CPU Management issues

[cuca]

Hi there,

I sometimes experience a Frame drop ingame unrelated to the surroundings (such as units in the bubble, smoke, particles etc). The frame rate will in these cases be significantly (60%) lower than normal, and stay that way until I end the flight end and restart BMS.

I checked the task manager last time when this happened, and saw that the BMS.exe was only taking about 15% of the CPU, as opposed to a normal value of 25% (1/4 on a 4-core).
My first guess was that something in Windows CPU Management goes wrong in these cases, so other processes will run on the same single core instead of being spread to the other, idling, cores.
Anyway that does not seem to be the case, because when I manually moved all the other CPU intensive processes to different cores than BMS, it stayed the same.

Any ideas?

[Arty]

Do you have unwanted background apps and services closed and stopped?

u could use gamebooster helps to quickly do such things.

[Shadow]

Game Booster…

“Boost your game and PC lifespan while keeping it in top shape”

“Speed up Computer and Improve Gaming Performance”

Read this, it say’s what I would. http://www.howtogeek.com/171734/benchmarked-will-a-game-booster-improve-your-pc-gaming-performance/

AND to be fair……

Look, if your a total computer noob who has lots of junk running in the background it might help

OR if your still running Win98 on a P3 with low resources it could be for you.

I would suggest first learn a bit about your hobby (PC) before you install another useless piece of software on your computer.

[Shadow]

Cuca, you could include some info about your hardware and software environment if you expect any informed responses.

And here is another one……http://www.ghacks.net/2015/05/23/do-game-boosters-improve-pc-gaming-performance/

[cuca]

Hi Shadow - my environment is:

AMD FX4300 CPU (Vishera, 4 core) @ 4200Mhz (instead of original 3800Mhz), uslually loaded at 25% during gameplay
Northbridge running at 2200Mhz instad of stock 2000Mhz
8GB RAM
R9 270 2GB GPU at stock settings, usually loaded between 15-35% during gameplay

Win7 Professional 64bit, pretty much a plain installation
Core parking is turned off.
No Junk software in the background.
Main additional CPU eaters aside from BMS itself are TrackiR software and MFDE, and Avira Antivirus (but kept at standby during gameplay)

BMS settings are basically low, low, low
Ingame:
all off except textured IR/TV and linear filtering

BMS configurator:
all off: no shadows, no HDR lighting, lowRes Textures, no Reflexion, no rain stuff,

GPU/CCC: also low:
AAliassing 2x, MultiSampling, Morph off
Texture Filtering, 2x, SurfaceFormatOpt off
v-Sync/triple buffering on/on

EDIT: Two more additions -
this happened during online gameplay
when it happened the three most CPU intensive processes were BMS 16%, MFDE 6%, and Trackir 3%, the rest being system processes all shown in the process list at more or less 0% each, BMS taking a bit more that 2GB RAM at the time.

[dawgboy]

@cuca:

Hi Shadow - my environment is:

AMD FX4300 CPU (Vishera, 4 core) @ 4200Mhz (instead of original 3800Mhz), uslually loaded at 25% during gameplay
Northbridge running at 2200Mhz instad of stock 2000Mhz
8GB RAM
R9 270 2GB GPU at stock settings, usually loaded between 15-35% during gameplay

Win7 Professional 64bit, pretty much a plain installation
Core parking is turned off.
No Junk software in the background.
Main additional CPU eaters aside from BMS itself are TrackiR software and MFDE, and Avira Antivirus (but kept at standby during gameplay)

BMS settings are basically low, low, low
Ingame:
all off except textured IR/TV and linear filtering

BMS configurator:
all off: no shadows, no HDR lighting, lowRes Textures, no Reflexion, no rain stuff,

GPU/CCC: also low:
AAliassing 2x, MultiSampling, Morph off
Texture Filtering, 2x, SurfaceFormatOpt off
v-Sync/triple buffering on/on

EDIT: Two more additions -
this happened during online gameplay
when it happened the three most CPU intensive processes were BMS 16%, MFDE 6%, and Trackir 3%, the rest being system processes all shown in the process list at more or less 0% each, BMS taking a bit more that 2GB RAM at the time.

Did you disable the swap file? I also put the game on an SSD. My next box will be all SSD.

[cuca]

Err, no, swap is not disabled. If I did that, would it make any difference with only about 3gb RAM used (out of the 8gb i have?)
I’d tend to think that the swap isn’t used (much) anyway in this situation?

My System drive (with the BMS install) is an SSD, plus there is another drive for documents, ACMI, and in-box backups of the oldschool mechanic, spinning, magnetic type

[dawgboy]

@cuca:

Err, no, swap is not disabled. If I did that, would it make any difference with only about 3gb RAM used (out of the 8gb i have?)
I’d tend to think that the swap isn’t used (much) anyway in this situation?

My System drive (with the BMS install) is an SSD, plus there is another drive for documents, ACMI, and in-box backups of the oldschool mechanic, spinning, magnetic type

It can help because it’s another transaction that takes the computing off the mobo.

[Shadow]

Ha Cuca, something is not right. Your specs look reasonable. I have been a long time AMD fan & user, Phenom ii x4 940 @ 3.6 was my last AMD rig & a Pii x3 720 @ 3.4Ghz for a few years before that.

Now on a i5-3750 @ 4.1 with a HD 7950 (R9 280) its a step above you but not extremely so. But runs @ 2560x1440 and MFDE on a 18.5" Asus.

In this TE (500 ground units and a few dozen air. ) on spawn (Taxi) I get 32fps looking north, 34 90deg left, 30 90deg right and 26 over my sholder. that in snap view with not much ICP showing.

CPU and GPU around 45%, Sat view looking around the base pushes the GPU to 60% max.

Try resetting BMS/F4 patch back to defaults, ( I get better performance with some of that left on) but definitely get no improved FPS turning things off.

Edit: Using GPU-Z, Core Temp & Task Manger/Performance.

Don’t use to much AA in graphics set up.
And I know this does not address your original FPS drop but might establish a benchmark to compare too.

[Arty]

Disabling swap file is not a good idea. In many cases caused more problems.

[Blu3wolf]

Biggest issue with disabling it is that you wont get windows error logs in the event of a crash.

If you have enough RAM its not a problem disabling it.

[Kuhprah]

Managing the threads to the cores of you CPU Windows is best at its own… and BMS it self… okay, it uses a lot of threads, but not parallel, they are used seriell… so you get 100 % load on 1 core… and 3 others wait until 1 has finished and give the work to core 3 … then other 3 are waiting and so on… so if just 1 of 4 has work, your CPU has a load of 25% … thats okay.

[cuca]

Hi Guys,

thanks for all the tips - I’ve tried lots of stuff now, and the best I can get out of it is (on shadows reference te):

38 front
39 left
55right (to the sea)
45/41 shoulders

Which is reasonable, but CAN get low in a campaign with TGP and/or FLIR/WPN on.

The “CPU management issue” hasn’t reappeared yet, and BMS has chucked away its 25% CPU load ever since…I’ll keep an eye on it for now.

As for the “optimization” programs - i don’t see the use for me, I think my system is a tight ship in respect to whats running on it and what is not…

Thanks for your suggestions, though!