"Issues with Nvidia Graphics Cards" - Fixed?

[ahmbor]

Because of the pinned thread:

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/103029-issues-with-nvidia-graphics-cards/

 

Still a thing or fixed?

[Adam Brennecke]

Hi everyone,

We are still looking into the Nvidia issue, but we haven't been able to reproduce it on our end with a wide variety of hardware. Today, I ran through some tests on a 1070 and I was getting around 40-50fps in the Neketaka Docks. It's not an ideal framerate, but it's fairly stable while moving the party and camera around. Occasionally the frame rate drops or stutters briefly, but it doesn't seem as frequent or severe as what is reported. Our profiling investigation shows that the game is heavily CPU bound. Most of the frame time is taken up by the ability, AI, and status effect systems. This means that the CPU is the bottleneck and not the GPU.

As a second test, our IT department swapped a 2080 into my rig (nice! ), and I ran through the docks and got similar framerate and performance. This lines up because we are CPU bound. As a side note, lowering the resolution is also a good test to see if the game is GPU or CPU bound. If a lower resolution gives more frames then the GPU is the bottleneck. The 2080 confirms we are CPU bound on the upper end of hardware, and unfortunately, even with the 2080 I'm still unable to reproduce the massive stutter/locks that some are experiencing.

A few things moving forward:

• I would like to continue to look at CPU performance and see if we can get any gains by optimizing some of the above systems (abilities). I have a few ideas in mind that may work, but optimizations to key systems are risky because they can introduce bugs. We will see what we can do, and I'll keep everyone updated on if we made progress in this area. The big problem is that we just have too much stuff. In the city, we can have hundreds of active abilities and status effects, each unique with custom scripting. Many of these need to be updated each frame. It's a problem, and one that can be solved.
• As an ask to the community: can anyone please record a video on the NVidia stuttering or find one that's already been made? It will be immensely helpful to take a look at it. Thank you!
• Also, can anyone supply a new save game with this issue happening? Does this issue happen if you jump straight into a low performance area? (iroll20s on the main menu console. F-11 to jump to a map). 
• There's also a reported performance problem that could be save game or achievement related. I would also be interested in getting save games from people experiencing that issue to see if we can see what's causing the freeze.
• We are aware of the Special K mod and fix. (You can view the thread here on Steam). A few programmers here looked into this last year when it was first reported, and we were unable to do anything on our end because it would require us to modify the Unity source code (which we aren't doing for Deadfire). Another unfortunate circumstance is we are running on a old version of Unity (5.6) and upgrading the engine to get the potential fix would be a significant undertaking. We are well aware this is still a problem, I'm discussing solutions with everyone to see if we can find a resolution.

Hopefully we can tackle some of these issues and make the game as best as it can be.

 

[Phenomenum]

8 hours ago, Adam Brennecke said:

This means that the CPU is the bottleneck and not the GPU.

Strange things. Even i'm not suffering NVidia problem (have Saphire Nitro OC+ 570 RX 8Gb onboard), but my CPU (6 core Rizen 5 2600) is barely used - during exploration it flows around 25-35% load, and around 45-50% during heavily crowded fights, but videocard always works at 100% load. How can 8 core i7 CPU, for example, be a bottleneck?

Edited June 4, 2019 by Phenomenum

[AndreaColombo]

Likewise, I have an i7 4790k and even when framerates drop below 60, my cores are far from 100% used. In the immortal words of Jon Irenicus, there is much untapped power.

[Phenomenum]

1 hour ago, AndreaColombo said:

Likewise, I have an i7 4790k and even when framerates drop below 60, my cores are far from 100% used. In the immortal words of Jon Irenicus, there is much untapped power.

Seems like a game engine (or, more precisely, game's code) can't properly utilize modern CPU's power - and this is a true bottleneck.

No offense, but when I'm reading things like @Adam Brennecke post i feel myself like...

Edited June 4, 2019 by Phenomenum

[AndreaColombo]

Game also suffers from memory leaks that degrade performance over time rather significantly. Would be great if that could be ameliorated.

[Mr Nightmare]

i have huge stuttering problems with the game what can i do to fix it? I already made a question about it but nobody answers me. (sry if my english is not that good ^^) I have a I5-8400 Processor, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 (6GB) Graphic Card and 16GB RAM. 

[Phenomenum]

1 hour ago, Mr Nightmare said:

i have huge stuttering problems with the game what can i do to fix it? I already made a question about it but nobody answers me. (sry if my english is not that good ^^) I have a I5-8400 Processor, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 (6GB) Graphic Card and 16GB RAM. 

Go to the slaughterhouse with your computer - this one no good enough for Deadfire

[Mr Nightmare]

1 hour ago, Phenomenum said:

Go to the slaughterhouse with your computer - this one no good enough for Deadfire

Really? Is there literally no possible way to fix the stuttering? So i basically bought a horrible optimized game, which the developers abonded because they dont care about us and just wanted to take our Money. Oh that sounds just great.... even games like Fallout 76 don't have this kind of technical problems. I'm so mad right now... i was looking everywhere for help and literally nobody cares. Nobody on Steam was able to help me (i dont even get any answers there) and apparently nobody here can help me... what am i supposed to do? I was really enyoying the game but these stuttering problems are ruining the game experience for me its unplayable right now.... I basically just threw my Money down to the toilet... 

[Phenomenum]

7 minutes ago, Mr Nightmare said:

Really? Is there literally no possible way to fix the stuttering? So i basically bought a horrible optimized game, which the developers abonded because they dont care about us and just wanted to take our Money. Oh that sounds just great.... even games like Fallout 76 don't have this kind of technical problems. I'm so mad right now... i was looking everywhere for help and literally nobody cares. Nobody on Steam was able to help me (i dont even get any answers there) and apparently nobody here can help me... what am i supposed to do? I was really enyoying the game but these stuttering problems are ruining the game experience for me its unplayable right now.... I basically just threw my Money down to the toilet... 

Really? You have no sense of humor?

[Mr Nightmare]

1 minute ago, Phenomenum said:

Really? You have no sense of humor?

Dude i'm looking for help, i don't need jokes...

[Phenomenum]

10 minutes ago, Mr Nightmare said:

what am i supposed to do?

Keep calm, drink something or eat something special - it always help.

[Mr Nightmare]

Just now, Phenomenum said:

Keep calm, drink something or eat something special - it always help.

Why are you even responding to my stuff if you can't help me? 

[Adam Brennecke]

8 hours ago, Phenomenum said:

Seems like a game engine (or, more precisely, game's code) can't properly utilize modern CPU's power - and this is a true bottleneck.

No offense, but when I'm reading things like @Adam Brennecke post i feel myself like...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This is correct. All of Unity's scripting is run on a single thread - so we are only using one of the many cores in modern CPUs. In some of the larger areas of the game the vast majority of the frame time is spent running scripting on that thread. Unity has recently added a job system and some more multithreading capabilities - but unfortunately, the version we are using can't take advantage of it.

[Adam Brennecke]

18 minutes ago, Mr Nightmare said:

Really? Is there literally no possible way to fix the stuttering? So i basically bought a horrible optimized game, which the developers abonded because they dont care about us and just wanted to take our Money. Oh that sounds just great.... even games like Fallout 76 don't have this kind of technical problems. I'm so mad right now... i was looking everywhere for help and literally nobody cares. Nobody on Steam was able to help me (i dont even get any answers there) and apparently nobody here can help me... what am i supposed to do? I was really enyoying the game but these stuttering problems are ruining the game experience for me its unplayable right now.... I basically just threw my Money down to the toilet... 



Hey Mr. Nightmare, 

The developers are still looking into fixes for it.  Do you experience the same stuttering if you jump straight into a map? You can do this by typing "iroll20s" in the console and then hitting F-11. From the list of maps, you can go to Fort Deadlight or Neketaka and see how the performance is without loading a save game. Getting a video from you would also be very helpful if you have the ability to capture and upload footage.

Thank you!

[Phenomenum]

1 minute ago, Adam Brennecke said:

This is correct. All of Unity's scripting is run on a single thread - so we are only using one of the many cores in modern CPUs. In some of the larger areas of the game the vast majority of the frame time is spent running scripting on that thread. Unity has recently added a job system and some more multithreading capabilities - but unfortunately, the version we are using can't take advantage of it.

It was obvious, but why you can't write about this earlier?!  Why you messing around with that problem? Why you can't tell your customers: "Yep, we failed in some things"???

You have a lot of fans, a lot of support - and doing some "sneaky" things you loosing a great part of it. Adam, i know you're not a SEO, but you can try to deliver a message to your boss: "Don't **** with Aria your players".

[Mr Nightmare]

1 hour ago, Adam Brennecke said:

Hey Mr. Nightmare, 

The developers are still looking into fixes for it.  Do you experience the same stuttering if you jump straight into a map? You can do this by typing "iroll20s" in the console and then hitting F-11. From the list of maps, you can go to Fort Deadlight or Neketaka and see how the performance is without loading a save game. Getting a video from you would also be very helpful if you have the ability to capture and upload footage.

Thank you!

I experience the stuttering everywhere. When i'm on my ship, on the World Map (not as bad though) when i'm in a city. The Worst so far is on Fort Deadlight at certain places there its unplayable because i get a Monster Stutter every 3 seconds. I can't upload anything because it says "You are only allowed to upload 1,024kb" I have no idea what that means, i can only capture footage with the Nvidia overlay but i can't upload any of it. And i dont even now how thats supposed to help me... 

[AndreaColombo]

You could either upload to YouTube and link it, or send it via email to support@obsidian.net

[Mr Nightmare]

6 minutes ago, AndreaColombo said:

You could either upload to YouTube and link it, or send it via email to support@obsidian.net

ok thank you

[Adam Brennecke]

35 minutes ago, Mr Nightmare said:

ok thank you

YouTube upload preferred. You can also upload video to Steam.

It helps me to see the video of the issue to diagnose what's going on and to make sure we are on the same page with what the problem is. 

I'm still curious if you see the problem with jumping to an area from the main menu. Could you please try this if you have a chance? The problem may not be related to your video card - it might be an issue with your save game.

Thanks so much!

[Mr Nightmare]

Ok guys i uploaded a Video on Youtube i hope you guys can see the stuttering, its only about 30 Seconds long. 

 

[Adam Brennecke]

3 hours ago, Mr Nightmare said:

Ok guys i uploaded a Video on Youtube i hope you guys can see the stuttering, its only about 30 Seconds long. 

 

Awesome! Thank you so much. This helps tremendously.

Can you upload your save files anywhere? By any chance to do you have Discord running? Also if you have time - try doing the debug jump test to a map from the main menu to see if you can reproduce the problem. 

 

[Phenomenum]

@Adam Brennecke this video reminds me something: in our PM chat with @MaxQuest he mentioned that game engine running some "cleaning" every 3 sec., that can cause stutter (i'd rather call it freezes) like this ones, in video. Personally i don't experienced this issue even on Core2Duo 2.4 paired with NVidia 760 (my old computer), but maybe it cause impact on some systems. And a second: i've seen a plenty of topics related to Unity Console - it may cause freezes like in this video every N sec. Don't know if this info can help...

Edited June 6, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Phenomenum]

On 6/4/2019 at 8:21 PM, Mr Nightmare said:

Why are you even responding to my stuff if you can't help me? 

Why not?

[MaxQuest]

23 hours ago, Phenomenum said:

@Adam Brennecke this video reminds me something: in our PM chat with @MaxQuest he mentioned that game engine running some "cleaning" every 3 sec., that can cause stutter (i'd rather call it freezes) like this ones, in video. 

I've seen this mentioned on a couple of forums. And will add a few source links:

- stutter related to garbage collector (usually minor hookups every 3s): https://support.brightrockgames.com/communities/1/topics/850-stuttering-every-10-15s. And additionally: one, two, three, four

- micro stutter related to Unity's VSync: one, two

- general performance issues in Unity: https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/fixing-performance-problems#5c7f8528edbc2a002053b594

- inherent problems with smoothness in general: https://medium.com/@alen.ladavac/the-elusive-frame-timing-168f899aec92 

---

At the moment the main optimizations a user can try, seem to be:

• [Special K] fix by Kaldaien
• disabling VSync in Deadfire (and enabling it Nvidia's Control Panel)
• keeping the amount of saves low (sub 70 I guess)
• keeping the amount of items in inventory low as well (but sell the junk somewhere not in Queens' Berth).

 

And also there is a large collection of performance tweaks (that may, or may not help): here

 

Edited June 7, 2019 by MaxQuest

[pomenitul]

Hi @Adam Brennecke, are you still looking into the (micro-)stuttering?

I have no other idea whether this is of any use to you, but I just wanted to point out that whenever I play Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I experience the same baffling drops, and at the same intervals, more or less: every 45-60 seconds. Tyranny, however, is unaffected. I'm on an i7-7700K/GTX 1070 8gb/SSD.

Edited July 1, 2019 by pomenitul