game so I will have to live with it and focus more on team playing ans concentrating on the objective other than lonewolfing and focusing on getting kills, though it is kinda hard to accept the fact that my cpu is causing a 'bottleneck'
sad but true. the game is very CPU intensive and AMD processors aren't the ones they designed this game for. you might as well crank graphics up to high because it still runs poorly on low settings on AMD.
I feel your pain man. But, from experience, you can gain quite a few FPS on the bottom end by overclocking that Thuban. You are going to need good cooling to make it happen though and I would not go above 3.8ghz if you are worried your mobo can't handle the voltage. That said the Thubans need a balance to get a good OC, read a guide. As far as your GPU goes you ideally want to balance your settings so you are not at 100% usage all the time, if you are at 100% you are bottle necking it. Personally I have had bad experience with the all in one liquid coolers so I would say stay away from them.
It's not that the game isn't designed for AMD CPUs, more so that the Intel processors perform better on a single core. I don't care if this game gets optimized for hyperthreading, but it surely should take advantage of at least 2 cores! Your system is pretty decent, and the 650 should be enough to handle the game, but it's just not running right. Just keep yourself enjoying it however you can (smaller fights, dealing with the low FPS), etc. Just so you know, I've got a 3570k OC'd to 4.5 and a 680 and still run into situations where I drop down to 40-50 FPS. Mine is very playable, but prior to pushing my OC further and tweaking the OC settings, I was right there with you. I actually went from a 970 BE to my current set up, in main part due to this game!
see, this is what I don't get. I have a dual core i5-2520M @ 3.2Ghz (dual core with hyperthreading). All 4 threads are at 100% usage. This is in contrast to alot of people. My CPU is being fully utilized, but its still not enough to get good fps in fights. Im glad I can hang around 20 in large fights. Still, if it only uses 1 thread effectivly, why are not only both cores at 100%, but also the 2 other threads?
Quick update: after a few tweaking here and there I got to get rid of the [CPU] text below, but now a [GPU] text appears, does that really mean that my GPU is bottlenecking? I will look more into it and try to get it compensated.
Lol, you are complaining about 25-35 in normal fights on high? I wish that I got that! But, have you tried unparking your CPU cores?
Well, yeah but PS2 was made before multi-cores became a "thing"...wait...what? It wasn't? Everyone and their mother already owned a multi-core pc? Oh...well...egg on their face huh? :/
I had 3 parked cores, I unparked them though.. small increase in fps however. I also tried this: (no difference for me) Set Priority to Realtime Affinity cores to 4 UPDATE: Tested it with the lowest settings possible, hit 60 FPS (I capped it there) when no one is around, gotta test it when during a fight
