Searching for FPS

[trowe65]

I'm having trouble bringing down my FPS in the game. I use CSP 1.51+SOL(no longer adding a PPF) and just barely get 55fps. I've been going through settings in Assetto Corsa setup section of Content Manager one by one, loading the game to see the difference, coming out and trying more settings. Also get in the settings for CSP in Content Manager.

I don't seem to be making any headway. I even click on the info button for a setting where you can get screenshots showing the percentage for each level of that setting. I'll bring the quality down think that should get me a couple of FPS, go back into the game and find either no difference or it's a bit worse. Bit more difficult than other game with a few places to go to adjust quality settings.

I'm just wondering what settings people are finding that give the biggest performance gain by adjusting that may help me with my tweaking? I've been reading on the subreddit others having issues and, like myself, even micro-stutters here and there. Would the makers of CSP+SOL maybe working on some optimizations for the graphics?

My system isn't the star it was 3 years ago or so, but I can still max out setting in all games in the market without issue, so I'm not sure what eating the FPS in AC now. Overclocked CPU/GPU are minor and have had those settings for over 2 years with no issue, so the O/C are solid.

QuadCore Intel Core i7-6700K, 4100 MHz (overclocked)
32 GB Memory
EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 iCX, 11GB GDDR5X (overclocked)
Acer Predator X34 (3440x1440 @ 100hz)

Any help would be awesome!

Current Settings:

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Yours is a fair question as you’re not getting good FPS for the hardware you have. My hardware specs are very similar (but with 1080 triples) to yours and I’m getting double the FPS you are.

@RasmusP , a member here, has made lots of useful posts on this. It may help to have a look. There have been many threads on this topic at RD - it’ll help to check them out too.

What grid sizes are you using? Large grids take lots of frames. Also many mod cars are not well optimised.

I noticed recently that choosing clear weather (so no clouds) gives me some 10% more frames but I think that CSP and SOL are actually good for FPS optimisation.

 

[trowe65]

Yours is a fair question as you’re not getting good FPS for the hardware you have. My hardware specs are very similar (but with 1080 triples) to yours and I’m getting double the FPS you are.

@RasmusP , a member here, has made lots of useful posts on this. It may help to have a look. There have been many threads on this topic at RD - it’ll help to check them out too.

What grid sizes are you using? Large grids take lots of frames. Also many mod cars are not well optimised.

I noticed recently that choosing clear weather (so no clouds) gives me some 10% more frames but I think that CSP and SOL are actually good for FPS optimisation.

Yes...I used to get around 80ish fps. Somewhere along the line with trying some PPF's etc the frame rates drops and won't go back up. I uninstalled all PPF to try and go back to vanilla CSP+SOL but framerates aren't going up. I'm loathe to do it, but I think I may just install a fresh copy of the game. Bit of work getting back up to speed, but I'm going to copy out my cars and tracks folders which should get me most of the way back without causing issues. Then just fresh installs of the CSP+SOL. I'll check out @Rasmus 's posts first to see if there is anything that may help avoid this, but it's worth a clean install to get back to 80 fps lol.

Oh, for grids I like to do about 20. Had usually brought it down to 60fps but that was no problem. WIth the FPS I'm getting now, 10 on grid isn't fun lol.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[onearmedbandit46]

There is mention of a memory leak with 3d clouds in Sol config. If you have 3d clouds enabled try turning that off.

 

[trowe65]

There is mention of a memory leak with 3d clouds in Sol config. If you have 3d clouds enabled try turning that off.

I will...thanks for the tip!

 

[BrainsBush]

About a week ago I had the same. Same system specs and around 90FPS then suddenly 55-60FPS?!?! Why? I did install several PP filters. Why couldn't my system go back to >90fps anymore? Then I decided to completely disable and delete MODS and deinstall CSP and SOL and start from scratch. I also followed the recommendations of Peter Boese (SOL).

I followed these guidelines from the experts: https://discord.com/channels/453595061788344330/573621523907346432/580280998856753153
and in the SOL download used the 1:1 recommended settings as described in the included PDF manual

Now in hotlapping around 120FPS (depends on car/track optimazation) and in AI race around 80FPS and in both cases the AC video settings maxed out on 1440P screen

Hope it helps?

 

[trowe65]

About a week ago I had the same. Same system specs and around 90FPS then suddenly 55-60FPS?!?! Why? I did install several PP filters. Why couldn't my system go back to >90fps anymore? Then I decided to completely disable and delete MODS and deinstall CSP and SOL and start from scratch. I also followed the recommendations of Peter Boese (SOL).

I followed these guidelines from the experts: https://discord.com/channels/453595061788344330/573621523907346432/580280998856753153
and in the SOL download used the 1:1 recommended settings as described in the included PDF manual

Now in hotlapping around 120FPS (depends on car/track optimazation) and in AI race around 80FPS and in both cases the AC video settings maxed out on 1440P screen

Hope it helps?

Wow! This may be exactly what I need. Sounds like I'm you from a week ago lol. Thanks so much for this...may save me a ton of work

 

[BrainsBush]

Wow! This may be exactly what I need. Sounds like I'm you from a week ago lol. Thanks so much for this...may save me a ton of work

TBH I was a bit 'afraid' at first. Will everything still work with all extra cars/tracks/mods installed?
Only issue I found that I had to reinstall the car sounds of the Kunos cars that had modded sounds.

Not sure but I think that playing around with all the PP filters, (de)installing them will cause some messing around of DLL files etc?

Fingers crossed and good luck

 

[RasmusP]

I don't think there's any need for a re-install.
What do you mean with "PPFs"? Like Reshade, sweetFX, ENB or just the AC post processing filters?

If you're only talking about the AC pp filters, simply use the sol one or the natural graphics mod filter.

I don't use Sol at the moment. When I did I didn't have any problems though! Maybe 10% more graphics card load. Still enough headroom.
But sadly I can't provide the sol settings.
However I think csp is the one killing your performance. Or just the normal ac graphics settings.

Here are my settings (screenshots below) with 3440x1440 @ super constant 60 fps (could probably run 120+ alone on track).
GTX 1070 ; i7 2600k from 2011 ; 16GB DDR3 2133 MHz

Questions: You need to find out if your graphics card or your CPU are at the limit. You can't see the CPU limit due to AC not using all your cores.
But you can see the Graphics Card limit! Either you already have a tool for this or just run openhardwaremonitor, msi afterburner, any graphics card tool or basically any other hardware monitor.

If your GPU load is above 95% when the fps drop, it's something with the graphics card/settings. Probably one of the heavy features from Custom Shaders Patch activated like HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion (I have 20 fps with it on...).

If your GPU load is below 90%, your processor is limiting. That is a tricky thing...
Apps are heavy on the CPU, so are shadows, reflections, world details, mod cars/tracks that aren't optimized.
Basically everything that has something to do with geometry, physics, calculations (apps) or letters (apps) are causing CPU load.
So if a mod car has 100x too many polygons, good night cpu power.
Or if you have a leader board app like substanding with lots of letters/numbers, quickly updating, you gonna get bad fps!

So try my settings, they should run decently on your system. Run a Kunos track with only Kunos cars. Nürburgring with a full grid of GT3s for example.

Now regarding CSP settings: everything that's white is "default". Everything that's red is edited by me.
Everything that's grey is deactivated.
So I'll only show you the things where I'm NOT running defaults. If a plugin name on the left is grey, I don't use the whole thing.

I'm using 8x Anisotropic filtering from the nvidia control panel on "quality". Never bothered testing 16x "high quality", sorry. That's why I have AF "off" in the AC graphics settings.

Beware: my settings are for online racing in dry weather without many clouds. So I deactivated all the lights, night stuff, rain etc.
I tried to have everything else maxed out or put to the best trade off for visuals vs performance.

I'm probably not on the latest version.. Not too old though I think. Didn't play AC since 2,5 weeks.

 

[Billy Pilgrim]

Thanks @RasmusP
I’m gonna use these tips and I think I’ll bookmark this.
You’re a massive help

 

[trowe65]

Hey all,

Thought I'd give you an update.

I followed both suggestions from @brainsbush and the nicely detailed information from @RasmusP (I thought I knew about computers but in reading your past posts looking for a solutions to my problem, I can see you're miles over my head in analyzing performance!). I got about 5-7 extra FPS from applying both. Frustrating! I even downgraded my nVidia drivers to a version I know played well with gSync etc.

So decided to pull the pin and uninstalled and reinstalled Assetto Corsa. I more or less left what was in my Assetto Corsa documents folder and what's under appdata for content manager. Started installing the important stuff like CM, CSP and SOL. Configured as noted. Then one by one added things back like all my cars and tracks(is it nuts to have over 500 cars...yikes!). Loading the game to see is FPS was affected. I have most done, and even found some things I had installed before CSP does now so left those alone. Just a few things left but I went from barely getting 55fps to 130-140fps with everything maxed out. If I had saved a profile after making the changes @RasmusP. Switched to that and I'm around 200fps! Granted this is quickly starting the game and just jumping in the car so I can see the FPS widget in the pit-lane.

So something along the line changed something and without knowing exactly what it was have no idea what or when it happened. My inkling is when installing PPF filters that required reshade. It seemed easy to look at what was installed and remove it though so I can't really point fingers.

I REALLY appreciated everyone's help! I guess something got messed up so bad that the nuclear option was the best one lol! Really appreciate this helpful community.

 

[RasmusP]

Awesome to hear, nice!
My guess is that some reshade stuff screwed with your fps then. The normal ac pp filters can't really use more than what's set in the normal ac graphics settings and you tried my settings for csp before re-installing so it's u likely that it was csp.

Did you try to find out if it was your CPU or gpu limiting the fps so heavily? If it was your graphics card it was definitely reshade in my opinion.
If it was the CPU, it's unlikely that it was reshade and it rather was something like broken content, hidden apps, or something else you don't really see.
(you can't see the CPU limit though. Apart from when it's at 100% ofc. So it's always graphics card at 95% or more = graphics cars limit.
If not, it's the CPU or some fps limiter)

 

[onearmedbandit46]

Reshade? I only hear bad things about that on the CSP discord.

 

[RasmusP]

I've never experienced "problems" with reshade. With older versions, sometimes a game wouldn't start or crash. But it would either do it right from the start or not. Never experienced crashes after a few minutes or an hour of playing.

The performance hit depends on the filters you activate. There are shaders like mxao or similar name. It's post processing ambient occlusion and it's massive.
I mostly use reshade for some slight colour filtering and sharpening. Performance hit is about 1-5% gpu load. Never had problems with it

 

[Please Stop This]

Possible fps impacts of some modules:
extraFX ~10fps or more and depends on its settings
grassFX ~10fps or more
smartmirror ~10fps or more and depends on its settings
graphicsAdjustments - depends on your settings
lightningFX - obviously mostly at night, ~10-20fps
reflectionsFX - ~10fps
particleFX - 5fps or more

 

[trowe65]

Awesome to hear, nice!
My guess is that some reshade stuff screwed with your fps then. The normal ac pp filters can't really use more than what's set in the normal ac graphics settings and you tried my settings for csp before re-installing so it's u likely that it was csp.

Did you try to find out if it was your CPU or gpu limiting the fps so heavily? If it was your graphics card it was definitely reshade in my opinion.
If it was the CPU, it's unlikely that it was reshade and it rather was something like broken content, hidden apps, or something else you don't really see.
(you can't see the CPU limit though. Apart from when it's at 100% ofc. So it's always graphics card at 95% or more = graphics cars limit.
If not, it's the CPU or some fps limiter)

Really the only test I did was a 3Dmark test to confirm it wasn't a problem with my CPU/GPU. Once I saw it wasn't a problem with my system for sure, I decided to go ahead and reinstall instead of doing more trouble shooting. Seemed the option that had the best chance for success so I don't really know if CPU or GPU was having a problem. I had read somewhere when trying to find a fix that apparently AC relies too much on CPU power. No idea at all if that's true, but It was were I was leaning as my GPU can usually carry a heavy load and it's my CPU that shows it's age first usually, but really don't know.

With all the extra content you can get and dump into AC(which is AWESOME and the reason I love it), I guess there is always the possibility something did more changes than expected when added and may have started my issues. Good reason to do a backup here and there of the game. I was surprised though how quickly it was to get back up and running though. Not the huge deal I thought it would be.

 

[RasmusP]

I had read somewhere when trying to find a fix that apparently AC relies too much on CPU power. No idea at all if that's true, but It was were I was leaning as my GPU can usually carry a heavy load and it's my CPU that shows it's age first usually, but really don't know.

These are always just some random guesses into the air. With mods, reshade, csp etc you can easily get a 2080ti down to 40 fps when throwing some ambient occlusion, anti aliasing and lighting stuff at it.

Though you can also get an i9 9900k to its knees when running a few heavy apps and badly optimized mods.

But yeah, if we're talking about stock ac, no reshade or similar and no CSP, modern graphics card are having a nice time while most CPUs begin to limitate the performance due to reflections, car+track mods or heavy apps like too frequently refreshing leaderboards.

 

[trowe65]

These are always just some random guesses into the air. With mods, reshade, csp etc you can easily get a 2080ti down to 40 fps when throwing some ambient occlusion, anti aliasing and lighting stuff at it.

Though you can also get an i9 9900k to its knees when running a few heavy apps and badly optimized mods.

But yeah, if we're talking about stock ac, no reshade or similar and no CSP, modern graphics card are having a nice time while most CPUs begin to limitate the performance due to reflections, car+track mods or heavy apps like too frequently refreshing leaderboards.

I belive I hit on it.

I started the game and I'm back to around 60fps. Luckily, other than adding some car skins back in, the only other things I added was apps. With some trail and error I found unchecking Camtool 2 from the apps section for Assetto Corsa in Content Manager took me from around 60fps back up to around 100fps. Unchecking F12016hud took me from 100fps back up near 200fps!

I'm still learning about camtool and I can see it taking resources, easy enough, keep it unchecked till I go to use it, but the other one is just a speedometer with tach etc around it like you see in some F1 onboards. Didn't expect that. I think it's an older app though, so may no work well with all the great updates where getting with the game graphics-wise etc lately.

Glad I was going slow in adding stuff back! I had never considered apps taking resources, but thinking now, depending on what they do(Calculations etc), they sure can.

 

[trowe65]

Possible fps impacts of some modules:
extraFX ~10fps or more and depends on its settings
grassFX ~10fps or more
smartmirror ~10fps or more and depends on its settings
graphicsAdjustments - depends on your settings
lightningFX - obviously mostly at night, ~10-20fps
particleFX - 5fps or more

Hey thanks! That's good info to know when deciding what I really need to have enabled. I'm gunna keep this info somewhere. Much appreciated.

 

[RasmusP]

I belive I hit on it.

I started the game and I'm back to around 60fps. Luckily, other than adding some car skins back in, the only other things I added was apps. With some trail and error I found unchecking Camtool 2 from the apps section for Assetto Corsa in Content Manager took me from around 60fps back up to around 100fps. Unchecking F12016hud took me from 100fps back up near 200fps!

I'm still learning about camtool and I can see it taking resources, easy enough, keep it unchecked till I go to use it, but the other one is just a speedometer with tach etc around it like you see in some F1 onboards. Didn't expect that. I think it's an older app though, so may no work well with all the great updates where getting with the game graphics-wise etc lately.

Glad I was going slow in adding stuff back! I had never considered apps taking resources, but thinking now, depending on what they do(Calculations etc), they sure can.

The main problem with apps aren't the mathematic calculations they have to do (especially with speedometer where it's basically just drawing info on the screen).
The main problem is the drawing itself. The guy who created sidekick mentioned that he tried to make a hud with everything you need with the best performance and that meant slowly updating letters/numbers, baking everything into "one field", not going too fancy.

That's why substanding eats your fps. It shows the full leader board with deltas, car used, full name, updating the gaps multiple times per second...

However:
Did you install csp yet? There's the "custom fonts rendering". It's activated by default and it's a massive help with letters and numbers.
Sadly not so much with graphics like a speedometer needle.

Btw if an app is killing your fps it means that your CPU is hitting the "single thread limit".
So getting an AMD ryzen CPU won't give you any fps boost. More cores won't either.
Which is why currently the best simracing CPU for its price is the i5 9600k, easily overclocked to 5 GHz by a few clicks in the bios/uefi.

You said you overclocked your CPU? Going higher will directly give you more fps with apps. Can you choose like..
1 used core = 4.7 GHz,
2 used cores = 4.6 GHz
3 used cores = 4.4 GHz

?

For ac you need 2-3 boosting cores so you can get a higher but stable oc than when overclocking all cores.
But not every motherboard has these options (I don't).