Weird framedrops after upgrading 7970 > GTX970?

I swapped my 7970 for an Asus STRIX GeForce GTX 970 a couple of days ago. Planetside 2 actually ran pretty excellent on the 7970, so that's why I'm creating this thread; since I've started using the 970, I'm having random drops in frame rate, which are quite noticeable and very annoying. These frame drops weren't there when I still used my 7970.

Since the drops are so random, it's very hard for me to figure out what the problem could be. For example, I can sit in a turret just watching the ground with no other people around, and I can see a drop of about 3 FPS every 20-30 seconds when there's literally nothing happening on screen. Sometimes at random moments the drop can even be bigger, from 60 (capped/vsync) to maybe 40 for a fraction of a second while running around.

I've got all my settings turned up to the maximum, except for shadows (medium) and particles (high), which are the exact same settings I've been using for a very long time, and didn't cause problems with my 7970. I've also been looking into disabling/enabling vsync, smoothing, capping the FPS manually and combinations of all those settings, but to no avail. I'm using the latest nVidia drivers.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? If so, maybe it could be an issue with the driver itself, if not, what else could it be? Could it be something within the global 3D settings of the nVidia control panel?

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ttings-for-ps2-as-well-as-other-games.171010/

I wrote a guide for that. Since you have a 970 put ambient occlusion on quality. Everything on ultra.

Make sure smoothing and vsync are both off in game. Have it on in two places or use normal vsync and youll get stutter. Make sure you have it on adaptive in the driver.

Thanks for the tips! Turning of smoothing and vsync in-game, and activating adaptive vsync in the nVidia has cleared most of the "big" drops (60 to 40 FPS). There's still a random very noticeable hitch with a relative big drop in frames at big intervals, but that happens way less than before.

I'm also noticing the in-game FPS counter sometimes going above 60 FPS (even though I hardcapped it in the UserOptions.ini at 60), but I guess that's down to the adaptive vsync or something.

Next to that, I still see the frame rate drop about 3 or 4 frames in situations where it didn't when using the 7970, for example in the warpgate with low population. Quite odd.

Mkay, after playing with the Nvidia Control Panel settings some more - and deleting the UserOptions.ini, letting the game generate a fresh one - here's where I am at the moment:

- I've kept all in-game graphical settings the same as they've been when I used my 7970. I have only disabled the in-game vsync and smoothing since getting the 970;
- I've turned off "Shader Cache" in the PS2 application settings of Nvidia Control Panel, which I think has terminated the "random hitching even while doing nothing";
- I've enabled regular (not adaptive) vsync within those application settings as well, because it seems to be the smoothest experience for some reason, as far as I can tell;
- I've set the "Power Management Mode" within the global 3D settings of the Nvidia Control Panel to "Prefer Maximum Performance", just to be sure the GPU is not hindered by some power saving feature.

Now there's one major thing that has become clear to me after playing the game today while paying extra attention to performance:

when looking at medium (48-96) to heavily (96+) populated spawnrooms/areas, my frame rate drops dramatically from 60 to sometimes even 40-35, depending on how many friendlies/enemies are around. If I look the opposite way of the populated area, I get a steady 60 FPS. Once the majority of players has left the spawnroom/area, I can look at the spawnroom again with 60 FPS. That situation is really odd, because it most certainly wasn't like this with my previous GPU.

I'm really baffled by all of this, because my GTX 970 should be way more powerful than my older 7970, right?

Hmm, it could be an issue with throttling/high clock/power management of the card and/or driver, seeing the threads about frame drops on the Nvidia forums:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...ack-gathering-low-gpu-load-and-other-issues-/
https://forums.geforce.com/default/.../300mhz-underclock-to-stop-voltage-throttle-/
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/803068/geforce-900-series/gtx970-low-fps-issues-/

As suggested in those threads, I'll be underclocking the card 300 Mhz (yes, 300...) to see if it helps in Planetside 2.

Meh, seems to be a somewhat better performance overall, but FPS is still dropping below 40 during big fights when looking in the direction of where most of the players are.

Dont hard cap it in the .ini at your refresh rate. Cap it in the .ini at 120. See if that totally fixes it.

Regular Vsync will cause drops to 30fps any time you drop below 60. Id try adaptive with the .ini set to 120, and rather than underclocking, set your power target to 90%.

Any hitching with those settings will lilely be on their end as a result of server side lag or network lag.

Just tested it, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, although the random hitching/freezing (3 to 4 frame drop) seems to have gone. But the performance even on medium-sized battles is quite bad. For testing purposes of the above, I was in a 24-48 vs. 24-48 Biolab fight on Amerish. FPS dropped to the higher 40's, sometimes lower, as seen in this screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/pukxnZC.jpg

Here I'm at about 49-50, with both friendly and enemy players being funneled into one of the pad entrances of the Biolab. Again, this was a 24-48 vs. 24-48 fight, so a 100 player battle at the very most. The FPS jumps around between 60 and 40 in a matter of seconds the whole time. When I had the 7970, this never used to be a problem.

To explain the numbers at the top left that MSI Afterburner gives me in this screenshot: the first number is the percentage of power used by my GPU. The second number obviously is the temperature, and the third number is the percentage of GPU usage. As you can see, it's not working very hard for some reason.

Well im kinda confused why thats happening now too.

However, the in game fps meter does say CPU limited, and dropping to the 40s or lower is pretty normal for huge biolab fights because the game requires single thread performance that doesnt exist in any CPU.

It never dropped that low in bio labs before?

Well... join the club.

The in-game fps meter has always been saying CPU limited, ever since I started playing PS2. No change when compared to my old GPU in that regard. The only time it says GPU limited, is when I'm completely alone inside a building or something. It did that to with my 7970. So no changes there. The only difference is the perfomance fps-wise.

And no, it has never dropped like this in biolabs with my 7970. Not even in huge Biolab battles, while the example above doesn't even come close to a "huge battle".

Any other games do this?

Not to the degree of how PS2 is running at the moment, no.

I've been playing Far Cry 4 for a couple of hours because it came with the card for free, but that game seems to be running quite well; I've got all settings maxed out, except voor AA (set it to SMAA, instead of MSAA2/4/8 or TXAA2/4). This gives me 60 fps most of the time, with slight drops to maybe 55 every so often. But that could also be down to optimization, because hey, it's a Ubisoft game...

I've also tested out Battlefield 4 multiplayer, even though I actually never play it, and it runs at 60 fps most of the time as well. Some slight drops of maybe 1 or 2 frames, but other than that it's running very well.

Dragon Age: Inquisiton is also running not too badly with the right settings (not maxed out). Otherwise this game is a mess optimization/performance-wise, but I think that's well known by now.

Other games I've tested for a bit since I got the 970:

- Borderlands 2: maxed out + PhysX, no problems.
- Chivalry: Medieval Warfare: maxed out, no problems.
- Mount & Blade: Warband multiplayer - Napoleonic Wars mod: maxed out, only drops about 15 frames (from 60) when there are a lot of bodies/rag dolls around, but I think that's a game/engine-specific problem.
- Assetto Corsa: high settings (not maxed out), runs well. But again, there are some known optimization issues with this one.
- Primal Carnage: Extinction: maxed out, no problems.

What i find odd is that it seems to be lower fps but CPU limited after changing GPUs. A 970 is much more powerful than a 7970 ao it wasnt a downgrade.

You should check to see if anything unusual is using system resources.

Do you have srcurity software thats doing something weird since you installed the nvidia drivers?

Might want to read this even if its not malware related. The link to process explorer is in theree too, which has much more detailed information than task manager.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...-malware-removal-and-mitigation-guide.193468/

Wow, I think I've got the solution.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4992286#post4992286

Following the instructions posted there, I completely removed the Nvidia driver and the GeForce Experience program (and all traces of AMD drivers, while I was at it). Then I reinstalled the latest official driver (347.09) without installing GeForce Experience.

PS2 now runs buttery smooth! I have not yet been able to test this extensively, but right from the start it was clear to me everything was running much more smoothly. I didn't play for very long, but I participated in a couple of the biggest battles I could find at that moment (48-96 vs. 48-96 and 48-96 vs. 96+) and my fps never dropped below 55.

In a thread on the official GeForce forums - created specifically due to the performance issues with the new 900 series - reactions are positive as well: https://forums.geforce.com/default/...gathering-low-gpu-load-and-other-issues-/107/

I also tested Far Cry 4, and for some reason, while it ran quite well already, that also seemed to be running much more smoothly. But the most important bit of this all, is that I've seen my 970 using all of its power when being put to the test, instead of hovering around 70-75% tops. At least, that's what I got when testing Far Cry 4; I haven't checked PS2 yet, but I will once I have time to play a bit longer.

There's one thing I'd like to note, though: within the short amount of time of me testing out the fresh driver installation, I did notice some random hitching, but I think that's down to PS2 itself, as multiple threads have been created about that after the latest PS2 patches. So I'm not too worried about those.


TL;DR --> If you recently started to have performance issues with an Nvidia GPU, reinstall the driver and get rid of GeForce Experience. It's worth a try, at least! I hope this will help others with similar problems.

Yeah Geforce Experience is garbage. I didnt even remember to tell you to get rid of it and all its "optimizations" lol. Good call.

how do u enable physX my graphics card is nvidia gtx750 ti
i tried every possible way HELP PLZ!!!

PhysX has been disabled for PS2 by the developers.

Ok, never mind my post earlier. I'm still getting massive fps drops...

Sigh.

If its just PS2 i wouldnt worry about it. From its power virus menus to its inexplicable stutter and hitching on supercomputers its just a bad engine.

Yeah, it's weird, man. I was just playing Dragon Age:Inquisition, and it runs perfectly now without GeForce Experience installed. I've got everything maxed out, except for the mesh quality (medium) and MSAA at 2 (max is MSAA4). Full-on 60 fps all the time.

I've also noticed that when I'm using adaptive vsync forced through the Nvidia driver (with max. pre-rendered frames on "1"), my games are running very well. Using the built-in vsync of most games gives me stutters or hitching.