Need help, VR performance issues despite available resources

[Xevyr]

Hey everyone,

I'm having severe performance issues with ED - VR and despite being pretty good with IT / tech (former software dev) I can't for the life of me figure out a solution.
I've been playing this game for a long time, but took almost a year break from it and now it seems to be even worse than it was in terms of the fps I'm getting (possibly due to the updates in between)
My rig has a GTX 1080 and a Ryzen 1700x along with 16 GB of ram and the game on an SSD and it's running Windows 10 x64. I'm using an Oculus Rift with the recommended Inateck (fresco logic chip) usb expansion slot and 3 sensors, it works without problems in every other VR game.

I remember back when I used to play there was a certain Nvidia driver version that Oculus recommended (was it 388.59? can't remember) since Nvidia broke their VR support so I used to be running that downgraded driver, but a few months ago I did a clean DDU and updated to the latest one and have been updating it since, as it seemed Nvidia and Oculus became 'friends' again (at least the latest driver works well for other VR titles that used to have problems)

So here's the thing.. I'm running at a low shadows and mid to high graphics settings with supersampling and HMD quality both set to the default 1.0 and ASW is almost always on except when out alone in deeps space... if I disable it then in stations I get around ~45-70 fps, in deep space or supercruise it hits and settles on 90 quite often, however it's literally unplayable in almost any combat scenario.. I'm getting horrible unplayable fps in even the least populated resource extraction sites to where it's just not enjoyable and causes sickness.

Now.. here comes the kicker... I would be totally okay with that and acknowledge that maybe my system isn't powerful enough to handle it, if that were actually the case... but as it stands in any of these circumstances my CPU is running at a whopping 20% load (no individual cores overloaded, load split evenly between all 16 threads so my hat's off to EDs multi-threading capabilities) and my GPU spikes at 50-60%... Memory usage is around 50% with everything running... Disk I/O is minimal.. Network activity is also minimal (although these fps values are all in a Solo / Private group setting so I can't imagine how it would run with lots of players around)..
If I use the performance hud it shows me that I have thousands of application frames dropped.. barely any compositor frames dropped ever.. and my performance headroom is jumping constantly in the negative from -30% all the way to -80% occasionally...

Has anyone experienced similar issues and maybe figured out the magic trick to make it work? I'd really appreciate some help.

Thanks!

 

[Crank Larson]

Funnily enough, I did have similar issues that for a long time I put down to just E: D requiring more performance than my i7-6700 and 980Ti could handle. Turned out that my problem was simply inadequate cooling. Since sorting that, I've been able to run with 170% super-sampling enabled in SteamVR settings and E: D looks and runs like a dream.

This may not be your issue, but you should be able to check very easily just by monitoring your GPU temperature.

 

[Flimley]

Hello Xevyr
Have you tried using just one sensor for ED ? As i understand it the sensors run data heavy, requing a lot of bandwidth. Not sure what your inateck Logic chip specs are, and if the driver software is reliable? But after experiencing lag and white flashes I added a high speed (StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express (PCIe) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card Adapter w/ 4 Dedicated 5Gbps Channels) . And that solved my issue. I also set my USB ports in device manager to be permanently on.

Flimley

 

[NW3]

I'd really appreciate some help.

Here's a free tool that can help you spot many PC performance issues: https://www.userbenchmark.com/

It spotted a RAM configuration issue on my system, which netted me ~20% gaming framerate improvement. It's helped several other people I recommended it to.

As mentioned above, you might be experiencing thermal throttling.

You might want to uninstall your video drivers (back to the original windows drivers) and then do a fresh install of your video drivers (sometimes your system might be using mismatched driver dlls, especially if you ever install an older driver than the one which is currently installed). Fwiw, nVidia recommends ALWAYS doing a clean install, but I only resort to a complete reinstall if I see issues. If you installed GeForce Experience, you might want to uninstall it or at least make sure the record video feature is OFF. There's a feature that automatically records video continuously, so that you can save the last few minutes (if something cool happens and you weren't actively recording at the time).

 

[Crank Larson]

UserBenchmark is a good call. I used it to benchmark after the watercooling, and am happy that my system is now in the 97th percentile for its hardware. The M.2 drive was actually off the chart (though I suspect that was due to rapid mode skewing the result). CPU wasn't that great (it isn't a K version so can't overclock), but GPU was at the top of its chart too (I have overclocked that by over 10%).

 

[Xevyr]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the replies! I've been trying to troubleshoot it more myself in the meantime and as it turns out cmdr Flimley isn't that far off from the truth!
So it turns out that USB issues ARE the cause of my low framerates. I always knew that my motherboard usb controllers are pretty cheap and flimsy, but apparently they're even worse than I thought. I had things split up between the 3 controllers (hmd and 1 sensor in the inateck card, 1 sensor in the CPU based controller and the last one in the MB based controller).
Now obviously I have all sorts of other accessories using USB, ending up being on either of these 3 controllers in some way or another.. so I started swapping around things a bit and I did notice a few fps increase...
So I got to work... and got a bunch of monitoring software on to monitor not only bandwidth, but power consumption too, the results were rather surprising..

Also, my Inateck card is advertised as having a 5Gbps speed as well, but things are never that simple and when they advertise that, they say "up to 5Gbps" and not "guaranteed" as it obviously depends on a lot of different factors... and when you think about it that 5Gbps isn't too much either, basically 640 MB/s.
The results of my testing were surprising, I always figured the sensors probably consume quite a bit of bandwidth, but I wasn't expecting this much...
...basically an Oculus sensor plugged into USB 3.0 uses up an almost steady 61 MB/s and draws roughly 800mA power, as a comparison a Logitech C920 or similar webcam uses up around 2.8 MB/s and 500mA... A sensor in USB 2.0 is somewhat below the camera, it's at 2.2 MB/s and 200mA, while the HMD itself is pretty much identical to the consumption of a USB 3.0 sensor.
(Quick edit: I looked up that StarTech card in the meantime and I see that this one is pciex4 and actually has 4 individual controllers, mine only has one and all 4 ports share that so this card could actually solve my issues completely, thanks!)

With all this new information, I tried moving all the plugs around and configuring them so there's the least chance of overloading any one controller (not an equal split, but keeping in mind their capabilities both power and bandwidth-wise).
The result is that now I am actually getting 90 FPS with a 1.25 HMD image quality, however it still drops in stations and during combat, but it made the game playable. I am pretty sure that the remaining issues are still due to the same usb problem, but this is the best I could do without replacing the motherboard so it will have to do.

Thanks everyone for the replies, maybe some of the information in this thread can help others too in the future.
Cheers!

 

[NW3]

That's great news! I'm glad you were able to fix your problem.

Stations and planetary surfaces are worst-case scenarios for ED framerate. I recommend tuning for performance inside a station. Even the VR start up "hanger" screen is a reasonable framerate test. I try to get at least 60-70 fps at the start up screen. That way, I get a consistently decent framerate everywhere.

 

[Crank Larson]

but this is the best I could do without replacing the motherboard so it will have to do.

This is something I had to do when I got the Rift. I have the same CPU and GPU, but had USB issues. I still have the Inateck card that I tried based on all the advice I found on the internet, but it didn't help at all for me. Replacing the motherboard with the next chipset up (Z270 vs Z170) solved those issues for me (my Z270 board has two USB specifically labelled for VR). I managed to persuade Amazon that the motherboard was faulty, and they gave me a replaced it free of charge (and I believe it was faulty, as it was specified as supporting VR, I just didn't get the VR kit at the same time).

Inside out tracking presumably does some internal processing as on my Odyssey+, there are no sensors and only one USB connection. I haven't had USB problems since the motherboard upgrade though (only heat issues ).