Remake - drop FPS

[Mixons]

The problems occurs when there are 8 players and it often happens on XL and XXL maps. During the game my FPS often drops to 1-9 and i want to ask what i can do about it. I am not interested in responses that say to buy a new computer or even invest money.

Parameters computer:
AMD Sempron (tm) Processor
2800 +
1.60 GHz, 512 MB ​​RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6200
Windows XP (SP3)

Thank you in advance for your help!

[sado1]

As I already wrote on Polish forums, I'm sorry to say but probably your processor is to be blamed, especially when it happens after playing for a while, on a big map, with 8 players. Not sure about the RAM amount either (I think Remake should be pretty much OK with that...). You might try overclocking, but it often needs a better cooling system for good results, which also costs money.

[Lewin]

sado is right, it's probably mostly due to the processor, and maybe partly due to the RAM (Windows XP runs much better with 1GB in my past experience).

The next RC will have some significant optimisations which might make your game run smoother with 8 players So when that comes out try it and see how it goes.

Here are some things you can do to increase FPS:
- Turn shadow quality to low in settings
- Disable VSync in settings
- Use a lower resolution
- Use full screen mode not windowed mode
- Close all other applications when playing

Those things are mostly only about graphics though, so they might not make a big difference (worth trying though). Apart from that all you can really do is avoid 8 player games and XXL maps.

[ChrisEggII]

Hmm... I have 1.80GHz, and I never had any problems... Maybe close all your programs, including antivirus. Use the lowest graphic options and try to zoom in.

[pawel95]

Well biggest problem is when you zoom out, that is really terrible at 8 player games, I also "lag" when I do this after 30 Min in 8 player game, doesn´t matter how strong your computer is normaly Windows mode also decrases your Number of pictures to like 1/2.

However like the guys already told you, its your cpu. I´m not sure how good your Computer skills are, but the computer is little bit older and when you are good skilled and want to have little bit more power, you can "Overclock" your Cpu , but
WITHOUT MY OR ANY OTHER GUARANTEE. When you already did some things, I would try that, it will help for sure(also when only small performace extras are given).


BTW I also wrote in older post that it look crazy that the KaM Remake really tries, also at 4 core cpus, to take like 100% of all 4 cores, I am not sure, but isnt the health of the cpu sinking, when having constant 40-80% at all 4 cores?


Pawel95

[Lewin]

BTW I also wrote in older post that it look crazy that the KaM Remake really tries, also at 4 core cpus, to take like 100% of all 4 cores, I am not sure, but isnt the health of the cpu sinking, when having constant 40-80% at all 4 cores?

The KaM Remake is basically only single threaded. While the game is running it should only ever consume 1 thread/core at any one moment. However, the process might get shifted between cores by the Windows process scheduler multiple times per second (which is basically out of our control), meaning the thread spends some time on every core (so with 4 cores they could appear to all be being used at 25%). The move probably happens between frames when OpenGL waits for the GPU/monitor sync (or sleeps if we hit maximum frame rate).

The KaM Remake process is not able to consume 100% of 4 cores. It should not consume more than 25% of 4 cores because it can only ever really use one core at once.

In general CPU usage shouldn't cause damage to it unless you have an overheating problem (I haven't heard of a CPU failing unless it overheated, usually the motherboard, RAM, hard drives etc. will fail well before the CPU). However, I imagine the task scheduler moves the KaM Remake between cores in order to even the load. 25% usage over 4 cores is probably better than 100% usage on 1 core, which would concentrate the heat in one place continuously. When it's being moved between all 4 cores, every core is "idle" for 75% of the time. If you think you know how to schedule tasks better than your OS kernel then you can go to task manage and set the affinity for the process to only use 1 core. It shouldn't affect performance because we only use 1 thread, but it will concentrate the heat into one place on your CPU, rather than spreading the load.

If I limit the KaM Remake to 1 core I get approximately (on my 1st Gen i7):
Menu: 20% usage on that core
Game: 50% usage on that core
Game zoomed out to max: 100% usage on that core
Which is pretty much what you'd expect given the amount that needs to be rendered for each case. Unless you're playing a big game on 10x speed, most of the CPU's time is spent sending instructions to the GPU (at 60 FPS game logic updates only happen approximately once every 6 frames).

[Siegfried]

I can only guess the following: you call the openAL sound library and the openGL graphics library. I guess, they will then work in a separate threads, that can be shifted to whatever core that is free. As far as I've understood the whole thing, even if the process 'KaMRemake.exe' only uses one single thread for CPU calculations, it can even cause more CPU load due to implicitly spawned chrildren threads. And then we also have the network access.

I know that's unlikely, because sound calculations rarely use more than very few %, and the graphics should be mostly GPU accelerated, so only a small CPU overhead is there. Remains the network access, but this should also be in low % regions.

[Lewin]

OpenAL, OpenGL and networking all run in the main thread. As I said the game basically only uses one thread. The only real exception is map scanning (for populating lists quickly without UI lag). It's possible to thread these things but it's a fair bit of work, especially OpenGL since it must go in the main thread, meaning we would actually need to move game logic to a second thread, and have ways for the render thread to copy the relevant game state data and send it to the GPU through OpenGL.

Networking and OpenAL barely use any CPU time so there's no justification for threading them. Rendering uses a fair bit, but the amount of effort it would be to have a render thread and a game logic thread would be massive considering they both need to access exactly the same data (i.e. game thread updates the game state, render thread uses the game state during rendering). So the amount of resources it would cost to keep these two threads working side-by-side on the same data would probably outweigh any benefit. It would also be a lot of work. Rendering is something the game does in the spare time between game logic updates. If you have a GPU made within the last 10 years then rendering 1 frame should be very fast.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

Hmm... I have 1.80GHz, and I never had any problems...

Wow, one of the weirdest posts I have ever seen..

You do know GHz alone doesn't say anything, right?

[Guest]

Hello
im trying to play with my friend but game with him is too laggy...not cuz of our internet but his computer i think
He has notebook with Cpu 2-core 2Ghz, 2 GB RAM, graphic card Mobile Intel(r) 965 Express and Windows Vista. He said he has OpenGL v.2.x but he cant update it (he has last-updated driver of graphuc card)
Is there anything what we can do?

[Krom]

It is hard to say without inspecting the hardware. Maybe the GPU is the weak link here. It might support OpenGL 2.x, but it does not have the power to render KaM Remake at speed. Maybe it stalls on video memory (KaM needs 128mb video RAM if I remember correct). Could be the CPU is not fast enough or has too little cache to work efficiently in game. Also I would check for the temperature, sometimes if CPU/GPU overheats (e.g. due to ventilation clogged with dust) their speed is decreased to avoid heating damage.

[ChrisEggII]

Hmm... I have 1.80GHz, and I never had any problems...

Wow, one of the weirdest posts I have ever seen..

You do know GHz alone doesn't say anything, right?

My bad

AMD Duron (tm) processor
MMX, 3DNow
1.80 GHz, 1,25 GB RAM
SAPPHIRE radeon 9200SE atlantis
Windows XP (SP3)

[Guest]

thx for reply
He will try do something with overheating and reinstalation to lower system (XP SP3 - it will be perfect i think).
Anyways i wanna ask:
Will be some "significant" optimalization for game in next release?

[Lewin]

thx for reply
He will try do something with overheating and reinstalation to lower system (XP SP3 - it will be perfect i think).
Anyways i wanna ask:
Will be some "significant" optimalization for game in next release?

There's moderate optimisations made to CPU usage which might be noticeable if you mainly get lag on big maps with lots of players. GPU usage should be mostly unchanged.

[Guest]

and where will be next update? (approximately)
holiday are coming...just saying