I thought I'd create a thread about discussing Performance since it's getting to that stage of the project and I cry tears of joy when I actually get a frame rate as high as or higher than my refresh rate (120Hz).

 

I have the following system

 

Intel Core i7 870 1156 CPU @ 2.93GHz

16GB Corsair DDR3-1600 RAM

ASUS HD7970 DirectCUII 3GB Video card

Windows 7 x64 SP1

1920x1080 @ 120Hz

 

and I get varying frame rates depending on the levels

 

60-90 in the Dyrford Village depending on location of the map

50-60 in the Dracogen Inn Level 1, but 90-100 in Level 2

~100 in small interiors

60-70 in the Dyrford Crossing, Stormwall Gorge and Ogre Cave

20-40 FPS in the Dyrford Ruins (very noticeable stuttering too)

Haven't checked Lle A Rhemen this build but I used to get 50-60 FPS in there too

 

Frame rate usually drops in combat, and when there are many units on the screen.

 

In contrast I get 90-120 FPS in Wasteland 2 and 120+ in Shadowrun Returns.

 

I seem to have frame rate issues in larger maps, and in areas where there are lots of units. When I go through the Dyrford Crossing and kill all of the beetles and wolves ... the frame rate in the area increases by 10-20 FPS when there's no units on the screen. More if I go through and clear the area entirely.

 

I think the frame rate issues I am having are a combination of the game having to render multiple 2D layers of the large maps and also something to do with the 3D units, whether it be on the CPU side having to load their data and run their AI or on the 3D rendering side (which may have not been optimized yet).

 

I participated in the Wasteland 2 beta, and during the earlier builds I only got 30 FPS and it seemed as if the game wasn't using any of my GPU power at all, but rather being very tied to the CPU. After they did a full optimization pass my FPS went up to 90-120 in all maps and the GPU usage when running the game increased.

 

Pillars of Eternity will obviously be different because the maps are 2D, but I thought I'd post about this information anyway since tests are currently being done.

 

I've also tried swapping my NVIDIA GeForce GTX-560 TI and I got a worse frame rate.

 

I thought I'd throw that information out there anyway just in case it's of any use to the programmers. I know there's quite a few others with frame rate issues as well - but the game seems to run fine on newer systems (recent i5s / i7 CPUs).

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by Sensuki

I got a weaker computer than you and I will be happy if my FPS just does not go below 30 fps anywhere at any time.

 

And I think your CPU is too old for modern times, I am not sure how you can expect 120 FPS with that.

 

But I applaud this topic, if they make it better for you, it will work better on my poor i5 750 as well.

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by archangel979

Well Shadowrun Returns is a Unity game that is primarily 2D and has 3D characters, and Wasteland 2 is a fully 3D game (in Unity) so I guess that's why I have the "frame rate entitlement"

 

The interesting thing is, is that people with iMacs and old AMD Athlon64 systems have reported better frame rates than me.

 

I imagine that units in Pillars of Eternity probably have a few Update() methods running at once, which likely slows things down a bit.

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by Sensuki

Note SR:R is also a tablet game, so tehre are limitations from that. But there should be no excuse to have worse framerates than fully 3D Wasteland 2 (which,arguably, had terrible FPS during beta).

I haven't measured the frames but I have waaay better performance in PoE than I did in Wasteland 2 (haven't played the latest patch though), like, no contest there. I get some stuttering in the Dragonfall DC version on certain maps but mostly good.

Dyrford Ruins in PoE is the one that drops down for me as well but it's not too annoying for me but I hope they can boost it. But I'm not very sensitive to that stuff admittedly. Those framerates in the OP would be completely fine by me, except the ones in Dyrford ruins.

Of course, I hope the game will be even more optimized so that more people can play it.

 

This is on 1920x1080 on Wind 7 64-bit

Intel Core i3 CPU 540 @ 3,07 ghz

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450

RAM  8123 Mb

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by Starwars

Just download Bandicam Free version and run that in the background.

Not sure if Eternity supports Hyper Threading.  If it doesn't you can only use one core of the i7 and that could be an issue if the game is setting the processor to handle certain effects.  If it does support hyper threading then.... you got me.  Likely they haven't optimized for AMD.

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by Karkarov

Shadowplay runs 60-90fps for me for most of the game, drops a bit in Lhe a Rhemen.

 

i5 4670k @ 3.4Ghz

 

MSi z87 G43 Mother Board

 

8GB DDR3 Corsair RAM

Nvidia GTX760 2GB

Not sure if Eternity supports Hyper Threading.

Unity doesn't support HyperThreading, so no

HyperThreading isn't a thing that software supports or not, it's a feature of your processor. Software doesn't know or care whether your CPU has hyper threading or not (in general).

Edited February 5, 201510 yr by BrainMuncher

You knew what I meant.

 

Unity games "don't take advantage" of HyperThreading. I can disable it in my BIOS with no effect whatsoever. The Source engine (at least, whatever version of OrangeBox CS:S uses does, and when I disable HT in my BIOS I get a substantial performance hit in CS:S (and other games).

 

Not sure if Eternity supports Hyper Threading.

Unity doesn't support HyperThreading, so no

Well that helps explain it.  Though the game not being well optimized for AMD cards is still very possible.  I am still confused when I see anyone using AMD products.  Intel wins on processors easily and Nvidia is always ahead of the curve on graphics, is far faster on driver updates and features, plus is more supported in general by game devs.

It seems ,well, playable on my lowly Macbook Air with HD4000 graphics, but I'm getting fps in the 20s. I should be getting a new laptop with an Nvdia 9xxM series GPU in it later this year though )

We haven't done any performance optimizations yet. Today, Roby is looking into optimizing factions that might help in larger areas with lots of baddies/people. 

We haven't done any performance optimizations yet. Today, Roby is looking into optimizing factions that might help in larger areas with lots of baddies/people. 

 

Great, I know the graphics are much better than BG/iWD, but the performance is definitely worse on my Intel HD4000 computer, though, as I said, it's still playable  

There are definitely components that characters use that need a CPU optimization pass which is likely the contributing cause to your slowdowns. The ol' Refactor Tractor will be visiting them shortly.

There are definitely components that characters use that need a CPU optimization pass which is likely the contributing cause to your slowdowns. The ol' Refactor Tractor will be visiting them shortly.

 

Great - BTW my computer has a 2Ghz dual-core i7, Intel HD 4000 GPU and 8GB RAM, so it's no powerhouse, but shouldn't be a complete slouch

[...] The ol' Refactor Tractor [...]

 

Haha! I'm gonna start using that expression at work.

When you pause the game, you also gain about 20-25 FPS

 

is it possible that sound, in-level animations or anything could be contributing drops as well ?

Although I suppose it's mostly related to the units themselves, as all of their update loops would be stopped.

The pause FPS gain only happens in combat. When you're not in combat there's no FPS gain when pausing.

The major issue with framerate fluctuation in the game is that screen scrolling speed is tied to it. So you don't just get stuttery visuals, it also affects how quickly you can scroll around.

Why do people even use a monitor with a refresh rate way higher than their computer would be able to manage? The update rate of the monitor should be in the area of FPS that the PC can deliver steadily.

Hi forum troll. I use a 120Hz monitor because I used to play competitive Call of Duty 4 Promod, and in CoD4 we play at either 125 FPS or 250 FPS.

 

In most of the games I play, I can get higher than 120 FPS. I don't play new games very much.

Edited February 12, 201510 yr by Sensuki

Also less smearing and faster response times.