Framerate Problems Alpha 19

[Vampirenostra]

8 hours ago, -Holo- said:

I'd like to add a bit of what I believe is Unity flakiness too,

I have seen this on many (all?) sandbox unity games, (and to lesser extent UE games) across several platforms and over many years.

 

Regardless of how good of a system it seems the engine itself chokes on something. (complexity?)

I have a logitech  keyboard with the display, that MSI afterburner is displaying all kinds of info in realtime for me,

CPU usage per core, temps, Mem usage, Vram usage, GPU usage and temp, disk usage. Everything useful

And even if no part of the system is even close to max, the game dips and runs at 30-50 fps in some cases. (Dishong tower especially nasty for this)

No videosettings changes affect the framerate with more then a few fps, so it really has to be something funky going on behind the curtains in the engine.

 

 

May that be the requirement to do way to many calculations per cycle? More cores required to do the trick, but multithreading is set to use like 4 cores max as I've heard?

[-Holo-]

2 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

May that be the requirement to do way to many calculations per cycle? More cores required to do the trick, but multithreading is set to use like 4 cores max as I've heard?

It's quite possible since it generally happens 'mid-lategame' when bases starts to become advanced, (in all games it happens in)

I'm fairly sure atleast 7days uses all threads available, albeit not much, most of my threads are at 20-30% on both client and the server (both ryzen 12 thread systems) with  two threads being used more at around 50-60%

Wish they'd had some sort to check for issues like this, it's so annoying to have 30 fps, when not a single part of the system is used more then 50%

[kptb]

I am having frame rate issues since 19.2 stable came out. Yesterday the game was running fine, today the frame rates dropped to the single digits and the game is unplayable as the rate drop occurs with movement.

[Ponasity]

My game is unplayable at low settings. I have 250 hours played with no issues at medium settings, pre A19. I havent played since March so I thought Id load up my A18 save. Nope. Tried to start a new save and its literally unplayable. I play every single other game I own on Ultra, getting at least 40 FPS. Not gonna bother posting specs as every person who has posted specs in this thread was met with aggression. Just letting Fun Pimps see yet another customer who is unable to play their game.

[Vampirenostra]

4 hours ago, Ponasity said:

My game is unplayable at low settings. I have 250 hours played with no issues at medium settings, pre A19. I havent played since March so I thought Id load up my A18 save. Nope. Tried to start a new save and its literally unplayable. I play every single other game I own on Ultra, getting at least 40 FPS. Not gonna bother posting specs as every person who has posted specs in this thread was met with aggression. Just letting Fun Pimps see yet another customer who is unable to play their game.

Oh you are so wrong...

Why are you here on this forum?  You actually came with your first post to blame product for poor quality, and throw @%$# all around,  you're not here to attempt to solve your problem if you do really have one what I strongly doubt.

[Liesel Weppen]

On 10/19/2020 at 9:07 PM, Vampirenostra said:

May that be the requirement to do way to many calculations per cycle? More cores required to do the trick, but multithreading is set to use like 4 cores max as I've heard?

Hmm, for me 7d2d during normal gameplay uses all of my 8 cores/16 threads equally and then has an overall usage of like 20-25%. So i can't confirm that there is a limit of using only 4 cores in 7d2d.

I had massive framedrops during last bloodmoon with darkness falls, but there was so much action, i didn't look at the system load. 🤪

Maybe i catch a look during the next BM.

 

Iirc structural integrity also uses more threads. You can easily test that. Start a game, turn on dm and cm, look for a high building with little floor space or little support blocks. Use dynamite to blow up the support blocks. The construction site works nice. One of the skyscrapers is also easy to make collapse. Then watch your system load while the POI collapses.

[Tjb]

1 hour ago, Vampirenostra said:

Oh you are so wrong...

Why are you here on this forum?  You actually came with your first post to blame product for poor quality, and throw @%$# all around,  you're not here to attempt to solve your problem if you do really have one what I strongly doubt.

All I can add is try Alpha 19.x maybe its better with your configured system.

[Daemonjax]

This game pushes my 1070ti past its limit during dusk and dawn hours @ 1920x1200 resolution.  My cpu is an i5 3570k (very old cpu with a mild OC), and it stays around 25-30% total cpu usage on singleplayer (but I didn't stress test it by blowing up a whole building or something like that).  I had to tone down some settings to keep the framerate playable during those dusk and dawn hours, but not that much -- still looks close enough to everything high/ultra.  Outside of those hours, gpu usage is around 50% iirc.  You'd figure this is the exact problem that the Dynamic Resolution setting is supposed to address, but that setting seems broken for me -- it doesn't do anything at all on my machine (static "works", but that's not what I need or want).  Anyways... Going from memory, I needed to lower the following (starting from the Ultra preset) to keep the fps drop during those hours within the playable range: 1) Object Detail to High; 2) Anti-aliasing Low; 3) Motion Blur Off. 

 

The OP's laptop's gpu and cpu don't seem too bad to me, although they are both weaker than my aging PC.  Although, the 2.2Ghz clock rate on the 8750h is concerning.  I imagine he's playing at a lower resolution than me, so that'll help out his GPU.   Maybe start from High settings, and use that as the starting point before lowering the above 3 things I mentioned (with Object Detail set to medium)?

 

I'd move the game from the HDD to SSD.  No reason not to.  I'm also assuming he's not accidentally using the integrated gpu.

[Tjb]

I on the other hand will add this my 2 cents.

Shut down your system and open it up. Usually some screws at the back of the case.

Take it out side and blow with compressed air if you can the heat sinks and fans. Get the dust and crap out of the thing. Off the heat sinks and fans.

Don't go ballistic just easy and gently blow or otherwise clean all the crap out.

 

 

 

[Vampirenostra]

8 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

Hmm, for me 7d2d during normal gameplay uses all of my 8 cores/16 threads equally and then has an overall usage of like 20-25%. So i can't confirm that there is a limit of using only 4 cores in 7d2d.

I had massive framedrops during last bloodmoon with darkness falls, but there was so much action, i didn't look at the system load. 🤪

Maybe i catch a look during the next BM.

 

Iirc structural integrity also uses more threads. You can easily test that. Start a game, turn on dm and cm, look for a high building with little floor space or little support blocks. Use dynamite to blow up the support blocks. The construction site works nice. One of the skyscrapers is also easy to make collapse. Then watch your system load while the POI collapses.

That is strange... I can clearly see not all cores are used in my MBP...

[linewalker]

6 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

That is strange... I can clearly see not all cores are used in my MBP...

it appears to be using the physical cores and not the fake hyperthreaded cores. which is pretty typical for a lot of earlier chipsets. especially if they are amd.

[Liesel Weppen]

15 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

That is strange... I can clearly see not all cores are used in my MBP...

But you can also see that it uses more than 4.

I didn't look that close, i just saw that it all cores are used. Some might indeed have lower usage anyway (or maybe even used for other background processes).

 

8 hours ago, linewalker said:

it appears to be using the physical cores and not the fake hyperthreaded cores. which is pretty typical for a lot of earlier chipsets. especially if they are amd.

It makes sense anyway. The hyperthreaded ones are not real, full cores. Especially if the real core ist at 100%, the hyperthread one can not bring the same performance as another real core on top. However, even if a real core is shown at 100% it doesn't mean all of his ALUs/FPUs are really used. Those unused units are still available to use for the hyperthreaded core, but that may not be enough to do further heavy calculations with them. That's why hyperthreading was invented.

 

From what i've seen in tests (and tested my self like 20 years ago on the first P4HT) Hyperthreading brings "only" 0-30% additional performance. How much it really is, hardly depends on the type of workload (and type of the cpu). Back then some specific workloads ran even faster if HT was turned off, but i guess that is solved nowadays, because the OS-scheduleres are now aware of how hyperthreading really works, what cpu is used exactly and how the workload looks like. And the result of that optimizations should look exactly like the screenshot above.

[meganoth]

I turned off hyperthreading in A17 and it got me a few fps at the time. Sounds like I should try turning it on again, the negative impact might be gone.

 

 

[napalm00]

I'm also facing horrible performance in Alpha 19.

No matter what I do with the video settings, vsync, dynamic resolution, the game still dips from like 120-200fps down to 20 for a few seconds, then back again.

This happens randomly and also when loading parts of the map that have already been visited. Both single and multi player.

 

PC Specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

NVIDIA RTX 3090 24GB

2x 16GB G.Skill 3600MHz

2x Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB

2 monitors (4K main and 1080p secondary)

 

The game has no reason to run this bad on such a rig and yet it does. It's the only game I've encountered that has such bad performance.

The funny thing is Alpha 18 used to run fine on my older rig (i7 4770k (?), 32GB G.Skill 1333MHz, EVGA GTX 980).

 

[Vampirenostra]

On 11/28/2020 at 3:44 AM, linewalker said:

it appears to be using the physical cores and not the fake hyperthreaded cores. which is pretty typical for a lot of earlier chipsets. especially if they are amd.

This is an 15" MBP late 2018, There can't be any amd. it is an I-7 8750H 6 cores, 12 threads. I assume it is strange cause I can fully load the stone building my java projects, it starts throttling heavily under load, but keeps distributing the load upon all threads. And I know Mac is a horrible place to play games)), but it is more than sufficient and comfy for my work, especially if you get it as a tool from your employer.

On 11/28/2020 at 12:49 PM, Liesel Weppen said:

But you can also see that it uses more than 4.

I didn't look that close, i just saw that it all cores are used. Some might indeed have lower usage anyway (or maybe even used for other background processes).

 

It makes sense anyway. The hyperthreaded ones are not real, full cores. Especially if the real core ist at 100%, the hyperthread one can not bring the same performance as another real core on top. However, even if a real core is shown at 100% it doesn't mean all of his ALUs/FPUs are really used. Those unused units are still available to use for the hyperthreaded core, but that may not be enough to do further heavy calculations with them. That's why hyperthreading was invented.

 

From what i've seen in tests (and tested my self like 20 years ago on the first P4HT) Hyperthreading brings "only" 0-30% additional performance. How much it really is, hardly depends on the type of workload (and type of the cpu). Back then some specific workloads ran even faster if HT was turned off, but i guess that is solved nowadays, because the OS-scheduleres are now aware of how hyperthreading really works, what cpu is used exactly and how the workload looks like. And the result of that optimizations should look exactly like the screenshot above.

Yes you're very right. More than 4 for sure. As we can see real cores are also far from 100% loading, here the problem is more on GPU side, as can be seeing from another chart a bit higher on the right poor Radeon Pro 555X 4Gb struggles to run the game even with lowest settings. 

BTW speaking of frame drops while collapsing large buildings - I've noticed it stutters more when looking at  blocks hitting the ground and not the ones that fall from the building getting destroyed.

[SylenThunder]

2 hours ago, Vampirenostra said:

BTW speaking of frame drops while collapsing large buildings - I've noticed it stutters more when looking at  blocks hitting the ground and not the ones that fall from the building getting destroyed.

The issue with frame drops while collapsing doesn't have much to do with the visuals. It's the large number of SI calculations and data related to those calculations overwhelming the RAM and CPU. It's been several builds since I did a test based on that, but the last one took the client from using about 8.5GB RAM to using about 24GB RAM. If you only had 12GB RAM available, then all the excess would go to Swap/Pagefile. Since hard drives are typically slower than RAM, this created a massive bottleneck, and tanked your systems ability to keep up with drawing the frames.  

[Vampirenostra]

On 11/30/2020 at 12:40 AM, SylenThunder said:

The issue with frame drops while collapsing doesn't have much to do with the visuals. It's the large number of SI calculations and data related to those calculations overwhelming the RAM and CPU. It's been several builds since I did a test based on that, but the last one took the client from using about 8.5GB RAM to using about 24GB RAM. If you only had 12GB RAM available, then all the excess would go to Swap/Pagefile. Since hard drives are typically slower than RAM, this created a massive bottleneck, and tanked your systems ability to keep up with drawing the frames.  

Macs possess quite fast ssd lately, but anyhow it is way slower than the RAM

[Kyr]

I have the same issue. Just sitting in my base I get around 18 FPS. Outside it can go up to 22-28 FPS.

 

Horde nights, or inside large POIs like Dishong Tower it drops to 3-7 FPS and gets really choppy.

 

I have updates/anti-virus/etc. disabled while playing and monitoring the system usage while playing I see the average GPU load goes no higher than 55% and it's temp sits around 50-60 degrees C. For comparison, running the 3DMark DX11 benchmark sees the GPU hitting 80 degrees C and 100% utilization and the recorded frame rate in the benchmark was between 36-51 FPS.

 

Overall CPU utilization doesn't get above 35%. The highest utilization of a single core is no higher than 75%.

 

Memory and disk drive usage are low to negligable.

 

Specs

 

CPU

2 x Intel Xeon Processor E5-2650

• Clock frequency: 2,778 MHz (2,000 MHz)
• Physical / logical processors: 2 / 32
• # of cores: 8

GPU

AMD Radeon RX 480

• Memory: 8,192 MB
• Clock frequency: 1,310 MHz
• Memory clock frequency: 2,100 MHz
• Average temperature 78 °C

RAM

32 GB Kingston HyperX (2 x 16GB matched sticks in separate channels)

 

Game Drive

2 x 250GB Samsung EVO SSD configured RAID0

 

OS

64-bit Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19041)

 

====================================

 

My wife gets 100+ FPS in our base and 70-95 FPS on horde nights/dishong tower.

 

For comparison to my specs above, my wife's PC has the following specs...
 

Specs

 

CPU

1 x i5-4460  CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz

 

GPU

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

• Display Memory: 8119 MB
• Dedicated Memory: 4053 MB

RAM

8 GB Generic (1 x 8GB)

 

Game Drive

1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD 1TB

 

OS

64-bit Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19041)

 

 

As you can see, her PC is far less powerful than mine. I don't understand what it is on mine that's making the game run so poorly.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Kyr said:

I have the same issue. Just sitting in my base I get around 18 FPS. Outside it can go up to 22-28 FPS.

 

Horde nights, or inside large POIs like Dishong Tower it drops to 3-7 FPS and gets really choppy.

 

I have updates/anti-virus/etc. disabled while playing and monitoring the system usage while playing I see the average GPU load goes no higher than 55% and it's temp sits around 50-60 degrees C. For comparison, running the 3DMark DX11 benchmark sees the GPU hitting 80 degrees C and 100% utilization and the recorded frame rate in the benchmark was between 36-51 FPS.

 

Overall CPU utilization doesn't get above 35%. The highest utilization of a single core is no higher than 75%.

 

Memory and disk drive usage are low to negligable.

 

Specs

 

CPU

2 x Intel Xeon Processor E5-2650

• Clock frequency: 2,778 MHz (2,000 MHz)
• Physical / logical processors: 2 / 32
• # of cores: 8

Lost of cores. Maybe the game uses too many of them and overloads the data paths on this very old CPU, especially since there are two CPUs with a comparatively slow interconnect.

To test that you could turn off one of the CPU chips in the BIOS, and maybe even turn off hyperthreading and see if it helps.

 

 

[Syn]

2 hours ago, Kyr said:

I have the same issue. Just sitting in my base I get around 18 FPS. Outside it can go up to 22-28 FPS.

 

Horde nights, or inside large POIs like Dishong Tower it drops to 3-7 FPS and gets really choppy.

 

I have updates/anti-virus/etc. disabled while playing and monitoring the system usage while playing I see the average GPU load goes no higher than 55% and it's temp sits around 50-60 degrees C. For comparison, running the 3DMark DX11 benchmark sees the GPU hitting 80 degrees C and 100% utilization and the recorded frame rate in the benchmark was between 36-51 FPS.

 

Overall CPU utilization doesn't get above 35%. The highest utilization of a single core is no higher than 75%.

 

Memory and disk drive usage are low to negligable.

 

Specs

 

CPU

2 x Intel Xeon Processor E5-2650

• Clock frequency: 2,778 MHz (2,000 MHz)
• Physical / logical processors: 2 / 32
• # of cores: 8

GPU

AMD Radeon RX 480

• Memory: 8,192 MB
• Clock frequency: 1,310 MHz
• Memory clock frequency: 2,100 MHz
• Average temperature 78 °C

RAM

32 GB Kingston HyperX (2 x 16GB matched sticks in separate channels)

 

Game Drive

2 x 250GB Samsung EVO SSD configured RAID0

 

OS

64-bit Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19041)

 

====================================

 

My wife gets 100+ FPS in our base and 70-95 FPS on horde nights/dishong tower.

 

For comparison to my specs above, my wife's PC has the following specs...
 

Specs

 

CPU

1 x i5-4460  CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz

 

GPU

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960

• Display Memory: 8119 MB
• Dedicated Memory: 4053 MB

RAM

8 GB Generic (1 x 8GB)

 

Game Drive

1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD 1TB

 

OS

64-bit Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19041)

 

 

As you can see, her PC is far less powerful than mine. I don't understand what it is on mine that's making the game run so poorly.

I'm having the same issues. When you are outside I'm getting anywhere from 28-42 FPS and inside it has gone as low as 12. This has been fairly recent that it has done this. 19.2 stable has been stable until about a week or so ago. My system isn't a kingpin set up but it's no slouch either. 

 

CPU: i9-9900k

RAM:32 GB 

GPU: RTX 2060

and I've tried running on my NVME and my SSD's there is no change. 

on Windows 10 Pro. 

 

I don't feel like with my set up I should see any issues at any resolution but I'm playing at 1080. 12fps inside a building is unplayable. I've also noticed that the amount of memory that I use goes up over time. It starts at about 12 and usually when I quit playing that the memory ends up over 16gb. Could it be that there is a memory leak somewhere? I don't know, I love this game but it's making playing just a hassle. Maybe Alpha 20 will fix some of these issues. 

[Kyr]

51 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Lost of cores. Maybe the game uses too many of them and overloads the data paths on this very old CPU, especially since there are two CPUs with a comparatively slow interconnect.

To test that you could turn off one of the CPU chips in the BIOS, and maybe even turn off hyperthreading and see if it helps.

 

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

The BIOS has no option to turn off a sepcific CPU socket unfortunately so I'm stuck with 2 CPUs but it did give me another idea.

 

I've created a shortcut for the game that forces 7DTD to run with a CPU affinity that limits it to just 8 of the cores on CPU1 (the 2nd CPU).

 

This has improved my FPS. I now see 32-40 FPS in my base, ~50 FPS outdoors.

 

I took a copy of my save and forced a horde night to test that and it still dropped massively... but I was still seeing 12-15 FPS which is an improvement and somewhat more playable.

 

I've tested this using 4, 6 and 8 cores. I always choose even numbered cores as these are the "physical" cores (as opposed to the "hyperthread" virtual cores).

 

In my testing 6 or 8 works best... there's very little difference between them with 6 being marginally better in my testing.

 

 

For anyone else that needs this fix and wondering how to do this, it's relatively simple.

 

First, open task manager > performance and count how many cores you have .. I have 32.

 

Next, in notepad, type out that many zeros...

 

00000000000000000000000000000000

 

Now, each of these represents a core. From right to left change a 0 to a 1 for each core you will want the game to use...

 

For me this was 8 cores...

 

01010101010101010000000000000000

 

Next, turn this into a hex value (https://www.mathsisfun.com/binary-decimal-hexadecimal-converter.html can do this)

 

55550000

 

Next, create a new shortcut on your desktop with a target as follows...

 

cmd.exe /c start "7DaysToDie" /affinity 55550000 "drive:\full\path\to\your\7DaysToDie.exe"

 

Replace the number in bold with the one you generated above...

 

Start the game using this shortcut.

[Syn]

On 12/12/2020 at 11:18 AM, Syn said:

I'm having the same issues. When you are outside I'm getting anywhere from 28-42 FPS and inside it has gone as low as 12. This has been fairly recent that it has done this. 19.2 stable has been stable until about a week or so ago. My system isn't a kingpin set up but it's no slouch either. 

 

CPU: i9-9900k

RAM:32 GB 

GPU: RTX 2060

and I've tried running on my NVME and my SSD's there is no change. 

on Windows 10 Pro. 

 

I don't feel like with my set up I should see any issues at any resolution but I'm playing at 1080. 12fps inside a building is unplayable. I've also noticed that the amount of memory that I use goes up over time. It starts at about 12 and usually when I quit playing that the memory ends up over 16gb. Could it be that there is a memory leak somewhere? I don't know, I love this game but it's making playing just a hassle. Maybe Alpha 20 will fix some of these issues. 

11 Fps during horde night now. it's getting worse and intermittent. 

[Beelzybub]

On 11/26/2020 at 10:24 PM, Ponasity said:

I thought Id load up my A18 save. Nope. Tried to start a new save and its literally unplayable.

You can't play an Alpha 18 world in A19. Sorry, but you need to start a new world.

[Emo Otaku]

I'm currentl;y MAXing out at 10 FPS in both Ultra and low settingsat 1080p,

 

Did a full game reinstall deleted all saved games etc

 

Optimized for performance nn geforce experience

 

Specs

 

CPU AMD 2600

GPU RTX2070 Super

32GB RAM

 

500GB NVME harddrive

 

All drivers are up to date

 

Using afterburner to monitor Usage  I am in single figuies for Both CPU and GPU

 

When paused I'm getting 110FPS

 

 

PS Turned off discord (was giving popup Notifications) have got up to 25 FPS in both 1080p Low and Ultra Settings_

[Beelzybub]

On 12/12/2020 at 6:19 AM, Kyr said:

RAM

32 GB Kingston HyperX (2 x 16GB matched sticks in separate channels)

This makes your memory run in single channel mode. (half speed). You'll probably get a performance bump by adding two

more chips to get them running in dual channel mode.

10 hours ago, Emo Otaku said:

I'm currentl;y MAXing out at 10 FPS in both Ultra and low settings

Post a log. Instructions are in a sticky at the top of this sub-forum.