MSI afterburner stats and OR in extended mode

Desert63

Desert63
I believe what I am talking about is extended mode. I have my desktop setup to "extend these displays" with the OR as secondary. Then when I launch ED, its set to the secondary monitor.
My question is around the FPS I see in afterburner. When it says 75FPS, does that mean I AM getting 75FPS in the RIFT?

The reason I ask is because I dont believe this is the case when I launch a demo in Direct to Rift. In those cases I believe the FPS I see in Afterburner represents half (one for each eye) of the FPS I would see in the RIFT. So I would need to see 150FPS when launched this way in order for it to be 75FPS in the RIFT.

I mostly want to confirm that when running ED as extend these displays that the FPS I see in Afterburner is the FPS, per eye, in the RIFT. Its a tiny bit choppy and doesnt feel as 75FPS is the big reason I am asking.

Nope, not finished configuring yet, but do want my baseline check in afterburner when I do.

Thanks
 

SlackR

Banned
SlackR
As the dk2 is one screen id be surpised if what you were seeing was per eye. Id recommend using playclaw 5 to monitor fps and cpu useage as you can move the readouts and so view it directly in the rift.
 
Last edited:

Desert63

Desert63
Help please - been getting it all running today and have run into some things I cant fix.

How to I back out of the RIFT. I just want to go back and play ED straight up, no RIFT, to test. When I turn it off or say to only show monitor 1, my main LCD still shows the two images. I have to go into graphics and remove 3d, which is hard to do when looking at two images, especially since my LCD is 1280. So what is the best way to get back to just my LCD if I need to test?


Mild nausea during combat training - I had to stop before it became more than mild. I know most of you say this will go away after awhile. It was worth the price though to be able to look over my shoulder to track enemies.

How do I make it so I am playing in the RIFT, yet someone can see what I am doing (dual image I know) on the main monitor? WHen I play in the RIFT my main monitor stays on the desktop - which I like when I test as MSI is sitting there showing my main monitor giving me stats. But when I have someone over I want to be able to see where they are looking in the RIFT. I have secondary selected in graphics settings - and on my machine the RIFT is second, so getting into it and playing is fine.

Space is amazing, stations look pretty crappy so far, although the scale is just awesome. I thought I would be a badass docking since I have watched like 100 videos of docking - nope!

My FPS is locked solid at 75 in space, but hits 50s in stations, so you all know what that is like. But back to what MSI is saying - 55 or so FPS in stations - yet my GPU is at 40% and my CPU at 40%....? Why aren't they maxed trying to give me more FPS?

My X52Pro - the mapping makes sense, and all works except the aileon needs to be trimmed. I am sitting in space spinning left and I cant find trim on the X52. I am guessing its somewhere in the profile under options but that is still hard to read and work with in the RIFT.
So on top of my first question on how to trim my x52Pro (not in the manual and cant find it on their website).
I was able to go in a move deadzone a bit, and now the drift its very minimal. Still when I roll left its now faster (as it seems to be closer to the dead zone range since the drift is left), yet when I roll right it has a slight delay before I pass the deadzone. That doesn't seem like a solution to me.

Thanks!!
 

Darkmark07

Darkmark07
Desert63 said:
I mostly want to confirm that when running ED as extend these displays that the FPS I see in Afterburner is the FPS, per eye, in the RIFT. Its a tiny bit choppy and doesnt feel as 75FPS is the big reason I am asking.
Click to expand...

The output from Riva Statistics Server (which is an optional component of the Afterburner installation and, I believe, takes it information directly from there) gives the proper reading - i.e if it says 75 FPS it's the same 75 FPS you see people on here talking about. With a bit of playing about, you can get the output to display in the rift with no issue.

On my setup when it says 75 FPS it's super smooth - (actually not bad down to about 71-72).

What is it that you are trying to baseline? With my chequered history here with multiple upgrades and so on, my advice would be to forget about any clever stuff like SweetFX, DSR and so on in the first instance and just make sure that you get the best performance whilst parked in a hangar in one of the bigger stations. In my experience, sitting in one of the bigger station hangars with the CO2 streams coming out of the vents above you is reasonably close to the maximum GPU load that you will see out in a busy RES zone without the risk of getting shot up.

Start with the threads mentioned above in terms of tweaking the in-game graphics options until you get 75 FPS. If you don't have to tweak stuff down that much, then you've got some headroom to add some of the nice stuff on top, or at the very least, you've got a good baseline to work from.

Also consider some of the options in nVidia Control Panel (assuming you're not running AMD) - probably similar options are available in Catalyst(?)

What GPU(s) are you using and what's the spec of the rest of your rig? It might be that someone else on here has a similar set up and can give you a quick shot to get you close to those settings and give you an idea of what's ultimately achievable.
 
Last edited:

Desert63

Desert63
Darkmark07 said:
The output from Riva Statistics Server (which is an optional component of the Afterburner installation and, I believe, takes it information directly from there) gives the proper reading - i.e if it says 75 FPS it's the same 75 FPS you see people on here talking about. With a bit of playing about, you can get the output to display in the rift with no issue.

On my setup when it says 75 FPS it's super smooth - (actually not bad down to about 71-72).

What is it that you are trying to baseline?
Click to expand...

Thank you, this has been my experience so far. Kind of amazing how it starts to become clear when you drop below 65 or so. I have made some of the changes - sweetfx, green colors (which I love) and Antiscopic? Randomly changing graphics settings left and right just to see what I get, which is fun, kind of like I am beta testing a spaceship :). Running fine at SS 1.5 out in space, but oddly don't see a huge visual difference. Lots of experimenting to do and I am fine with that. This is a great community and one of the things that attracted me to the RIFT is the fun attitudes of everyone running it. My question is not one of support or recommendations on hardware, as that has been offered and the advise is well taken. It is around why Afterburner indicates I have available CPU and GPU capacity, when my frame rates run low. Why am I dropping below 65 FPS and my GPU and CPU are just kind of having a casual day running below 50% utilization. (I am benchmarking other things as well). So beyond the "you have an old CPU - just upgrade it", why are the numbers showing what they do?

It made sense when I was getting judder in poorly optimized RIFT demos as it showed my CPU was maxed. A clear bottleneck and one I would expect. But playing ED it shows my CPU and GPU are just having a light workout in the park - while I am getting judder. Why doesn't my CPU/GPU try to burn themselves up getting me the FPS I need? A maxed hardware component is the reason for an upgrade.

In short - Afterburner shows I have capacity that is not being utilized.......thoughts please
 

Karnath

Karnath
Just as a suggestion, have you tried running your tests with adaptive v/sync forced in the nvidia control panel instead of it being just locked on
 

Thoemse

T
Afterburner FPS = Rift FPS. If it shows 75 FPS you are fine.
I use it all the time with my logitech G15 keyboard to check on FPs.
Of course you can feel if you have 75 FPS or not very easily but if i feel judder i cropsscheck with afterburner and it allways drops below 75FPS if i feel judder.
 

Darkmark07

Darkmark07
Desert63 said:
Afterburner shows I have capacity that is not being utilized.......thoughts please
Click to expand...

Where are you seeing these FPS drops? In general, I only see significant FPS drops when I've just entered hyperspace and when I'm in supercruise near a planet or star.

I usually play in solo - others have reported significant frame drops when in busy systems / instances in public and group play. To date there has been no cast-iron reason found as to what causes this but there is are a lot of theories.

I had similar problems to you which I ended up diagnosing as a lack of memory bandwidth (although my frame rates in station were closer to 40 FPS with everything turned down to low).

Are you able to post some more detail about your setup so we can make some more educated guesses?
 

Desert63

Desert63
Karnath said:
Just as a suggestion, have you tried running your tests with adaptive v/sync forced in the nvidia control panel instead of it being just locked on
Click to expand...

No, I have not, but will try that!

- - - Updated - - -

Thoemse said:
Afterburner FPS = Rift FPS. If it shows 75 FPS you are fine.
I use it all the time with my logitech G15 keyboard to check on FPs.
Of course you can feel if you have 75 FPS or not very easily but if i feel judder i cropsscheck with afterburner and it allways drops below 75FPS if i feel judder.
Click to expand...

Yes, so far my experience matches that exactly. I can already 'feel' when I have dropped below 75 and afterburner verifies it. Of course the reason I drop when my CPU and GPU are relaxing is still the question :)
 

Desert63

Desert63
Darkmark07 said:
Where are you seeing these FPS drops? In general, I only see significant FPS drops when I've just entered hyperspace and when I'm in supercruise near a planet or star.

I usually play in solo - others have reported significant frame drops when in busy systems / instances in public and group play. To date there has been no cast-iron reason found as to what causes this but there is are a lot of theories.

I had similar problems to you which I ended up diagnosing as a lack of memory bandwidth (although my frame rates in station were closer to 40 FPS with everything turned down to low).

Are you able to post some more detail about your setup so we can make some more educated guesses?
Click to expand...

I have only so far been in training missions and solo as I work out the kinks, set my joystick throttle, etc. Frankly its fun enough right now just being in the RIFT that I dont need to go open yet, so I have yet to experience even more significant frame drops.

I drop below 75 when I am in the station - or approaching the station.
Really I appreciate the help, but the discussion will likely boil down too is I need to upgrade my CPU or motherboard. That is a safe bet, but an expensive one, that still doesn't explain why MSI says I have plenty of CPU capacity. So either afterburner is broke, or there is a bottle neck on my machine that cannot be monitored by Afterburner since I have turned it all on at one point or another.

Except...I have not yet turned on monitoring for each individual CPU. ED with DX11 can only take advantage of how many cores, 1-2? So if 1-2 is getting maxed yet MSI is reporting on the sum of my 6 cores, it could seem artificially lower. The first two cores are maxed yet I get an average based on unused cores, hmmmm. Even if ED and DX11 uses 4 cores that average would still be skewed by having two unused cores. Still doesnt explain why the demos showed a maxed CPU, but something to try.

Still with all that being said if I had to live with it, I could, there is nothing that comes even close....not the slightest bit close.
 
Last edited:

Darkmark07

Darkmark07
Can you run maxxmem and post your results here? http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php

If you want to redact the stuff about CPU and Memory types that's fine - clearly this is an issue for you. Equally, the copy, read, write and latency statistics would do if you're feeling particularly coy.

Some details of my (similar) issues here along with the MaxxMem result: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=132369&page=2&p=2035379#post2035379

Some other observations:

If 75 FPS is the holy grail with VR (it is, trust me) then that's what you need to focus on.

To get to this, depending on your rig you may need to make some compromises depending on the specs of various components. These compromises involve turning down the graphics settings (especially super-sampling, anti-aliasing, shadows, bloom, ambient occlusion, even oculus quality) and turning off reshade / sweet fx / whatever else. All of these things rob you of precious frame rate and will hinder you from reaching the 75 FPS nirvana.

If you can find a compromise where you can live with the lack of eye candy to get an acceptable frame rate then that's it - you've found a reasonable base line. Now you can start to fiddle with this and that to try to improve the experience.

If you can't get a solid 75 FPS even with everything dialed back to the minimum settings or you can't find a compromise that you're willing to live with then you have 2 options: 1. give up with VR or 2. upgrade some components to get the experience that you desire. However, turning down the graphics settings is a really good way to make a low end rig run a decent VR experience.

Lastly, the training missions are far less CPU and GPU intensive than even solo in game. If you can't hit 75 FPS here then you are pretty much wasting your time in the game, in my opinion.
 

Desert63

Desert63
Darkmark07 said:
Can you run maxxmem and post your results here? http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php

If you want to redact the stuff about CPU and Memory types that's fine - clearly this is an issue for you. Equally, the copy, read, write and latency statistics would do if you're feeling particularly coy.

Some details of my (similar) issues here along with the MaxxMem result: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=132369&page=2&p=2035379#post2035379

Some other observations:

If 75 FPS is the holy grail with VR (it is, trust me) then that's what you need to focus on.

To get to this, depending on your rig you may need to make some compromises depending on the specs of various components. These compromises involve turning down the graphics settings (especially super-sampling, anti-aliasing, shadows, bloom, ambient occlusion, even oculus quality) and turning off reshade / sweet fx / whatever else. All of these things rob you of precious frame rate and will hinder you from reaching the 75 FPS nirvana.

If you can find a compromise where you can live with the lack of eye candy to get an acceptable frame rate then that's it - you've found a reasonable base line. Now you can start to fiddle with this and that to try to improve the experience.

If you can't get a solid 75 FPS even with everything dialed back to the minimum settings or you can't find a compromise that you're willing to live with then you have 2 options: 1. give up with VR or 2. upgrade some components to get the experience that you desire. However, turning down the graphics settings is a really good way to make a low end rig run a decent VR experience.

Lastly, the training missions are far less CPU and GPU intensive than even solo in game. If you can't hit 75 FPS here then you are pretty much wasting your time in the game, in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dark - great site and information. And yes, feeling coy :). I have no problem listing my hardware and will, and believe I have elsewhere, but just trying to prevent well meaning troubleshooting advice. I know somebody, somewhere has information that shows my motherboard or CPU will cause my monitor to shoot glass into my face...and probably also no good for ED, so I need to upgrade immediately. (see coy :)). But I really am just looking for standards in testing and benchmarks that will show where I need to make hardware changes (MSI afterburner) - that is why I like the tool you list above. My gaming PC is indisposed at the moment but I will run it.

MSI gaming 970
AMD 1090T
890gxm-g65
8GB DDR3 2133 (Ares - whatever that is)
700 watt (non modular) power supply
An incredibly cool green translucent Aluminum mid tower case I bought 15 years ago when Apple paid Jeff Goldblum to go on TV and tell all the PC owners we were in "thinking jail" for having beige cases.

Still haunts me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQQZn7epHAI


 
Last edited:

ranix

ranix
I really don't think your CPU is the bottleneck here, I think it's extremely likely you're hitting some kind of headtracking bug or something. I really don't think this CPU is too slow for this application.
 

Desert63

Desert63
ranix said:
I really don't think your CPU is the bottleneck here, I think it's extremely likely you're hitting some kind of headtracking bug or something. I really don't think this CPU is too slow for this application.
Click to expand...

Thank you, this has been the general consensus about CPUs of this caliber when I came on the forums. I have seen numerous posts of people on here with old 2.7gig quads but with a new GPU that can optimize ED just fine to acceptable OR game play.
Crazy busy life right now, probably wont even touch my OR until Sunday, but I will do lots more benchmarking and start to narrow this down a bit better.
Thanks all!
 

Rick_Black

R
ranix said:
I really don't think your CPU is the bottleneck here, I think it's extremely likely you're hitting some kind of headtracking bug or something. I really don't think this CPU is too slow for this application.
Click to expand...
I agree that I dont think it should be the bottleneck but at the same time I have noticed a pattern here with amd cpu's. Every time I have seen someone talk about problems and that their cpu is not showing its even working hard it has been an amd cpu. So maybe there are certain amd cpu's that are not optimized for how VR works or something? I dont know for sure its just an idea, and I have no way to find out if im completely wrong or not.
 

Desert63

Desert63
Rick_Black said:
I agree that I dont think it should be the bottleneck but at the same time I have noticed a pattern here with amd cpu's. Every time I have seen someone talk about problems and that their cpu is not showing its even working hard it has been an amd cpu. So maybe there are certain amd cpu's that are not optimized for how VR works or something? I dont know for sure its just an idea, and I have no way to find out if im completely wrong or not.
Click to expand...

Yes Rick, I have gotten that rumbling before too. I don't want to appear the slightest bit anti-AMD, as I am not and usually choose them first. Having now read hundreds of comments across these forms I think part of the issue with AMD and the benchmark is that those "extra cores" as AMD goes to 6 and 8 are just not fully utilized by the OS(DX) and games. A good debate can start here but its already happened other places. But I may have uncovered some memory throughput issues via DarkMarks maxxmem utility, so I could still have a hardware problem.

On the left is my work laptop, which is a bit beefy, and fricking heavy. On the right is my gaming machine. Although not terrible I am surprised by the lack of bandwidth across my gaming machine. I don't like that the program could not identify my RAMM and type. Not a major problem in the bandwidth but possibly indicating my backplane is the bottleneck.

Oh wait, the lack of perceived bandwidth on my gaming machine might simply be that I have 16 GIGs in my worktop and only 8 GIGs in my gaming machine....Still even if I were to double the final score of 6.25gigs a second I still would not equal the 17gig throughput on my work laptop.
Hmmmm...
Work is slow and home today - off to play Elite in the Rift!

~
 

Attachments

  • maxxmemtest.png
    maxxmemtest.png
    276.8 KB · Views: 156

Darkmark07

Darkmark07
I think that the utility bases its tests on the RAM available to it, therefore you will not see a machine with 16GB give you twice the throughput of an 8GB machine.

It's an interesting result nonetheless and I think that this is most likely the cause of the poor performance that you're seeing given the fact that neither CPU nor GPU are maxed out.

Next question is what to do about it? Not sure about your mobo, but I would check to make sure that you're running the latest BIOS and check whether there are any memory relevant settings in the BIOS that are either sub-optimal or just plain wrong. Also check the physical placement of the RAM on the motherboard, some configurations will work but not give the best performance.

Could be that the RAM itself is at fault, if you've got more than one stick you could test each stick individually to see if one isn't performing as well as it should or find a friend and swap with a different type / brand to see if this gives you an improvement.

I recall that its DDR3 - if funds allow, you could buy some new high-performance RAM and see if that fixes it. There seem to be some good offers on Hyper-X RAM at the moment and it wouldnt be money wasted if you do decide to upgrade your mobo later on.

It may be that the mobo is the bottleneck as well - ultimately this could be limiting the throughput and it wouldnt matter how fast the RAM was. That said, the memory copy statistic above is quite low so the RAM is where I would start.

Good luck.

ETA - specs from my new machine:

Capture.PNG

This runs 2 x 970s in SLI without a problem, right up to 100% GPU usage.
 
Last edited:

Desert63

Desert63
Darkmark07 said:
I think that the utility bases its tests on the RAM available to it, therefore you will not see a machine with 16GB give you twice the throughput of an 8GB machine.

It's an interesting result nonetheless and I think that this is most likely the cause of the poor performance that you're seeing given the fact that neither CPU nor GPU are maxed out.

Next question is what to do about it? Not sure about your mobo, but I would check to make sure that you're running the latest BIOS and check whether there are any memory relevant settings in the BIOS that are either sub-optimal or just plain wrong. Also check the physical placement of the RAM on the motherboard, some configurations will work but not give the best performance.

Could be that the RAM itself is at fault, if you've got more than one stick you could test each stick individually to see if one isn't performing as well as it should or find a friend and swap with a different type / brand to see if this gives you an improvement.

I recall that its DDR3 - if funds allow, you could buy some new high-performance RAM and see if that fixes it. There seem to be some good offers on Hyper-X RAM at the moment and it wouldnt be money wasted if you do decide to upgrade your mobo later on.

It may be that the mobo is the bottleneck as well - ultimately this could be limiting the throughput and it wouldnt matter how fast the RAM was. That said, the memory copy statistic above is quite low so the RAM is where I would start.

Good luck.

ETA - specs from my new machine:

View attachment 56906

This runs 2 x 970s in SLI without a problem, right up to 100% GPU usage.
Click to expand...

Thank Dark, this was exactly what I was looking for. A diagnostic view of the problem and that maxxmem tool certainly showed it. Yes BIOS settings first.
Although I am sure you are right and the tool was build smart enough to not care about the amount of ram I would love if some other people here gave the tool a whirl especially if they have single stick 8 gig configurations.

EDIT - Also, I am a tiny bit concerned the tool doesn't identify my RAM....not the biggest issue, but certainly when you don't know the cause of a problem, every symptom matters.


Oh, are you saying when you run MSI with your dual 970s you show 100% GPU utilization? That is what I would expect if you are working to take advantage of every bit of power you have invested in.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom