Unofficial : Significant performance loss when panning camera [any angle, any arc]

[Ranebow]

Have made this thread in hopes it gets treated as an official issue that is intended to be addressed or is currently being addressed already.

What this post is NOT about:

-Overall performance
-Bragging
-How you fixed your 'problems' by buying a new cooler or fan
-People's supposed knowledge of DirectX APIs
-Why Windows is bad

What this post IS about:

A performance issue where panning the camera causes significant frame speed loss.


How does it happen?: We don't know, it's what we're here to try and find out and get support from Square.

How does it manifest itself? What are the symptoms?: Anytime you pan the camera, there may be a noticeable drop in performance and frames per second. The panning itself does not need to cover an arc of any particular spread, i.e. 90 degrees, 45 degrees etc. It happens when making even minute adjustments to the camera. However it does not happen when strafing side to side, or in motion forward and backward.

Where does it happen?: For some people, everywhere in the game. For others (most with the issue), it happens in the vicinity of hot spots. 'Hot spots,' are areas in the game where when facing them physically, your performance lowers because of strain on the CPU and/or GPU. A simple example would be standing at an Aetheryte camp with lots of other players around. This is not uncommon and is treated as an 'overall performance' issue (which as mentioned above is not the purpose of this thread). What is not common, is that panning the camera creates even more performance loss of a noticeable degree. One to three frames per second MIGHT be within an error margin, however ten to fifteen frames per second is not normal.

Where does it happen that it shouldn't happen?: Unlike above when in a hot spot area, this can happen anywhere in the game. For most though it appears when you are facing a hot spot location yet are not actually within local proximity. Currently if you face a hot spot as described above, then run the opposite direction until you are unable to see the hot spot with the naked eye, you will still suffer the same performance degradation when panning the camera. Even despite the fact that the hot spot is not being rendered on screen.

Is it possible that the Occlusion Culling feature in the game's System Configuration is not working?: Depends on what defines "not working." If you disable the option, you lose performance. On that merit, it is working. Whether it functions properly to it's full extent is unknown - though this problem did not exist in BETA III or prior.

Could this be a two pronged issue, where a bad Culling system can cause the camera panning problem?: Possibly, though it doesn't explain why some people have the issue everywhere, even when not facing or near hot spots.

Is there any official response or word about it so far from Square?: To my knowledge no.

Does it affect all users?: No, it's not universal though it happens to enough people that it involves hardware from all companies Nvidia, AMD, Intel and all third party vendors in any non specific combination.

Do I have any idea what's causing it?: I am confident that it has a lot to do with player character rendering(PCs, not NPCs) and strain on the CPU. While this is a natural performance degrader, the panning issue is the anomaly that exacerbates the poor organic performance. The anomaly then manifests itself further when you are outside of hot spots yet still suffer performance loss - as if it has a residual effect that cannot be purged.

What has been tried to work around or fix it?:

Disabled SLI/Crossfire [GTX670s, 680s, Radeon 7950s, 7970s and others]
Physically removing one card
Swapping card positions (and repeating above)
New/old drivers
New/old modified drivers
Separate Windows install
Compatibility modes for FFXIV client
Fullscreen/Borderless/Window client
Multitude of manual adjustments in Nvidia Inspector/Radeon Pro (including no Vsync, adaptive Vsync, frame limiter, frame limiter 58/60hz etc)
Disabled overclock
Disabled memory overclock
Affinity combinations
Task priority (high/realtime)
Disabled/reduced motion blur(radial blur) in-game



What can I do about it?: If the knowledge was available, you'd be the first to know! In the meantime you can help with a generous first step by taking the time to /sign or post here that you understand what's been written and you experience this issue(s). Additionally you can fill out the template that was provided by Kittra and we'll see about identifying a common denominator. Please avoid commenting otherwise and refer to the comments above about the thread's purpose.

If anyone is experiencing this issue, I'd ask if you would please post your setup in the format of:

CPU: xxxxx @ x.xxghz (include any overclock information in the speed)
Motherboard: xxxxxxxxx
Memory: xxxxxxxx xxGB @ speed here
Hard Drive: xxxxxxx (This is the HDD the game is installed on, not windows)
Video Card: xxxxxxx xGB (include any overclock information)
Power Supply: xxxxxxx (include the wattage)

Driver Information
nVidia or AMD/Radeon driver information should go here along with whether or not you did a clean install or just over wrote the previous drivers.

[Ranebow]

Reserved for updates

[cypherx]

Bump.
/10char

[Althea]

If you unlock the frame rate, go to a place where you can get 70+fps, then pan your camera do you still notice this drop in framerate? Do you notice it while maintaining 60 or more FPS while panning?

[MysteriousStranger]

Windowed Mode or Full Screen... I notice this in window mode... NOT full screen.

[Ranebow]

If you unlock the frame rate, go to a place where you can get 70+fps, then pan your camera do you still notice this drop in framerate? Do you notice it while maintaining 60 or more FPS while panning?

Yes; it can happen from any arbitrary point/fps.

Windowed Mode or Full Screen... I notice this in window mode... NOT full screen.

All modes. I have added this to the list of things tried; there was a post from another user a week ago where they had stopped using full screen because they got what they called 'stutter.' They switched to borderless window and said the stutter wasn't as noticeable but they got overall worse performance and had to alt-tab often to fix it.
Later we came to find out that the sutter they mentioned was actually the panning camera problem. Borderless/window mode did not fix it, it just masked it because the overall performance was lower and thus left a smoother impression with less hiccups.

[Syx]

AHAHAHAHA. WOW. An entire thread dedicated to chasing ghosts. I'm not even going to try to explain how dense you are for thinking your issue is unrelated to every other framerate issue players are experiencing. Enjoy the futility.

[C-croft]

You realize, you MUST take ALL things into account. One of the joys of PC games. This includes drivers, hardware, fans, direct X knowledge everything right? What bother's me is you told me that having a multi-monitor setup paired with borderless windows has no impact on GPU performance. This would have been better served as a consolidation point for all FPS issues, instead of your own view of the problem instead of as a whole.

[Ranebow]

AHAHAHAHA. WOW. An entire thread dedicated to chasing ghosts. I'm not even going to try to explain how dense you are for thinking your issue is unrelated to every other framerate issue players are experiencing. Enjoy the futility.

You realize, you MUST take ALL things into account. One of the joys of PC games. This includes drivers, hardware, fans, direct X knowledge everything right? What bother's me is you told me that having a multi-monitor setup paired with borderless windows has no impact on GPU performance. This would have been better served as a consolidation point for all FPS issues, instead of your own view of the problem instead of as a whole.

There are enough generic performance 'why is my FPS' bad threads. This is targeted at a specific anomaly that while may be 'performance' related, is not a direct result of any specific variable that I've listed, that you've listed or anyone to date has listed. Until that happens, then we can't 'consolidate' it and pass it off as normal.


As to your comment about multi monitors, it is irrelevant to any noticeable degree unless the displays are rendering content. If they are idle then the only thing they have in common is shared video memory - which can be monitored while in a 3d application. Even with four monitors in succession, FFXIV uses less than 1400 GPU RAM.
What was the point of mentioning this other than it bothers you(and why does it bother you?)?

[Raist]

I disabled motion blur and it got a LITTLE better... like one or two FPS, but it was only dipping to ~48 for me to begin with, so not really a noticeable improvement. Depending on the system, it might be more noticeable.

Just mentioned it because I didn't see it on the list of things tried.