POOR Performance on High End Rigs? Please Help!

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by TheGurhm, Jan 29, 2015.

  1. TheGurhm

    Hello Community!

    I'm new here to PS2 and am having serious performance issues. My buddies and I were looking for a change from BF4 and Tribes Ascend and found our way here. After booting up the game and putting in around 4 hours we all experienced really poor performance (i.e. strange slow downs, stuttering/hitching, previous frame images flickering on screen and flickering shadows, etc.). The list was significant and we all experienced most of them. We all run high end rigs too...

    After doing some CPU and GPU monitoring in afterburner, we found that the game hardly uses our rigs to their full potential. Going forward I'll just reference my rig and issues (specs below). My GPUs never went over 45% when I ran the game in SLI and when running a single card, it never used over 60%. Similarly, my 'unparked' CPU stayed really low in usage as well with all cores well balanced. This is with the game completely maxed out (every graphic option max with smoothing on) with VSync on and off as well.

    My Rig:
    GTX980 SLI
    i7 4790k
    8GB
    1200p (60hz) monitor

    My FPS stayed above 50 at ALL times with VSync on and with it off it never went below 60. However I am getting significant stuttering/hitching, slow downs in big battles and just overall a clunky gameplay experience. Not sure what the flickering is from previous frames either but that seems to happen quite often.

    I did some homework here and it looks like there's a lot of "tweaks" out there that really only suggest you turn settings down. So I tried that approach (Low shadows, no AO/FOG, etc) which really didn't make the game run much better, plus it seriously takes away from the games beauty when everything is low. It's obvious that the game takes a serious hit when there's a lot of other players around or if you are in a big battle (when having good performance is most important). I can't find any reason my rig would have issues with this game unless I'm missing a weird tweak that could help or it's just a poorly optimized game that needs a lot of love from the devs.

    Is there anything I'm missing here guys? Any suggestions?
    I read that turning the HUD UI off helps, is that true? Can't see not having the minimap available a good idea though...

    Although the performance sucked, the game was fun and I definitely have an interest in putting some time in here. Please let me know, your help is greatly appreciated!!!
  2. NoctD

    Set Shadows and Particles to High, not Ultra.

    Turn off Flora because it adds nothing of value. Turn off Bloom because it blinds you mostly. I'd turn off Smoothing as well given you can go above 60 easily most times. I can't tell you much about SLI, but I hear it doesn't run well with PS2. And I hope you weren't trying to mix Smoothing in game with Vsync on your graphics driver, that's a no no. Turn Smoothing and Vsync off.

    You can set your Render Distance to 6000, shouldn't be an issue.

    The game will never fully use a CPU, but it will still work better the faster your CPU is - you didn't mention if yours is overlocked on not. If no then you definitely want to do this.

    You will still see slowdowns in big fights, and server latency can still be an issue, but those few changes should get you to about as well as the game can run.

    And no - don't expect it to use up the potential of your hardware, its just not efficient enough to do that.
  3. baka

    Unless they changed something, SLI does not help in this game (I just have a 660ti, so can't speak for the GPU elites!). You have a K series CPU, I assume it is overclocked?
    My system is nothing next to yours, and I play (adaptive vsync on) at a steady 59/60 fps with very rare drops lower. Pings are the thing that kills me lately, with POOR to BAD indicators rampant in the evenings.
    Can you set your nVidia Planetside 2 profile to not use SLI?
  4. TheGurhm

    Hi Baka, thanks for the reply!

    I have tried playing on a single card which did not solve the issues. However, I have not tried 'adaptive vsync' only traditional. I'll give that a shot in both SLI and single GPU config tonight and report back.

    I have yet to overclock my CPU (base clock is 4.0ghz) but intend too soon so everything is at stock clocks at the moment.

    Regarding your FPS though...mine never drops below 50 and primarily sits at 59/60 the whole time as well but the in-game experience stutters/hitches.
  5. TheGurhm

    Thanks for the reply as well! I'll take your feedback and Baka's and report back after I troubleshoot them tonight!
  6. sjtw_w_stot

  7. baka

    Keep us in the loop as to what you try -- results are all over the map with regards to performance vs system power. Like I said, with my specs I play steady and (mostly) the only issues are when the meter shows POOR or BAD... that is the point where I just log out. By mostly, I do sometimes get a sudden drop in FPS which clears up fast. I never see anything I could call stuttering.
    I'd love one of your cards or a 970, just so I could jack the renderquality up!
  8. Fuers

    tweak the game in UserOptions.ini in ur Planetside 2 folder this lines:

    [Display]
    RenderQuality=1.410000 or 2.000000 -> u will give more impact on gpu so it should give u boost in fps or at least more stable fps

    [Rendering]
    UseLod0a=1 (default is 0)
    MaximumFPS=60 (set this to 60 as u dont want it to jump up and down -> it slows u.)

    [Sound]
    UseFloat32Output=1 (default is 0)
    SampleRate=44100 (add this line)
    MaxVoices=40 (optional. default is 96, some people claim they get better fps lowering this.)

    [Terrain]
    RenderFlora=Off

    make a backup of ur old useroptions.ini in case u forget how it was before.

    CPU intensive settings: render quality, shadows (turn off or low shadows for fps), render distance ( default i guess as u have a good cpu), lightning quality, effects quality, flora quality, , particle quality.

    GPU intensive settings: graphic quality, texture quality, terrain quality (it might be cpu i am not sure here), model quality

    uncheck everything.

    I am not familiar which settings u can run with that gpu and cpu but remember that some settings can go up to 4 or 5. In game u will see a "tf" thing under graphic settings if u use 4 or 5.

    Google for some high end useroptions.ini and lower it from there to ur best performance. I have mid to low end rig so i dont think my useroptions.ini will boost ur fps.

    Regards!
  9. Fuers

    i am sharing this just so u can see that ultra settings are possible in useroptions.ini AMD X6 1090T @ 3.8 Ghz (OC) / HD 7770. min 30 in really huge fights and 106 in warpagate if i wouldnt set min max fps to 60.

    [Display]
    FullscreenRefresh=0
    Maximized=0
    FullscreenWidth=1920
    FullscreenHeight=1080
    WindowedWidth=1437
    WindowedHeight=978
    RenderQuality=0.930000
    Mode=Fullscreen
    FullscreenMode=Fullscreen

    [Rendering]
    GraphicsQuality=4
    TextureQuality=0
    ShadowQuality=0
    RenderDistance=1163.000000
    Gamma=0.150000
    MaximumFPS=60
    UseLod0a=1
    VSync=0
    OverallQuality=-1
    LightingQuality=5
    FogShadowsEnable=0
    EffectsQuality=1
    TerrainQuality=4
    FloraQuality=4
    ModelQuality=4
    ParticleQuality=0
    ParticleLOD=0
    MotionBlur=1
    AO=0
    GpuPhysics=0
    VerticalFOV=64
    ParticleDistanceScale=0.450000
    BloomEnabled=0
    Smoothing=0
    SmoothingMaxFramerate=60
    SmoothingMinFramerate=20
    UseAspectFOV=0

    [Sound]
    Master=1.000000
    Music=0.520000
    Game=1.000000
    Dialog=1.000000
    UI=1.000000
    UseFloat32Output=1
    ExclusiveMode=0
    HitIndicator=1
    LowAmmoIndicator=1
    VehicleChatter=1
    IdleMusic=1
    UseHighQualityReverb=0
    MaxVoices=96
    SampleRate=44100
    OutputDeviceName=System Default

    [Terrain]
    RenderFlora=Off


    REMEMBER!!!! U CAN RUN ON FAR BETTER SETTINGS :)
  10. Fuers

    Bonus just coz i am kind :>

    [UI]
    TintModeReticuleStyle=1 (default is 0 -> set corsshairs to the color u want)
    TintModeReticuleColor=16737792 ( kind of a gold color )
  11. Jedesis

    I can run Ultra across 3 screens at 80 FPS, but I choose to run Low on one screen, helps a lot in general game play and target acquisition, removes all that visual clutter. And the 220 is a nice bonus.
  12. TheGurhm

    WOW, thanks for all the killer feedback, you all rock! I'll try a bunch of these and report back with my results. Thanks!!!
  13. TheGurhm

    Hi All,

    I spent a bunch of time troubleshooting the poor performance I was getting last weekend by using the suggestions ya'll provided. Not only did I upgrade my monitor from a 24" 1200p to a 30" 1600p monitor last weekend which increased the processing demands of the game, I also got it to run almost silky smooth.

    Firstly though, big thanks to Fuers and Baka for the great suggestions. Really cool to see community members willing to take the time and help. Thanks!!!

    OK, now to the good stuff! Just to recap, I originally put everything in the game at Ultra or as high as it could go (expect Render% which was left at 75% accidentally <---this caused issues BTW). With my rig there's no reason I should have had any issues IMHO. So if you are running a hotrod rig as well please pay attention here.

    Shadows - Changed to High instead of Ultra (no visual difference at all, just better performance. In fact, cured some of the shadow popping I was getting)
    Particles - Changed to High instead of Ultra (no visual difference at all, just better performance)
    Render - Changed to 100% instead of 75% (not sure why this was set at 75% but putting it at 100% improved performance)
    VSync & Smoothing - I enabled both and the game ran much smoother (triple buffering set on in NVCP) *Details on this below

    *I always play with VSync on and I know this should not be the case BUT using VSync and enabling Smoothing actually made the game run much better with no in game lag (beyond the lag VSync already produces). This one is a mystery to me...I tried running every configuration using VSync on/off and Smoothing on/off along with all the settings above (took a couple hours total). For whatever reason, this worked for me in combination with the settings above. With Smoothing off in any other configuration, it stuttered/hitched horribly.

    I tracked my CPU and GPU in afterburner and averaged above 50fps at 1600p with FOV set at 74 and Rendering Distance at 6000. With the Shadows, Particles, Render% changes and VSync/Smoothing enabled, the game ran acceptably smooth. It still hitches/stutters at random moments but infrequently enough that it doesn't ruin the experience and it doesn't increase when in heavy battle.

    Conclusion Time!!!!
    This game is optimized really poorly IMO and has a lot of glitches but with enough time tweaking using the suggestions above, I think most users can get it running good. Particularly if you are running a high end rig and can't figure out why the game won't run well maxed out, these changes could help you. After doing a lot of reading online and finding others with close too or the same rig as mine, it seems this game has issues regardless and the solution is different for everyone. Nevertheless, these changes might help and now I can play the game.

    Thanks!