Now getting >90 FPS at 1080p - info on issue affecting high-end rigs [spoilers]

Astyrrean · Post by **Astyrrean** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 06:18

Possibly.

And as this is the most-viewed thread on these forums, including the stickied ones, I think the devs should take notice

curt428 · Post by **curt428** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 07:16

Am I allowed to bump? This post needs immediate attention from the Devs

ilikefood · Post by **ilikefood** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 07:54

Pimpace wrote:
Astyrrean wrote:
...

My hypothesis is that it is a thread synchronization issue between the (very numerous) ai-controlled ships in Albion and the other threads. That would explain low utilization and low FPS seen...

...

Best,

Astyrrean
Dude, you can easily find this: open X Rebirth with windowed mode, download Process Explorer then put windows on your monitor to see well, right click xrebirth.exe in Process Explorer, then properties, now click on "Threads" tab on Process Explorer. Now you can measure thread loads of all cores of your CPU, so you can see if any of the thread is overloaded. (maybe stuck at 100%) The name of the thread and the hexadecimal number which is the call point could help devs to reveal this issue, if yout theory is right.

Something like this: screenshot
(I'm on a dual monitor, but you can do this easily with one single monitor too)

However, most functions calls point to an Windows external dll, so in this case pointless its name, but if devs get your thread in this forum, maybe we could ask them that programatically name their threads, (I don't know their programming habit, most of the time programmers don't declare a name for working threads in their programs, except debugging purposes) so all users can measure and check your theory and we'll see what thread causes the problem, so they can investigate it.

Hope this helps.

ps.: for taking screenshot in Windows, no need any external program. Just hit ctrl-PrintScrn button. (not just PrintScrn) Then you can paste this SS to any paint program to crop/cut/anything, then save.

If this could help I think alot of people are willing to do it, or if there is anything similar that requiers a mass small effort from the players.

Brachra · Post by **Brachra** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 09:29

So, i took the screenshot

Heres what confuses me..

I took over 10 of these, INGAME...

all it shows is a loading bar (even though im actually playing.. and was flying around "Azure Barrier" whilst taking them..

http://i.imgur.com/NZMcsTa.png

gibre · Post by **gibre** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 09:37

Hello, guys, I'm having some performance issues too and I don't know if it comes from my graphic card (GTX 560 Ti) or from elsewhere. I'd like to measure the performances like you, but I have one stupid question :

What is this soft you use to get all those informations on your screen ?

Thank you ^^.

Rockstar · Post by **Rockstar** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 11:13

bump again until a dev addresses they seen this, or a sticky from a mod...

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 11:22

Yes, we've seen it, and yes we're aware. No need to keep bumping.

Gupster · Post by **Gupster** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 13:01

I don't know if it is relevant, but since playing from the day of release i have found that if i start a campaign game my FPS is much lower and varies wildly
from about 10 FPS suddenly back to about 30/40 FPS, it is never constant.

I tried starting a free play game to see if there was any difference and it was silky smooth running constantly at between 40/50 FPS in the starting area and that was with everything maxed out apart from SSAO off and shadows off. I then did a save and left the game and switched offf my PC. Then i started the game again and loaded my free play game and it was instantly choppy in the starting area but no settings had been changed.

On my campaign game once i got to devries the game performed a LOT better and if i then went back to the starting system my FPS went back down again.

I would add that i had ingame AA off but in my Nvidea control panel i turned on FXAA.

Playing the campaign i have had about 7 serious errors and the corresponding dumps files but i did not know that they had occured until i stopped the game and went back to my desktop so they had occured whilst still in game and they did not stop the game running.

I would post the dump files on this forum but i dont know where or how i copy and paste it here.

My system is an intel core i5 Lynfield @ 2.67 GHZ, Nvidea GTX 570 GPU, 8 GB onboard ram/ Intel SSD.

I think when the game runs at proper FPS its stunning and very enjoyable, if there is anything you want me to post here like DMP files DX diag etc and you can tell me how to do this then please let me know, i really think this game is superb, maybe the npcs and staions need some graphic improvment but space looks amazing.

kayahr · Post by **kayahr** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 13:56

Gupster wrote:I don't know if it is relevant, but since playing from the day of release i have found that if i start a campaign game my FPS is much lower and varies wildly
from about 10 FPS suddenly back to about 30/40 FPS, it is never constant.
I tried starting a free play game to see if there was any difference and it was silky smooth running constantly at between 40/50 FPS in the starting area and that was with everything maxed out apart from SSAO off and shadows off. I then did a save and left the game and switched offf my PC. Then i started the game again and loaded my free play game and it was instantly choppy in the starting area but no settings had been changed.

Same here. I simply don't understand the general rule when the game is slow and when it is fast (Ok, it is NEVER fast, but it sometimes runs with acceptable performance). It looks pretty much random. I guess that's why so many "I FIXED THE PERFORMANCE ISSUE" threads can be found here with lots of "DOESN'T WORK" replies. It doesn't matter what you change, it is most likely not the reason for the performance increase and the increase may even be temporary and will be gone the next time you reload, reboot, dock, change sector, whatever.

Yesterday I was flying around some stations to identify all the parts of it and it was pretty much unplayable. So I gave up but tried again a few hours later. And suddenly the performance was ok (Stable 30 FPS). I changed nothing and it was the same sector and the same stations I was flying around.

The same happens when I change something to improve the performance. When I finally think I found something that helps then I undo the change and try again and suddenly the performance is ok even without the change. But on next try it can be slow again.

There is nothing unusual running in the background, my Windows machine is a pure gaming PC, it doesn't even have a virus scanner.

This is an endless fight, Performance seems to be pure luck. . I guess the only way to get good performance is buying X-Rebirth-certified hardware directly from Egosoft

cosmo666 · Post by **cosmo666** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 14:10

dunno if this info would help...
my game behaves poorly after loading, but after 20-30 seconds of flying around, it becomes smooth. this happens both in space and in stations, so very different things needed to render. i didn't notice it getting worse after the initial low fps. somehow, i'm suspecting ram...

WitchZero · Post by **WitchZero** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 14:52

Res - 1080
CPU I7 (x58)
GPU GTX660

I have the same problem with maybe some information that may or may not help.

When I started the game everything ran fine all night. I played for around 4 hours.

The next day when I loaded up the game the initial Egosoft splash screen came up and the Audio was crackling. When I continued the game where I left off (at a station) my FPS was very choppy and the game and menus ran very slowly.

After updating all of my various drivers and re-installing the same result. So on a whim I decided to move my save folder out of documents, turn off Steam cloud, and restart the game "fresh".

It ran great in again. I played again for a couple hours. Saved it, exited, restarted and the Audo Crackling on the Splash screen was back.

Post by **CBJ** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 15:15

The audio crackling on the load screen is something we are aware of. As per the Known Issues in the Q&A thread at the top of the forum, you can work around this by playing in windowed mode or turning off VSync. Does turning off VSync affect performance for you in other situations? Note that if you've overridden the in-game settings in the driver settings, you may have to reset the value there.

kayahr · Post by **kayahr** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 16:47

cosmo666 wrote:my game behaves poorly after loading, but after 20-30 seconds of flying around, it becomes smooth.

Yes, this happens here, too. Sometimes. But it also happens the other way around. Game is smooth (As smooth as 30 FPS can be) at the beginning and then suddenly gets choppy with 15 FPS or lower. It all feels pretty random.

To be honest it feels like the performance problems of The Sims 3 (Not that I want to compare these two games in any way (Well, actually the characters in Sims 3 are MUCH MORE beautiful than in XR

). The Sims can get choppy when characters are stuck somewhere because of pathing issues. Maybe the same happens in XR with ship pathing. Maybe some algorithm needs a SIGNIFICANTLY amount of time to solve a specific situation and that's when the game gets slow.

I have seen some "balls of ships" so far in the albion sector where the ships were constantly colliding with other ships (They were not bumping into each other, they were IN each other) and all of them randomly rotating around random axis to solve the collision or whatever. Maybe that's related to the performance problem. And maybe the thread who is responsible to handle this situation has sometimes to wait for one of the other threads (Rendering?) and then you have the situation that the CPU is not running with 100% while the game is slow as hell. And maybe the rendering thread has sometimes to wait for the other thread which then explains the low FPS while the video card is idle. Some guy here in the forum already explained how all this could be a thread synchronization problem. For me it sounds like the best theory so far.

cosmo666 · Post by **cosmo666** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 17:19

btw, is there an in game FPS counter? and if yes, how do you activate it?

Astyrrean · Post by **Astyrrean** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 17:21

kayahr wrote:Some guy here in the forum already explained how all this could be a thread synchronization problem. For me it sounds like the best theory so far.

Low performance (throughput) with low resource utilization is generally an indicator of a thread synchronization bottleneck.

That's just a hypothesis though, and not an easy one to test - you need specialized profiling tools to gather hard data on it, otherwise it's coding trial-and-error.

Hence the recommendation to add a toggle or console command to limit instancing of objects relying on pathing (especially in Albion, where they are most prevalent).

PS
On a side note - all my ships have disappeared (container ship, destroyer, energy cell ship). No log as to what happened to them. No message on any event associated with them... anyone has ideas? Maybe time to restart campaign...

Astyrrean · Post by **Astyrrean** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 20:54

gibre wrote:Hello, guys, I'm having some performance issues too and I don't know if it comes from my graphic card (GTX 560 Ti) or from elsewhere. I'd like to measure the performances like you, but I have one stupid question :

What is this soft you use to get all those informations on your screen ?

Thank you ^^.

I use PrecisionX from EVGA. MSI afterburner should do the same. If you have access to neither, get the RivaTuner Statistics Server which is what both of the above are based on.

curt428 · Post by **curt428** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 01:12

CBJ wrote:Yes, we've seen it, and yes we're aware. No need to keep bumping.

Ok... plan on doing anything about it? I haven't heard much of anything about actually addressing this issue... which is hard to understand as this is THE issue.

Harmar · Post by **Harmar** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 01:17

I have noticed a simaler thing, after loading into the area I have to leave the system completely then come back

First loading into game ~5fps
After leaving area then returning after highway ~30 fps

Mastercyclone3D · Post by **Mastercyclone3D** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 01:29

I get poor fps on this game. 15 to 24 fps with sync on or off.

AMD 965 3.4 GHZ
8 GB of corsair
Foxconn Destroyer 780A
Nvidia 480 GTX
SLI turn on with another 480 GTX get 3 fps more.
on 1680 x 1050.
I can't play on 1920 x 1080 for 1 or 2 min

Some people get better improvement by going to nvidia profile by going to power management mode to maximum performance. And turning on FXAA and Transparency.
But me I don't no matter what setting I do. Even turning everything to the lowest on the game setting. But I do notice get even bad fps at x8 mode or better on AA in the game setting.

Mastercyclone3D · Post by **Mastercyclone3D** » Tue, 19. Nov 13, 01:55

Oh yea I forgot about my little setting if I want to keep playing all day long

I have to go to ctrl + alt+ del and go to the task manager and set this game xrebirth.exe to set pirioity to high

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Now getting >90 FPS at 1080p - info on issue affecting high-end rigs [spoilers]

Re: Now getting >90 FPS at 1080p - info on issue affecting high-end rigs [spoilers]