25% FPS loss out of the blue

[Billy Pilgrim]

I'm looking for a bit of help.

A week or so ago, I started getting 20 to 30% fewer FPS when using AC. I wondered if it was Dynamic Shaders so uninstalled it but that doesn't change much, if anything. I can't figure it out. (the fps drop didn't come just after installing Dynamic Shaders anyway)

Wondering if a Windows update may have done this. I can't think of any graphics-type mod that I installed a week ago either.

I've got a 1080 ti and an i7 4770k (with an overclock). Triple screens. But there has been no hardware change recently that could have caused this.

 

[Denis Betty]

What we need is a RANT thread.

 

[Case_]

The stuff I see today with windows 10, jesus man. In the old days, once working, stuff didn't just stop working out of the blue . Games were released in a form you could call "approximately finished product".

Human memory. What a wonderful thing it's not.

 

[Kek700]

Regarding reflections: only the update rate is important. So I have them at static but with the highest quality.
Disabling shadows helps too but it's a bit... Well I like shadows

Something new again, i really like my reflections, tried without but left everything flat.
So took a fps hit with medium, medium.
Did not realise that the reflection update was the fps buster.
Now i have my reflections ( medium ) and update rate at static.
This has given me another 3 fps at start.

What we need is a RANT thread.

You need to go toACC , everyone is ranting there.

@Billy Pilgrim
it is not something that needs rushing through, as the example above shows with @RasmusP.
When i am a bit bored i find an article in racedepartment and read it, taking a
mental note of all that i think is relevant. Then apply it to AC and see what happens to the fps.
I always use Brands or Silverstone, full grid and the start, as a worst case senario.
When i got to the point were it was becoming difficult to find an advantage. I then clocked my
processor to 4.5Ghz . ( now it’s at 4.7Ghz ). I also water cooled ( cheaply) my GPU in an attept
to stop it from down clocking when hot. ( this should not apply to you ) ( i dream of a gtx1080ti ).
There are also many tips and info on YouTube, on graphic tweeks ,CPU and win 10 that are
also applicable.
Ironically there is no secret to any of this, probably the vast majority know it anyway as a collective.
it’s just conveying it to an individual that’s not so easy. @RasmusP has been very helpful on this
point, and he would, i am sure deny it’s him and say it all the other contributer and starters
of each article.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Personally, the approach that every problem has an explanation and a proper solution wears very thin after it happens constantly and i spend more time diagnosing FPS losses/stutters than actual racing. Specially since win10 and VR came onto the picture.
Free time with actual energy to spend comes at a premium, and I already spend my daily energy/attention quota doing that exact same approach in my day job taking care of a few hundred computers and servers, so I just said screw it and did the following:

• Two SSD's with two separate win10 installations. One is for everything else I play and do in the computer at home (general use; every game other than racing games; web browsing; movies etc).
• The other SSD only has windows 10 ver. 1809 with updates disabled by WUB tool and VR + Racing Sims + teamspeak and that is it. I even have a clone of this installation when everything is working right.

Windows 10 can be "great" at times, but man, I don't wan't it at my job and I don't wan't it at home. I lost count on how many Saturdays I have lost on performance problems. Modern PC gaming.

Edit: needless to say that even this approach is not immune to problems. The other day steam launched an update that disabled Odyssey+ when I was going to practice for a race. Man, chairs almost flew this time around the house such is the BS with modern pc gaming. People on PS4 only focus on roasting the other guys. Not us. This is a workload

I have recently had the same feeling ('this is a workload") as I have spent about fifteen, or more, hours during this holiday period trying to fix things: the fps problem, a mic that will not work despite going through every online guide i can find on it, and various other issues.

I'm not familiar with Odyssey+. Is it better than the Vive Pro. Is its USP that it has no screen door efect?

 

[Case_]

a mic that will not work despite going through every online guide i can find on it

If you're on Windows 10, it has its own setting to allow/disallow apps to access mic. Unless you've checked this already, it might be worth checking.

 

[Dan Costa]

I have recently had the same feeling ('this is a workload") as I have spent about fifteen, or more, hours during this holiday period trying to fix things: the fps problem, a mic that will not work despite going through every online guide i can find on it, and various other issues.

I'm not familiar with Odyssey+. Is it better than the Vive Pro. Is its USP that it has no screen door efect?

Yes that is the one. Same resolution as the Vive Pro but faaaar less screen door. Works freaking brilliantly in sim racing. Haven't tried other kinds of VR games yet. But if your room is well lit, tracking is good.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

If you're on Windows 10, it has its own setting to allow/disallow apps to access mic. Unless you've checked this already, it might be worth checking.

Thanks for this.
I have looked at that in Microphone Properties. It didn't make a difference.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

I've tried reflections at static and getting better fps But I haven't even figured out what the difference is.

What's the difference between static reflections and four/five etc. faces per frame?

 

[Kek700]

Please forgive me, if i am stating the bleeding obvious

Had exactly the same problem as you.

I am assuming you have headphones with attached or plug in microphone.
Make sure the microphone is properly plugged in, mine wasn’t, caused me so much grief.

Control panel, realtek speakers in my case, should be ticked.
Goto recording , microphone, test it , it if nogo , right click configure speech recognition,
Goto, setup microphone,
Select Headset Microphone,.
Press Next , then Next again. If it does not work :-
Make sure , defiantly , that your microphone is properly plugged in.
Still nogo could be windows 10 needs an speech reconition download.

My head phones and mic are plugged into my realtek PC amplifier ?

 

[Dan Costa]

I've tried reflections at static and getting better fps But I haven't even figured out what the difference is.

What's the difference between static reflections and four/five etc. faces per frame?

Static doesn't update the real-time environment on the reflections. Its just the same picture all the time. Thumb of rule about cpu performance is: the less geometry you have to render, the faster the cpu can feed the gpu.

geometry heavy graphics settings:
- Reflections
- Mirrors
- World Detail (basically, objects in the world and the polygon amount)
- World draw distance
- Shadows

Remove all these, and you are basically cpu limited only by software inefficiencies either on the game side code, or the graphics driver side (two things out of your control).

If you are in VR and need the absolute rock solid 90fps (assuming your GPU can handle it), drop all those, and go one step further by installing "Content Manager" and check the box "patch to fully disable shadows).

If you have to have concessions though, say, between having mirrors of having shadows, I'd go for the shadows. You need mirrors in racing.

In AC, which seems to have some gremlins about CPU performance, from my testing, having MSAA 4x instead of 0x improves CPU performance and stutters. Its counter-intuitive but we have to play with the tools and bugs we have.

 

[Case_]

Thanks for this.
I have looked at that in Microphone Properties. It didn't make a difference.

What kind of microphone is it and how is it connected to your PC?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Static doesn't update the real-time environment on the reflections. Its just the same picture all the time. Thumb of rule about cpu performance is: the less geometry you have to render, the faster the cpu can feed the gpu.

geometry heavy graphics settings:
- Reflections
- Mirrors
- World Detail (basically, objects in the world and the polygon amount)
- World draw distance
- Shadows

- Number of opponents
- HUD Apps
- Smoke

 

[Dan Costa]

Thats right, the apps. Dread the apps. I never found any improvement by disabling smoke with my cpu bottlenecks.

 

[RasmusP]

With the shader patch's custom font rendering apps are a lot better! They still eat the fps they really need to calculate with but it's much better with the custom font rendering!
As said, substanding's draw is now about 6 fps instead of 20+!

 

[Dan Costa]

With the shader patch's custom font rendering apps are a lot better! They still eat the fps they really need to calculate with but it's much better with the custom font rendering!
As said, substanding's draw is now about 6 fps instead of 20+!

Where can I find that patch Rasmus?

 

[RasmusP]

Where can I find that patch Rasmus?

In content manager when you go into settings you will find the tab "shader patch". There you can click on the "download build" button and then you will be directed to a hosting website (forgot the name) where you can download a complete pack. Look for the latest "stable build".
Download it and put it into your MODS folder using jsgme or whatever it's called
That way you can install and uninstall the whole package with one click.
You'll get a whole lot of stuff. Brake disc shaders, night mod etc etc etc.
Just go into each of them and "disable extension". Only activate the custom font rendering in the general tab

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

What kind of microphone is it and how is it connected to your PC?

It's a clip on microphone type thing with a battery in it. Here (amazon) , if you're interested.

I have used it successfully in the past. Then the battery ran out. I kept forgetting to replace the battery so couldn't use it so I plugged in a microphone and headset thing that was useless. Finally I got a replacement battery and went to use the microphone one Saturday morning thinking it'd be nice 'n simple. Three hours later I was still sitting there trying to get the thing to work. No luck.

I have plugged it in to the front of the PC, which is where it was plugged in and worked successfully in the past. And I have also tried plugging it in at the back of the PC. Neither alternative helped matters.

I have checked that the microphone (with its new battery) works by plugging it into another device - it worked successfully.

When I plug it into my PC, the Realtek UI opens up and asks if I've just plugged in a microphone so it seems to be recognised by my computer.

I wonder if the problem comes from something that happened in between the battery running out and using a new battery. Well, in that period, I plugged in another crappy headset with microphone (as mentioned above) and I installed this surround sound software (Spatial Sound Card) and then uninstalled it. Dunno if these things could have affected the mic issue.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Where can I find that patch Rasmus?

In content manager when you go into settings you will find the tab "shader patch". There you can click on the "download build" button and then you will be directed to a hosting website (forgot the name) where you can download a complete pack. Look for the latest "stable build".
Download it and put it into your MODS folder using jsgme or whatever it's called
That way you can install and uninstall the whole package with one click.
You'll get a whole lot of stuff. Brake disc shaders, night mod etc etc etc.
Just go into each of them and "disable extension". Only activate the custom font rendering in the general tab

Talking about these builds and fps, I have the most recent stable build installed (1.24). I tried the latest preview build (1.25 preview 32, I think) and lost 10 or 15% of my fps with it. Although there is a thread here at RD where people are apparently pleased with this preview build.

 

[Case_]

@Billy Pilgrim Realtek, eh? Almost unnecessary to connect the microphone anyway, then, it will sound like crap, they have absolutely terrible input quality

But sadly there's not much I can help you with, I guess. If you've recently had a Windows update to a new version of Windows, they tend to swap your audio devices around (as they're making some ongoing changes to sound settings in the last few big updates). So I would plug the mic to get that popup, make sure everything is set correctly on the soundcard side (be sure to have your microphone boost set correctly for your mic if you do have that function, I believe some Realtek drivers do and some don't), then head over to Windows sound settings, make sure your microphone is set as input device (not mandatory, I believe, but might help, also you can i.e. tap the microphone and see on the input bar if it responds) and as default communication device (that can only be done in the old sound panel you access by clicking Sound control panel on the right of the Win10 sound settings window, then heading to Recording tab there), and finally, once everything is set correctly here, also verify the settings of your application - for example Teamspeak has an annoying tendency to keep the previous non-existing input device set for use if some changes to audio devices happened.

If while doing all this the microphone doesn't even respond in the Windows settings, then I'd suspect either soundcard issues (perhaps reinstall drivers or check you're using correct ones, there's bazillion of them for Realtek cards) or connection issues (if you're for example using the front panel input, they develop issues fairly quickly), provided the microphone does indeed work in other PCs. And if it does respond in Windows settings and not in your app, then it would suggest a misconfiguration of your app.

But I guess you already tried all this, so probably not much help. But it's much easier to troubleshoot this in person rather than over a forum

 

[RasmusP]

But I guess you already tried all this, so probably not much help. But it's much easier to troubleshoot this in person rather than over a forum

I chuckled a little as I thought "telling him what to click on etc would be way easier via teamspeak. - oh wait..."

Sorry to hear that about the mic though! Martin's guide is all I could write about it too. Crucial thing about microphones is that you need to check the full signal chain and test every station of it. But that's tricky for a lot of people as they don't know all the steps and even if they do, don't know how to access and check them.