Priority #1: Improving performance...

santaranger · Post by **santaranger** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 14:20

BigBANGtheory wrote:Look how the CPU threads shift from kernel-mode and good performance in Open Space but then disappears when you cross into a Zone and take a 50% or more performance hit.

I don't clearly see your point with the picture. The difference in kernel time most likely relates to less fps (and thus less kernel mode graphics processing). The cause for this behavior could be XR simulation threads influencing CPU usage.
However, you also need to monitor GPU load at the same time. The overall drop in CPU usage in your picture (not only kernel time) can also result from the GPU bottlenecking, though it seems unlikely on the given card.

Sace · Post by **Sace** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 15:58

jl1aisbett wrote: My current performance is a minimum of about 17 fps, mainly in albion. I have vsync on so I don't know the true maximum but it hits 60 at times.

My specs now:

Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 CPU @ 2.67Ghz
6Gb DDR3 667Mhz RAM - Triple channel
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 3Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card

What my specs will be once the hardware arrives:

Asus RAMPAGE IV Black Edition Motherboard
Intel Core I7 4930K CPU @ 3.4Ghz (don't plan to overclock)
32Gb DDR3 2133Mhz RAM (G.Skill) - Quad Channel
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 6Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card (probably)

Hey, your i7-920 is somewhere in line with my previous CPU, and your future CPU is the same as mine. You will notice the difference in power, even non-OC'd and outside of Rebirth as well. I also have the game running from a Samsung SSD 830, this could make a few FPS difference as well.

BTW: Why don't you wanna overclock? I am using the Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 and manage a 4,5GHz clock with just raising the multiplier in BIOS. Temps are way below 60°C all time. Seems such a waste running a CPU with free multiplier without OC. ^^

jl1aisbett · Post by **jl1aisbett** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 17:19

Sace wrote:BTW: Why don't you wanna overclock? I am using the Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 and manage a 4,5GHz clock with just raising the multiplier in BIOS. Temps are way below 60°C all time. Seems such a waste running a CPU with free multiplier without OC. ^^

I don't plan to for now, that doesn't mean I don't want to and I might eventually. I just kind of doubt I'd need to at the moment.

One thing probably worth playing with is the ROG RAMDisk my new motherboard supports, should put an SSD to shame. Might give that a crack with Rebirth and see what difference it makes as well.

Sace · Post by **Sace** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 17:51

Ah, RAMdisks. Was wondering why you put 32gb in your PC

That's interesting, I hope you post your results here when your rig arrived.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 19:53

santaranger wrote:
BigBANGtheory wrote:Look how the CPU threads shift from kernel-mode and good performance in Open Space but then disappears when you cross into a Zone and take a 50% or more performance hit.
I don't clearly see your point with the picture. The difference in kernel time most likely relates to less fps (and thus less kernel mode graphics processing). The cause for this behavior could be XR simulation threads influencing CPU usage.
However, you also need to monitor GPU load at the same time. The overall drop in CPU usage in your picture (not only kernel time) can also result from the GPU bottlenecking, though it seems unlikely on the given card.

The GPU utilisation drops at the same time as the CPU utilisation:
[ external image ]

My point is that the software is not utilising the hardware correctly, if say there is an increase in the number of calculations needed to be performed in a zone vs. open space you would expect to see CPU utilisation rise to meet that demand upto 100% of 1 core at least. As it happens the game appears to do the complete opposite.

ergo there is no hardware bottleneck, it has to be something in the software stack i.e. Sum Ting Wong

The drop in Kernel-mode CPU utilisation looks to be the cause of weak GPU utilisation i.e. the CPU has stopped driving the GPU at the needed rate. The question therefore must be why has the CPU stopped driving the GPU? What is holding the CPU rendering pipeline up? Whatever it is it is more than a simple increase in calculations...

Gupster · Post by **Gupster** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 21:50

Sace wrote:
jl1aisbett wrote: My current performance is a minimum of about 17 fps, mainly in albion. I have vsync on so I don't know the true maximum but it hits 60 at times.

My specs now:

Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 CPU @ 2.67Ghz
6Gb DDR3 667Mhz RAM - Triple channel
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 3Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card

What my specs will be once the hardware arrives:

Asus RAMPAGE IV Black Edition Motherboard
Intel Core I7 4930K CPU @ 3.4Ghz (don't plan to overclock)
32Gb DDR3 2133Mhz RAM (G.Skill) - Quad Channel
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 6Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card (probably)
Hey, your i7-920 is somewhere in line with my previous CPU, and your future CPU is the same as mine. You will notice the difference in power, even non-OC'd and outside of Rebirth as well. I also have the game running from a Samsung SSD 830, this could make a few FPS difference as well.

BTW: Why don't you wanna overclock? I am using the Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 and manage a 4,5GHz clock with just raising the multiplier in BIOS. Temps are way below 60°C all time. Seems such a waste running a CPU with free multiplier without OC. ^^

There is never any point in overclocking any CPU unless you are getting low performance in games, it is clear with Rebirth that Overclocking is pointless as you will not see any performance difference unless your CPU was below minimum specs posted by Ego-soft in the first place.

The only other reasons to overclock an already powerful CPU is to see if there is any performance difference in a game and if not you may as well bring the CPU back to stock speed, and the other reason is to show off your epean in public forums, a prime example of this is a person in any forum who has a new PC well above the games maximum needed specs and posts somthing like " Will my computer run this game " ?

steelgrey75 · Post by **steelgrey75** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 22:00

Extra performance is not to be found in overclocking when it comes to this game. Its not the hardware thats at fault here its the program and until its fixed we are stuck with it.

Gupster · Post by **Gupster** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 22:13

steelgrey75 wrote:Extra performance is not to be found in overclocking when it comes to this game. Its not the hardware thats at fault here its the program and until its fixed we are stuck with it.

Sadly yes, i just hope we are not stuck with it for too much longer.

santaranger · Post by **santaranger** » Wed, 11. Dec 13, 22:58

Actually, I had good results with overclocking in scenes where I was not GPU limited. Overclocking does improve single threaded performance, which is what this game is craving.

@BigBANGtheory:
CPU utilization will not rise as long as there's 1 or 2 threads limiting whole game.
100% load on 1 core will never happen in this scenario, because of Windows thread scheduling, which always pushes demanding threads to the least used core over and over - making it appear that every core is used a bit (PWM-like effect).
Try prime95 and 1 worker thread, you will notice the same.
Unfortunately, we cannot set core affinity thread-wise to stop Windows from doing that, but this behavior does not pose a significant performance threat, it's a good thing in most regards (I won't talk about turbo boost here

)

Skeeter · Post by **Skeeter** » Thu, 12. Dec 13, 01:16

Duno if its been mentioned yet but if not then has anyone tried disabling aero in win 7 and see if performance was any better?

To do so go to your install folder typically steam/steamapps/common/xrebirth. Right click on the exe and go to compatibility tab and tick disable desktop composition.

Then try the game and see if it helps smooth anything out. I cant be sure if its me lowering my lod etc settings from 100 to 50 or this disable aero method but seems smoother on the landing pads tho could be the sector im in at the mo i dunno.

Anyhow somit to try if you haven't i guess.

Oh and i suppose i should mention incase it helped, i alt and tabbed when playing and opened task man and set priority of rebirth to high.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Thu, 12. Dec 13, 06:11

Even if the Windows task scheduler was executing more demanding threads on different cores you would still expect to witness that behaviour and see a rise in average CPU utilisation under load, but you do not.

Sace · Post by **Sace** » Thu, 12. Dec 13, 09:34

Gupster wrote: There is never any point in overclocking any CPU unless you are getting low performance in games, it is clear with Rebirth that Overclocking is pointless as you will not see any performance difference unless your CPU was below minimum specs posted by Ego-soft in the first place.

The only other reasons to overclock an already powerful CPU is to see if there is any performance difference in a game and if not you may as well bring the CPU back to stock speed, and the other reason is to show off your epean in public forums, a prime example of this is a person in any forum who has a new PC well above the games maximum needed specs and posts somthing like " Will my computer run this game " ?

As you can see, with my new CPU I have way less performance issues than most here. Even if it's only 5 frames I gain from OCing, it's worth it. And for me, there is no reason not to get the most out of my system.

jl1aisbett · Post by **jl1aisbett** » Fri, 13. Dec 13, 13:00

Well if anyone is interested here is my before and after when upgrading my computer:

Before specs:

Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 CPU @ 2.67Ghz
6Gb DDR3 667Mhz RAM - Triple channel
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 3Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card

After specs:

Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit
Asus RAMPAGE IV Black Edition Motherboard
Intel Core I7 4930K CPU @ 3.4Ghz
32Gb DDR3 2133Mhz RAM (G.Skill) - Quad Channel (not sure it's actually running at 2133 though)
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Superclocked
Standard SATA hard drives (non SSD) running at 6Gb/s
Using HDMI Audio via graphics card

With vsync turned on and like for like graphics settings:

Before performance - 17 -> 60 fps
After performance - 28 -> 60 fps

I didn't reinstall windows but fixed the startup to work with the new hardware so the OS and software installed for both tests was identical with the only difference being motherboard related driver updates.

I also tried running rebirth off a RAMDisk just cause I could but it didn't seem to make any difference, guess disk IO isn't much of a factor.

I can't be bothered overclocking or tweaking right now and I find that performance is good enough for me at the moment. I'll let the patches do the rest.

santaranger · Post by **santaranger** » Fri, 13. Dec 13, 14:16

That goes well with my experience.

The game profits from single-threaded performance ("more GHz"), as well as having 5 cores (but not more). The latter can be explained with the thread balance as seen in my picture on the previous page.

Cakefish · Post by **Cakefish** » Sat, 14. Dec 13, 00:50

In the parts where I have poor performance turning shadows off does absolutely nothing. This is because these section are not GPU limited. Egosoft needs to work on the CPU bottleneck limitations - that is what is crippling the game so much at the moment. 1.2 beta.

BigBANGtheory · Post by **BigBANGtheory** » Sat, 14. Dec 13, 11:03

v1.20 beta, new campaign start...Where Yisha is first re-activating the Skunk systems my fps can dip below 12!

Still the same 60% performance hit transitioning from Open space to zone space.

Turning shadows off has little effect in fact as a general observation the more I reduce graphical settings the worse the performance in game.

Game still stutters for me like Dustin Hoffman around stations.

Technical Support, please?

Sace · Post by **Sace** » Sat, 14. Dec 13, 13:33

Really? It's still never under 30FPS for me, most of the time in the 40s in the first scenes.

Cakefish · Post by **Cakefish** » Sun, 15. Dec 13, 01:05

Sace wrote:Really? It's still never under 30FPS for me, most of the time in the 40s in the first scenes.

Frozen Circuit zone. Get a view where there are a lot of asteroids on screen. You won't be hitting 30 unless you have absolute top-end CPU overclocked. The parts of the game that perform the worst are CPU bottlenecked.

quintupularity · Post by **quintupularity** » Sun, 15. Dec 13, 14:45

The Great Basin is nearly a slideshow on my rig. It dropped to 5 FPS while I was trying to board an Arawn. Finally had to give up that dream.

So much ice...

Sace · Post by **Sace** » Sun, 15. Dec 13, 18:57

Cakefish wrote:Frozen Circuit zone. Get a view where there are a lot of asteroids on screen. You won't be hitting 30 unless you have absolute top-end CPU overclocked. The parts of the game that perform the worst are CPU bottlenecked.

http://abload.de/img/xrebirth2013-12-1518-zgsme.png
http://abload.de/img/xrebirth2013-12-1518-25sx3.png

Shadows off, rest @ highest

It's pretty much acceptable for me, weren't it for the countless showstopper gameplay bugs and missing features. :/

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Priority #1: Improving performance...