A18 Optimization issues persist. 130 FPS indoors to 10 FPS outside

[SylenThunder]

I can play it, just that it uses up all GPU with the microsplat enabled.

Having your GPU at 100% is a good thing. You want that.

[ZombieSurvivor]

Having your GPU at 100% is a good thing. You want that.

 

I wonder where the idea came from and how it started that so many believe, that is, its a bad thing for the GPU to be at 100%. :/

[FiftyTifty]

It depends on the workload. Since it's all spent on textures, that's a huge problem. There's nothing visually impressive about 7 Days To Die, so it's an issue of poor optimization. The devs would do well to hire someone who knows their ♥♥♥♥, such as the freelance developer of ENB Series.

 

If we're talking draw call heavy scenarios, a GPU that's at 100% utilization shows that the renderer is properly designed, since the GPU isn't having to wait for the driver thread to process draw calls. Using intelligent batching would be an example, where you batch every object into a couple of large vertex buffers, and only add/remove vertices when an object is spawned/destroyed. Or using the Mantle-derived APIs, Direct3D 12 or Vulkan.

 

@OP What is your graphics card?

[ZombieSurvivor]

Several of us on our server are still having optimization issues for a18. In a17 we could run textures on max and high settings with a consistent 100+ FPS. Now certain terrain textures cause massive fps drops. Even after turning all settings on low (esp texture filtering), full texture size still results in 130 fps indoors and only 10 fps outside. This is bizarre and cannot be considered normal. GPU / CPU temperatures are all nice and cool.

 

I have attached a link with 3 images showing the wildly varying FPS rates based on location.

 

https://imgur.com/a/0OHIll0

 

Anyways, a18 has been a blast otherwise. Keep up the amazing work.

Also, those demo zombies are my favorites.

 

A18.2 has included a new graphics option called terrain texture filter...something. look for it in main menu video setting. change it to medium and you will have no more issues. you can try high as well see if that works. medium works for my graphics card and how I have my game set up.

 

This was a known issue back in A18 exp right after release. I brought it to the attention of Faatal along with a bunch of evidence I gathered when did a bunch of testing trying pin point the most likely cause of massive fps drop in snow and desert biome. Faatal has finally included the option in A18.2 that we talked about so long ago on the dev diary. indeed it looks like it was what I originally thought it was and spoke with faatal about.

 

You should be good to go now, just change the setting in the main menu video options screen.

[erlgrey]

tbh. providing a slider for adjusting af is a workaround, not a fix. And just for convenience because you could force 4x af in driver too and have exactly the same effect. And i think, usually you have in games a really low performance difference between 0 and 16x AF, so its not like it is a common issue that you loose 50% by enabling 16x af..

 

terrain quality setting is kind of useful, because you can turn down the terrain quality, even switch to legacy shaders for really weak systems, without having to make too many sacrifices regarding e.g. model quality. (tools < full texture quality look extremely ugly)

 

what really surprised me, was an insane performance boost if i just switched from dx11 to vulkan in exactly these situations (outdoor, desert or snow + 16x AF), i got similar fps in vulkan with 16x af compared to <4x AF dx11.. (edit: it was actually a +47% gain from dx11 too vulkan with same settings)

this should not be the case at all, but this also means, there is hope.

[ZombieSurvivor]

tbh. providing a slider for adjusting af is a workaround, not a fix. And just for convenience because you could force 4x af in driver too and have exactly the same effect. And i think, usually you have in games a really low performance difference between 0 and 16x AF, so its not like it is a common issue that you loose 50% by enabling 16x af..

 

terrain quality setting is kind of useful, because you can turn down the terrain quality, even switch to legacy shaders for really weak systems, without having to make too many sacrifices regarding e.g. model quality. (tools < full texture quality look extremely ugly)

 

what really surprised me, was an insane performance boost if i just switched from dx11 to vulkan in exactly these situations (outdoor, desert or snow + 16x AF), i got similar fps in vulkan with 16x af compared to <4x AF dx11..

this should not be the case at all, but this also means, there is hope.

I'm guessing this is addressed to me. I was not talking about the AF option they included in...A18.1 I believe. I'm talking about the new terrain option. You can search faatals post history on the forum and learn what it is and does.

[FiftyTifty]

tbh. providing a slider for adjusting af is a workaround, not a fix. And just for convenience because you could force 4x af in driver too and have exactly the same effect. And i think, usually you have in games a really low performance difference between 0 and 16x AF, so its not like it is a common issue that you loose 50% by enabling 16x af..

 

terrain quality setting is kind of useful, because you can turn down the terrain quality, even switch to legacy shaders for really weak systems, without having to make too many sacrifices regarding e.g. model quality. (tools < full texture quality look extremely ugly)

 

what really surprised me, was an insane performance boost if i just switched from dx11 to vulkan in exactly these situations (outdoor, desert or snow + 16x AF), i got similar fps in vulkan with 16x af compared to <4x AF dx11.. (edit: it was actually a +47% gain from dx11 too vulkan with same settings)

this should not be the case at all, but this also means, there is hope.

 

What we need is a way to see how many draw calls are being issued. I wonder if it's a problem of too many blocks being rendered unnecessarily, as that is exactly where Vulkan excels. When there's a large number of objects being drawn, Direct3D 11 and OpenGL crater once you pass 6,000 draw calls. Vulkan, on the other hand, will eat as many draw calls as you can throw at it without any driver-related performance drain. And if the renderer uses multiple draw call submission threads (Vulkan has parallelizable draw call processing that scales almost 1:1 with core count), you can throw more cores and see your performance shine even in ungodly complex scenes.

 

The other possibility, is that the Vulkan shaders are far more efficient than the Direct3D 11 ones. I'm guessing that the Direct3D 11 shaders got borked somehow, and either the Vulkan shaders themselves are just better written, or the Vulkan driver is so much more clean that it chews threw the shader that much faster. Could even be both.

[erlgrey]

The other possibility, is that the Vulkan shaders are far more efficient than the Direct3D 11 ones. I'm guessing that the Direct3D 11 shaders got borked somehow, and either the Vulkan shaders themselves are just better written, or the Vulkan driver is so much more clean that it chews threw the shader that much faster.

 

i guess its just bit borked in dx11 and vulkan fixes something by "accident", not intentional.

i would somehow understand the performance diff. if i'm running an e.g. 2500k with my vega56, but i'm actually using a [email protected].

But yeah, maybe it generates way more drawcalls as i would expect, but don't really know why performance reports from different people vary so extremely. I mean, there are people which claim to get >60fps constant on way weaker hardware and this damn far away from my experience so far.

[-Holo-]

Having your GPU at 100% is a good thing. You want that.

 

Why... why would I want that?

That's like saying you should drive at maxspeed in your car at all times.

[SylenThunder]

Why... why would I want that?

That's like saying you should drive at maxspeed in your car at all times.

You want to use 100% of your GPU while gaming. If you aren't at 100% at some point while playing the game then you are either playing a much older game, using too low of graphics settings, or your CPU isn't strong enough. It is completely normal for the GPU usage to bounce around during a game. However your GPU is actually designed to be used at 100%.

 

Not having your GPU at 100% is like trying to launch the space shuttle without booster rockets.

[erlgrey]

yes, you really can't compare cars to gpus, that's just ridiculous.

 

there is only one legit reason why you don't want your gpu at 99%, they currently (amd+nv) seem to have a inputlag penalty compared to having a few % headroom, but in general 99% gpu usage is good because this is more a competitive fps thing.