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Age of Conan Performance Problems

Elcs

Elcs

Diamond Member
So, taking advantage of a wonderful the HD4870's... I replaced my old 8800GT and thought a fresh OS install would be nice too.

Replaced my dying PATA DVD drive with a SATA DVD R/W and of course, my HD4870 blocks two of my four SATA ports.... so my PATA drive which was attached by a SATA adapter had to go back to being PATA. That drive didnt like it so I installed Windows XP on my SATA HDD and jobs a goodun.

Running the latest Cats with the Hotfix and using the fanspeed profile trick, installed and updated AoC. Performance has been equal to below the performance I had with my 8800GT.

The only change I have made hardware/installation wise is that I have dropped the PATA drive and installed AoC on the OS drive (only have 1 HDD in at the moment). I did try to hook up the PATA drive onto the PATA port, picks up extremely slowly, doubles my boot time and slows down the Windows fire up process. It is stuck in PIO mode and I have no idea how that can be resolved.

Would installing AoC on the same drive as opposed to two separate drives kill my FPS as much as this? Any suggestions?
 
Keep in mind you're also changing cards. It could very well be that ATI hasn't had time to optimize the 4870 drivers yet (or nearly as much as NVIDIA had with the 8800GT's).

Also keep in mind that NVIDIA may have had performance tweaks in their drivers lowering image quality for the sake of speed. Or, it could be the PATA issue. Who knows. Too many variables have changed to make a quick diagnosis.
 
Originally posted by: SunnyD
Keep in mind you're also changing cards. It could very well be that ATI hasn't had time to optimize the 4870 drivers yet (or nearly as much as NVIDIA had with the 8800GT's).

Also keep in mind that NVIDIA may have had performance tweaks in their drivers lowering image quality for the sake of speed. Or, it could be the PATA issue. Who knows. Too many variables have changed to make a quick diagnosis.
Click to expand...

What would you recommend as my next course of action?

Await new ATI drivers?

Attempt to install the PATA drive under anything but PIO mode and install/run AoC off that to test?

Await more responses, hopefully one from an HD4870 owner playing AoC?
 
First of all..I planned on doing this..but by now elcs AOC SUCKS when it comes to properly coded video, google the GTX280 with AoC or the GX2.

I've read that the 4870 does a bit better in AoC with AA and what not...but it's still poorly coded.
 
Originally posted by: Powernick50
First of all..I planned on doing this..but by now elcs AOC SUCKS when it comes to properly coded video, google the GTX280 with AoC or the GX2.

I've read that the 4870 does a bit better in AoC with AA and what not...but it's still poorly coded.
Click to expand...

Yes it does but the HD4870 is a faster card than the 8800GT and I am on a fresh install.

This does not particularly help me solve my issue. Meanwhile, Im forcing UDMA 5 on my HDD via the bios as it is always autodetecting as PIO. Startup is painfully slow but I dont intend to reboot often... once every 4-8 days is my norm. Ill install AoC on this second drive, hopefully solving my issues.
 
From what I've read AoC does not like ati cards, so that might be why you've noticed a downgrade.
 
the problem is not your card. AoC does not like many ATI cards.
It'll take awhile to fix, you might want to wait for dx10.

you may have better luck looking at the AoC technical forum on ATI cards.
 
Originally posted by: Pepsei
the problem is not your card. AoC does not like many ATI cards.
It'll take awhile to fix, you might want to wait for dx10.

you may have better luck looking at the AoC technical forum on ATI cards.
Click to expand...

Ive searched their forum thoroughly for HD4870 problems however I have had no luck. Perhaps the 8.7 Cats may help... I still think (read: hope) that because the HD4870 is still brand new, the Catalyst drivers havent ironed out all of the bugs in their drivers or fixed compatibility problems with games. I was an early adopter with the 8800GT, bought it a day or so after its UK release and Nvidia released a quite a few driver updates to fix compability issues and tweak performance so heres hoping.

I'll post on the EU AoC forums and see if I can get any joy out of them.

Funniest thing is that when I started AoC with the HD4870 for the first few minutes, I maxxed most things and it looked/ran fabulous. Now its like a dog.

EDIT: Hardocp seem to have tested AoC on the HD4870 and found performance to be great. Go figure.
 
Originally posted by: acabose
if you can, use Vista 64, that would fix your problems, seriously
Click to expand...

Vista 64 would miraculously fix the problems i have with low FPS? Please elaborate.
 
Having tested Hellgate: London with at 1280x720, maxxed settings (AA, Textures, AF), I get a steady 60FPS inside and on an outdoor area I was greeted with 25-30 FPS.

I am confused. I did read a 72 page thread on ATI cards with AoC. Results are inconclusive with players having playable settings and some with the problem I have. I have encountered around 3 HD4870 users, all of which have no problems and have installed the Hotfix too.

Anything else?
 
Originally posted by: Elcs
Having tested Hellgate: London with at 1280x720, maxxed settings (AA, Textures, AF), I get a steady 60FPS inside and on an outdoor area I was greeted with 25-30 FPS.

I am confused. I did read a 72 page thread on ATI cards with AoC. Results are inconclusive with players having playable settings and some with the problem I have. I have encountered around 3 HD4870 users, all of which have no problems and have installed the Hotfix too.

Anything else?
Click to expand...

I've got a 4850, and AoC's been running fine, till today. Suddenly I'm getting 50% (literally) lower FPS constantly.

As far as the drivers, the current ATi drivers are nowhere near optimized for the 4xxx series cards. The hotfix was just that - a hotfix - to add in more support and fix some fan issues with the 4xxx series cards.

AoC is nowhere near finished, and neither are the ATi drivers. Add those two together and you have a fussy, glitchy situation at best 🙁
 
Originally posted by: Canai
Originally posted by: Elcs
Having tested Hellgate: London with at 1280x720, maxxed settings (AA, Textures, AF), I get a steady 60FPS inside and on an outdoor area I was greeted with 25-30 FPS.

I am confused. I did read a 72 page thread on ATI cards with AoC. Results are inconclusive with players having playable settings and some with the problem I have. I have encountered around 3 HD4870 users, all of which have no problems and have installed the Hotfix too.

Anything else?
Click to expand...

I've got a 4850, and AoC's been running fine, till today. Suddenly I'm getting 50% (literally) lower FPS constantly.

As far as the drivers, the current ATi drivers are nowhere near optimized for the 4xxx series cards. The hotfix was just that - a hotfix - to add in more support and fix some fan issues with the 4xxx series cards.

AoC is nowhere near finished, and neither are the ATi drivers. Add those two together and you have a fussy, glitchy situation at best 🙁
Click to expand...

I set AoC to high, forced max AA and AF through CCC and Im getting 25-30 FPS solid now. Game looks good too.

Canai - Open CCC, set it to Always on top and watch the GPU Utilisation under the Overdrive tab. Ctrl + Alt + F on AoC to display your FPS in the top right hand corner. My GPU utilisation fluctuates so much its unbelievable. I do know that it underutilises my CPU too, I dont think I ever get to 100% utilisation of both cores.

I might lock AoC onto one of my cores and see what happens.
 
Originally posted by: acabose
In Vista 64 the GPU usage doesnt fluctuates while using latest ati cards, i dont know why but its a fact i experienced this myself with a 3870 also you could check this long thread in the official forum
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=23864
Click to expand...

Interesting, does performance change at all when over/underclocking? I don't know how accurate a gauge that GPU % monitor is, but perhaps this is related to the RV670/770's Vec5 shaders, where there's 4 gimp shaders for every full one? That would bring you to ~20-25% shader utilization. If that's the case it might need a top-down redesign of the engine to fully take advantage of ATI's shader design. I remember in Beta you could hit ctrl-\ to bring up a console that actually showed you shader/particle usage. I'm sure Funcom knows what the problem is, only question is if/when they fix it.
 
Originally posted by: chizow
Originally posted by: acabose
In Vista 64 the GPU usage doesnt fluctuates while using latest ati cards, i dont know why but its a fact i experienced this myself with a 3870 also you could check this long thread in the official forum
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=23864
Click to expand...

Interesting, does performance change at all when over/underclocking? I don't know how accurate a gauge that GPU % monitor is, but perhaps this is related to the RV670/770's Vec5 shaders, where there's 4 gimp shaders for every full one? That would bring you to ~20-25% shader utilization. If that's the case it might need a top-down redesign of the engine to fully take advantage of ATI's shader design. I remember in Beta you could hit ctrl-\ to bring up a console that actually showed you shader/particle usage. I'm sure Funcom knows what the problem is, only question is if/when they fix it.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate a bit chizow. Any diagnostics or tests I can run to provide data or something tangible to work with would be great if it fixes or improves things.

You do see a few Nvidia people having this problem with the 8x00, 9x00 and the GTX 2x0 series but much less than the ATI crowd where the problem is predomintely with the later card types such as the 38xx and the 48xx series.
 
Well first I'd see if that GPU % monitor is accurate. What does % utilization show in games that seem to perform well/normally? Does changing resolution in AoC increase/decrease % utilization or FPS at all? Does over/underclocking the card change utilization or FPS at all?

What I was referring to with ATI's Vec5 shaders is that they have 64 worst-case but 320 best-case shaders. They're grouped 1 + 4, but the additional 4 are only utilized if the shader code is written to keep them busy. NV's strategy is more brute-force with 128 shaders on a G80/G92. So you have 128 best/worst case shaders, but on top of that, NV runs their shader clock at much higher clock speeds than their core speed, so really you're looking at 1.5-2x of that 128 shaders.

There was a dev console in Beta that let you show particle/shader utilization in real-time. Like if you cast a spell you'd see the particle counter go up in real time. There was also a running shader op counter too I believe, along with a specific checkbox for G80 shader hack. Its too bad someone with a 3870 didn't pay closer attention to this during Beta, might have offered some insight. I do remember complaints of ATI hardware running AoC poorly though.
 
My 8800gts 320mb performs like SHIT as well, @ 1680*1050. Not sure if you know the villa's, but one of them I got like 30-40fps steady ( mostly indoors so not to heavy on the videocard ) but now all of a sudden it slows to a crawl, like 3 fps, and I think it's because of some fires that are burning in there. I had to turn down most settings and it's sometimes still rather slow. In Old Tarantia for example things run pretty badly, if you walk up to the trader it's like 4-5 fps, and I think that's because of the many characters, which AoC handles very poorly. Game looks great, but doesn't run that great at all.
 
Originally posted by: MarcVenice
My 8800gts 320mb performs like SHIT as well, @ 1680*1050. Not sure if you know the villa's, but one of them I got like 30-40fps steady ( mostly indoors so not to heavy on the videocard ) but now all of a sudden it slows to a crawl, like 3 fps, and I think it's because of some fires that are burning in there. I had to turn down most settings and it's sometimes still rather slow. In Old Tarantia for example things run pretty badly, if you walk up to the trader it's like 4-5 fps, and I think that's because of the many characters, which AoC handles very poorly. Game looks great, but doesn't run that great at all.
Click to expand...

Im trying to run at 1280x720 and its struggling. Forcing AA and AF through CCC has given me an IQ and slight performance boost which is odd.

Just tested Hellgate: London. "Always On Top" doesnt work on the CCC for HG:L but alt-tabbing back and forth, I see 99% GPU usage so Im assuming that its using most of my GPU. Im getting a solid 60 FPS on DX9 with all options enabled, no AA and at 1920x1080 indoors... outdoors I get dips down to 30 FPS.

The Villa's havent been too bad for me. I do get the occaisional dip in FPS, usually when I first see those fires then it calms down to reasonably smooth.

From the settings I am at, turning them down yields little in the way of performance gain and drops IQ severely. Raising settings lowers my performance and increases my IQ. Im stuck with a general 20-30 FPS which isnt great but doesnt make the game unplayable.

I know people with the HD4870 are playing it fine, people with weaker cards are playing it fine and people with stronger cards are having the same problems as I am. Browsing the AoC EU Technical Issues and Solutions forums and as highlighted in acabose's thread above, many people on both sides of the graphics card line, Nvidia and ATI (mainly ATI) are having the same issue.

MarcVenice, I replaced my 8800GT with an HD4870 and the 8800GT had the same problem with AoC. I am very unsure as to what the problem is or how to fix it. The AoC community as a whole seems baffled also.

I think I'll have to live with it until someone finds the key.

EDIT: I play in Windowed mode which I suddenly thought would be the link. Full Screen mode gives me exactly the same FPS... sadly.

EDIT2: Quick play around with AoC.... 1920x1080 full screen, I cant view CCC over the top to monitor GPU usage but as it shut down, it was clocked at 76%. With X4 AA and X4 AF forced through CC at the same settings, I took on the small Boss Bear in Ei-whatsit Mountains and I was chugging 30-45 FPS. Someone test this because I feel delusional!!!

EDIT3: On a positive sidenote, I like the ability to play the sound straight through into my TV via HDMI. Could be improved by me actually having a decent soundsystem plugged directly into my TV but thats my fault, not ATI's.
 
I now think that there is not one common issue between everyones performance problems in AoC, certainly a difference in problems cross-GPU maker

Assuming that ATI's GPU usage meter is correct then AoC is currently using approximately 25-40% of my GPU at most @ 1280x720 using standard settings, forcing AA and AF through CCC, giving 20-30 FPS. This increases when using 1920x1080 at the same settings to approximately 70-80% usage with 30-45 FPS.

Hellgate London pushes my GPU at over 90% usage providing consistantly over 30FPS at 1920x1080, maxed in-game settings (no AA) and forced AA/AF through CCC.

I think its an AoC-specific problem whereby it does not properly interact with the GPU and use it to the fullest. I know that AoC has extremely inconsistant CPU usage on my AMD X2 6000+ even when set with High priority and locked onto ONE core only.

Does anyone have any more suggestions on this?

EDIT: Interesting. Looks like theres a big 8800GT performance fix thread and its not limited to the 8800GT's either. Seems quite widespread.
 
8800 users, move to the 177 drivers with a modded inf of course. I had really good fps, then moved to vista 64 from 32 bit when my velociraptor came. frames tanked with the 175xx drivers, moved to 177.xx and it was much faster.
 
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