Low fps

[AlienDNA]

First the machine specs:

MB: Asus Striker II Extreme
CPU: QX9650
Mem: 4GB OCZ FLEXX DDR3-1600
GPU: GTX280 SLI
Audio: X-fi Fatal1ty
OS: Vist X64 Ultimate SP1

Next the problem:

After playing Warfare for awhile the fps just fall from 62 to between 28 and 32. The fps will remain at this level until the game is restarted.

Midway suggested trying the following:
http://www.fuzeqna.com/midway/consum...l.asp?kbid=886
http://www.fuzeqna.com/midway/consum...l.asp?kbid=887

The first link is negated by SP1 and I have tried everything in the second link.

Does anyone have a similar setup that does not have fps issues or has solved them?

[Indy]

While not that close I might have a similar setup Quad core/780i/4gig OCZ Flex DDR2/8800 GTX's SLI/xfi-Fatality/Vista x64 Ultimate SP1. and have not experienced FPS like that at all.

Sounds like not enough data going to render. Why its not getting there can be many reasons.. Before troubleshooting I recommend you reduce driver settings specifically for the game to a minimum..

Ok. Nvidia 3D settings for max FPS (usually for benching offline but can only help your issue at least until the problem has been identified although there are benefits to using them online too) Note also that at least one of these settings are not applicable to UT3 but are included for those who might use them in Global settings and who also use OpenGL games.

Nvidia Control Panel
Manage 3D Settings - Program Settings

Select UT3.exe to customize

Ambient Occlusion = OFF (try this first if present!!)
Anisotropic Filtering = OFF
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction = OFF
Antialiasing - Mode = OFF
Antialiasing - Transparency = OFF
Conformant Texture Clamp = Use Hardware (or OFF)
Error Reporting = OFF
Extension Limit = OFF
Force Mipmaps = None
Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames = 3 (or 2)
Multi-display/Mixed-GPU Acceleration = Single Display Performance Mode
SLI Performance Mode = Nvidia Recommended
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic Sample Optimization = ON
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias = Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality = High Performance
Texture Filtering - Quality = OFF
Threaded Optimization = Auto or ON
Threaded Optimization = OFF
Vertical Sync = Force OFF

(if I missed any then turn them off!!)

Check if SLI mode is enabled? (although for troubleshooting i would try removing temporarily the second or third video card and test with only one video card installed in the primary slot, the one closest to the CPU)

Go here for an excellent guide on tweaking UT3 by Ultron

For now you might try turning off Dx10 in game. Set AllowD3D10=False in UTEngine.ini

In the settings tab of the GPU-based PhysX control set no


Note @ 2am.. I just ran a couple of benchmarks on my game rig and notebook using all the above settings and tweaks both set at 1680x1050 resolution and achieved 186 & 113 FPS. So I think with all the above settings and Ultrons performance tweaks you're rig should be hitting the 200 FPS mark on a CTF Coret Flyby benchmark.

[AlienDNA]

Thanks for the reply Indy.

I have already used Ultron's tweaks so that just left the NCP settings to try out. Using these settings and benchmarking at 1920x1200, the results were 188 without SLI and 217 with SLI . OK, time to go online for awhile and see what happens to the fps while playing Warfare.

[AlienDNA]

The online test did not go well. The game keeps crashing and I believe this is because of the 181.2 driver update I did at the same time as the NCP updates. The game only crashes on Warfare while playing online, locally everything works fine. TDM, CTF and VCTF all seem to work fine online.

Guess I will have to revert back to the 178.24 drivers in order to continue testing.

[Indy]

Thanks for the reply Indy.

I have already used Ultron's tweaks so that just left the NCP settings to try out. Using these settings and benchmarking at 1920x1200, the results were 188 without SLI and 217 with SLI . OK, time to go online for awhile and see what happens to the fps while playing Warfare.

Cool! That's quite a high res. to play on but whatever... That's an awesome FPS now Does the fps maintain it's number during a game? I see you're having other issues online, but first let's stick to one issue at once..

[gargorias]

First off you should have vsync on if your using an LCD, FPS that is too far above your monitors sync rate will cause choppiness, screen tearing. Secondly you don't need any tweaks with that system you should be able to run the game perfectly with all settings on max, even the NCP settings at that res, you should even be able to get some good AA going. Obviously you do have a driver or some other issue that is causing the problem.

[AlienDNA]

I had to revert back to the 180.48 Nvidia drivers to get rid of the crashes in order to test the FPS online. Still problematic - although I was able to play for almost an hour at one point before the fps fell off. This does make me think it could be a heat issue but RealTemp, HWMonitor and GPU-Z indicate no issues.

Any more suggestions ?

[Random54]

Same thing was happens to me. If you go and stare at a wall they should go back up and the longer you stare at a wall the longer they will stay up. I have a gtx 260 core 216, quad core cpu and a x-fi as well. Also some times pressing esc and goto menu a couple of times will fix it for a map. I've also been meaning to try typing flush in console to see if that works, but haven't had a chance.

Hopefully some one finds something that works because its actually quite common

[Random54]

Same thing was happens to me. If you go and stare at a wall they should go back up and the longer you stare at a wall the longer they will stay up. I have a gtx 260 core 216, quad core cpu and a x-fi as well. Also some times pressing esc and goto menu a couple of times will fix it for a map. I've also been meaning to try typing flush in console to see if that works, but haven't had a chance.

Hopefully some one finds something that works because its actually quite common

[Moloko]

I had to revert back to the 180.48 Nvidia drivers to get rid of the crashes in order to test the FPS online. Still problematic - although I was able to play for almost an hour at one point before the fps fell off. This does make me think it could be a heat issue but RealTemp, HWMonitor and GPU-Z indicate no issues.

Any more suggestions ?

You'll find that even at 1920 x1200 an 8800gtx isn't pushed in UT3. The rendering is very cpu bound, hence not much difference in fps with sli . Is your cpu downclocking mid game, have you monitored cpu-z when the fps drop occurs to see what happens to the freq? Speedstep can do this with certain apps, and others who've had the same problem found entering the BIOS and disabling SPEEDSTEP fixed it. I presume you do know that the game is capped at 90fps online regardless of HW. The servers are having problems with War, the slow downs and choppy play are server side, often just before the frequent crashes.

[Indy]

I had to revert back to the 180.48 Nvidia drivers to get rid of the crashes in order to test the FPS online. Still problematic - although I was able to play for almost an hour at one point before the fps fell off. This does make me think it could be a heat issue but RealTemp, HWMonitor and GPU-Z indicate no issues.

Any more suggestions ?

Ok, Try to reduced the number of frames prepared by the cpu before being sent to the GPU..

Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames = 2 or 1


While you check that, how about listing tweaks you've performed on windows to reduce it's demand on the cpu. Like disabling or removing antivirus, windows search, automatic updates etc. etc. And have you tried a clean boot? What BIOS setting have you changed? are Speedstep and C1E disabled?

Are you still getting 200+ FPS offline? and for how long? an hour? if so I think you established that the issue lies somewhere other than the Video cards or the drivers.. Which emphasizes the need to check the Pre-Rendered Frames option..

[Indy]

Just a couple of notes on game crashes to think about, which are really off topic a little but I mention it because of the issues you're having.

Primary causes of crashes during this or some other games are:

Different versions of OpenAL dll's found in various locations on the machine. (A huge issue!) Try disabling sound completely from the game settings to isolate these files. Check out this link

Video drivers which are improperly installed (or uninstalled and re-installed). I still use v176.xx without any issues at all on Vista 32bit which is not my preferred OS for gaming BTW. I'm just barely beginning to like Vista x64 which I still have OpenAl version compatibility issues in other games, however should not be a problem with UT3 alone. Thus WinXP Sp3 is still the favorite.

Hardware Stability.

Lastly Software bugs which I'm not convinced are causing your issues.


With any of the above you'll find it pays to be meticulous in your efforts to fix them.

[UnrealMasher]

Well I am glad that I am not the only one to experience poor FPS when playing this **** game online. This has been a sparadic problem since I bought this game on the day it was released.

As AlienDNA stated with his post, his fps drops from a playable 60+fps while playing to around 30fps (very non-playable). It does not matter what you do to your settings, nothing seems to work. I have seen my fps drop as low as 5-10 and at that time sound also drops. Some days are good with no issues while others are bad. The days that are bad on one server are not bad on other servers. You would think that would be due to some sort of packet loss, but looking at the net stats in the game there is no packet loss. I have compaired the incoming and outgoing packets to others no experiencing the issue on the same server and they are practically identical. You would think it is an internet issue with routing to specific servers, but I can connect to one server and it is bad, then connect to another server from the same host and everything will be fine. I have had the server provider take the .ini file from the working server and place it on the non working server and restart the system and things magically improved. We have also restarted our server on that same host several times and the issue went away after quite a few restarts. So I am not sure if the first fix worked or if it was a one time lucky restart.

I have experienced this issue on the 2 machines I have in xp and in vista. In my test, I ran the game on one machine and I was getting about 30fps, so I disconnected and went to the other machine on the same server and also had about 30fps.
Machine specs 1:
MB: Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
CPU: Core i7 920
Mem: 3GB
GPU: ATI 4870x2
Audio: on board
OS: Vista X64 Ultimate SP1
Res: 1680x1050

Machine specs 2:
MB: Asus Crosshair
CPU: AMD6400+
Mem: 4GB
GPU: 8800GTX
Audio: Xfi-Gamer
OS: XP Pro SP3 and now Vista X64 Ultimate SP1
Res: 1680x1050

On my original machine (No. 2) the processor was maxed and I ran my setting on 1/1 with the frame smoothing off. I can usually get 60-90fps online.

On my new machine (No. 1) the processor runs between 30-35% and I have ran settings from 1/1 to its max with Frame smoothing off. I can get 90fps consistantly when online.

There seems to be little to no knowledge on this issue. It would really be nice if someone knew the smoking gun instead of trying tweaks for underpowered systems. I am really ready to give up playing this game and that is pretty sad.

[Indy]

....There seems to be little to no knowledge on this issue. It would really be nice if someone knew the smoking gun instead of trying tweaks for underpowered systems. I am really ready to give up playing this game and that is pretty sad.

Your right nobody yet has identified the cause of this particular issue and I can at least relate to your frustration, because I've been there with Epic before. Do what I do direct it towards the folks at Epic!! This should be addressed as a priority..
Meanwhile the process of troubleshooting is not a quick one and we just got started. The list of possible causes are all but endless so maybe you'd like to share with the community addresses of the servers where and when you experience a problem, maybe the smart folks on the forum can do some troubleshooting of their own from the other end..
With first hand experience of the issue you have an advantage over others like myself who have never seen this performance degradation on any machine or server we've played on. But then I play on a very fast system configured down to the most minute detail as if it were an underpowered system and am very picky about the servers I use and how they are configured..

Good luck..

[UnrealMasher]

Well I hope epic reads this post, because I will give them any information they need to fix it. The game looks great when it performs well, although all of the glitz and glamour are turned off on my PC because it kills my eyes after playing for a few hours.

I think this issue has hampered the success of the game. When I first saw the issue, I just thought it was my original slower PC, and the reason for the poor performance was the system. After building my new rig, I believe the poor performance was not the PC. Poor performance was a complaint of many PC owners, and most of them thought it was because you needed a super high end machine to play the game. This has caused many from the competitve community to choose other games. I hope they can find and resolve this issue, because the online community needs help. It is getting smaller and smaller every day. I played ut2k4 for years before the community died.