Hister Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 When I was doing performance testing in this thread I came to a surprising conclusion. I get a better game performance (more frames per second aka FPS) if I would set antialiasing setting to 16xCSAA in Nvidia control panel then if I would have it at anything lower (aka 2x, 4x, 8x). I also realized I get more FPS if I set the ingame texture quality setting to better or best then to have it set to anything lower. This is all against the common sense. Phil Culliton (one of the devs) had this to say about the matter: Good test. Right now you're likely looking at differences in driver optimization. We don't directly affect or support any of this (nor do we need to), it's down to how your drivers interact with OpenGL. It looks like higher-level CSAA is probably the most heavily optimized path for your card. Performance of control panel settings will change, irrespective of Combat Mission, with new driver releases. So when using different control panel settings you're really measuring card and driver performance more than Combat Mission performance (case in point, Hister's 16xCSAA performance, which is entirely down to his drivers and has nothing to do with anything CM is doing). Panel settings have nothing to do with Combat Mission - you're just forcing your card to use those settings while rendering Combat Mission. Very different things, as obviously we can't change any of that, AND it's not necessarily long-term relevant to your (or others', if they see your results and buy your card) card's performance with CM. Again FYI. I have Geforce 550Ti MSI GPU with the (at the moment of this writing) latest 314.07 WHQL Drivers. I'm interested to learn if any other owners of Nvidia GPU would get the same surprising result. If you do I'm glad I helped you get a better performance out of your machine in this game. Please do report here if you checked it out. In order to see actual FPS in game install free program called FRAPS (google search for it - it comes with no spam). To have consistent results you can load any of your WEGO save game replay. Lock-view one of your chosen units (preferably a moving vehicle) hitting the Tab, press play button and at the same time also press F11 to have the FRAPS start monitoring your FPS. When the turn ends press F11 again - you can also set up FRAPS that it only monitors your frame rates for 1 minute which is more preferable, so that you don't have to press F11 again when the wego turn ends. Now go to the folder where you have FRAPS installed and find the Benchmarks folder - in it you get a report looking like this: 2013-03-12 14:31:52 - CM Normandy Frames: 2143 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 35.717 - Min: 23 - Max: 44 If you don't have any wego replay savegame you can head over to pre-prepared performance testing and get it here. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 What about the in game AA setting? On or off? So you get the most FPS with both texture and models to better? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 What about the in game AA setting? On or off? So you get the most FPS with both texture and models to better? In-game antialiasing must be set to on - if it is set to off I get no antialiasing in the game no matter if I set nvidia control panel to override any in-game antaliasing setting. Texture quality profits from better and best settings where there are notably much more FPS's then if you set it to for example improved. This is not so with 3D model quality setting where FPS drop accordingly the higher you set it (as one would normally expect). In my case I resorted to balanced 3D model quality in order to get a really smooth gameplay with best texture quality and 16xCSAA in the Nvidia control panel. If I set 3D model quality to improved and higher I get lower FPS's so my observation is by no means related to it - just 16x in nvidia control panel and best texture quality as in-game setting gives me a considerable FPS boost. Having those two at a lower settings actualy decreasy my FPS which is counter common sense but surprisingly works that way with current nvidia drivers (at least for me). Hope it's clear now? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
para Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 I will change my settings later and see what happens thanks Hister. I have a GeForce 9800 GTwith the latest drivers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Would be interesting to see someone else get similar results - I feel rather lonely at the moment, he he he. Maybe it's just my hardware combo, dunno. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LeeW Posted March 12, 2013 Share Posted March 12, 2013 Avg: 38.029 - Min: 29 - Max: 44 Textures set to balanced. Avg: 39.522 - Min: 32 - Max: 48 Textures set to best. nvidia GTS 450 314.14 Drivers Get the same thing happening as well 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 12, 2013 Author Share Posted March 12, 2013 Avg: 38.029 - Min: 29 - Max: 44 Textures set to balanced. Avg: 39.522 - Min: 32 - Max: 48 Textures set to best. nvidia GTS 450 314.14 Drivers Get the same thing happening as well Yeeeey, I'm not alone any more! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rake Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 I've run the test again using the scenario replay submitted by Steiner in the tech support thread that Hister linked above. I played (slightly) with a few of the other card settings and tested the gamut of AA settings, from my card's max (32x CSAA) down to App-Controlled. Again, I ran these tests with all mods still in the game. I found the other night that mods only made for a small framerate hit on my system. What I found today is that there is almost no difference with the settings for my GTX 670 (v314.07, latest driver that I'm aware of). Frames improved slightly by dropping from 32x to 16xQ CSAA. From there down to 2X, differences were within +/- one frame: 32x CSAA: 17 / 34 / 24.1 16xQ CSAA: 19 / 37 / 26.9 16x CSAA: 19 / 37 / 26.4 8x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 8x CSAA: 19 / 36 / 26.9 4x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 2x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 The biggest hit came when I used the App-Controlled setting, with rates falling to 18 / 28 / 23.0. I've only run the game a time or two with model and texture settings lower than Best, so I don't know what changing these settings would do to framerates. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plinko Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 I've run the test again using the scenario replay submitted by Steiner in the tech support thread that Hister linked above. I played (slightly) with a few of the other card settings and tested the gamut of AA settings, from my card's max (32x CSAA) down to App-Controlled. Again, I ran these tests with all mods still in the game. I found the other night that mods only made for a small framerate hit on my system. What I found today is that there is almost no difference with the settings for my GTX 670 (v314.07, latest driver that I'm aware of). Frames improved slightly by dropping from 32x to 16xQ CSAA. From there down to 2X, differences were within +/- one frame: 32x CSAA: 17 / 34 / 24.1 16xQ CSAA: 19 / 37 / 26.9 16x CSAA: 19 / 37 / 26.4 8x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 8x CSAA: 19 / 36 / 26.9 4x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 2x: 19 / 37 / 26.9 The biggest hit came when I used the App-Controlled setting, with rates falling to 18 / 28 / 23.0. I've only run the game a time or two with model and texture settings lower than Best, so I don't know what changing these settings would do to framerates. Wow Rake. That's what you get with a gtx 670? I was looking to move from my 275 to at least a 660, thinking the additional vram would give a good boost for cm. Guess I'll hold off on that... What is your cpu? Reed 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rake Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 Wow Rake. That's what you get with a gtx 670? I was looking to move from my 275 to at least a 660, thinking the additional vram would give a good boost for cm. Guess I'll hold off on that... What is your cpu? Reed HARDWARE OS: Win7 CPU: i7-2600K CPU @ 3.4GHz Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth P67 RAM: 8GB DDR3 Graphics card (overclocked?): GeForce GTX 670 - No Graphics memory: 2GB Hard Disk: Western Digital Caviar (7200 rpm) Plinko: I think it has more to do with CMBN's optimization. I haven't seen many people list framerates much higher when running at Best settings. Not saying that some don't, I just haven't seen much higher on the boards without dropping models or textures... and Hister's posts seem to indicate that maybe modeling is the key. I might explore a bit with dropping the model settings and see what that will do. Still, I experience very little noticeable lag, so I'm pretty happy with the way the game runs. Looking at your BM readings, you're doing fairly well with what you have. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warloch Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 Game should run just fine with any modern hardware. When you put a single mod file CMBN just stops to be playable. I just tested with my I5, 16gb mem and 680 GTX 4gb with few mods and framerate with fraps was about 10-17? Is it bad optimization or bad coding? (or should modding feature be left out from future versions?). I hope that my statement is not too harsh for you guys at BF CM is still my fav game eveeeR! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 13, 2013 Share Posted March 13, 2013 It has very little to do with optimization, and quite a bit to do with CPU and GPU load. CM does more stuff than most games per frame. Way more than most. If it were about optimization it would indicate that there's something concrete we can do to improve it in the code - and there really isn't. A much better move than us spending a few months to squeeze another 2-3% out of the engine (and that's optimistic) is the reduce your model quality to, say, "Improved", which adds frames and smooths play quality, and looks great to boot. Turn it up to "Best" for closeup screenshots or smaller scens. If you're playing a nasty scenario turn it down a bit to give your CPU and GPU some breathing room - that's why the settings are there. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 When you put a single mod file CMBN just stops to be playable. I just tested with my I5, 16gb mem and 680 GTX 4gb with few mods and framerate with fraps was about 10-17?That's very strange Warloch - I think you are the first to report that mods lower your FPS so considerably - I only get 1 to 2 frames less when using more then 4Gb's of z folder. Only scenarios load a bit longer. Edit 1: And now for some hard data to prove my point regarding inconsistency in antialiasing levels with my hardware/drivers: AA 4x (default in-game setting) vs AA 16x (set in Nvidia control panel) --> AA 16x wins with higher FPS's. Tests were done using the wego savegame from the CM performance thread. My HARDWARE OS: Windows 7 64bit CPU: AMD FX-6300 BOX 3,5 GHz - 14MB Cache - 95W Mainboard: Asus AM3+ M5A97 (970 ATX) RAM: DDR3 1600 8GB CL8 Corsair 2x4GB Vengeance Graphics card: Geforce 550 Ti (MSI) Graphics memory: 1Gb Hard Disc (SSD): Samsung 840 Pro 128GB All at vanilla settings, nothing over-clocked. CMBN in-game settings Display Size: Desktop (1280x1024) Vertical Synchronisation: Off 3D Model Quality: Balanced 3D Texture Quality: Best Antialias/Multisample: On High Priority Process: On Nvidia Control Panel Settings Anisotropic filtering: Application controlled Antialiasing - FXAA: Off Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: Application controlled Power Management: Maximum performance Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: Off Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off 2013-03-13 13:37:31 - CM Normandy Frames: 2282 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 38.033 - Min: 26 - Max: 48 2013-03-13 13:39:00 - CM Normandy Frames: 2229 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 37.150 - Min: 25 - Max: 46 2013-03-13 13:40:07 - CM Normandy Frames: 2218 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 36.967 - Min: 26 - Max: 47 Note: I ran 3 tests since due to the OS background running programs results can not be the same each time the test is run - no major deviations occur. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nvidia Control Panel Settings Anisotropic filtering: Application controlled Antialiasing - FXAA: Off Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On Antialiasing - Mode: Application controlled Antialiasing - Setting: Application controlled Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: Application controlled Power Management: Maximum performance Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: Off Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off 2013-03-13 14:30:33 - CM Normandy Frames: 2119 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 35.317 - Min: 22 - Max: 45 2013-03-13 14:32:31 - CM Normandy Frames: 1806 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 30.100 - Min: 20 - Max: 42 2013-03-13 14:33:44 - CM Normandy Frames: 1798 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 29.967 - Min: 20 - Max: 42 Note: As you can see AA16x gives me better FPS rate. Application controlled is actual AA 4x in-game - that was confirmed by Phil Culliton. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 13, 2013 Author Share Posted March 13, 2013 I copy below this recent observation of mine that I posted in the Performance thread: CMBN in-game settings Display Size: Desktop (1280x1024) Vertical Synchronisation: Off 3D Model Quality: Balanced 3D Texture Quality: Best Antialias/Multisample: On High Priority Process: On Nvidia Control Panel Settings Anisotropic filtering: 16 Antialiasing - FXAA: Off Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: Application controlled Power Management: Maximum performance Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: Off Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off 2013-03-13 15:01:19 - CM Normandy Frames: 2295 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 38.250 - Min: 26 - Max: 48 2013-03-13 15:09:19 - CM Normandy Frames: 2319 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 38.650 - Min: 27 - Max: 47 2013-03-13 15:10:30 - CM Normandy Frames: 2316 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 38.600 - Min: 27 - Max: 47 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nvidia Control Panel Settings Anisotropic filtering: 16 Antialiasing - FXAA: Off Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA Antialiasing - Transparency: 8x (Supersample) Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: Application controlled Power Management: Maximum performance Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On Threaded Optimization: Auto Triple Buffering: Off Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off 2013-03-13 15:17:44 - CM Normandy Frames: 2546 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 42.433 - Min: 31 - Max: 56 2013-03-13 15:19:19 - CM Normandy Frames: 2402 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 40.033 - Min: 27 - Max: 49 2013-03-13 15:20:25 - CM Normandy Frames: 2405 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 40.083 - Min: 28 - Max: 49 Note: Surprise, surprise - I've discovered another inconsistency! I get 2 more average frames when setting AA transparency to 8x (Supersample) which is otherwise the most demanding level for this setting. Multisample was supposed to give more FPS's with a bit worse visual quality over any Supersample option (from 2x to 8x) but it's not so in my case. I get crystal clear visuals and no ground textures shimmering with this one - yeeeeey! Best visuals so far!!! So as you can see I get 2 more FPS's when I set AA transparency to 8x (Supersample) together with brilliantly clear visuals that I haven't been able to experience before in this game! 3 "anomalies" discovered so far: Nvidia control panel set to AA 16x, in-game 3D textures set to Best and AA transparency set to 8x (Supersample) give me the highest possible FPS while they also bring incredible visuals. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warloch Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 It has very little to do with optimization, and quite a bit to do with CPU and GPU load. CM does more stuff than most games per frame. Way more than most. If it were about optimization it would indicate that there's something concrete we can do to improve it in the code - and there really isn't. A much better move than us spending a few months to squeeze another 2-3% out of the engine (and that's optimistic) is the reduce your model quality to, say, "Improved", which adds frames and smooths play quality, and looks great to boot. Turn it up to "Best" for closeup screenshots or smaller scens. If you're playing a nasty scenario turn it down a bit to give your CPU and GPU some breathing room - that's why the settings are there. Ok. Sorry I found the reason. It is the models. I have to use improved model quality in CMBN and then it runs 20-30 frames per sec. Fortress italy runs just fine with best model quality. I tried everythin else. Changing drivers didn't change frame rate at all. Perhaps leaking models or too complex models? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 15, 2013 Author Share Posted March 15, 2013 Perhaps leaking models or too complex models? I doubt it. It's not about quality of 3D models (in my case there are only two levels of vehicle 3D quality differences) but has more to do with how far in the the distance 3D objects (like hay stacks) and ground textures are shown. Lower the setting sooner those objects disappear from the view and vicus versa. The biggest FPS hit happens when you go from improved to better. You can play around with the 3D model quality in actual game not having to exit to main menu at all. You have two designated keyboard keys for that role: I have "+" and "-" set for the task (not sure if they are the default ones, check it out) so that I can lower or improve that setting on my whim when in the scenario. Handy tool actually. There is a little bug though with it. When you increase 2D model quality from fastest onwards game does everything as expected but if you downgrade the quality (in my case if I press "-" button) the quality does not scale back and it remains at the previous level. I have to go all the way down to fastest before it return to proper quality level. Maybe something for Phil to look up. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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