Terrible performance in Final Fantasy XIV with GTX 970

[RobbieH]

I've been posting this to GeForce forums and as usual nVIDIA never cares.

Previous GPU was a 570, on S hunts i'd get 35FPS at worse, very rare i must say, now with the GTX970 i get 25FPS at worse and averages 30FPS.

In Limsa during peak hours it goes to 40FPS and averages 45FPS, if i turn the camera around it's an FPS jump fest, then stabilizes, i turn the camera again same thing, this even happens during exploration.

I'd like to mention i can't play on max settings either, i use the exact same settings i did on the 570.


The benchmarks runs fine, scores:

570: 6.5k
970: 15.4k

Actual in-game FPS:

570 Limsa: 45-50FPS
970 Limsa: 40-45FPS

570 S Hunts: 35-40
970 S Hunts: 25-30

It's unplayable during S-Hunts.

Raising the overclock from 4.2Ghz to 4.6Ghz didn't help either.



Average GPU usage on the 970 is 40%, same for CPU, CPU usage NEVER goes above 75%, and rarely even gets to 70%, meanwhile the GPU can go to 80%, chaning the settings on nV CP to Max Performance - Power Management, doesn't do anything besides raising GPU usage.



Every other game runs properly, except this one which was greatly affected.

Specs: 4670k @4.4Ghz
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 G1
GPU BIOS: 84.04.1F.00.62, updated to 84.04.1F.00.B4, no difference.
MoBo: ASUS Z87-Pro
MoBo BIOS: 2103
MoBo PCIe Speed (Confirmed with GPU-Z): 16x

I've tried every driver from 344.11 to the 344.60 which was released today, the only difference was the fog issue that was fixed with 344.48

I always uninstall a driver, reboot, install another driver, reboot, i've even used Display Driver Uninstaller between, and doesn't help.

Basically i got a card 3 generations ahead of what i had that makes this game unplayable and has worse performance.

[Cadwgan]

If you haven't already, would recommend reporting this to nvidia also, most of the time it's a combination of the card and drivers with the game, especially if it's a new card.

[RobbieH]

If you haven't already, would recommend reporting this to nvidia also, most of the time it's a combination of the card and drivers with the game, especially if it's a new card.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I did, also on Guru3D which is a forum they read and rarely reply, a lot of people having issues especially with the 970, 980 users don't seem to be affected, for some 970 owners they even get issues while playing games i don't have issues, such as Battlefield 4 and Far Cry 3.

There's been people on reddit also saying they got better performance with their old cards, cards mentioned were the 7850 and 660, both better than what i had, so you can imagine how the difference must be for me.

It's been 1 month and a half since the cards came out, more or less, they only released drivers for upcoming games, they seem to be completely ignoring this, today the 344.60 came out, to add profiels for Call of Duty and fix a crash on a specific level, which was something i've read on a previous driver thread.

What frustrates me, i how they seem to completely ignore the issue and don't even bother to acknowledge/reply, and then release drivers just to add basic support for newly released games.

[RobbieH]

Sorry to bump this, however here's the settings i play at (also more tweaked than when i played with the 570) so people can have an idea how bad it is, it even includes the FPS in the Window:

http://imgur.com/a/mVAxH#0

[Raist]

You've still got some "eye candy" on that may be bogging you down a bit. For starters, try disabling/lowering the shadow options. That is one aspect I found posing a challenge on four different cards.

After that, you could look at some other options that may pick up a frame or so here and there like glare, HDR rendering, and screen edge darkening. Anisotropic and Radial blur shouldn't be having much impact either, but you never know. Have to remember you are dealing with DX9 calls that are all being emulated, on top of a pretty lackluster game engine as well. All that extra fluff is posing a challenge because of their implementation at the source, that gets further compounded by them using outdated API calls in Windows. Wish they could hurry up with the DX11 upgrades....

An afterthought... might want to disable the inactive frame rate limit too, just in case. Who knows--there could be some stupid side effect in the overlay. It's been known to happen in the past (more so with windows modes, but hey... this is an SE product after all).

grr... another thought hit me as I was logging into the game again. Make sure where you have options that crossover into your graphics card's control panel, that they are set to "Application Controlled". Sometimes you wind up causing issues when you set them otherwise.

[Mango]

I'm glad i spent extra gils on ASUS GTX 980 STRIX, i dun have such issue except the square fogs.
The card is cool and quiet. I game for long hours, i so dont run max settings except dungeons and raids.
i'll be trying the new driver today.

this is a bump. Hope it will be fix

[Mango]

oh oh and
Hands Up for DirectX 11!

[RobbieH]

You've still got some "eye candy" on that may be bogging you down a bit. For starters, try disabling/lowering the shadow options. That is one aspect I found posing a challenge on four different cards.

After that, you could look at some other options that may pick up a frame or so here and there like glare, HDR rendering, and screen edge darkening. Anisotropic and Radial blur shouldn't be having much impact either, but you never know. Have to remember you are dealing with DX9 calls that are all being emulated, on top of a pretty lackluster game engine as well. All that extra fluff is posing a challenge because of their implementation at the source, that gets further compounded by them using outdated API calls in Windows. Wish they could hurry up with the DX11 upgrades....

An afterthought... might want to disable the inactive frame rate limit too, just in case. Who knows--there could be some stupid side effect in the overlay. It's been known to happen in the past (more so with windows modes, but hey... this is an SE product after all).

grr... another thought hit me as I was logging into the game again. Make sure where you have options that crossover into your graphics card's control panel, that they are set to "Application Controlled". Sometimes you wind up causing issues when you set them otherwise.

I've messed with all the stuff don't worry, nothing helps.

I've tweaked the nVIDIA profile for the game, doesn't help. I've tried to disable graphics settings even further, helps a lot, like disabling shadows.

But this is where the problem is, this IS a GPU issue, i don't know if BIOS or drivers related, but i'm sure it's driver related.

But since i sold the 570 and the 970 performs worse (what a joke) i'm probably gonna send it back and get a refund, since HDMi doesn't work either, and i'm completely frustrated because i can't play normally due to all this frustration with poor performance for the past 1 month and a half.

For people with the same card and that they think this is normal, it's not, don't fool yourselves, a 970 should be able to run this game butter smooth even in Peak hours in towns at max settings, it gets as low as 25FPS on max settings, the 570 got 35 at worse.

Drivers up to 344.60 didn't solve the problem.

A lot of people are having issues with the 900 series, just go to the GeForce forums and see how many there are, most report poor GPU usage while playing some games, which is believe is what is causing the issue.

TL;DR: Don't buy a 970 for this game, it's broken, i don't know if the Chip itself or the drivers, if you want to upgrade wait some time or you're going to get frustrated too.

I'm glad i spent extra gils on ASUS GTX 980 STRIX, i dun have such issue except the square fogs.
The card is cool and quiet. I game for long hours, i so dont run max settings except dungeons and raids.
i'll be trying the new driver today.

this is a bump. Hope it will be fix

The Squares in fog were fixed with driver 344.48

These cards are DirectX 12 which isn't available until Windows 10, the cards are also optimized individually.

Also why dont you run on max settings with that card? I don't get it, even the 970 should run it on max without any issues.

I think i'm gonna send it back and get a refund.

The 980 is too expensive, i got the 970 for 386€, the 980 costs 600€+

It's an huge difference.

[Squa11_Leonhart]

The Benchmark is NOT cpu limited, it is scripted and has the same characters and battles each time.

The game IS cpu limited, especially around aetheryte plaza's and hunts (more so when occlusion culling is disabled.)

Your results are within the margin of error considering hunts and zone population can change momentarily.

For people with the same card and that they think this is normal, it's not, don't fool yourselves, a 970 should be able to run this game butter smooth even in Peak hours in towns at max settings, it gets as low as 25FPS on max settings, the 570 got 35 at worse.

after a patch and you run through gridania or limsa, you'll get full fps
as people log back in, more effects need to be preprocessed, batched and processed - and thats before handing it to the driver for rendering....

Optimisation for DirectX Graphics (NVIDIA PDF)

Renderstate change costs
Basically any movement, light change, shadow change, shimmer, texture change or the likes will generate a state change causing the entire process to have to be reprepared from scratch - this increases cpu usage and inhibits gpu usage (it doesn't get enough data).

Batch Batch Batch! (Nvidia PDF)

GPU Gems

[RobbieH]

The Benchmark is NOT cpu limited, it is scripted and has the same characters and battles each time.

The game IS cpu limited, especially around aetheryte plaza's and hunts (more so when occlusion culling is disabled.)

Your results are within the margin of error considering hunts and zone population can change momentarily.

after a patch and you run through gridania or limsa, you'll get full fps
as people log back in, more effects need to be preprocessed, batched and processed - and thats before handing it to the driver for rendering....

Optimisation for DirectX Graphics (NVIDIA PDF)

Renderstate change costs
Basically any movement, light change, shadow change, shimmer, texture change or the likes will generate a state change causing the entire process to have to be reprepared from scratch - this increases cpu usage and inhibits gpu usage (it doesn't get enough data).

Batch Batch Batch! (Nvidia PDF)

I'm not going over the CPU talk with you, if you don't understand what's going on, please refrain from posting as you're only making things worse.

The 900 series have a ton of issues at the moment on various games, were others run fine.

Even people with the 980 have issues, blaming the CPU everytime someone calls out poor performance on an MMO pretty much says people don't have a clue.

There are TDR, TDP, Voltage drops and usage issues with the 900 series. If you think a 4670k at 4.6Ghz can't do it's job as CPU on this game then you have no clue.

The new cards came out, nVIDIA just released game ready drivers so far, no optimization ones, every other game runs as it should, and i'm gonna say it again and maybe, maybe this time you understand, CPU usage NEVER goes above 70%, averaging 40%, same for GPU.

TL;DR on Bottlenecks:

- If lowering the graphics settings has no effect on frame rates, then the bottleneck is your CPU
- If lowering the graphics settings increases the frame rate, then your GPU is reaching its upper limits

Now, as i've also said, disabling shadows helps a lot. Shadows, graphics settings, got it?

So, the 970 it's reaching it's upper limits which is 3 Gens ahead of the 570, and even plays worse at same settings, and you say it's CPU, please stop blaming the CPU everytime someone talks about performance in MMOs or you just look clueless.

Crysis 3, Hitman Absolution, two non-MMO intensive CPU games, both run as they should.

EDIT: Almost forgot, i removed the OC completely by settings BIOS to default settings and tested, because who knows, maybe there was a BIOS settings that could have been causing the issue....... same FPS. That CPU Bottleneck.

But hey, thanks for trying to help, it's just annoying how people always jump on the CPU. =)