Getting an edge in HOS with a better PC build?

[tolas]

just a quick reply for the 560ti

imo and sicne i have one

my response is to stay away from it.

y?

well its based on luck, but if you go to the nvidia forums you will find that there is a thread detailing issues people are having with them, and there are hundred upon hundred of them.

ive found that there seems to be a bug that nvidia has yet to correct with these cards, many people are reporting that the cards arent even being properly utilized, me in particular im getting much lower usage out of the card that what i should be getting, i also get frame drops over time very similar to what you might see form a memory leak.

other issues involve incorrect voltages that STILL hasnt been resolved, but can be fixed with a simple adjustment on your end.

but just take a quick glance on nvidias forums, and you will find that the 560ti line is pretty much hit or miss, i wish now i woulda spent a lil more at the time and gotten the 570 card instead.

and whatever you decide, try to get a reference card or one made by someone like evga, as i have never had a problem with any of there cards in the past.

also, the problems with the 560ti has a habit of not manifesting itself until after some time and usage, mine started having issues about 4 months in, as i would constantly get issues where the card stopped working and recovered while using simple things like a browser and there was flash based things on screen. Many people dont even get the "recovered" portion and just constantly have a blank screen forcing a hard reset, or others report just a plain BSOD

good luck with your purchase

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

just a quick reply for the 560ti

imo and sicne i have one

my response is to stay away from it.

y?

well its based on luck, but if you go to the nvidia forums you will find that there is a thread detailing issues people are having with them, and there are hundred upon hundred of them.

ive found that there seems to be a bug that nvidia has yet to correct with these cards, many people are reporting that the cards arent even being properly utilized, me in particular im getting much lower usage out of the card that what i should be getting, i also get frame drops over time very similar to what you might see form a memory leak.

other issues involve incorrect voltages that STILL hasnt been resolved, but can be fixed with a simple adjustment on your end.

but just take a quick glance on nvidias forums, and you will find that the 560ti line is pretty much hit or miss, i wish now i woulda spent a lil more at the time and gotten the 570 card instead.

and whatever you decide, try to get a reference card or one made by someone like evga, as i have never had a problem with any of there cards in the past.

also, the problems with the 560ti has a habit of not manifesting itself until after some time and usage, mine started having issues about 4 months in, as i would constantly get issues where the card stopped working and recovered while using simple things like a browser and there was flash based things on screen. Many people dont even get the "recovered" portion and just constantly have a blank screen forcing a hard reset, or others report just a plain BSOD

good luck with your purchase

I actually have had some similar issues as you describe. According to MSI (my 560Ti), I should stick with the latest drivers they post on their website and not the ones from NVDIA. Problem is for me is that I keep using the newest and latest drivers; one set will work perfiectly fine and then the next I might have some problems (usually after a Flash update). I should probably stick with the latest that I know works

EDIT: Actually my problem with the latest drivers had more to do with the fact I accidentally undervolted my card in MSI Afterburner. I bumped it back up and now I'm fine. D'oh!

 

[mattlach]

many people are reporting that the cards arent even being properly utilized

Usually if you are seeing low GPU utilization out of your video card, it has nothing to do with your video card, and instead everything to do with the rest of your system (CPU, bus speeds, RAM, etc.) not being fast enough to feed the video card with the data it needs to make full use of its capabilities.

This is what often is referred to as being "CPU limited" in games.

So what the people complaining on the forums have - essentially - done, is bought a modern mid range video card, and installed it in a older/slower computer that can't keep up with it.

This is a problem that's particularly bad in RO2, as RO2 is very CPU intensive.

 

[mattlach]

The joy of an SSD in a gaming machine cannot be understated. Even if it is just for the OS. And they are getting cheaper again soon from what I hear.

Yep, just make sure your "my documents" and thus your "my games" folder is on the SSD, and not moved to a slower drive (like I did to save SSD space).

Apparently this game reads from and writes to the "my games" folder A LOT (which is odd) during load time. This slowed my load times significantly.

Now that I have moved the "my games" folder back to my SSD, it loads very quickly.

 

[ROII4Me]

Saying there are hundreds reporting issues with a card is not that surprising, since it is hard to find an electronics product owned by many thousands that does not have hundreds of people complaining about various things.

There are countless positive reviews of the 560 ti as well.

I did get an evga card, and it is the ultra version that I keep reading is actually more a 570 than a 560.

And I assume my processor will not take full advantage of it. But when the time comes to get a new PC I will have the card ready to go.

 

[tolas]

Usually if you are seeing low GPU utilization out of your video card, it has nothing to do with your video card, and instead everything to do with the rest of your system (CPU, bus speeds, RAM, etc.) not being fast enough to feed the video card with the data it needs to make full use of its capabilities.

normally i would concur with you, unfortunately if you take a gander at the forum you will see hundreds of people having far more capable hardware that it would otherwise provide more than enough resources to mitigate this issue.

i even remember noting some individuals swapping their 560ti for more powerful ones and having no such utilization issues thereafter, while maintaining their current cpu ram and other hardware.

 

[ROII4Me]

Well, if this card gives me trouble I will send it back.

But it arrived today, much to my great surprise.

It is big as a moose and I love that it has an exhaust vent on the end so at least some of the heat will go out into the room rather than into the PC chassis.

 

[Floyd]

Afaik, all double slot cards vent out the back....

I think you're going to be pleased. Its a good value for the $, imo.

I've not had a BOSD from the card, but I've had instances where the I got the "driver recovered" message. And usually during a benign event like loading a flash animation or on a vary odd website.

Enjoy.....

 

[ROII4Me]

Hmmm just lost a big post. Took me to the log in screen and when I logged in it told me I was logged in and when I came here my post was nowhere.

I will wait a bit to see if it shows up before reposting it here.

 

[Yoshiro]

Looks like the forums trolls ate it. Don't see it anywhere.

 

[ROII4Me]

Take Two - the short version.

Had a big shock when I changed cards and then my hard drive would no longer boot, even with the PC's boot disc. But I got it going with my new Windows 7 disc and once the drivers were installed it has been fine.

The EVGA GTX560Ti 448 Core Classified has instantly doubled my frame rates, almost exactly doubled them.

But I am still nowhere near 60 FPS.

As with my original query, I would like to know what specific graphic settings I can pull back on that will have the most impact on FPS.

When I was playing with War Movie and Ultra across the board (except for Bloom, Light Rays and one other thing turned OFF, the "smoothing" feature) ...

Old Card - Idle at 24 FPS, drop to 18 when moving around, drop to 12 - 14 when near the enemy.

New Card - Idle at 42.5 FPS, combat operations 24 - 36. And the splash screen where you choose Multiplayer, etc. is over 150.

I will have to live with 4MB and a 2.66 processor for a while.

So what visuals can I pull back on to help FPS, without dragging everything down to Medium, etc.

Thanks

 

[Yoshiro]

Detail mode will probably have the greatest impact on FPS if you are CPU bound, with shadow settings coming shortly after it on higher player count servers.

 

[ROII4Me]

Thanks. I can sacrifice a few shadowy pebbles in exchange for winning a few more quick draw contests.

 

[mattlach]

Take Two - the short version.

Had a big shock when I changed cards and then my hard drive would no longer boot, even with the PC's boot disc. But I got it going with my new Windows 7 disc and once the drivers were installed it has been fine.

The EVGA GTX560Ti 448 Core Classified has instantly doubled my frame rates, almost exactly doubled them.

But I am still nowhere near 60 FPS.

As with my original query, I would like to know what specific graphic settings I can pull back on that will have the most impact on FPS.

When I was playing with War Movie and Ultra across the board (except for Bloom, Light Rays and one other thing turned OFF, the "smoothing" feature) ...

Old Card - Idle at 24 FPS, drop to 18 when moving around, drop to 12 - 14 when near the enemy.

New Card - Idle at 42.5 FPS, combat operations 24 - 36. And the splash screen where you choose Multiplayer, etc. is over 150.

I will have to live with 4MB and a 2.66 processor for a while.

So what visuals can I pull back on to help FPS, without dragging everything down to Medium, etc.

Thanks

What resolution do you play at? Also, what CPU do you have?

I suspect what you are seeing is a CPU limitation, not a video card limitation.

This game - unlike most games out there - is highly CPU dependent.

Things you can try to do to help here are to make sure that "enable hardware physics" is checked, to try to help reduce CPU load, but the difference here will be small.

Other than that, if you are playing at 1920x1200(or 1080) or lower, you can likely lower any of the settings all you want without impacting overall framerates much.

You see, if you are video card limited, your framerates will scale well with graphics settings, if you are CPU limited, your framerates will mostly stay the same unless you increase the settings so high that you are video card limited again.

The CPU load is mostly the same regardless of settings.

To verify if you are indeed CPU limited, I recommend doing the following:

Run a program like MSI's Afterburner, or EVGA's Precision X. Be sure to enable the data charts, and make sure that your GPU utilization is visible.

Leave the chart up in the background while you play the game for a while.

Quit back out and examine your charts. What is the typical GPU load (as a percent) during your gameplay? if it's significantly below 100%, then you are probably CPU limited. (you could also be limited by RAM speed, or bus speed or something else, but CPU is the most common culprit)

Just to give you an idea of how CPU intensive this game is, I have an Intel Sandy bridge-E CPU overclocked to 4.6Ghz, and I can't even max out my video card. It typically hovers in the high 80%'s when I have everything maxed out at 2560x1600.

So I am not sure what 2.66Ghz CPU you have, but regardless of which one it is, it is likely the limiting factor for your system.

notes on CPU's.

Through personal testing I have found that RO2 HATES AMD CPU's at any speed. If you want good performance, Intel is a must.

For older Intel CPU's (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad or older) there really isn't much you can do to help. First generation core CPU's (Core i5-xxx, Core i7-9xx, 8xx or other three digit models) are mostly passable, but will likely require a large overclock to perform their best in this game.

Ideally for RO2 you want a Sandy bridge based second gen Core CPU (core CPU's with four trailing digits, Core i5-2xxx, core i7-2xxx or better). Even with these, the higher you can overclock them, the better.

Depending on which CPU and motherboard you have, overclocking may be an option for you, but only if you don't have a prebuilt system or laptop (Dell, HP, etc.) as they don't usually have overclocking features on their motherboards. If you have a custom built system, getting a cheap high performance cooler and overclocking that CPU may be your best bet until you can afford a faster CPU.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

... For older Intel CPU's (Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad or older) there really isn't much you can do to help. First generation core CPU's (Core i5-xxx, Core i7-9xx, 8xx or other three digit models) are mostly passable, but will likely require a large overclock to perform their best in this game...

I have the Q6600 2.4 GHz overclocked to 3.2GHz with a GTX560 Ti and I can say the overclocking really helps. At 1920 x 1080 I have everything checked and all settings maxed out (AA at medium) and I routinely get 40-60 fps. I rarely ever drop below 35 fps even on a full server.

So, in this case, if ROII4me can safely overclock his cpu with acceptable temps that would probably help quite a bit.

Edit: No vertical sync...

 

[ROII4Me]

Thanks.

Yes, I know my processor is a problem, as it is 5 years old and is a Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66 with a 2.66 front side bus.

But the new card has helped a LOT right out of the box. It will hold me for some months before I get a new PC and then I will just put the card in that.

My monitor is a 22" LG with 1680 x 1050 as the max resolution, which is what I run on.

I have never overclocked anything and have no experience with anything like that, but I am going to run the NVidia utility you recommended.

Just dropping the two game graphics features recommended above, along with a little decrease in the detail of the toons got me another 10 fps. I was often in close quarters combat over 40 and sometimes over 50.

Compared to the past year playing RO2 with combat rates under 20 FPS I am pretty happy.

In another thread I mentioned that going to Windows 7 improved things in game but my loads were taking forever, so I was always left with the bolt rifle as my only choice.

Last night on JG2 I was often the second person to get whatever class I wanted.

Now if we can only get all those new guys to pay attention to the vets when they say you have to take Alpha and Delta immediately if you want the Russians to have a chance to win Commissar's House!