7 Days To Die optimization

[Rotor]

So, not at my puter right now, but which settings are cpu intensive vs gpu?  I can't recall the description mentioning specifics.

[Jason Tamosiunis]

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

You don*t know what you are talking about. 😁

 

More serious, the game is CPU- and probably cache-or datapath-bound in some situations as well, not GPU bound, and it is dependent on a graphics library that is not optimized for their use case.

 

"A chain is only as strong as its weakest link". You probably know that saying, right? Now in the case of 7d2d (different than most other games) the CPU is the weakest link. grandspartan could have two 3099ti overclocked in his computer (if such beast were available) and the game would not run one FPS faster. Because if the 3080ti was using 20% of its power then the two 3099ti would be running at 10% utilization. But the same 1 (!!) core of the CPU would be running at 100% just like it does now with a 3080ti.

Whatever you do to the GPU, the CPU is the weak link and it is running at full speed already.

 

Now could TFP change that? Not according to its developers, because the graphics engine (Unity) seems to feed the data to the GPU in one single thread running on 1 core of the CPU and that is the core that is already fully occupied with that task.

Since players who have super graphics cards expect to turn all options to ultra, their games often have low FPS and those FPS do NOT depend on their graphics card but on the CPU. Every graphics option they turn on also makes the CPU have to work slightly more in that single thread which is feeding the GPU with data. But that single thread in the CPU is already at its limit and so the game gets slower at ultra settings even though the GPU is bored out of its wits.

 

in the last years GPU performance and CPU performance have been improved as expected. But while the GPU was multi-core from the beginning and could fully employ those improvements, the speed of the CPU (for games at least) was almost equal to its single-core speed and all the improvements by adding more cores are half wasted by many games today. Since i7-4770k  (6 generations ago) the single-core performance improved only by about 30% (at least according to a comparison website). And graphics engines like Unity are only slowly converting to the situation that all tasks have to to be balanced across cores.

 

I don't have experience with Unity myself. I don't know what the current status is. Eventually all graphics engines will have to be fully balanced multi-core or they will be superseded by better engines because at the moment CPU improvements largely only happen by adding more cores.

 

i have all my game setting to as low as possible and here is my system specs, is there anything at all you think i could turn up to maybe help   Operating System
    Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz    81 °C
    Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
    4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
    Hewlett-Packard 3048h (XU1 PROCESSOR)
Graphics
    DELL 1704FPV (1280x1024@60Hz)
    DELL 1704FPV (1280x1024@60Hz)
    2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 (ZOTAC International)    74 °C
Storage
    465GB Seagate ST3500413AS (SATA)    39 °C
    465GB Seagate ST3500630NS (SATA)    44 °C
Optical Drives
    HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Jason Tamosiunis said:

i have all my game setting to as low as possible and here is my system specs, is there anything at all you think i could turn up to maybe help   Operating System
    Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz    81 °C
    Wolfdale 45nm Technology
RAM
    4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
    Hewlett-Packard 3048h (XU1 PROCESSOR)
Graphics
    DELL 1704FPV (1280x1024@60Hz)
    DELL 1704FPV (1280x1024@60Hz)
    2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 (ZOTAC International)    74 °C
Storage
    465GB Seagate ST3500413AS (SATA)    39 °C
    465GB Seagate ST3500630NS (SATA)    44 °C
Optical Drives
    HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50

 

It's a wonder its running 7d2d at all. Are you really only having 4G RAM? Or did you mean 2x4G?

 

If someone donates some RAM to reach 8G or a better CPU for exactly that socket to you, take it. But you simply won't get much bang for the buck upgrading any one part of that PC since all parts aren't far from being a limiting factor. An SSD might improve things somewhat but won't allow you to turn on more graphics options.

 

In other words putting money into that PC is largely wasted (except for a SSD which might be used with a new PC as well) and the money would be better spend on a new or secondhand computer that isn't too old.

 

[Maharin]

13 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

It's a wonder its running 7d2d at all. Are you really only having 4G RAM? Or did you mean 2x4G?

 

If someone donates some RAM to reach 8G or a better CPU for exactly that socket to you, take it. But you simply won't get much bang for the buck upgrading any one part of that PC since all parts aren't far from being a limiting factor. An SSD might improve things somewhat but won't allow you to turn on more graphics options.

 

In other words putting money into that PC is largely wasted (except for a SSD which might be used with a new PC as well) and the money would be better spend on a new or secondhand computer that isn't too old.

 

 

Yeah... with 4MB of RAM how are you even generating maps to play on?

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, RudyPolak said:

Well you are right - the game is CPU based. However, i dont have that bad CPU - i should be able to play it if it would be CPU based only. But it might be also my GPU just being very bad for now. 

 

You seem to have a laptop, that is a different case. Usually CPU and GPU in a laptop share the RAM which isn't good for RAM performance. Also an integrated GPU is generally underpowered for playing games so you actually might have the situation that your GPU **is** the bottleneck.

 

Furthermore laptops have a very tight heat budget and it is possible that your system is getting throttled when the heat goes above the limit. 

 

[Jason Tamosiunis]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

It's a wonder its running 7d2d at all. Are you really only having 4G RAM? Or did you mean 2x4G?

 

If someone donates some RAM to reach 8G or a better CPU for exactly that socket to you, take it. But you simply won't get much bang for the buck upgrading any one part of that PC since all parts aren't far from being a limiting factor. An SSD might improve things somewhat but won't allow you to turn on more graphics options.

 

In other words putting money into that PC is largely wasted (except for a SSD which might be used with a new PC as well) and the money would be better spend on a new or secondhand computer that isn't too old.

 

so in laymans terms take a sledgehammer to it XD

[meganoth]

7 hours ago, Jason Tamosiunis said:

so in laymans terms take a sledgehammer to it XD

 

For gaming I would call it an Atari console 😁

 

[Roland]

On 2/28/2022 at 4:52 PM, Jason Tamosiunis said:

RAM
    4.00GB

 

The game will never be optimized this far.

[Jason Tamosiunis]

10 hours ago, Roland said:

 

The game will never be optimized this far.

i know but aything is better than what it currently is i would think even you would agree

[JCrook1028]

On 3/2/2022 at 11:56 PM, Jason Tamosiunis said:

i know but aything is better than what it currently is i would think even you would agree

You're playing on hardware so small you can't even see what is "optimized" or not. It's amazing you can even load up the game at all.

[SylenThunder]

On 2/28/2022 at 1:53 AM, Jason Tamosiunis said:

Watching a grandspartan stream who has a 3080ti graphics card with 64gbs of ram has massive lag i dont want anyone telling me i dont know what im saying the game is not optimized 1 bit and im sick and tired of people telling me otherwise. Dont tell the player base we dont know what we are talking about

Fox already covered this in quite a lot of detail, but just wanted to add a little something.

 

A lot of streamers run CPU's like threadrippers because they are great at running multiple tasks on single threads. Like playing a single-threaded game (most are) while streaming and also encoding. The problem is that these CPU's are pretty weak when an application requires a lot of heavy multi-threaded CPU use, which is something 7 Days does.

 

And blowing a 5950X for something you're just going to play games on is a complete waste of money. The processor is only going to be utilized when you're running multiple programs like Photoshop, the Creative Cloud, video editing software, and DAWs. Otherwise most of those 32 cores are just going to be sitting at idle not doing a damn thing. Sitting and bragging you've got a 5950X, 64GB RAM, and a 3090Ti just to play games only shows that you have more money than common sense. I would strongly advise anyone preaching specs like this take a few minutes to do some research on how things actually function.

[Jason Tamosiunis]

10 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

You're playing on hardware so small you can't even see what is "optimized" or not. It's amazing you can even load up the game at all.

i know i keep wondering that myself XD

2 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Fox already covered this in quite a lot of detail, but just wanted to add a little something.

 

A lot of streamers run CPU's like threadrippers because they are great at running multiple tasks on single threads. Like playing a single-threaded game (most are) while streaming and also encoding. The problem is that these CPU's are pretty weak when an application requires a lot of heavy multi-threaded CPU use, which is something 7 Days does.

 

And blowing a 5950X for something you're just going to play games on is a complete waste of money. The processor is only going to be utilized when you're running multiple programs like Photoshop, the Creative Cloud, video editing software, and DAWs. Otherwise most of those 32 cores are just going to be sitting at idle not doing a damn thing. Sitting and bragging you've got a 5950X, 64GB RAM, and a 3090Ti just to play games only shows that you have more money than common sense. I would strongly advise anyone preaching specs like this take a few minutes to do some research on how things actually function.

that is grandspartans PC specs and i dont know his whole setup either was just stating something i noticed at the time and realized later i made a mistake

[pApA^LeGBa]

9 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Fox already covered this in quite a lot of detail, but just wanted to add a little something.

 

A lot of streamers run CPU's like threadrippers because they are great at running multiple tasks on single threads. Like playing a single-threaded game (most are) while streaming and also encoding. The problem is that these CPU's are pretty weak when an application requires a lot of heavy multi-threaded CPU use, which is something 7 Days does.

 

And blowing a 5950X for something you're just going to play games on is a complete waste of money. The processor is only going to be utilized when you're running multiple programs like Photoshop, the Creative Cloud, video editing software, and DAWs. Otherwise most of those 32 cores are just going to be sitting at idle not doing a damn thing. Sitting and bragging you've got a 5950X, 64GB RAM, and a 3090Ti just to play games only shows that you have more money than common sense. I would strongly advise anyone preaching specs like this take a few minutes to do some research on how things actually function.

 

Right now, you can´t buy any CPU that doesn´t lag in cities. It´s a fact, the lack of optimization shows as strong as never before during development. You can´t talk that away. Now i am not saying fully optimize right now, but denying the problem is just a no go tbh.

 

And it´s only cities, so turning options down, just for a certain area is annoying af and not a solution, it´s not even a workaround.

 

For me it´s either using KingGen and not having the new tile system and cities. Or waiting for optimization. As much as i like the new cities there is no fun in playing right now with those lags. 

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Right now, you can´t buy any CPU that doesn´t lag in cities. It´s a fact, the lack of optimization shows as strong as never before during development. You can´t talk that away. Now i am not saying fully optimize right now, but denying the problem is just a no go tbh.

 

So you have such a CPU? May I ask which one?

If not, are you basing this opinion on watching streamers where you don't even know what they have running beside the game and what options or mods they employ?

 

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

And it´s only cities, so turning options down, just for a certain area is annoying af and not a solution, it´s not even a workaround.

 

For me it´s either using KingGen and not having the new tile system and cities. Or waiting for optimization. As much as i like the new cities there is no fun in playing right now with those lags. 

 

Do you have dynamic meshes turned on or off?

 

If you have it on then you have turned on a new feature just introduced in A20 which still has an unhealthy amount of bugs and unoptimized code, anything else would really be astonishing. I'm sure the devs would totally agree with you that that code isn't optimized.

 

Cities ARE the most FPS-intensive terrain besides densely populated forrests because of high polygon count, there is no avoiding this. If you set your options so only the best case has playable FPS then the worst case will be unplayable. There is no way around that.

 

 

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

I actually do know someone with a 11900K who knows what he is doing when it comes to PC´s and gaming. And the fact that there is no way avoiding this is the problem here. Turning things off just for a certain area is just not it. A feature that you can´t use without having lag, meh. Well gotta wait if this can be solved, the lack of T5 POI´s generated is boring af anyways. 

[meganoth]

13 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I actually do know someone with a 11900K who knows what he is doing when it comes to PC´s and gaming.

 

Even if I knew what I'm doing I could not prevent having problems with dyn.meshes. Be really happy that you actually can turn it off.

 

13 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

And the fact that there is no way avoiding this is the problem here. Turning things off just for a certain area is just not it.

 

So there is a way avoiding the problem that you just discount here so that you can say there is no way avoiding it? 😏 😁.

 

Turn off dyn.mesh for the whole game and be done with it. Or complain endlessly that you are eating a poisoned carrot just because it is dangling before your nose. 

 

13 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

A feature that you can´t use without having lag, meh. Well gotta wait if this can be solved, the lack of T5 POI´s generated is boring af anyways. 

 

Yeah, happens in EA. May I remind you about the bugged minibikes in A15 we had to live with for a year. No option there to simply turn it off.

[pApA^LeGBa]

I was actually saying that the problem exists and that blabbering about streamers for what ever reason and you guys claiming that they lie about their setups doesn´t make the problem go away.

 

And as said, i am not gonna tinker with settings just because of a certain area not beeing able to enjoy itin the rest of the world that doesn´t have any problems with lag, i rather wait.

 

Three posts equals endlessly? Good to know....

[SylenThunder]

5 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

for what ever reason and you guys claiming that they lie about their setups doesn´t make the problem go away.

I'm not aware of anyone saying any such thing.

 

I'll also note that I'm not experiencing huge lag drops in cities. Yes there is a little bit, but that's always been there when it's loading buildings looking around.

I've tested some of the complaints about the Dishong tower as well and have not experienced the same dips. I posted detailed information on it over in the Steam forum.

[Maharin]

The easiest way to avoid the problem is to not play 7DTD.  Wait, that isn't easy to do at all... forget it, carry on.

[Jason Tamosiunis]

18 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Right now, you can´t buy any CPU that doesn´t lag in cities. It´s a fact, the lack of optimization shows as strong as never before during development. You can´t talk that away. Now i am not saying fully optimize right now, but denying the problem is just a no go tbh.

 

And it´s only cities, so turning options down, just for a certain area is annoying af and not a solution, it´s not even a workaround.

 

For me it´s either using KingGen and not having the new tile system and cities. Or waiting for optimization. As much as i like the new cities there is no fun in playing right now with those lags. 

TY that is what i have been trying to say this whole time just didnt know how

5 hours ago, Maharin said:

The easiest way to avoid the problem is to not play 7DTD.  Wait, that isn't easy to do at all... forget it, carry on.

yes i agree it drives me insane everyday i cant play it thank god i have grandspartand and kage to keep me semi-sane ATM till game does get optimized

[Pernicious]

23 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Right now, you can´t buy any CPU that doesn´t lag in cities. It´s a fact,

 

Say what?

 

I'm playing perfectly fine on an 8086k, everything cranked up up, including 64 max zombies. I mean, it's not 100+Fps, but I wouldn't describe 45fps as lag, it's just not perfectly smooth. Many movies are still played at the traditional 25fps.

[meganoth]

21 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I was actually saying that the problem exists and that blabbering about streamers for what ever reason and you guys claiming that they lie about their setups doesn´t make the problem go away.

 

I said that we don't know about their setup. If we asked them we might or might not find reasons why they have problems with FPS. Sylen even offered a likely explanation why streamers often see performance problems.

The ones we can ask, for example simple questions like "What is your CPU?", instead pull another anonymous guy out of the hat we can't ask about details.

 

Note I do not doubt your friend exists and I don't assume he lies to you. It just doesn't help with your claim if we can't check the circumstances. Instead we have lots of people here on the forum saying they can play the game in cities with current CPUs. And only one of them being factually correct refutes your claim as stated.

 

I actually asked you IF YOU KNOW about the setup of the streamers. You avoided to answer that questions just like you never answered the question about your CPU. I don't discount streamers outright, but they have no better claim on the truth than any random guy.

 

Performance is a problem? In general that is known for years. Did you miss all the statements of TFP that they can't increase the zombies much?

Fact is also that dynamic meshes seem to be another cause of performance problems and if TFP can't solve them reasonably then that option will surely be turned off by default when the game releases.

 

21 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

And as said, i am not gonna tinker with settings just because of a certain area not beeing able to enjoy itin the rest of the world that doesn´t have any problems with lag, i rather wait.

 

That is always a choice. Illogical in my view when playing an alpha and concering an area that might be small in quadratic miles but where almost everything happens, but so be it. If I didn't turn off some options I would never have been able to play the game well with my current reasonably priced and at least 3 year old PC.

 

21 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Three posts equals endlessly? Good to know....

 

Yeah, that was hyperbole. I fail at being a 100% rational being as well 😉

 

 

 

[RyanX]

On 3/5/2022 at 5:49 AM, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Right now, you can´t buy any CPU that doesn´t lag in cities. It´s a fact, the lack of optimization shows as strong as never before during development. You can´t talk that away. Now i am not saying fully optimize right now, but denying the problem is just a no go tbh.

 

 

Well said.  With each alpha, optimization continues to take a hit.  That little "stutter" that crept in a few alphas ago has been here so long that I think most people have gotten used to it.  Bad hitboxes, stutters, etc. etc. can't be covered up by adding more "features" or "content", it accentuates it.  Dying because a zed spawns on top of you trapping you in a closet is not ok.  It ruins immersion and just @%$#es you off.  But, realistically this topic has been discussed ad nauseum and those who try to talk it down are in denial.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, RyanX said:

Well said.  With each alpha, optimization continues to take a hit. 

 

Strictly speaking it is the other way round, TFP adds more stuff that costs performance, some of it previously won through optimization. AND they seem to target better and better PCs as time goes on. A consequence of the release date being farther and farther in the future.

 

1 hour ago, RyanX said:

That little "stutter" that crept in a few alphas ago has been here so long that I think most people have gotten used to it. 

 

The stutter when opening chests and inventory? Yes, a consequence of the unity engine having a garbage collection routine that costs too much with all the things happening in the game. Now it is relegated to occur only where it doesn't matter much but where it is much more conspicuous.

 

1 hour ago, RyanX said:

Bad hitboxes, stutters, etc. etc. can't be covered up by adding more "features" or "content", it accentuates it.  Dying because a zed spawns on top of you trapping you in a closet is not ok.  It ruins immersion and just @%$#es you off.  But, realistically this topic has been discussed ad nauseum and those who try to talk it down are in denial.

 

I'm not saying the problems don't exist. A game that could run well on 8 year old PCs could have been released a few years ago and it wouldn't have been bad. But it wouldn't have the features TFP were promising in the kickstarter and it would have been much much smaller on all levels. Some players are fine with the direction 7D took since then, some are not. And if you are not fine with the direction, additional bugs or performance problems may seem like the ruined icing on the ruined cake.

 

But me, I'm fine with that direction. I'm fine with more and new bugs if I can experience another alpha with new features and changed gameplay. If it is denial to actually have fun with a bigger game even though I have to experience bugs and turn off some graphics options I don't care much about, then so be it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pernicious]

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Strictly speaking it is the other way round, TFP adds more stuff that costs performance, some of it previously won through optimization. AND they seem to target better and better PCs as time goes on. A consequence of the release date being farther and farther in the future.

 

You reminded me of the furor around the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game was perfectly playable on the 980Tis which were the flagships at the time, but even with a top end gaming machine, you couldn't have all features on and textures on ultra. The developers made a comment that they had written the game to take advantage of DX12 features they saw coming, but weren't here yet (And implemented them much more slowly on DX11), and it really divided the community: Those that loved the game, and even enjoyed the lower settings, calling it still one of the best graphical experiences of the time. And those that simply couldn't get past the fact that their top end gaming rig couldn't run top end settings and called the game unplayable.

 

And that was with a finished AAA game.

 

The very first game I had Beta access to, they vetted Beta invitees (And in fact, not only was the game free to Beta testers, we then got private invites to the launch event - got special packs that were only given to media, etc.) They wanted to make sure that Beta testers knew what they were up for and had the right skills and mindset to handle it: Unstable programs, unfinished features, and the ability to read debug messages and know how to report bugs.

 

I guess this is the down side of the "hybrid" release model. A bit CICD, a bit Alpha, a bit "Game's not ready yet, but we've gotten the worst bugs out, so we can sell it to early adopters who know what they're in for." Unfortunately, it does seem like a small but vocal minority didn't know what they were in for, not helped by the fact that the "But it's Alpha" excuse has been stretched a bit thin.

 

I have to admit, it does get my goat a little that people speak of "Optimisation" like it's just a step in programming that the developers were too lazy to do, when this game is so much more ambitious than many others, in terms of things that need to be calculated. Why do people get shocked that frame rates drop in big cities, yet, nobody seemed that surprised when the Zerg rush came in Starcraft, or late game 60 empire, 1000 star system Stellaris? I guess it seems understandable when they can see the 500 zergs, and 500 fleets, but "We have 128 players and multiple skyscrapers in Battlefield, and that plays fine!".

 

Oh well, it is what it is, and fans of the game just have to be patient with those who don't understand.