[BUG] Why am I not getting more fps?

Hi everyone!

I recently bought the Gigabyte 5700 xt Gaming OC in the hopes that I would get much better FPS compared to my previous R9 380. I have noticed a small difference, but nothing compared to what i expected.

I have watched my CPU and GPU usage while ingame on my second screen and i have seen that my CPU never goes above 40% utilization and my GPU never goes above 25% utilization. (I have the Ryzen 5 2600 CPU(as you can see in the screenshots, all cores are being used at the same time))

I have messed with graphics settings, getting pitiful FPS at maxed settings, and respectable fps at potato settings.

I am getting 60FPS in massive fights, with my CPU and GPU still not being utilized properly. I was looking for 144FPS (to match my monitor's refresh rate) before ramping up quality settings because I value performance over quality.

I like to think I know a decent amount about computers, but I'm honestly stumped as to why this is happening. Could someone please advise me on what might be going on here? I'd like to get the most out of my system.

Thank you all for reading!

(These screenshots are taken after about 10 mins ingame, before the hardware has had a chance to heat up)

More about your FPS...

Is it 60fps like constant 60, 60, 60, 60 as if it's artificially capped?

Or you talking wild variations with 60 as an average?

Play with two variables for four total permutations.
Variable 1 = player load (lots of network packets, cpu stuff)
Variable 2 = graphics load (lots of **** on screen special effects and whatnot).

Find an isolated area on the map. Preferably an off continent. Go somewhere deep in friendly territory with zero pop. That should put variable 1 in check.

Now stand outdoors with lots of polygons visible. What is FPS?
Now go indoors, somewhere without direct LoS to larger areas. Stand in a corner, face wall. What is FPS?

Now go do the same thing in a 96+ fight (flip Variable 1)

The experiments should give you a better idea about CPU vs GPU bottlenecks.

A few random things to also check:
--Set render quality at 99%, just one nudge down from 100. Some report 30fps gain from that.
--Version/Date on your NIC drivers. Everyone overlooks this. Planetside is highly network dependant with all the clientside processing it does. Old NIC drivers can be a source of slowness or lack multicore optimizations.
--Be sure smoothing is not on in graphics settings.

Post your UserOptions.ini sections [Display] and [Rendering] here

Might be a CPU problem - 3.4 GHz is low. PS2 only really uses one core despite showing differently in the task manager.
If Ryzen has a turbo mode, activate it.

You can press Alt+F in game, the FPS counter shows if it's a CPU or GPU bottleneck.

Also, as has been said above, disable smoothing and vsync.

and Shadows, get those shadows OFF!

Yep - afraid that PS2 just isn't great at using multiple cores, the multi-core update years ago helped but above about 4 you'll see very little improvement. The 6 core / 12 thread 2600 will beast anything that can fully utilise those threads - PS2 isn't one of those.

PS2 loves clock speed and instructions-per-clock above all else, both of which are somewhat lacking on the 2600. However the 2600 can be overclocked (assuming a good cooler) - and this is something worth checking out.

So yeah, first off, I'll state that AMD is band, go with intel for CPU and NVIDIA for GPU next time.

That said, reading the specs, the parts you have aren't complete garbage and should provide a decent gaming experience, especially for a game such as Planetside 2.

CPU
-Cores don't matter in this game, Planetside 2 relies on a single core for most of its processing. Clock speed is therefore more important than number of cores.
-That said, 3.4 ghz isn't all that bad, and you shouldn't encounter drastic CPU related drops except in large fights.

GPU
-Since the DX11 update, this is probably the most important piece of hardware the game relies on
-Although the game had a partnership with NVIDIA, it should still be compatible with your amd gpu
-Crank up the settings, planetside 2 is a weird game, some people report fps boost with higher settings
-144fps is quite a high expectation, especially in large fights, what would you say is your average frame rate
-Perhaps try contacting DBG customer service, maybe they can tell you if your hardware isn't compatible idk

Keep in mind the game is online based. You need to have a strong connection (use ethernet over wi-fi) and see if there's any servers near you that offer better ping.
In large fights servers deal with more packets and there's a bug which causes it to randomly lose packets in large fights. Try your frame rate in different situations by checking ping and server lat each time, see if the cause of fps drops could be due to poor connection.

I'd say if you ever upgrade, go for NVIDIA and Intel, they're way more reliable than amd and offer better performance usually. Everyone I know uses intel and NVIDIA, they have no significant fps problems. (200+ in no fights, drops to 100 or 130 in large fights) keep in mind I'm talking with and i7 9th gen and rtx 2080 ti

Good luck anyways

Hi I know it's late, and you probably got your answer but in case you still didn't figure it out: It's your clockspeed.

The moves to 64bit, DX11 and new servers have done a LOT for performance but PS2 remains a GHz hungry game. Your processor is a productivity processor not a fast GHz, IDK if you bought it for gaming or use the pc for other things too but most games, and esp older games, still prefer clock speed to cores.

You might wanna try overclocking, and possibly disabling hyperthreading only having your cores running to get as high a clock and low temp as possible (at least on Intel, idk how you manage these things on AMD). Ideally you shoulda had close to another GHz running PS2 on that card.

I am running an 5700XT myself on a i7 9700k - I got that processor specifically for the gaming perf (barely slower than 9900k) but much cheaper, add to that most of the games I play 8 cores is plenty. And running the processor at max turbo (I did overclock but no need) I find myself constantly CPU bound but I manage to stay over 60 almost regardless of anything now with ulta settings and ultra shadows @1440p I peak at about 220 unless staring at the sky, stay over 100 in most fights but in super high effect and pop areas like wg party with flareguns etc after a lock I might even briefly dip under 60. It's just the engine.

Actually, at least for PS2, your screenshots are a telltale. low GPU AND low CPU is almost always a sign of CPU-bottleneck and more specifically clock speed. This game can easily get your GPU to 100% and if you don't get there it's the CPU slowing it down.

In low/med pop I will have about 100% util on both CPU and GPU, and when the CPU can't do it you will see it staying high and GPU starting to throttle down.

So in short OVERCLOCK your CPU as much as you dare. Your GPU is fine. Don't bother with the threads if you can disable them do so if all you do is game... There is no need - at least not in PS2.

Finally: As for the go NVIDIA the guy over me posted, it's not true. The 5700XT outperforms a 2070 SUPER almost in any gaming scenario and at a much lower price point. Right now it looks like the 6k series AMD cards might actually be on par with the NVIDIA 3000-series and if that is the case then great. Till then if you wan't something faster than the 5700 you have to go NVIDIA. Driver issues for AMD has not been a thing for me but they are usually a bit meh there. Add to that the new Ryzen processors (5) will supposedly match Intel in single core performance even at lower clock because of more instructions per tick. Never buy platform religion, be pragmatic and buy whats right for you when you need it. I wanted an AMD processor so bad but I got a sick deal on the 9700k and it's a faster gaming CPU than the 3900x I wanted.

Best of luck.

Absolutely correct.
The same resume and some workaround are here https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/massive-frame-drops.254148/

May seem counter intuitive but try disabling hyperthreading. Your usage on your virtual CPUs seems too high. If disabling doesn't make an immediate and obvious difference, flip it back on again though.

Also: Servers are acting like *** right now. Not so much a framerate thing as a hitching thing.

Some motherboards reset CPU overclocking to stock if hyperthreading is off. This is my case.

Possible reasons:
- your CPU is durable, but it has lower NPC than Intel and much lower clock speed. Which is crucial for this game.
- 5700xt means not much for your problem, it has even more GPU power than this game is asking for.
- try to overclock your CPU, RAM and disable SMT thing, there are many cases when SMT had negative impact on FPS in certain games.

My story was near the same. I went for 2060s after my 1066 and this didn't help much in a tightest fights i.e. Ti Alloys on 3 sides. My fps in critical situations raised from 45+ to 55+ and that's all. Ofc, when out of battle, new GPU helped me to achieve more FPS, like stable 100+, but in screwed fights i still got some drops. My CPU is 6700@4500, 2800 RAM

I got a little bit higher FPS by lowering the number of audio channels from 90 to 50. And I manually set priority of processes PlanetSide2_x64.exe and PlanetSide2_x64_BE.exe to "above normal".
I have ~67..80 in 96v96 fights.
Xeon1660v2 (6/12 cores), 4.1 Ghz, 32 Gb Ram, GTX 1060

how you did it, please?

Hi everyone!

I made this thread ages ago and i was surprised to find it at the front page again. I've had my problem fixed for months now. I recently upgraded to a R5 3600, which, with a few extra tweaks involving changing render distance driver updates and some light overclocking, has allowed me to get a solid 90+fps in the biggest fights, as well as 144+ fps in mid sized fights with quite high graphics.

Thank you all for your suggestions and tips. I especially enjoyed the one letting me know that AMD is bad. That gave me a good laugh.

In all seriousness. Those of you who informed me that my GPU was not the bottleneck were right. My CPU was what was holding me back. The upgrade, as well as some experience learned since my first post, has got me back on track and planetsiding at peak efficiency. Thank you all.

In game Audio menu set the number of audio channels.
And read the WHOLE thread https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/massive-frame-drops.254148/
and
"by lowering the number of audio channels from 90 to 50. And I manually set priority of processes PlanetSide2_x64.exe and PlanetSide2_x64_BE.exe to "above normal"" :
command lines
wmic process where name="PlanetSide2_x64.exe" CALL setpriority "above normal"
wmic process where name="PlanetSide2_x64_BE.exe" CALL setpriority "above normal"


By the way. If I set the graphics settings to Ultra I still get about 58-67 fps in 96+ fights no matter what resolution I have (2k or 720p). And some CPU cores still do nothing, overal CPU load is no higher than 50%. In low pop bases or at warpgate ALL if my CPU cores are loaded 58..70% giving 144+ fps.
I think it is the engine feature. Or network. Or Windows7

It's not like AMD or Intel bad, it's just the fact that 1xxx & 2xxx Ryzen generations are slower on IPC than current (Sky)lake cores
Ryzen 3xxx reached as close IPC as possible, so that is why you see the boost. I'm wondering how much boost would 5600 do in this game!

WHy is the thing 3-4 years ago i can run gsync with fps cappedd at 141 smoothingmaxframerate but now i have 100 fps capped in empty base and i have more fps on 24-48 battles (130-140) ? this thing is for years now !

Yeah, it's a thing, go hunt on reddit for a few tips that will regain you some fps.

I've gone from a level 144 in Oct. Now capped to 122 yet it is still bouncing down to 60fps....

Don't worry though, we're getting a new Sundy!

https://sailchip.cc/planetside-2-settings/

I went back to comp.ini and although I hate the look it got me back to 144 stable :/

Try mild, it seemed stable at these low pop hours but I hate the look of it.... Good luck.