The Choppy Framerate Conundrum

This is it... ENOUGH!

I've had it up to here (/indicating slightly above my eyebrows) with the choppiness!

And OH... the inconsistency! Some games run great, and others, well, don't. I just know there's a pattern here somewhere, but I just don't see it :( Please allow me to take advantage of my fellow Gamespotters' expertise.

Ive made a list of the games that run relatively well at the highest settings and of the ones that consistently show choppy framerates at almost any setting.

+ awesome fps!
crysis 2
mass effect 2
starcraft 2
Deadspace 2
Shogun 2
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Warhammer DoW 2
Fallout New Vegas
Left 4 Dead 2

- meh fps
Trine
Arcania Gothic 4
Dead Rising 2
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Aliens vs Predator 2
The Witcher


My rig:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
4.0 GB RAM
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition Service Pack 2 (build 6002), 64-bit
ATI Radeon HD 4850 Series X2 (crossfire)
DirectX 11.0

This is it... ENOUGH!

I've had it up to here (/indicating slightly above my eyebrows) with the choppiness!

And OH... the inconsistency! Some games run great, and others, well, don't. I just know there's a pattern here somewhere, but I just don't see it :( Please allow me to take advantage of my fellow Gamespotters' expertise.

Ive made a list of the games that run relatively well at the highest settings and of the ones that consistently show choppy framerates at almost any setting.

+ awesome fps!
crysis 2
mass effect 2
starcraft 2
Deadspace 2
Shogun 2
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Warhammer DoW 2
Fallout New Vegas
Left 4 Dead 2

- meh fps
Trine
Arcania Gothic 4
Dead Rising 2
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Aliens vs Predator 2
The Witcher


My rig:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
4.0 GB RAM
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition Service Pack 2 (build 6002), 64-bit
ATI Radeon HD 4850 Series X2 (crossfire)
DirectX 11.0

ecoolen

1) your not running in dx11 your gpu is only dx10.1 compliant

so all those games are haahah actually in dx10 not 11

second crossfire/sli and dual gpu's blow eggs serious eggs take out on 4850 and play bfbc2 on a tiny resolution (under 1680 x 1200) on like default high and i imagine it your play smoothly at about 40fps

Wow... Can you believe I didn't even realize about the directX 11 not being compatible. Just checked the grid on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon) and apparently directX 11 only works on HD 5000 series and up. Thanks man fer pointing that out :)

Removing one of the 2 GPU's did the trick on BFBC2. It also made Trine improve a teeny bit (fps is still pretty low, around 20). Also installed Trine on a P4 pc with Geforce 8800 as a test: runs a lot better! (ATI problem maybe?) Arcania is still chopping like a lumberjack though :S

Wow... Can you believe I didn't even realize about the directX 11 not being compatible. Just checked the grid on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon) and apparently directX 11 only works on HD 5000 series and up. Thanks man fer pointing that out :)

Removing one of the 2 GPU's did the trick on BFBC2. It also made Trine improve a teeny bit (fps is still pretty low, around 20). Also installed Trine on a P4 pc with Geforce 8800 as a test: runs a lot better! (ATI problem maybe?) Arcania is still chopping like a lumberjack though :S

ecoolen

okay gothic i cant fix srry :S its developer is fallen on hard times so dont expect a fix anytime soon but were ex[ecting a aptch by the 19th of april for amd cards perhaps try again then (rev. 11.4)

nextfor avp and dr2 those tow should be working normally now if not then again srry idk as AvP 2010 responds just fine on my 5830

Don't know about the other games, but BFBC2 requires a quadcore to run well.

Don't know about the other games, but BFBC2 requires a quadcore to run well.

GTR12

:cry:

:?

:|

[QUOTE="GTR12"]

Don't know about the other games, but BFBC2 requires a quadcore to run well.

BattleSpectre

:cry:

:?

:|

There isnt a bad company 3 being planned yet, If you mean Battlefield 3 however, your i5 will handle it fine.

[QUOTE="BattleSpectre"]

[QUOTE="GTR12"]

Don't know about the other games, but BFBC2 requires a quadcore to run well.

Azurites

:cry:

:?

:|

There isnt a bad company 3 being planned yet, If you mean Battlefield 3 however, your i5 will handle it fine.

Tomorrow i'm going out and replacing it with the i7 2600K and overclocking that, which should be my last upgrade for a while. (I know it's not needed, but i'm an idiot for not getting the i5 2500 "K" model from the start.

Stupid me, sorry about that i did mean Battlefield 3, and thanks for the kind words. I was expecting another "your cpu is rubbish because it isn't unlocked" reply :P

Tomorrow i'm going out and replacing it with the i7 2600K and overclocking that, which should be my last upgrade for a while. (I know it's not needed, but i'm an idiot for not getting the i5 2500 "K" model from the start.

BattleSpectre

If BF3 is gonna be what it lives up to, no-ones GPU setup now is gonna run it well. I hope it does this, cos then I got an excuse to upgrade :P

okay gothic i cant fix srry :S its developer is fallen on hard times so dont expect a fix anytime soon but were ex[ecting a aptch by the 19th of april for amd cards perhaps try again then (rev. 11.4)

nextfor avp and dr2 those tow should be working normally now if not then again srry idk as AvP 2010 responds just fine on my 5830

ionusX

AvP2 works fine too. Just some graphical inconsistencies, but I guess it's the game itself.

The Witcher runs good as well now.

Dead Rising, well, that one too :D. Although it's still annoying about the Xbox Controller not working properly out of the box, but thats a problem for another thread..

Lessons learned:

- No more dual-gpu setups

- No more ATI cards (thinkin' about it , I had a lot less problems with nvidia cards in general)

- check the compatibility list :S

[QUOTE="BattleSpectre"]

Stupid me, sorry about that i did mean Battlefield 3, and thanks for the kind words. I was expecting another "your cpu is rubbish because it isn't unlocked" reply :P

Tomorrow i'm going out and replacing it with the i7 2600K and overclocking that, which should be my last upgrade for a while. (I know it's not needed, but i'm an idiot for not getting the i5 2500 "K" model from the start.

GTR12

If BF3 is gonna be what it lives up to, no-ones GPU setup now is gonna run it well. I hope it does this, cos then I got an excuse to upgrade :P

Or it could very well be Crysis 2 DX11..

[QUOTE="BattleSpectre"]

Stupid me, sorry about that i did mean Battlefield 3, and thanks for the kind words. I was expecting another "your cpu is rubbish because it isn't unlocked" reply :P

Tomorrow i'm going out and replacing it with the i7 2600K and overclocking that, which should be my last upgrade for a while. (I know it's not needed, but i'm an idiot for not getting the i5 2500 "K" model from the start.

GTR12

If BF3 is gonna be what it lives up to, no-ones GPU setup now is gonna run it well. I hope it does this, cos then I got an excuse to upgrade :P

[QUOTE="ionusX"]

okay gothic i cant fix srry :S its developer is fallen on hard times so dont expect a fix anytime soon but were ex[ecting a aptch by the 19th of april for amd cards perhaps try again then (rev. 11.4)

nextfor avp and dr2 those tow should be working normally now if not then again srry idk as AvP 2010 responds just fine on my 5830

ecoolen

AvP2 works fine too. Just some graphical inconsistencies, but I guess it's the game itself.

The Witcher runs good as well now.

Dead Rising, well, that one too :D. Although it's still annoying about the Xbox Controller not working properly out of the box, but thats a problem for another thread..

Lessons learned:

- No more dual-gpu setups

- No more ATI cards (thinkin' about it , I had a lot less problems with nvidia cards in general)

- check the compatibility list :S

[QUOTE="ecoolen"]

[QUOTE="ionusX"]

okay gothic i cant fix srry :S its developer is fallen on hard times so dont expect a fix anytime soon but were ex[ecting a aptch by the 19th of april for amd cards perhaps try again then (rev. 11.4)

nextfor avp and dr2 those tow should be working normally now if not then again srry idk as AvP 2010 responds just fine on my 5830

Chris_53

AvP2 works fine too. Just some graphical inconsistencies, but I guess it's the game itself.

The Witcher runs good as well now.

Dead Rising, well, that one too :D. Although it's still annoying about the Xbox Controller not working properly out of the box, but thats a problem for another thread..

Lessons learned:

- No more dual-gpu setups

- No more ATI cards (thinkin' about it , I had a lot less problems with nvidia cards in general)

- check the compatibility list :S

[QUOTE="GTR12"]

If BF3 is gonna be what it lives up to, no-ones GPU setup now is gonna run it well. I hope it does this, cos then I got an excuse to upgrade :P

Chris_53

Not quite, BF3 uses frostbite 2.0 whilst BC2 used 1.5, also BC2 supported dx9, which will be removed from their new engine. So dx10 only game, previous gen GPU's are going to struggle, and these new ones 6xxx and 5xx will just be mainstream for dx11.

It'll be like how the 8800GT(S) struggled running the original Crysis in dx10. Also BF3uses EA's ANT textures/models, I'm not sure how hard that is to run, but its gonna be fun.

BTW some of the games that dont run that well is because of the CPU. DOnt get me wrong the 8400 is still by all means good but Bad company 2 for instance is heavilly multi threaded and in order to play it at highest settings you need a decent quad core ( i had a Q6600 at 2,4ghz and i was getting 25-45fps in bad company and since i changed to a phenom ii X4 955 at 3,2 ghz i never drop below 40fps all max settings and 4xAA) Trine i have similar problems so it might be the game. Its still well playable but a 2d platformer shouldnt be running like that on good hardware ( i get dips to low 30's which can be annoying ) Gothic 4 is defo the game. Even with a quad core at 3,4ghz and a gtx460 i still get to mid 20's fps and i have some settings set to even medium The Witcher again requires a very fast CPU and gets choppy in towns and places with alot of A.I. it gets really choppy ( like vizima )adamosmaki

Thanks for the lowdown!

Taking all you just said into account, I guess I can safely summarize that some of the framerate issues come from the games themselves and the way they are coded. (Which is kind of a relief :) )

Which brings me to another musing.. What would, you reckon, be the next big hurdle for a +- 2 year old system like mine? Which future game will eventually force me to buy a new pc?

@GTR12 The answer will probably be BF3 then :D ?

[QUOTE="adamosmaki"]BTW some of the games that dont run that well is because of the CPU. DOnt get me wrong the 8400 is still by all means good but Bad company 2 for instance is heavilly multi threaded and in order to play it at highest settings you need a decent quad core ( i had a Q6600 at 2,4ghz and i was getting 25-45fps in bad company and since i changed to a phenom ii X4 955 at 3,2 ghz i never drop below 40fps all max settings and 4xAA) Trine i have similar problems so it might be the game. Its still well playable but a 2d platformer shouldnt be running like that on good hardware ( i get dips to low 30's which can be annoying ) Gothic 4 is defo the game. Even with a quad core at 3,4ghz and a gtx460 i still get to mid 20's fps and i have some settings set to even medium The Witcher again requires a very fast CPU and gets choppy in towns and places with alot of A.I. it gets really choppy ( like vizima )ecoolen

Thanks for the lowdown!

Taking all you just said into account, I guess I can safely summarize that some of the framerate issues come from the games themselves and the way they are coded. (Which is kind of a relief :) )

Which brings me to another musing.. What would, you reckon, be the next big hurdle for a +- 2 year old system like mine? Which future game will eventually force me to buy a new pc?

@GTR12 The answer will probably be BF3 then :D ?

@GTR12 The answer will probably be BF3 then :D ?

ecoolen

Probably, I can't say for sure as there are no requirements, but with dx9 being left behind, I would guess all our dx11 GPU's now will be running it in dx10, forget dx11 until 2 more generations.