Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Rate This Thread
Hop To
Page 1 of 2 1 2
#4518605 - 04/28/20 11:24 PM WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring  
Joined: Oct 2019
Posts: 398
orbyxP Offline
Member
orbyxP  Offline
Member

Joined: Oct 2019
Posts: 398
Washington State
I made a pilot to fly a regular campaign mission in order to take more hardware tests.

[Linked Image]

Campaign Date: 7 March 1918 8:48am Flying for Britain in RFC-46
My ride: Camel
Wingmen: 5
Patrol Enemy Front Lines
Air start over target
Active war
Total Flight Time: 10 minutes

Heavy air activity
Highest workshop settings

Average GPU temp 39 C

Average CPU temp: 47 C

GPU usage Average: 29%
CPU usage Average: 20%

Framerate locked to 59.

Frame drops: I don't understand why there are so many minor frame drops. The mission was not stressing my system at all!

Attached Files camel graph.jpg
Last edited by orbyxP; 04/28/20 11:24 PM.
#4518612 - 04/29/20 01:11 AM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 4,879
RAF_Louvert Offline
BOC President; Pilot Extraordinaire; Humble Man
RAF_Louvert  Offline
BOC President; Pilot Extraordinaire; Humble Man
Senior Member

Joined: May 2012
Posts: 4,879
L'Etoile du Nord
.

Orby, I've a hunch those FPS dips go right back to that old CFS3 pipeline. You can only push so much through it so fast, and sometimes it still won't be enough to keep up with all that beautiful action and eye candy going on in WOFF.

.


[Linked Image]

Three RFC Brass Hats were strolling down a street in London. Two walked into a bar, the third one ducked.
_________________________________________________________________________

Former Cold War Warrior, USAF Security Service 1974-1978, E-4, Morse Systems Intercept, England, Europe, and points above.
"pippy-pahpah-pippy pah-pip-pah"

#4518616 - 04/29/20 02:19 AM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
I'm 100% with you on this Lou. Just really a shame this happens on systems that are easily capable otherwise.

Orbyxp, your conclusion regarding frame drops, GPU/CPU loading is consistent with very similar testing I've done. Even using a fairly mid/low end GPU, I've seen 50% or less actual load. I don't know why the frame drops occur either (I really wish I did), but this clearly illustrates that even conservative systems are easily capable, but something is going on that causes FPS drops even though the system isn't really loaded much at all. Thank you for showing this with the clarity you have.

Edit: I wanted to say, looking closer at the graphs, I'm not sure how "minor" those frame rate drops really are (assuming you're referring to what I think you are; the negative spikes that are visible on the graph). For example, although it's not happening all the time, there appear to be a couple pretty severe dips. They don't look too bad, stretched out over time like they are. But the scale, if I'm looking at it correctly, is actually 200 FPS, and your frame rate is locked at 59. However, zooming in on those spikes shows they're >10% at times, and the couple worst ones look to be around 30% (drop in actual frame rate). This is going to be a very noticeable drop, and nothing I'd call minor TBH. The horizontal grid is what, 5s/div? Looks like some instances where there are drops >10%, several times a minute.

Also, I'm sure you know any measurement tool has resolution or sample rate (how often it's actually recording a number, and how much time that recording takes, itself). So I'd even go so far as to say that, when these drops are happening, that by the time it's being sampled/recorded, it could possibly have been on the 'upswing' from a much lower number - and I'd be willing to bet that, on screen, the perceived pause is longer (and maybe 'deeper', losing more FPS) than even what the chart shows at times.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 04/29/20 10:14 PM.
#4518694 - 04/29/20 05:19 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
VonS Offline
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
VonS  Offline
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
Member

Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
Thank you for this post/thread Orbyx, since otherwise I never would have found out about "Afterburner MSI." I did use some level-2 or level-3 cache overclocking tweaks back in the good old days of Mac OS 9 and earlier - but never bothered to read up on this for Win - and also because there aren't any good software overclocking programs, that I know of, and that are designed to work on Macs that feature integrated Intel vid. cards. Now that I'm running WOFF on the Mac Pro - I have a short technical question for kksnowbear, our resident specialist in computer components, installations, etc.

Is it safe to (slightly) overclock the main clock and memory on a workstation vid. card - specifically on the FirePro D700 in my case (the consumer equivalent seems to be the FirePro W9000, by the way). I won't be tampering with voltages, and I am only overclocking within the "factory overclocking band" in Afterburner - nothing fancy.

Default settings are:

GPU clock: 850 MHz
Memory clock: 1370 MHz

Tweaks that I've managed to set, successfully - but have not tried them out yet in WOFF and FE2:

GPU clock: 920 MHz
Memory clock: 1445 MHz

(Further info.: I will not tamper with overclocking the CPU since it boosts up to 3.9 GHz anyway when necessary, 6-core Intel Xeon - and I don't want to damage it.)

Hopefully my "overclocked" specs. for the two AMD FirePro D700 cards are not excessive, but I can always drop them to something like 900 MHz for the GPU, and 1420 or so MHz for the memory clock.

(The factory limits, by the way, within the factory overclocking band, are 950 MHz for the GPU clock, and 1475 MHz for the memory clock.)

Thanks in advance for any comments/info. that you gents can provide. Always much appreciated.

Von S smile2

P.S. Fuller specs for the vid. card (https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/firepro-d700.c2555).

Last edited by VonS; 04/29/20 05:21 PM. Reason: Modified info.

~ For my various FM/AI/FPS/DM Mods. for First Eagles 2, WoFF, RoF & WoTR, and tips for FlightGear, recommended is to check over my CombatAce profile (https://combatace.com/profile/86760-vons/) and to click on the "About Me" tab while there. ~
#4518716 - 04/29/20 06:14 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Well, thanks for letting me answer...and (for a change) I'll try to offer a short answer (but we all know that, in my usual idiom, a long answer is coming right behind it biggrin )

So, here we go: Is it safe to (sightly) overclock the main clock and memory on a workstation vid. card ?

In a word, "Yes".

And cue the long answer...

It's arguably 'safe' to overclock most anything. The differences come from how much of an increase in speed, for how long, with what enhancements in cooling if any...blah, blah, blah.

But, here's the thing (at least in my mind): If your overclock is so mild as to not ever require any voltage bumps, etc. the I'd submit that, reasonably, any performance gained is going to be perhaps negligible. Let me clarify this ("Atta boy Luther..." biggrin biggrin biggrin ):

If I take a CPU and get a (very aggresive) 30% overclock out of it, it will pass the various benchmarks at roughly 30% higher (depending on various junk) because that's what those benchmarks do: Measure that performance specifically. However, the overall increase in the computer's performance, as a function of noticeable difference to a human user...well, that might run around 5%. The reason is that the CPU maybe have bumped up 30% but it's contribution to the computer's overall performance isn't that much to begin with. Is it more than the SSD? Yup. More than the GPU? Usually not. So you see, if a CPU is 25% (total) of a computer's gaming performance ability, and you increase that by 25% with an overclock, then overall the gaming performance only gained 6.25%. And that's going to be difficult to notice - it doesn't even necessarily translate directly to 6.25% increase in teh almighty FPS (which is misleading of itself, IMHO).

And there's no way you're getting 30% from a CPU without increasing voltage.

That's with CPUs. TBH I have limited experience with overclocking GPUs, and even less with Macs smile I have done it with GPUs - using the same Afterburner tool orbyxp has (great tool BTW). But, I still feel fairly certain you're not going to see anywhere near 30%, or even half that, in a GPU overclock - especially without a voltage increase. Voltage bumps are all but hand-in-hand for overclocks, so without voltage increasing, I can't imagine getting very far. I've only been able to get a few percent out of it the few times I tried, and I was actually increasing the voltage slightly. (And stability at load is a whole 'nother discussion).

Now as with any component, there are notable exceptions. And most GPUs these days (if not all) have a complicated on-board management system to allow 'automatic' overclocking within the constraints of thermal management. The card's firmware will temporarily bump speeds up with loads if it can within thermals, and bump then down as temps begin to increase (all the while, controlling fan speed as well). But even with that, you do still have some ability to overclock GPUs a bit further. SInce GPUs typically are a bigger factor in overall gaming performance than CPUs, then a smaller GPU bump can arguably make a bigger difference than a bigger CPU bump. But really, none of this would be likely without voltage increases.

For me, though, I'll tell you: The performance you can get from a good CPU overclock is (arguably) worth what has to be considered (temps, increased cooling costs, stability and the testing needed...). But I hardly ever try to overclock memory or GPUs anymore because a. I don't seem to have time for what I could get out of it, and b. Given a., it doesn't seem 'worth it' to me. Out of 350+ records in my 3DMark spreadsheet o' results, I think maybe 2 or 3 have overclocked GPUs (and I'm pretty sure one was aggressive enough I wound up bumping it back due to rare stability problems).

If you really really want to get every last drop of got-go out of your setup, then you'd have to do the CPU, memory, GPU, maybe LN2 or even oil submersion cooling, etc...but you're certainly not going to get all that without bumping up a voltage wink

I hope it helps.


PS: Looking at your figures, you've gotten roughly 8% overclock on the GPUs, if I follow. What do the thermals look like? Benchmarks? And (perhaps most of all) any stress testing to confirm stability? Sometimes remarkable things are possible, but I usually test any overclock for at least 8 hours and sometimes 24 or more.
EDIT: Fat-fingered calculator and did your GPU overclock % wrong. It's closer to 8% than the 10 I originally wrote. Which, incidentally, reinforces the questions re: what does it do actual performance (synthetics are best here, because even if they're "not real world" they're going to be uniform in terms of what's tested and how, as well as the empirical result - as opposed to often subjective human observations)


Last edited by kksnowbear; 04/29/20 09:20 PM.
#4518750 - 04/29/20 09:24 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
VonS Offline
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
VonS  Offline
WWI Flight Sims on a Mac
Member

Joined: Mar 2011
Posts: 936
Much obliged gents and thank you KK for the detailed and thorough response. Will look into ave. fps and gpu temperatures later today to see if this minor overclock is worth it - in stock mode, temps. average around 80 degrees Celsius if running at max settings in a flight sim, for about an hour or two.

Von S


~ For my various FM/AI/FPS/DM Mods. for First Eagles 2, WoFF, RoF & WoTR, and tips for FlightGear, recommended is to check over my CombatAce profile (https://combatace.com/profile/86760-vons/) and to click on the "About Me" tab while there. ~
#4518757 - 04/29/20 09:43 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: VonS]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Originally Posted by VonS
Much obliged gents and thank you KK for the detailed and thorough response. Will look into ave. fps and gpu temperatures later today to see if this minor overclock is worth it - in stock mode, temps. average around 80 degrees Celsius if running at max settings in a flight sim, for about an hour or two.

Von S

No problem I hope it helps. If it will work in your environment you should seriously look at a gaming graphics benchmarking application. 3DMark is sort of a standard and there's a free version.

Without such a program, there's little way to do accurate, apples v apples comparison testing. The old "I get x FPS by changing this setting" is grossly subjective and almost impossible to use for any meaningful comparison because there are too many variables that aren't held constant, and our eyes just are not fast enough or sensitive enough to accurately measure anything (much less document it). This is why I say use synthetic benchmarks. You can always do FPS in-game testing as subjective augmentation to proper quantative testing.

#4518794 - 04/30/20 08:23 AM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 1,910
dutch Offline
Member
dutch  Offline
Member

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 1,910
EURO-zone
I always use to measure WoFF onscreen, while using Afterburner, only I never did use FPS nor one graph for the complete CPU.
Switch to frame times and let all your CPU cores log the load. Be aware when you find a peak from around 90% on one core this core could be overflowing. There is also a logging between time if I still can remember.
Watch what happen ingame if something does peaking, like CPU peak is there suddenly an massive AI activity. I can remember something that when I was flying low at lots of ground activities it was always fluctuating a lot.

If not did this, turn on the RAM’s XMP in your bios, free extra performance, and see what happen.

read this about frame times: https://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking/

BTW, What is your system hardware?

#4518816 - 04/30/20 12:16 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,454
MajorMagee Offline
Member
MajorMagee  Offline
Member

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,454
Dayton, OH
I agree that the frame drops (typically visible as micro stutters) is something in the underlying CFS3 engine. I've chased after eliminating these for years, and no amount of hardware upgrades and tweaking of settings has ever made them go away entirely.

They are most evident when flying low to the ground looking perpendicular to the direction of flight. This has the image on the screen needing to blit big chunks of data laterally with large relative offsets. I suspect that it's related to a memory buffer clearing routine in the game engine that is not optimized to take advantage of today's hardware capabilities. (e.g. much of my GPU/CPU memory sits there unused when flying)

In some of my test scenarios I've been able to get the hiccup to occur like clockwork at precise time intervals, as the buffer fills up to a limit and resets. Changing the level of detail, altitude, or flight speed changes the frequency of the interrupts, but maintains their consistent pacing.


Service To The Line,
On The Line,
On Time

US Army Ordnance Corps.
#4518833 - 04/30/20 01:11 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: MajorMagee]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Originally Posted by MajorMagee
I agree that the frame drops (typically visible as micro stutters) is something in the underlying CFS3 engine. I've chased after eliminating these for years, and no amount of hardware upgrades and tweaking of settings has ever made them go away entirely.

They are most evident when flying low to the ground looking perpendicular to the direction of flight. This has the image on the screen needing to blit big chunks of data laterally with large relative offsets. I suspect that it's related to a memory buffer clearing routine in the game engine that is not optimized to take advantage of today's hardware capabilities. (e.g. much of my GPU/CPU memory sits there unused when flying)

In some of my test scenarios I've been able to get the hiccup to occur like clockwork at precise time intervals, as the buffer fills up to a limit and resets. Changing the level of detail, altitude, or flight speed changes the frequency of the interrupts, but maintains their consistent pacing.

This is such an incredibly precise description it's almost scary. I have to be honest, even though I have done lots of work with software and developers, I've no professional experience with graphics/game engine software - so the part about blitting etc is kinda outta my league. But, I can absolutely see what you're trying to describe, and this is (by miles) the best assessment of the situation I've ever read. In fact, I recall the first time you posted (something similar), I read it thinking "Hallelujah, I am not losing my mind, and it's not just me or my hardware..."

A couple of specifics I'd like to comment on:

One, your remark regarding hardware upgrade and tweaking of settings: I think this remains entirely true. I don't know what your current system is like, but the issues I can replicate (see next point) haven't shown any change regardless of whatever system I've tried on, all the way up to and including i7-8086k / 1080Ti (which are both very capable devices, even by today's standards). Sure, the system and the sim run better overall compared to more modest setups, no doubt. But it appears to have zero impact on the actual frame drops we're discussing.

Two, concerning the test scenarios: I've done exactly what you describe, with scenarios that precisely show the drops to occur at the same points. I've described many times how it's necessary to have such a test scenario that can do this, predictably and reliably, in order to do testing with any real, meaningful conclusions. (Among other things, If there's no "before", how can you test an "after"?)

I am honestly just extremely grateful that your experience and comments seem to be exactly what I've tried to communicate. Whether it's the CFS3 engine (I'm sure we all believe that it is) has never really been my concern, though I can say I saw this behavior way back in CFS3. I just wish it weren't happening now.

FWIW I do sincerely wish that OBD's obvious talent, passion, and skill weren't affected by this, and I do still support their efforts in the most meaningful way I can afford. I think that such support can exist, while still acknowledging some stuff we'd all like to see gone.

I genuinely appreciate your input MM. For reference, would you be willing to share your system details (and/or that of the units you may have tested on), please?

EDIT: Something else I should've mentioned...some time ago, I decided to do a test to rule out storage access time as a cause, having already upgraded to various storage setups many times faster than standard hard drives. I actually set up a RAM drive on my (32G) machine, and it benchmarked exactly as expected: Not HDD speeds, SSD speeds, or even NVMe speeds - it ran at actual system RAM speed; easily 9-22 times faster than a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD depending on the test. I set up the RAM drive to create a volume big enough to hold WOFF, and ran the entire game from that RAM drive (which is also functionally equivalent to any 'preloading' of sounds etc, because this way, the entire thing is loaded in RAM.) But I still saw the exact same drops, at the exact same places.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 04/30/20 02:02 PM.
#4518855 - 04/30/20 02:39 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Robert_Wiggins Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Robert_Wiggins  Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Hotshot

Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada
KK and MM

Thanks for all the effort and data you have brought to this thread. Most of it is over my head but the link MM provided is very detailed and easily understood. I too am beginning to believe that the CFS3 engine is the culprit. That said, some of us are achieving levels of performance that are acceptable to us as a result of various tuning techniques and better hardware choices.

I still get some mixro stutters but I live with and accept it in favour of all the pleasures of the sim.

I too wish that OBD could get license access to the engine source code in hopes that the code could be improved but that is not likely to happen. I do fail to see why MS holds the license so close when the CFS3 is no longer marketed.

Just my two cents worth.

Thanks folks!

Best Regards


(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper
PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt
MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme
Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered
CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler
Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB
OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L
Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4

#4518867 - 04/30/20 03:48 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Robert,

I believe the point you're making is true in that there are also some issues that tuning etc *can* improve. But I think it's important to distinguish between the "lesser" problems that might dealt with by tuning, TrackIR tweaking, better hardware etc... and those that seem persistent regardless. I've long since been able to "tune" graphics very well; I don't have (nor would I tolerate) stuttering from overclocking or whatever else. It's the stuff that isn't changed by any of the things we can do that has always been a concern for me.

Acknowledging the difference between these two types of issues saves people beating their heads against the wall to no avail, or even far worse, heaving money better spent elsewhere toward a problem it isn't going to solve.

Moreover, I believe it actually in *any* game developer's best interest to advocate lower system requirements, and thus increase the potential market, by keeping the 'price to play' down. I'm all but convinced even very modest systems will get as much improvement from this sim as you're going to get, and that anything beyond that is cost that's progressively disproportionate to the gain. Just as an example, I feel you can have a <$750 machine that will do just about as well in this sim as a machine costing three times as much can do in this sim. A third the cost, for the vast majority of the performance, and neither will be completely free of the remaining issues anyway**

I hope you can see what I'm trying to say.

**EDIT To be absolutely clear, this has nothing to do with new or used hardware, or the source one chooses for it. It's strictly an observation of cost v performance.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 04/30/20 04:47 PM.
#4518872 - 04/30/20 04:22 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Robert_Wiggins Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Robert_Wiggins  Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Hotshot

Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada
KK

I understand you point and I have no argument with your views. I merely wished to state that I found the link by MM very informative and that in my particular case the performance of WOFF acceptable to me, that is not to say I don't wish it was better because I do. I receive considerable pleasure from the sim and I am willing to live with the small stutters I receive when flying it. That of course is my particular stance and others may find it unacceptable. To each his own.

I also was just acknowledging that I also believe the CFS3 engine is the primary culprit and that I am somewhat puzzled that OBD is not able to acquire licensing for the source. If it is no longer being developed I don't know why MS cannot offer it as open license for other developers to build on. Just my thoughts!

Best Regards


(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper
PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt
MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme
Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered
CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler
Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB
OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L
Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4

#4518877 - 04/30/20 04:44 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Robert, good, no argument here, and certainly no offense intended. Just civil discussion, far as I'm concerned.

I think everyone shares your curiosity regarding licensing, engines, etc. - but it's regretfully not a subject OBD has had much to say about thus far. I wouldn't even know if there's been any contact with MS (strictly as an assumption, I doubt it). I do feel, though, that if anyone approaches MS formally about using any part of their product, I wouldn't be at all surprised that they suddenly insist on getting paid - even if not being actively developed, it's still their intellectual property. If no one says anything, they can choose to look the other way if they want. But if it were to come up, they might have grounds to make a fuss. A lot of this does depend on 'source code' and whether any of the modding could've been possible without 'reverse engineering', that I do know from related experiences with software licensing in other industries.

Again, as far as CFS3 and MS, this is all speculation; I do not know any of this to be fact.

One thing - I'm not sure I see the MM link you've referred to. Did I miss something?

#4518881 - 04/30/20 05:01 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Robert_Wiggins Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Robert_Wiggins  Offline
BWOC Survivor!...So Far!!
Hotshot

Joined: Jun 2012
Posts: 7,993
Lindsay, Ontario, Canada
KK, Sorry, My bad, That link was in Dutch post above. You probably saw that.


(System_Specs)
Case: Cooler Master Storm Trooper
PSU: Ultra X3,1000-Watt
MB: Asus Maximus VI Extreme
Mem: Corsair Vengeance (2x 8GB), PC3-12800, DDR3-1600MHz, Unbuffered
CPU: Intel i7-4770K, OC to 4.427Ghz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M Liquid CPU Cooler
Vid Card: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX 6GB
OS and Games on separate: Samsung 840 Series 250GB SSD
Monitor: Primary ASUS PG27AQ 4k; Secondary Samsung SyncMaster BX2450L
Periphs: MS Sidewinder FFB2 Pro, TrackIR 4

#4518884 - 04/30/20 05:09 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: dutch]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Originally Posted by dutch
I always use to measure WoFF onscreen, while using Afterburner, only I never did use FPS nor one graph for the complete CPU.
Switch to frame times and let all your CPU cores log the load. Be aware when you find a peak from around 90% on one core this core could be overflowing. There is also a logging between time if I still can remember.
Watch what happen ingame if something does peaking, like CPU peak is there suddenly an massive AI activity. I can remember something that when I was flying low at lots of ground activities it was always fluctuating a lot.

If not did this, turn on the RAM’s XMP in your bios, free extra performance, and see what happen.

read this about frame times: https://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking/

BTW, What is your system hardware?



Very interesting article indeed, thank you. It discusses in detail something I've mentioned often (above, in this same thread, in fact): The fallacy of (what I call) the "Almighty FPS". This article shows that FPS alone is misleading and modern measurements don't usually rely strictly on an FPS number.

I do have to say though, that changing one's memory to XMP isn't likely to make a tremendous difference in the 'final' on-screen experience. Unless it's already *very* poorly setup (as in, worse than even BIOS defaults), XMP can potentially increase RAM speed a fair amount - but the effect on the system overall might do well to change by 2% in a standardized test. And, as discussed elsewhere, just changing this setting by itself can introduce instability. I've never set XMP alone and had it pass MEMTEST loops without failing, unless I manually bumped the RAM voltage. I am sure this is because the memory manufacturers don't make the motherboard, and vice-versa. It's also less likely to be stable if you populate all the DIMM slots, due to what's called "fan out" in electronics.

XMP is supposed to be one-click, but it doesn't always work that way. Of course, YMMV and it's going to vary with board mfr and memory mfr, too.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 04/30/20 05:11 PM.
#4518889 - 04/30/20 06:00 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,454
MajorMagee Offline
Member
MajorMagee  Offline
Member

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,454
Dayton, OH
Currently I'm running a water cooled Ryzen 7 3700X with a GTX1070 Super and the program is loaded on an NVME SSD.
This set-up lets me run a 3440 x 1440 Gsync monitor at up to 100MHz with 4X SSGA which would not have been anywhere near possible with any of the previous gaming systems I've put together over the years.
The image quality is outstanding, and the game plays with great responsiveness, but those little frame pacing hitches persist.


I've chased after the HDD versus SSD versus NVME versus RAM Drive idea, and like you, found it was not a relevant factor.

I've isolated / optimized the mouse, joystick, and TrackIR activity to eliminate the usb interrupts as a source.

I played with single core versus multi threading processors to no effect.

Running at half refresh rate so both the CPU and GPU have plenty of excess capacity does not make them go away.

I've gone the other way and tried loading the system down with as much to do as possible (8x SGAA, High Terrain and Object Density, etc.). The system never shows a hint of slowing up from its work, and it still happens,

I've also explored all of the various FPS limiters like RTSS, or those available through Nvidia Profile Inspector, as well as the one built into the game engine itself, and their routines for regulating the pace of displaying each frame doesn't resolve this.

I've even tried a frame pacing routing written for Reshade that was specifically intended to make everything buttery smooth like a game console, and it failed to clear it up. (though I'll admit that the FPS timing was absolutely rock steady between the little hitches)


I'm satisfied that I getting all I'm going to out of this old bird. After all, I'm an engineer, so my diligent efforts at trying to determine the root cause of this behavior has been just my cup of tea.

Please, don't forget, this is typically going to be most noticeable when you're just tooling along looking around at the scenery.

When you're doing a white knuckled check six in the middle of a dogfight, you're hardly ever going to notice a little hitch in the display.


Get a strong enough system so it looks good and you're not getting too bogged down, and then just go have some fun!


Service To The Line,
On The Line,
On Time

US Army Ordnance Corps.
#4518891 - 04/30/20 06:13 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Dec 2014
Posts: 1,340
HarryH Offline
Member
HarryH  Offline
Member

Joined: Dec 2014
Posts: 1,340
Very interesting discussion. I hope my enjoining does not throw it off the rails. To that end, let me start by offering KKSnowbear a public apology for my recent disgraceful behavior. No matter how much passions are stirred, there's no excuse for that.. I am sorry KK.

Major McGee, I concur 100%. You have used the term 'hiccups' to describe what you see. I've used that term myself in the past and I'm very relieved that it appears to have been accepted in this thread as a legitimate term for describing a key issue with the CFS3 engine. After all my tuning and experimenting I do still have those as well. Typically there's one hiccup I can set my watch by at ~ 93 seconds into the mission (it varies a little depending upon the campaign region) followed by one or two less dramatic ones, until around 200 seconds in, from which point I will seldom see any more of them through to the conclusion of the mission. Sounds very similar to what MM is describing.

Now here's the part where I hope the discussion can stay civil: if those occasional hiccups were grouped together to become stutters every time I was in low combat,, i.e. the issue that KK's original QC showed so well, I wouldn't be able to play this game. But they don't, for me at least, no matter what terrain I'm over, or the weather, or anything. Sure, sometimes maybe not 100% smooth, but still very playable. As the Major says, "When you're doing a white knuckled check six in the middle of a dogfight, you're hardly ever going to notice a little hitch in the display."

Whatever terms we use for less than 100% smooth performance, It looks like pretty much everyone agrees that it's the engine that's the root cause. I would say that if you can put up with those hiccups and you are prepared to put the time and effort into it to make everything else very smooth and playable at high detail settings, this sim has an abundance of enjoyment to offer.

Thanks to Lou and Stache I was able to configure OBS to get a pretty decent 2K recording that's very close to what I actually experience on my monitor. No question there's a bit of a performance hit with OBS but it's ok for demo purposes. I now have a video that I'll upload later that shows those early hiccups very clearly.

Again, hope this stays civil.

Thanks all.


System: i5 8600K @ 3.6GHz,16GB DDR4 @2666MHz. RTX2080, MSI Z370 mobo, Dell 27" G-SYNC @ 144Hz. 2560x1440

#4519217 - 05/03/20 05:24 AM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: dutch]  
Joined: Oct 2019
Posts: 398
orbyxP Offline
Member
orbyxP  Offline
Member

Joined: Oct 2019
Posts: 398
Washington State
Originally Posted by dutch


BTW, What is your system hardware?


I7 9700
2080 ti

By the way, all this reference to not needing a modern CPU does omit some differences. A modern CPU can do some things that simply can't be done with older CPUs:
1. Fly at 60 FPS (90% of the time) in 1918 on heavy air activity. So, no need to fiddle with air activity once 1918 starts.
2. Fly at 60 FPS with x12 time compression at ultra heavy in 1917. Gets to target quicker.
3. Any Frame drops last a second or less.
4. Precipitation in any year with any air activity has zero effect on FPS. Stutters occur at the same times with or without precipitation
5. M.2 (ssd or nvme, not cpu mostly) loads mission faster. E.g Ultra Heavy in 1918 missions spawns your aircraft on the field in under 1 minute.
6. What about when you want to play another modern game, then the differences become even more pronounced.
So, if none of these make any difference, then you're good.

Last edited by orbyxP; 05/03/20 05:27 AM.
#4519301 - 05/03/20 08:13 PM Re: WOFF Stats with Afterburner Monitoring [Re: orbyxP]  
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
kksnowbear Offline
Member
kksnowbear  Offline
Member

Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 945
Originally Posted by orbyxP
Originally Posted by dutch


BTW, What is your system hardware?


I7 9700
2080 ti

By the way, all this reference to not needing a modern CPU does omit some differences. A modern CPU can do some things that simply can't be done with older CPUs:
1. Fly at 60 FPS (90% of the time) in 1918 on heavy air activity. So, no need to fiddle with air activity once 1918 starts.
2. Fly at 60 FPS with x12 time compression at ultra heavy in 1917. Gets to target quicker.
3. Any Frame drops last a second or less.
4. Precipitation in any year with any air activity has zero effect on FPS. Stutters occur at the same times with or without precipitation
5. M.2 (ssd or nvme, not cpu mostly) loads mission faster. E.g Ultra Heavy in 1918 missions spawns your aircraft on the field in under 1 minute.
6. What about when you want to play another modern game, then the differences become even more pronounced.
So, if none of these make any difference, then you're good.

On the subject of omitting differences, there are some pretty significant ones you continue to omit, for example:

1,2: I haven't specifically tested time compression, but I also don't know there's any proof that it's mandatory to 'fiddle with air activity' just because you don't have a 9-series CPU. You have proof of a requirement to fiddle with air activity settings for everyone who doesn't have a 9-series CPU?

3. This is completely misleading. I've rarely (if ever) seen a frame drop last more than 1 second, regardless of the CPU (at least going back to some 2nd and 3rd gen i7s, which I have tested not that long ago). Even these CPUs still show the same drops everyone has seen, yourself included, essentially regardless of CPU. The drops last .25-.5 seconds, maybe sometimes slightly more. Your statement "Any frame drops last a second or less" applies to any CPU I've seen/tested since 2nd gen (like Lou has) - not just 9-series CPUs.

4. "Stutters occur at the same times with or without precipitation" I haven't specifically tested precipitation. Again, I'd welcome proof of your specifics. If you're saying precipitation doesn't worsen the specific frame drops we're discussing in this thread, I think it's been accepted that drops still happen with a 9-series CPU, just like other CPUs. Not sure what impact precipitation has on this; but if they all show it....well, they all show it. Maybe it gets worse still on older CPUs, but I've never seen proof of this - the stutter seems to be what it is, regardless.

5. Again, this is misleading. I was using verious methods of storage beyond a simple SSD 10 years ago, and have been ever since. I always make suggestions that system builds for gaming include 'performance' storage, which can vary depending on platform.

First of all, M.2 is nothing more than a form factor. It is not inherently faster than even plain SATA drives; in fact, some M.2 slots actually still operate at SATA 6Gs speeds (no faster than a 2.5" SATA SSD). Long before NVMe capabilities on boards (starting ~Z97), I was using/building RAID arrays with multiple SSDs on real, hardware RAID controllers (with very little CPU load by design), and getting 1200+ read speeds when SSDs were still second-gen (SATA 300G/s) And many gamers were still using standard hard drives, many (including some here today) claiming it "only improves load times". This is obviously incorrect, and since that time, almost everyone now says to use SSDs (funny, since many at the time insisted it didn't matter).

Also, most any board since ~Z68 will have PCIe 2.0 x4 slots, which means cards that can deliver 1500+Mb/s read rates, or >3x faster than SATA 6G/s. My original NVMe drive - a very fast Samsung 950 Pro - gave read speeds at ~2000, so I can do 75% of that speed for no more in cost, on a board that dates back to 2nd-gen processors. Done it, in fact, many times. No doubt NVMe is fast; my newest Samsung delivers up to about 3200 Mb/s, but it (and the hardware required to support that speed) costs a lot more than a 2nd-gen Z86. Like I've said many times, a high percentage of the performance at a much lower cost. Whenever I build a system for gaming, storage performance gets plenty of attention, and capable hardware recommendations. Still, it's up to the person paying for it. In spite of the benefit to gaming, fewer people decide to include these units than really should, and for one reason: Cost. Many have opted to run games from even standard hard disks, to save money. While I can (and do) recommend otherwise, what this illustrates is that for the majority, you cannot exclude cost from comparisons.

6. The CPUs I've mentioned here, and recommended to actual clients, are more than capable of modern games. For example, before my son's recent upgrade to an overclocked 8086k/RTX2070 Super, he was using an overclocked 4790k/GTX1070 and was keeping very good frame rates on high settings, and while streaming, no problem, with very demanding recent titles. Certainly more than this sim requires, per the evidence we've all seen that CPU load isn't typically high at all in WOFF. (And that's only a 4790k; I've also mentioned others into the 6 and 7 series as well; which can be had for much less than newest retail costs).

So, even if the things above make a difference, you can still save money and get performance that's reasonably comparable, and a better value for the cost...unless, as I've said before, money is no object.

Once again, all this might be accurate if you're ignoring cost. But cost is a factor for almost anyone. All these discussions about how the latest CPUs are 'best' are really without merit, unless someone can actually afford to spend $500+ on just a motherboard and CPU (no memory, no drives, no PSU, no GPU...which collectively can push the cost upwards toward $2000). But the performance still isn't likely to be in proportion: You're not getting twice the performance for twice the money. You might get 15-30% more for 200% the cost.

Last edited by kksnowbear; 05/07/20 10:52 AM.
Page 1 of 2 1 2

Moderated by  Polovski 

Quick Search
Recent Articles
Support SimHQ

If you shop on Amazon use this Amazon link to support SimHQ
.
Social


Recent Topics
CD WOFF
by Britisheh. 03/28/24 08:05 PM
Carnival Cruise Ship Fire....... Again
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:58 PM
Baltimore Bridge Collapse
by F4UDash4. 03/26/24 05:51 PM
The Oldest WWII Veterans
by F4UDash4. 03/24/24 09:21 PM
They got fired after this.
by Wigean. 03/20/24 08:19 PM
Grown ups joke time
by NoFlyBoy. 03/18/24 10:34 PM
Anyone Heard from Nimits?
by F4UDash4. 03/18/24 10:01 PM
RIP Gemini/Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford
by semmern. 03/18/24 02:14 PM
Copyright 1997-2016, SimHQ Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.6.0