low GPU usage and low FPS in level-5 mission house, how ?

[S3xySteak]

With the number of zombies increases , GPU usage was reduced from around 98% to around 65% with low FPS. It is always happened in a level-5 mission house. After I kill all zombies in level-5 mission house , the FPS and GPU usage becomes normal.

Meanwhile,  some people in TIE BA( like reddit in China) said maybe the zombies' pathfinding AI cause the low FPS, because FPS is not reduced too much(compared with that in level-5 mission house) in horde night. The difference between  level-5 mission house and horde night is that the horde night usually do not have the complex terrain.

I have used some mod to boost the FPS like "Simple FPS Saver" "Weed reduction" "Yakov's A20 Performance Mod" , but it has no visible effect.

 

5600x-flck2000

gtx1070

8g*2RAM-4000c16

WDC-sn500

[Fox]

Thermal throttling?

 

Back when I had just a GTX 1060 with my 5600x, I never experienced that issue at all. So my guess is either your settings are a little optimistic or you're thermal throttling due to heat on something (whether it's the CPU or GPU, could be either one since a throttled CPU would bottleneck the GPU and vice versa).

 

It's unlikely unless you have apps running in the background like Antivirus and whatnot chewing up more ram than necessary, but 16GB of ram is a small possibility too. Loading too much / filling up the ram for the scenario and having to resort to much slower pagefile to compensate. If you haven't already, I would try cleaning up your system of all the junk apps you don't need while running the game as the game will eventually use up all your available ram when playing for hours at a time. Running MSconfig and disable some of the junk (obviously leave driver related stuff enabled and of course, must have the RGB software enabled for max fps, the rest (non-microsoft related) can usually be disabled), then restart the computer and run the game and see if that helps.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[S3xySteak]

2 hours ago, Fox said:

Thermal throttling?

 

Back when I had just a GTX 1060 with my 5600x, I never experienced that issue at all. So my guess is either your settings are a little optimistic or you're thermal throttling due to heat on something (whether it's the CPU or GPU, could be either one since a throttled CPU would bottleneck the GPU and vice versa).

 

It's unlikely unless you have apps running in the background like Antivirus and whatnot chewing up more ram than necessary, but 16GB of ram is a small possibility too. Loading too much / filling up the ram for the scenario and having to resort to much slower pagefile to compensate. If you haven't already, I would try cleaning up your system of all the junk apps you don't need while running the game as the game will eventually use up all your available ram when playing for hours at a time. Running MSconfig and disable some of the junk (obviously leave driver related stuff enabled and of course, must have the RGB software enabled for max fps, the rest (non-microsoft related) can usually be disabled), then restart the computer and run the game and see if that helps.

I assembled and maintained this pc myself and I think it was not thermal throttling. I monitor my pc by MSI afterburner and it shows that the GPU and CPU works well.

I noticed that it said 15g RAM was used. I checked my windows task manager and it said 7dtd.exe has used 10g RAM.

Is 10g RAM enough?

Maybe I should upload a video on Youtube to show the problem exactly in a few days.

 

[Fox]

I very recently did a ram test and it turns out this game will use up to 11GB of ram upon loading a map for the first time (I did not test reloading the same map to see if it used less ram or not). 11GB of ram being used at startup and of course the game would likely use more the longer you play... if it's available. So yes, it is possible that your lack of ram is the cause for fps issues, especially if as you said the game is only able to use 10GB of the available ram and the rest going to the OS and other junk running in the background.

 

Also, doesn't MSI Afterburner only monitor GPU stuff? Do you know for sure that your CPU isn't reaching high temperatures?

[S3xySteak]

43 minutes ago, Fox said:

I very recently did a ram test and it turns out this game will use up to 11GB of ram upon loading a map for the first time (I did not test reloading the same map to see if it used less ram or not). 11GB of ram being used at startup and of course the game would likely use more the longer you play... if it's available. So yes, it is possible that your lack of ram is the cause for fps issues, especially if as you said the game is only able to use 10GB of the available ram and the rest going to the OS and other junk running in the background.

 

Also, doesn't MSI Afterburner only monitor GPU stuff? Do you know for sure that your CPU isn't reaching high temperatures?

So sad  I will shut down those @%$# running in the background and try again.

Afterburner can be used to overclock GPU. Besides, it can monitor almost everything. For examples, GPU stuff, CPU temperature, CPU usage of each thread, CPU clock of each thread, CPU power, RAM usage, FPS, Frame time, average fps, 1%Low fps. You can check it in settings. It is very useful and convenient. Strangely, MSI do not make any tips to make user know those function.

[Naz]

Drops in gpu utilisation like that are normal. It typically means your system is bottlenecked somwhere else during that moment. You said it happens in level 5 poi's. Those are usually found in city centers and because of the density of large detailed poi's + zombies + structural integrity calculations it's normal for performance to be cut in half with frequent stutters and low gpu usage in those areas. 

 

I've experienced the same behaviour in those areas on 3/3 sets of hardware, so I think it's safe to say it will be like that for everyone and it just down to personal sensitivity wherever or not it gets brought up as a problem. The 3rd set of hardware has the new 13900k cpu and if it stutters with the best gaming cpu available the issue can't be blamed on a lack of sufficiently powerful hardware and tfp should really look into improving the performance in those areas (which I believe they are) 

 

Until then however there are a couple things to try but they are more band aid solutions rather than fixes. Closing all background junk like already mentioned can improve performance depending on what you have running in the background. Locking your framerate (msi afterburner with rivatuna can do this) this won't give you a higher frame rate but it can make it less jarring instead of going from 100fps to 30 lock it down so it caps at 50 so they drops are not as extreme. You can even set a hot key toggle so you only need to do this in the city's. 

 

Also make sure you have set xmp in your motherboards bios. If you feel up to learning cpu overclocking that can help too, however if you haven't done it before it can take a significant amount of time to learn and might not get you any significant gains in performance while also increasing the chances of system instability without thorough stress testing. 

[Pernicious]

This is a well known problem, and it is usually related to structural integrity checks rather than path finding. Almost everyone complains of sub 40fps in T5 POIs, with older and poorly designed/tuned PCs complaining of worse.

 

More memory wouldn't hurt, as you are probably wasting cycles page faulting, but won't solve the problem fully.

[Fox]

8 hours ago, S3xySteak said:

So sad  I will shut down those @%$# running in the background and try again.

Afterburner can be used to overclock GPU. Besides, it can monitor almost everything. For examples, GPU stuff, CPU temperature, CPU usage of each thread, CPU clock of each thread, CPU power, RAM usage, FPS, Frame time, average fps, 1%Low fps. You can check it in settings. It is very useful and convenient. Strangely, MSI do not make any tips to make user know those function.

Ah, ok. I've always been a PrecisionXOC snob, so I never had a reason to use MSI stuff yet. That will probably change now though seeing as how EVGA no longer makes GPUs anymore.  Also, given that I use AMD CPUs, overclocking hasn't really been worth it for the last several years, so there's that too. I also use PrecisionX for limiting my fps to 72 so as to not create unnecessary heat as my apartment gets really hot if I don't.

 

I used to use RivaTuner, but it kept crashing this game (and a few others) whenever the settings weren't tuned for the specific game, not sure I'd ever recommend anyone using that anymore. Just not worth the headache.

Edited October 30, 2022 by Fox (see edit history)

[Jugginator]

7 hours ago, Fox said:

I used to use RivaTuner, but it kept crashing this game (and a few others) whenever the settings weren't tuned for the specific game, not sure I'd ever recommend anyone using that anymore. Just not worth the headache.

 In all honesty, MSI afterburner and Rivatuner are both issues for a lot of crashes. I've given up on both of those programs as a whole. I've got a Zotac card, its software is a little lackluster but it's minimalistic and hasn't caused any issues anyway. Not sure if it'll work with other cards or not 

[S3xySteak]

12 hours ago, Pernicious said:

This is a well known problem, and it is usually related to structural integrity checks rather than path finding. Almost everyone complains of sub 40fps in T5 POIs, with older and poorly designed/tuned PCs complaining of worse.

 

More memory wouldn't hurt, as you are probably wasting cycles page faulting, but won't solve the problem fully.

Thx for  your answer. Hopefully TFP will be able to solve this problem in the future.

[Stranded_Napkin]

AI is handled by the cpu. Entities on screen or in world, the map, inventories, vehicles, anything that has stats and moves or can be changed is handled on the cpu. What's waiting on your cpu gets stored in the RAM. Some stuff stays there while other stuff doesn't. The game doesn't handle RAM usage well. I've got 64Gb of RAM and it got up to 30Gb usage overall on my pc. Takes a lot to get it there though. Just something in the engine or something that keeps more of the info stored in the RAM than other games do.