Definitive Proof of Poor Optimization, Requesting a Fix/Work-Around

http://i1093.photobucket.com/albums/...ationFFXIV.png

As you can see in the image, I am in Uldah at 1440P Ultra, and unless I set everything to Normal or Less, I don't get 60 FPS (see the yellow 45 in the corner), this problem carries over to other large battle engagements and populated fates.


I7 3770K
GTX 780
256GB SSD
16GB DDR3
+ overclocking

and as you can see I have NO bottleneck, nothing is over 80%, and a GTX 780 should never get to 75% in the first place.


edit: ctrl + middle mouse wheel forward to zoom in.

Welcome to Direct3D9.

What you are seeing is a result of DirectX overhead, long known to exist in Direct3D9, reduced to a degree in D3D11 and being heavily focused on in Direct3D 12.

The cause is dynamically updating effects such as reflections and shadows, coupled with the spamming of thousands of new draw calls everytime a new effect occurs (or the scene changes in some way) saturating the cpu core that the main game engine is running on.

Unfortunately, there is no safe way (and few that actually improves fps) to multithread a direct3d9 engine where effects are used to such an extent, you would end up introducing thread locking which would drop fps to single digits or hang the process.

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Originally Posted by Squa11_Leonhart

Welcome to Direct3D9.

What you are seeing is a result of DirectX overhead, long known to exist in Direct3D9, reduced to a degree in D3D11 and being heavily focused on in Direct3D 12.

The cause is dynamically updating effects such as reflections and shadows, coupled with the spamming of thousands of new draw calls everytime a new effect occurs (or the scene changes in some way) saturating the cpu core that the main game engine is running on.

Unfortunately, there is no safe way (and few that actually improves fps) to multithread a direct3d9 engine where effects are used to such an extent, you would end up introducing thread locking which would drop fps to single digits or hang the process.

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Thanks for that info.

You would think that after a year of promising a native x64 DX11 client they would deliver something...

Does the PS4 run on this mess or did they get a newer client?

The dx11 client was shifted from same time as the ps4 launch till sometime after the chinese client.

SE stated they plan to release the DX11 client in 2014, but that is as accurate a release date as they provided. The cpu/gpu usage percentages are basically the indication of the amount of overhead involved in D3D9 rendering. How amusing is it that 25-50% of the cpu/gpu time is spent waiting for data to be passed around the rendering pipeline. You may even notice a single core up around 90% with the others at 60%. That would be the D3D9 thread synchronization process, so multiple threads don't attempt to lock the same asset and perform the same work.

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Originally Posted by InVizO

Thanks for that info.

You would think that after a year of promising a native x64 DX11 client they would deliver something...

Does the PS4 run on this mess or did they get a newer client?

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The PS4 uses proprietary combination of two languages, both sitting on a linux OS. One api is low-level for direct hardware access, the other is high-level for broader software graphical functions. It also has it's own shader language. There are very few components in common with D3D9.

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Originally Posted by Syx

SE stated they plan to release the DX11 client in 2014, but that is as accurate a release date as they provided. The cpu/gpu usage percentages are basically the indication of the amount of overhead involved in D3D9 rendering. How amusing is it that 25-50% of the cpu/gpu time is spent waiting for data to be passed around the rendering pipeline. You may even notice a single core up around 90% with the others at 60%. That would be the D3D9 thread synchronization process, so multiple threads don't attempt to lock the same asset and perform the same work.

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^ This

I was just too tired to explain it to such a degree.

And these are 4 images demonstrating what threads are eating the cpu.

http://s25.postimg.org/t4gitq5jj/east_shroud1.jpg

http://s25.postimg.org/gojszzc7j/east_shroud2.jpg

http://s25.postimg.org/7quhovudr/mor_dhona1.jpg

http://s25.postimg.org/bohreah73/mor_dhona2.jpg

As you can see, when thread 113872 goes UP, thread 148420 goes down.

However, 154160 also increases 2% which might be where the reduction in 148420 comes from, so its hard to say which thread is actually the one causing performance to dip.

I lean towards 113872 as nvd3dum.dll!QueryOglResource is a synchronisation handle.

Both the PC and PS4 Versions have optimisation Issues. And I think this is largely a result of object occlusion.

Take for Example: when out in the field You see on the Map a Large FATE that is in progress, but ingame you are too far away to see it. if You stand on the spot and pan the camera around it will be smooth, but when panning past the distant FATE, You will notice the camera judders.

That tells me that the FATE is being processed even though its not actually in View. It would be great if SE would use Occlusion for distant events, as this would improve performance.

Similarly, when taking part in a large FATE, everything outside the FATE, that is at a distance should be Occluded. This again would improve performance.

Occlusion is used. however character locations still seem to get processed even if they aren't rendered.

Default 'Max details' setting disables occlusion culling though.

Offscreen processing of Player location and Fates is a massive and unnecessary resource burden, even more so on the Console Versions.

i'm sure addressing this Issue would see a huge performance gain on every Platform. I just hope SE see the Merit in looking into this.

It's unlikely your ever going to see 100% utilization in any real world scenarios. It's like how your car get's worse gas mileage in the city than on the highway. In the city you do a lot of starting and stopping, where as on the highway you drive at constant speed (more or less). And depending where you are and what you are doing in the game, you see better or worse frame rates.

If your getting 80% that's pretty good. Perhaps you should stop watching your frame rate and just play the game. It doesn't matter what the framerate is. It matters if it's playable.

SE can and will make constant improvements to A Realm Reborn. And along the way I foresee them improving performance as well.

And why not, Better Optimisation, means Better Immersion. Which means a better experience for the Players.

in any case, directX is terrible anyway, developers ignore OpenGL, and that's part of the reason that windows versions of most games require higher end hardware to run the game, while the PS3 and PS4 are able to run the game with low end hardware

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Originally Posted by Laraul

It's unlikely your ever going to see 100% utilization in any real world scenarios. It's like how your car get's worse gas mileage in the city than on the highway. In the city you do a lot of starting and stopping, where as on the highway you drive at constant speed (more or less). And depending where you are and what you are doing in the game, you see better or worse frame rates.

If your getting 80% that's pretty good. Perhaps you should stop watching your frame rate and just play the game. It doesn't matter what the framerate is. It matters if it's playable.

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If you jerk the camera around in this game it's not smooth and I don't receive a solid 60FPS; the motion of moving the camera causes my FPS to go from 24-60 FPS within a few second period. The occlusion and LOD help out a little, but 80% usage on a GTX780 is next to obscene, that means you can't play this game on High with a 770GTX or anything less than a $400 video card. Do you honestly think that is the best they can do? Farcry3 looked just as much if not prettier and delivered amazing 50% usage.

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Originally Posted by Syx

The PS4 uses proprietary combination of two languages, both sitting on a linux OS. One api is low-level for direct hardware access, the other is high-level for broader software graphical functions. It also has it's own shader language. There are very few components in common with D3D9.

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It's actually a freebsd derivative, not a linux os. AFAIK.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

It's actually a freebsd derivative, not a linux os. AFAIK.

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You're probably right. I know it's a fork of some *nix derived OS.

you guys should try TERA. and see what poor optimization is like T_T

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Originally Posted by InVizO

If you jerk the camera around in this game it's not smooth and I don't receive a solid 60FPS; the motion of moving the camera causes my FPS to go from 24-60 FPS within a few second period. The occlusion and LOD help out a little, but 80% usage on a GTX780 is next to obscene, that means you can't play this game on High with a 770GTX or anything less than a $400 video card. Do you honestly think that is the best they can do? Farcry3 looked just as much if not prettier and delivered amazing 50% usage.

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I don't understand how this game's performance seems to exist in some sort of nebulous middle ground, but I find it perfectly playable on my work PC (i5 w/ 550Ti) with some effects turned off/ low, and perfectly playable at home on an i7 2600k w/ 560Ti and everything turned on/ high (though the frame rate sticks to around 30). Based on that I'd expect a 760 or higher to play the game flawlessly, but I don't think I've heard of anyone cranking the resolution up very high and getting a good frame rate regardless of the hardware they're using.

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Originally Posted by Nutz

I don't understand how this game's performance seems to exist in some sort of nebulous middle ground, but I find it perfectly playable on my work PC (i5 w/ 550Ti) with some effects turned off/ low, and perfectly playable at home on an i7 2600k w/ 560Ti and everything turned on/ high (though the frame rate sticks to around 30). Based on that I'd expect a 760 or higher to play the game flawlessly, but I don't think I've heard of anyone cranking the resolution up very high and getting a good frame rate regardless of the hardware they're using.

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I haven't confirmed my framerates, but I'm currently on a GTX 780Ti and 2560x1440@60Hz monitor, i7-4790 and 16GB RAM @ 2400MHz... and don't notice any framerate dips.
Again, can't say that there are none, just that I don't notice them.

the framerate dips are a legit issue, but they mostly only introduce issues when occlusion culling is enabled and you flick the camera about.