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AMD CPU -> 0% GPU Load -> Low FPS

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AMD CPU -> 0% GPU Load -> Low FPS
 
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Acelot's Avatar


Acelot
01.20.2012 , 03:14 PM | #61
Quote: Originally Posted by NegativeDown View Post
BioWare didn't sell you the product. They sold it to retailers who, in turn, sold it to you. So if you want a refund, you'll have to take it up with the retailer you purchased it from. And yes, Origin is a retailer that is a separate entity from BioWare.
You are right. I expressed my self bad here.
Of course I bought the game from a reseller. But I fear the reseller I bought the game from won't believe me that the game itself is broken and therefor refuse to take the product back.

That's why I ask the support what I can do.

Kogri's Avatar


Kogri
01.20.2012 , 03:16 PM | #62
Just the same issues at WZs, very low fps 5-30 (nothing helps, I can set all to high with shadows&bloom off or all to low and fps are the same). GPU Load during WZs is just funny (screen) CPU like 30-40%

GPU Load during WZs

Climbatize's Avatar


Climbatize
01.20.2012 , 03:26 PM | #63
I have the same problem as OP ... as soon as i'm in a crowded area fps drops, and gpu usage is 0 % , mostly on fleet , wz's ilum etc ....
Used "amd system monitor" to check this and i recorded it with the same program, there is at least half hour of gameplay some of it on fleet . my ship and a WZ.
Uploaded the recorded file here is the link : https://rapidshare.com/files/2487301...012_093204.csv


My dxdiag ...

Spoiler


Hoping for a quick fix for this.
Just another day.

Wakantanka's Avatar


Wakantanka
01.20.2012 , 04:16 PM | #64
As a software engineer I am going to throw out my speculation based on some poking around using tools like Process Explorer.

The game is not CPU or GPU limited when in Warzones or other player heavy situations. Usually when you see this kind of behavior it means things are I/O bound. Both the CPU and GPU are waiting for either data from the hard drive or the network and doing nothing for short periods of time.

Games used to be single threaded and the same loop that does the rendering also processed network packets and read data from disk. If something was loaded from disk no frames where being rendering during that time, so most games had a loading screen and loaded everything into ram and made sure to never touch the disk again until the next load screen.

SWTOR is not single threaded, this is easy to know because it runs two processes, this means a minimum of two threads, but its actually much more, last time I looked both processes had 10+ threads each.

SWTOR is definitively loading assets from disk constantly probably because a whole planet cannot fit into the 2 gigabytes of address space a 32bit process has access to. A lot of software does this sort of thing, it typically called streaming, and there are a lot of approaches.

SWTOR is actually unusual in using two processes, I myself have never seen a game do this. In poking around its easy to see the main swtor.exe with the larger memory footprint is doing the network communication and playing the sounds while the secondary smaller swtor.exe is doing the direct3d calls and utilizing the GPU.

These two processes must communicate somehow and this is what makes things unusual for something like a game, because inter-process communication adds much overhead, even when using the fastest form called "shared memory".

It's seems no matter how fast your CPU or GPU is any time the disk is read in SWTOR the framerate will plummet, this is the random "hitching" you see when driving a speeder around, this means the disk access is blocking the rendering engine in some way. Other players exasperate the problem because of their varying outfits and models which must not be able to completely fit in ram and must be loaded/unloaded on demand, vs NPC which in a questing area are all wearing similar outfits etc.

You can tell SWTOR blocks on disk while a game like WoW doesn't because have you noticed in SWTOR you never see another player partially loaded? In WoW while the players assets are being loaded they may show up as just a "shadow" on the ground, you can see them moving around but the model hasn't been loaded yet. In SWTOR players "fade in" fully loaded which mean their models must be read from disk(or already be in ram if lucky) before the engine will continue. This may be intentional or a limitation in the engine design. I prefer WoW's approach of never blocking rendering even if on the rare occasion you might end up fighting nothing but a shadow while the model is loading(happens much less in wow because of simpler models allow more to stay in ram).

So the game is blocking on I/O, either network, IPC, or most likely disk leading to horrible FPS even on high end systems. SSD's will help the situation some, but even an SSD is still thousands of times slower than ram. And for those with 8-16gigs of ram, SWTOR is only 32bit with two processes, so it basically has a total of 4 gigs of usable address space and it seems that only one processes is really using it's 2 gigs, while the second renderer is only using about 300-400megs. There has been reports of setting up RAM disks for SWTOR's assets helping if you have lots of ram, which would line up with what I am seeing.

If this is the case what are the solutions?

1. Stop blocking on disk reads, this made leads to things like just seeing a blob shadow run by for a few seconds, but you can still control game and take action. This may or may not be easy to do given the engine design.

2. Merge the two processes. Again I have never seen a game do this, IPC adds overhead and latency that would not exist in a single process design.

3. Compile for 64bit. This may be difficult to do depending on the engine design, but a single 64bit process could use all the available system ram for caching assets greatly reducing disk I/O.

That is my educated guess based on what I know and what I have seen in game, it may be wrong, it would be nice to get a real response from a dev to clarify.

JoeHUK's Avatar


JoeHUK
01.20.2012 , 04:18 PM | #65
Quote: Originally Posted by Wakantanka View Post
As a software engineer I am going to throw out my speculation based on some poking around using tools like Process Explorer.

The game is not CPU or GPU limited when in Warzones or other player heavy situations. Usually when you see this kind of behavior it means things are I/O bound. Both the CPU and GPU are waiting for either data from the hard drive or the network and doing nothing for short periods of time.

Games used to be single threaded and the same loop that does the rendering also processed network packets and read data from disk. If something was loaded from disk no frames where being rendering during that time, so most games had a loading screen and loaded everything into ram and made sure to never touch the disk again until the next load screen.

SWTOR is not single threaded, this is easy to know because it runs two processes, this means a minimum of two threads, but its actually much more, last time I looked both processes had 10+ threads each.

SWTOR is definitively loading assets from disk constantly probably because a whole planet cannot fit into the 2 gigabytes of address space a 32bit process has access to. A lot of software does this sort of thing, it typically called streaming, and there are a lot of approaches.

SWTOR is actually unusual in using two processes, I myself have never seen a game do this. In poking around its easy to see the main swtor.exe with the larger memory footprint is doing the network communication and playing the sounds while the secondary smaller swtor.exe is doing the direct3d calls and utilizing the GPU.

These two processes must communicate somehow and this is what makes things unusual for something like a game, because inter-process communication adds much overhead, even when using the fastest form called "shared memory".

It's seems no matter how fast your CPU or GPU is any time the disk is read in SWTOR the framerate will plummet, this is the random "hitching" you see when driving a speeder around, this means the disk access is blocking the rendering engine in some way. Other players exasperate the problem because of their varying outfits and models which must not be able to completely fit in ram and must be loaded/unloaded on demand, vs NPC which in a questing area are all wearing similar outfits etc.

You can tell SWTOR blocks on disk while a game like WoW doesn't because have you noticed in SWTOR you never see another player partially loaded? In WoW while the players assets are being loaded they may show up as just a "shadow" on the ground, you can see them moving around but the model hasn't been loaded yet. In SWTOR players "fade in" fully loaded which mean their models must be read from disk(or already be in ram if lucky) before the engine will continue. This may be intentional or a limitation in the engine design. I prefer WoW's approach of never blocking rendering even if on the rare occasion you might end up fighting nothing but a shadow while the model is loading(happens much less in wow because of simpler models allow more to stay in ram).

So the game is blocking on I/O, either network, IPC, or most likely disk leading to horrible FPS even on high end systems. SSD's will help the situation some, but even an SSD is still thousands of times slower than ram. And for those with 8-16gigs of ram, SWTOR is only 32bit with two processes, so it basically has a total of 4 gigs of usable address space and it seems that only one processes is really using it's 2 gigs, while the second renderer is only using about 300-400megs. There has been reports of setting up RAM disks for SWTOR's assets helping if you have lots of ram, which would line up with what I am seeing.

If this is the case what are the solutions?

1. Stop blocking on disk reads, this made leads to things like just seeing a blob shadow run by for a few seconds, but you can still control game and take action. This may or may not be easy to do given the engine design.

2. Merge the two processes. Again I have never seen a game do this, IPC adds overhead and latency that would not exist in a single process design.

3. Compile for 64bit. This may be difficult to do depending on the engine design, but a single 64bit process could use all the available system ram for caching assets greatly reducing disk I/O.

That is my educated guess based on what I know and what I have seen in game, it may be wrong, it would be nice to get a real response from a dev to clarify.
Nice read, cheers.

Invesco's Avatar


Invesco
01.20.2012 , 04:28 PM | #66
Quote: Originally Posted by Wakantanka View Post
As a software engineer I am going to throw out my speculation based on some poking around using tools like Process Explorer.

The game is not CPU or GPU limited when in Warzones or other player heavy situations. Usually when you see this kind of behavior it means things are I/O bound. Both the CPU and GPU are waiting for either data from the hard drive or the network and doing nothing for short periods of time.

Games used to be single threaded and the same loop that does the rendering also processed network packets and read data from disk. If something was loaded from disk no frames where being rendering during that time, so most games had a loading screen and loaded everything into ram and made sure to never touch the disk again until the next load screen.

SWTOR is not single threaded, this is easy to know because it runs two processes, this means a minimum of two threads, but its actually much more, last time I looked both processes had 10+ threads each.

SWTOR is definitively loading assets from disk constantly probably because a whole planet cannot fit into the 2 gigabytes of address space a 32bit process has access to. A lot of software does this sort of thing, it typically called streaming, and there are a lot of approaches.

SWTOR is actually unusual in using two processes, I myself have never seen a game do this. In poking around its easy to see the main swtor.exe with the larger memory footprint is doing the network communication and playing the sounds while the secondary smaller swtor.exe is doing the direct3d calls and utilizing the GPU.

These two processes must communicate somehow and this is what makes things unusual for something like a game, because inter-process communication adds much overhead, even when using the fastest form called "shared memory".

It's seems no matter how fast your CPU or GPU is any time the disk is read in SWTOR the framerate will plummet, this is the random "hitching" you see when driving a speeder around, this means the disk access is blocking the rendering engine in some way. Other players exasperate the problem because of their varying outfits and models which must not be able to completely fit in ram and must be loaded/unloaded on demand, vs NPC which in a questing area are all wearing similar outfits etc.

You can tell SWTOR blocks on disk while a game like WoW doesn't because have you noticed in SWTOR you never see another player partially loaded? In WoW while the players assets are being loaded they may show up as just a "shadow" on the ground, you can see them moving around but the model hasn't been loaded yet. In SWTOR players "fade in" fully loaded which mean their models must be read from disk(or already be in ram if lucky) before the engine will continue. This may be intentional or a limitation in the engine design. I prefer WoW's approach of never blocking rendering even if on the rare occasion you might end up fighting nothing but a shadow while the model is loading(happens much less in wow because of simpler models allow more to stay in ram).

So the game is blocking on I/O, either network, IPC, or most likely disk leading to horrible FPS even on high end systems. SSD's will help the situation some, but even an SSD is still thousands of times slower than ram. And for those with 8-16gigs of ram, SWTOR is only 32bit with two processes, so it basically has a total of 4 gigs of usable address space and it seems that only one processes is really using it's 2 gigs, while the second renderer is only using about 300-400megs. There has been reports of setting up RAM disks for SWTOR's assets helping if you have lots of ram, which would line up with what I am seeing.

If this is the case what are the solutions?

1. Stop blocking on disk reads, this made leads to things like just seeing a blob shadow run by for a few seconds, but you can still control game and take action. This may or may not be easy to do given the engine design.

2. Merge the two processes. Again I have never seen a game do this, IPC adds overhead and latency that would not exist in a single process design.

3. Compile for 64bit. This may be difficult to do depending on the engine design, but a single 64bit process could use all the available system ram for caching assets greatly reducing disk I/O.

That is my educated guess based on what I know and what I have seen in game, it may be wrong, it would be nice to get a real response from a dev to clarify.
Awesome read and probably the reason so many of us get such low FPS. But the problem is that out of the people with same hardware, only some get the FPS drops

Wakantanka's Avatar


Wakantanka
01.20.2012 , 04:39 PM | #67
Quote: Originally Posted by Invesco View Post
Awesome read and probably the reason so many of us get such low FPS. But the problem is that out of the people with same hardware, only some get the FPS drops
There are a couple of explanations for this.

1. Peoples tolerance for FPS stuttering is different. I know for my rig with a 580GTX I get more than 60fps most of the time in high with AA on, even the FPS counter show an average around 60, but the "micro-stutters" happen constantly but not enough to bring down the average too far.

2. Some obscure hardware variation makes a huge difference in FPS even with high end video cards and CPU's. If so probably something related to the IPC mechanism used with the unusual 2 process model, since other popular games run on the hardware without issue.

3. Some sort of software configuration problem, again getting back to IPC I know there are issues with shared memory performance on 64bit windows with 32 bit processes, maybe running 64bit Windows contributes.

JoeHUK's Avatar


JoeHUK
01.20.2012 , 04:46 PM | #68
Quote: Originally Posted by Wakantanka View Post
There are a couple of explanations for this.

1. Peoples tolerance for FPS stuttering is different. I know for my rig with a 580GTX I get more than 60fps most of the time in high with AA on, even the FPS counter show an average around 60, but the "micro-stutters" happen constantly but not enough to bring down the average too far.

2. Some obscure hardware variation makes a huge difference in FPS even with high end video cards and CPU's. If so probably something related to the IPC mechanism used with the unusual 2 process model, since other popular games run on the hardware without issue.

3. Some sort of software configuration problem, again getting back to IPC I know there are issues with shared memory performance on 64bit windows with 32 bit processes, maybe running 64bit Windows contributes.
and again very nice information

#2 The fix, Requires whom? Bioware/engine/ourside?

Wakantanka's Avatar


Wakantanka
01.20.2012 , 05:04 PM | #69
Quote: Originally Posted by JoeHUK View Post
and again very nice information

#2 The fix, Requires whom? Bioware/engine/ourside?
This is all Bioware, they bought the engine source code back in 2005, they have heavily modified it and are the only ones who could maintain it properly at this point. They might be able to consult with the original creators (and they probably are) it may not even resemble the original code base enough for them to be helpful.

even if there is some obscure hardware bug, since it won't be fixed on existing machines and other games have managed to perform properly on the same hardware, then a software solution must exist.

It is possible a new graphics driver from both ATI and Nvidia could help things if it's just straight up something they are doing in direct3d that current drivers don't handle very well. ATI/Nvidia almost always detect popular games and translate certain graphics calls to something else that performs better on their hardware.

Zaskaszh's Avatar


Zaskaszh
01.20.2012 , 05:15 PM | #70
Quote: Originally Posted by Kailas View Post
Same Issue.

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.50GHz
Memory (RAM): 6.00 GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 5450 5
Gaming graphics 3839 MB Total available graphics memory
Primary hard disk 856GB Free (920GB Total)

All better than the "reccommended" system requirements
I don't mean to be insensitve or patronizing, but this setup can't really be called gaming gear. Especially the video card. Let's look at a simple fact.

The Radeon HD 5450 is a bargain video card. It's horrible. I mean this sincerely. I'm not trying to be mean to you, Kailas, I'm just staing a fact; your video card is garbage. Furthermore, it is *below* the minimum system requirement. The minimum for an ATI card is a Radeon X1900; your card is inferior, and by far, to a Radeon X1900. You can see the comparison here;

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...on,2761-7.html

And yet this disappointed gamer was under the impression that his system exceeded the recommended specs, when in fact it can't even run the game at all. It's no wonder Kailas is upset.

Right off the bat, if I had been in your shoes, I wouldn't even have bought the game; I know that a powerful (or at the very least, decent) video card is a necessary evil when PC gaming is your hobby. If you buy a game and your hardware doesn't somewhat exceed the minimum specs, you're going to be very very disappointed.

In this case, there is absolutely nothing Bioware can do to make the game playable for you; your video card is just too weak, and that's not their fault. I just wonder how many people are having issues with the game because they incorrectly assume their hardware is "blistering fast".

Not all of you, certainly, but I bet more than would be willing to admit it...
"Welcome to today's MMO generation mate, the single worst, entitled generation ever seen. - BegaTasty"
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