Underperforming Graphics

[MaggieSuerte]

Hi Everyone,

I finally ditched my 9 year old PC and built a new one in the hopes of improving my SL experience.  While there was some improvement, it was not as much as I'd hoped.  I was hoping that y'all would be able to give me some viewer/card setting tweaks that might improve things.

The new build is what I'd call a modest gaming rig:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor             (3393.63 MHz)
Memory: 16333 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 18363.752)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: Radeon RX 570 Series

 I don't know much about tweaking cards or the viewer so everything is basically at default settings.  When I use "recommended settings" in the viewer (halfway between high and ultra, draw distance 128) I get ok results.  Frame rates in semi busy sims are generally 12-25...    I do a lot of exploring and really wanted a much bigger draw distance.  When I extend that out to 512 with the same settings Fps generally drops to less than 6, and that is when I'm standing still.  at Medium/512 it begins to approach 10...

I've read all the articles saying "Your GPU is too weak, you need a fancier card"  but what don't understand is that I can't find the bottle neck.  Looking at the windows performance manager while walking around in SL shows me a computer that isn't even breaking a sweat.  CPU doesn't go about 20%, Memory 20-30%, and The GPU never breaks 50%, even walking around in Ultra with a draw distance of 512.  

So, why can't I get a better frame rate if my PC doesn't seem to be taxed it all?  This is literally a brand new build (3 days old), with most current drivers, and nothing installed other than the OS and SL.  Are there any tweaks I can make to actually get the viewer to use the GPU/CPU to their capacity and improve my SL experience.

Much thanks in advance for your help!

Maggie.

 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

You're basically trying to render, what, 9 or so whole sims all around you with all its content at once. On ultra, even. That'll probably bring future generations to its knees. You'll need to adjust your own expectations and accept that 128m is a perfectly fine draw distance to wander.

A reading of your CPU at 20% can easily point to a CPU bottleneck. It doesn't have to sit at 100%, which would literally mean that all cores of your CPU are under full load. Besides that, the Ryzen 2600 isn't the best choice for a new build these days. Either a 3600, which is quite much the state of the art gaming CPU now, or a 1600 [12nm], serial code YD1600BBAFBOX, the re-release of 2020.

I do hope drivers, especially Chipset and graphics, are part of the OS installation. And is there a SSD in that setup, by the way?

Short and sweet: congratulations, your system performs on its expected level.

[MaggieSuerte]

Thanks, Lillith!   I didn't think about the multiple cores skewing the number down...  SL really only uses one right?   Yeah, I knew the 2600 wasn't cutting edge, like I said, I was going for modest...  budget was a huge issue.

I'll check on the chipset drivers too, thanks!

[MaggieSuerte]

HI again,

 

I checked on the chipset drivers...   all up to date.  Also looked at the CPU utilization again.  It doesn't peg at 20%, that's just the highest I saw and when I look at the sl process I sits pretty happily between 8-9%....    

Yes, the drive is SSD.  There's and HDD for storage but everything SL is on the SSD.

Any other thoughts/settings worth playing with?

Thanks again!

[Gage Wirefly]

Maggie I have an identical machine, my CPU is the Ryzen 1600 AF model which is in fact just a very slightly underclocked 2600. I am using it with an Asus ROG RX 570 4gb. This is a mid settings card in my opinion. You can push it , but try to think of it as a mid-tier card. Try setting your viewer to mid settings, you may be able to run ALM in nonbusy sims with shadows. The biggest thing you can do is lower your rendered max avatar complexity to something like 60k instead of 350k or unlimited. You can also follow this guide, which I have used in Windows 10 also. It will help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz5kTs8rDfk

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Gage Wirefly

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

A reading of your CPU at 20% can easily point to a CPU bottleneck. It doesn't have to sit at 100%, which would literally mean that all cores of your CPU are under full load.

I'm no computer expert either but if your CPU is not being used much, that does not make it a CPU bottleneck... literally the opposite. The CPU is idling, waiting for it to be told to do stuff because it already did all of the work it's meant to do.

But since the GPU isn't maxing out either, the problem isn't there either. The fact is that viewers are just pretty poorly programmed to process "all the stuff" in an efficient manner that also takes advantage of everything the system can do (like splitting things into more threads (calculating multiple things at once), or using things that even make it possible).

The components listed are definitely good, you could play lots of games very smoothly. Just not SL, especially when you crank up the draw distance. (That's arguably the worst thing you can do to your FPS.)

Edited April 11, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[bigmoe Whitfield]

if you are running shadows,  try to disable them, it does give a fps boost.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Very good in terms of the SSD and drivers.

The usage leveles also depend on the way you do your monitoring. If you tab out or minimize the viewer to look at the Taskmanager, it will be running in background, thus produce less load. For real time logs, you can use overlays like the on screen display option of the MSI Afterburner tool or even your driver's statistics.

18 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I'm no computer expert either but if your CPU is not being used much, that does not make it a CPU bottleneck... literally the opposite. The CPU is idling, waiting for it to be told to do stuff because it already did all of the work it's meant to do.

Sadly, I only got a German tutorial at hand... basically, you are looking at the CPU as a whole, that is every single core and its load. 20% load can easily mean that Core 1 is maxed out and Core 2 might be handling other duties, all other cores are idling. That's still the CPU being the limit here.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Sadly, I only got a German tutorial at hand... basically, you are looking at the CPU as a whole, that is every single core and its load. 20% load can easily mean that Core 1 is maxed out and Core 2 might be handling other duties, all other cores are idling. That's still the CPU being the limit here.

Yeah I know. But this is what things look like with Firestorm in focus (using 14% CPU and 30% GPU total):

No cores are maxing out, CPU and GPU are practically asleep, ~35 FPS in a crowded messy sim. Don't look at my uptime.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Nalates Urriah]

Performance tuning a viewer is an arcane art best understood by demi-gods and explained by Pen & Teller type magicians...

Here are the bits of information I've collected over the years: http://blog.nalates.net/?s=performance+tweaking&submit=Search This information gives you hints on how to set things in the viewer and the Operating System. It is getting a bit old. Graphics rendering loads haven't changed enough to make the info out of date. Experiment to find which "graphics" settings affect you system. Draw Distance is a HUGE factor if your system and viewer are not optimized.

When you are attempting to figure out if there is a bottleneck in your computer use HWMonitor and MemHistory, both free tools. Both will trigger the User Access Control warning when started. That is due to the software reaching down into the operating system (OS) to get the information it displays. So, make sure you download these from the authors' websites.

SL performance is a highly dependent on the computer hardware. The CPU, GPU, memory (RAM), PCIe bus, and storage devices all have to work together. CPU speed is probably the most important single criteria. The viewers are multi-threaded and becoming more so. But, the visual render is primarily in a single thread. The dedicated GPU in a graphics card can only render what the CPU hands it. How fast it can travel between the CPU and GPU depends on the motherboard and the PCIe bus (which the GPU connects to). The clock speeds of all these components are tied together. Over clocking boosts the CPU and motherboard performance. Both can be limited by RAM speed. It is a real trick to find where a system is bottlenecking.

A good CPU and GPU can be hamstrung by slow memory. Beyond just slow memory, if the system is low on memory the OS throws memory out to the storage devices (use MemHistory and Win Resource Monitor). SSDs have to be reached through the PCIe bus, which can conflict with traffic traveling to the GPU which can also slow data on its way to storage, depends on the motherboard's number of PCIe channels and how many the graphics card uses. Bottlenecks here can make a huge impact. Use the Resource Monitor in Windows to see how many Hard Faults the system is generating.

I suspect you get the idea that there is a lot to look at and tweak... 

My i5-6600K and GTX 1060 on an ASUS z170-A MB are close to your hardware's capability. I am using medium speed memory. My low end FPS is generally in the 20's. With FS 6.3.2 my average FPS ranges from 30 to 75 with peaks in special places near 150 FPS.

[MaggieSuerte]

Thanks everyone!  This is all super helpful and educational!

Nalates- just to compare apples to apples...  FS means Firestorm?     What graphics settings are you using when you experiences those results?

 

Again, thanks so much!

Maggie!

 

[Nalates Urriah]

Yes FS = Firestorm.

Basically between High and Ultra. I have shadows on with Sun/Moon Projectos so ALM is enabled. Draw Distance is at 128m most of the time. When I fly or sail I kick it up to 512. For some photos I max to 1024m and LoD to 4, otherwise LoD @ 2 (FS default).

While our computers are similar in capability, they are different. So, you will need to experiment. Reading the material I blogged will give you the other settings I have experimented with. Some have impacts on performance and visual quality. Some drastically suppress performance others have minimal impact on performance but enhance the render. LoD is one that impacts us and other users. You need an idea of which are which on your computer.

For instance: Anti-Aliasing (AA). If you have to have the viewer do AA it will severely impact performance. If the graphics card does the AA or has an AA the viewer can use then you get better quality render and better performance. You can read all the tech on your card and viewer and sort it intellectually. Or just experiment changing your viewer's AA settings and the computers AA controls (usually in the graphics card controls). AA has different process for creating the result. Which a card has depends on WHEN it was made.

Because my card handles AA I can use 2x or 16x with no impact on performance. Plus I can run faux-4k render with minimal performance hit.

Experiment. Changing graphics setting in the viewer and on the computer is not going to break anything. I do recommend you try one thing at a time so you are clear on what does what.

[MaggieSuerte]

Thanks so much Nalates!  Most of that was greek to me but I will read up, starting with your blog and the HW manuals, and start to experiment.  This is incredibly helpful!

In case you or anyone else watching the thread has any more thoughts about the HW and possible gotchas/issues/tweaks, here is a complete list of what I used in the build:

MB:  Gigabyte B450M DS3H

SSD: PNY CS900 500GB 2.5” SATA III

Case:  Fractal Design Focus G Black ATX Mid Tower

GC: GIGABYTE Radeon RX 570 4GB 

RAM: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16GB (2 x 8GB)  DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000)

CPU: AMD RYZEN 5 2600 6-Core 3.4 GHz

Windows 10 

 

Thanks again to everyone for all your help!!!  If we ever run into each in in world, the first round is on me!!

 

Maggie