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Benchmarking framerates between 4.0 and 4.1?


Scrapper_511

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5th generation 4gig video card at 1680 x1050 vysnc on,

4.0 ghz cpu,

32 gig of ram,

windows 7,

settings were on default accept cache set to 100% and AA to 2 instead of 4

Tried to run a recent preview mission for kanium that's posted in the multi forum(benchmark mission would not load) and its pretty abysmal.Frames were all over the place 17-25 in external view or day sight. And this is without any movement on the map other than my own platoon.I can't imagine what's going to happen in a multi session.Any other game I play which most are new and AAA tittles I would get atleast 30-40 constant or higher on high settings.This does not bode well.

Edited by Raven434th
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7 hours ago, Ssnake said:

It seems like many users are running into low framerates with settings where their graphics card's video RAM is exceeded.

Things that consume a lot of video RAM are:

 

spacer.png

 

  • Dynamic Cache size: This should be reduced to a minimum first; restart Steel Beasts after changing this!
  • Road rendering detail: This should be reduced from 5 to 3, then 1 to see if things get better
  • Shadow Mapping: Reduce to 3 first, then gradually rise until you see a noticeable decline in framerate again.

If your video RAM limit is exceeded it will first use system RAM (which is still "fast" but much slower than VRAM), and if that's not enough it'll start swapping to disk (and that is the end, even if the application doesn't crash). A lot of the render techniques and tricks that we applied depend on the availability of fast video RAM. Since this is a limited resource for anyone with less than 4...6GByte (VRAM, mind you... on the graphics card) you'll need to reduce usage in order to get back into playable framerate regions.

Okay, some corrections are due.

 

Dynamic Cache Size does not use video memory (at all). But it consumes system RAM. If you have an 8 GByte RAM machine, we recommend to reduce the Dynamic Cache Size to its minimum value (which is 50, ayway).

 

We'll release a patch in the not-too-distant future that will help to conserve more RAM and video RAM with the default settings, so that might help those with system specs close to the recommended minimum.

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FWIW (e-mail sent to Ssnake per request, anyway) ...

On my outdated PC with 3.5 Ghz, 16GB ram and a 2GB GTX950, frames were DRASTICALLY improved (back to 4.0 levels for me, anyway) at the default settings by lowering the road rendering detail to 2.  I did this based on a post by Rotar pointing out that the "3" setting exceeds the VRAM of a 2GB card.  

 

I don't know what eye candy I'm giving up at that setting because I haven't had a chance to explore much. But at least I'm back in the game.

 

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After some work i brought frame rates up from 5-9 to 15 even spiking at 20 some times, this by killing my screen resolution AA to 1 shadows to 1 everything else to its lowest settings. i can live with this, not that i have a choice. 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB, Mac book Pro Boot camp.  Still looking great however appreciate the had work fellas, relieved i got those frame rates up above 10. 

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Ok then my Dynamic Cache reduction must have been a placebo effect with my 32GB RAM.

 

For me it was AA then, obviously. Which I can explain because all those trees must be a pain to smooth.

😊

 

Road setting is still at 6. Apart from the blurry edges mentioned earlier (which probably wont bother me anyway) are there other effects from reducing this setting? It seems like the best tradeoff to keep quality and gain performance if there aren’t.

 

Shadow quality doesn’t make any difference in FPS for me, be it lowest or highest.

Edited by Yskonyn
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With 32 GByte RAM you definitely don't need to reduce the dynamic cache size.

 

The road settings are among the biggest video ram hogs. So if you're short on VRAM/experience low framerates, that should be the first to be reduced. I'd try "3" first, anything below that looks rather terrible. Hopefully that's good enough. If not, I'd try to reduce the shadow map level. If that's on 3 too and the framerate is still terrible, setting antialiasing to 0 and then trying "the non-maskable antialiasing" as an alternative would be my next step.

And if that still doesn't help, it's time for the really hard decisions - going lower than 3 in the sliders, switching off FSAA entirely, considering a new graphics card, sucking it up and hope for a patch that further improves things, or giving up on Steel Beasts (noooo!).

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I have been playing 4.0 with quite good framerates and good graphics, but 4.1 is so far unplayable for me. Framerates are down to low teens even on smaller maps. I have turned all graphic settings down to the minimum, switching off AA entirely helped a bit, but framerates are still around 15-18, and with low settings the game looks... well it aint pretty.

 

My specs are: i5-3570 @3.4 Ghz quad core, AMD Radeon HD 7700. Win 7 Ultimate. It aint a new rig, but I was hoping it would still be able to run it decently. I'm not really in the position to get a new rig at the moment, so am looking for any tips/tweaks that might help framerates a bit.

 

Edited by daskal
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Wait for the next patch, would be one thing. We'll release that soon-ish.

 

But I won't promise miracles. The HD7700 is about seven years old, the i5 is six generations old (so an i5 today would probably be about three times faster per clock cycle, and for the same price you could get the latest Ryzen 7 that is even more potent than a current i5 of the same price. My machine isn't that much younger (with its i7-4770K), but I switched the graphics card once and added more RAM, so that definitely helped to extend the serviceable lifetime.

I totally understand that not everybody can afford a new computer at any given moment. But at the same time, if Steel Beasts isn't supposed to look like pre 2010 by 2020 we have to take advantage of modern cards' capabilities, and that invariably deprecates older hardware.

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Copy (or move) the scenario to

 

C:\Users\YourUserName\Documents\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\My Scenarios

 

When picking a scenario to run, click the drop down menu at the top and select "My Scenarios". It should appear in the list.

 

No idea why the FPS counter won't show for you.

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Maybe you mapped the framerate display to a different hotkey?

Hit Alt+C to bring up the Controls dialog. There, type in "fra" as the search phrase and the only command listed would be "Show Frame Rate" with the associated key binding.

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11 hours ago, Hoover said:

Further impressions:

  • maybe it's fantasy, but the scene lighting looks much better
    • more immersive,
    • especially with a large screen
  • greatly improved bouncing roadwheels together with the new terrain engine make vehicles in motion optically heavy
  • main gun firing picks up a lot of dust, looks great
  • path finding is much better now, the player or the AI can overtake now other vehicles without traffic chaos or slowing down
  • incoming artillery graphics effects are spectacular
  • SB is a lot quicker than in previous versions.
  • with 4K (3840x2160) resolution in a medium size scenario I get about a nice 40-60 fps
    • System: Win 10 Pro / 64bit,

      • Ram: 32 GB

      • CPU i7-5960X 3 GHz

      • GPU NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti

  • improved framerates lead to a much easier and fluent targeting of the enemy

  • 4.1 - the dot one extension is the understatement of the year!😄

 

What is medium size? I find that a number of the single player scenarios runs at a low fps around 25-30. Others runs ok, so I wonder if there is some difference in the maps or scenario data causing such large differences - i.e. what the CPU is doing as it is always the bottleneck while the GPU is idling. I even turned on real time ray tracing shaders and, as I'm guessing there is no global illumination, (after all nothing apart from vehicles have shadows) it had no impact. 

 

I run with 4.4Ghz, 4K, 16GB, 2080TI and often only get around 30fps. The 'ground cover' slider is the biggest fps killer once it hit 40+ I don't understand why as it appear more as simply sprites duplicates than anything that would cause the CPU to make more calculations. 

Edited by inexus
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28 minutes ago, inexus said:

What is medium size?

Hi inexus,

This is a good question. For me it‘s a medium size scenario for another person it could be a small one.  You have to test it and decide by yourself. I send you the name of the scenario when I‘m back from work (this evening). From your specs you should have a very good performance. 

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29 minutes ago, inexus said:

I find that a number of the single player scenarios runs at a low fps around 25-30

...

I run with 4.4Ghz, 4K, 16GB, 2080TI and often only get around 30fps. The 'ground cover' slider is the biggest fps killer once it hit 40+

I don't understand why...

I'm not sure if the discussion of "why" is leading anywhere. I trust that our programmers are doing the best they can under a whole host of limiting factors (such as still having to work with the DirectX 9 framework).

 

So, let's focus on what can be done in practice. You have a machine that should be able to run Steel Beasts with great framerates if you're willing to compromise with the settings in the one or other place.

  1. Screen resolution. You may not like this advice, but you'll instantly boost your frames by switching to 1920x1080 resolution or similar, rather than running at 4K (where the text and the icons are too small anyway)
  2. Pull the ground clutter slider down. 20 is "good enough" in my opinion, but in any case, if you're noticing a substantial reduction at "40+" it's pretty obvious that you should keep it at "under 40".
  3. Consider reducing the shadow mapping level to 5...7
  4. Maybe a different antialiasing mode still delivers acceptable quality at better frames. If you set the regular antialiasing slider to "0" you can try out the alternative modes.
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12 hours ago, Ssnake said:

With 32 GByte RAM you definitely don't need to reduce the dynamic cache size.

 

The road settings are among the biggest video ram hogs. So if you're short on VRAM/experience low framerates, that should be the first to be reduced. I'd try "3" first, anything below that looks rather terrible. Hopefully that's good enough. If not, I'd try to reduce the shadow map level. If that's on 3 too and the framerate is still terrible, setting antialiasing to 0 and then trying "the non-maskable antialiasing" as an alternative would be my next step.

And if that still doesn't help, it's time for the really hard decisions - going lower than 3 in the sliders, switching off FSAA entirely, considering a new graphics card, sucking it up and hope for a patch that further improves things, or giving up on Steel Beasts (noooo!).

 

Thanks, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in the way I asked, but I was inquiring wether the Road Quality setting had any other side effects when lowered other than the texture quality or blurry sides. Perhaps things like more crudely hooked corners, floating roads, etc?

Forgive me if this has already been stated somewhere. Just curious why its so taxing. :)

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2 hours ago, Yskonyn said:

I was inquiring wether the Road Quality setting had any other side effects when lowered other than the texture quality or blurry sides.

A reduction in video RAM usage.

 

If you experience low framerates because the GPU's video RAM is exhausted and it begins to swap video memory to system RAM, this will result in a very noticeable framerate drop. Other than that and the obvious changes in road render quality at medium and long distances, changing this slider's values will have no other effect.

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10 hours ago, inexus said:

What is medium size?

 

10 hours ago, Hoover said:

...

This is a good question. For me it‘s a medium size scenario for another person it could be a small one.  You have to test it and decide by yourself. I send you the name of the scenario when I‘m back from work (this evening)...

As promised, here is name of the scenario and where to find it...

[Your Window Drive]:\Users\All Users\eSim Games\Steel Beasts\scenarios\Classics\Hasty Defense 01 (DE).pln

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I'm quite impressed with the overall performance gain of the new version. I just tried the benchmark scenario but with other settings: Every slider to the max, except the AA, I left that to 8x. Resolution was 4k: 3840x2160

 

The test scenario ran between 35 and 65 fps, while 35 beeing the low end at the first position scanning the tree line. The other two positions ranged between 55 and 65 fps. VRAM Usage varied between 6,8 and 7,8 GB of the 11 GB available.

What I noticed was that the first position scanning the tree line is the only part of the scenario, that saturated the GPU, so that part seems pretty GPU heavy.

 

My Specs: Intel Core i7-8700K @3.7 GHz, 32 GB of RAM, NVIDIA RTX 2080 TI with 11 GB of VRAM.

Edited by raskil
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