Help Diagnosing Graphics Performance

[Mbando]

My girlfriend's new PC isn't a world-beater by any means, but it's decent enough that it shouldn't be painfully slow, sticky/jerking in PFO. It plays other 3D games fine, but for PFO it is just terribad.

What's frustrating is that I have updated the drivers and benchmarked the system using 3dMark, and it is performing at similar levels to other systems with the same GPU & CPU. Specs:

-Microsoft Windows 8.1 (6.3) 64-bit (Build 9600)
-Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1GB (driver ver. 347.09 WHQL, released 12/23/2014)
-8GB DDR3 RAM
-Direct X11

I thought at first that the problem might be the system using the CPU on-board graphics, but I have verified that PFO is using the GT 720, and that the core and memory clocks on the card are doubling during game play. The only things I can think of are, 1) The crappy Dell MB only has a x8 PCI-E slot, and 2) The card only has 1GB of memory.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

[Hobson Fiffledown]

Got me matched or beat except for the ram.

[Scarlette]

All the geforce gt 720 I find are 64bit interfaces. This would be the problem if yours is the same. You really want 256+ interface for good perfor!amce. 1gig of GDDR is good, 2 better, 4 not quite needed yet but doesn't hurt. Remember transfer rate is a biggy when looking for performance.

[Dazyk]

I had a very similar setup, with 8gb of ram, and the same problems. Valkenr suggested I boost it to 16gb of ram, and it's been running great since then (30-60 fps on Beautiful).

2 sticks of 8gb ram cost me $250 ish (CDN).

[Mbando]

Dazyk wrote:

I had a very similar setup, with 8gb of ram, and the same problems. Valkenr suggested I boost it to 16gb of ram, and it's been running great since then (30-60 fps on Beautiful).

2 sticks of 8gb ram cost me $250 ish (CDN).

DDR3 RAM is pretty cheap right now---getting two more 4GB sticks would be like $65-75 right now. I just don't see how 16 GB of RAM would impact gaming performance vs 8GB.

[Dazyk]

I didn't either, to be honest. But it has :)

The only difference between my system and the one you posted is:

Win 7
AMD 9370 4.4ghz
GeForce GTX 770 (which is 2gb)

That's it.

[Hobson Fiffledown]

I upgraded from 8gb to 16gb two days ago and I noticed a nice difference when running one client. Also, sometime in the last couple of updates prior to EE, running two clients pushed above my 8gb of resources and one would crash. Two is fine now.

[Neadenil Edam]

Mbando wrote:

The only things I can think of are, 1) The crappy Dell MB only has a x8 PCI-E slot, and 2) The card only has 1GB of memory.

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

Graphics memory is mainly needed for textures. What graphics settings have you tried? Have you also tried windowed versus fullscreen ?

[Ryan Dancey]

I am really surprised to hear that increasing system RAM over 8GB has any noticeable effect. I'll make sure the developers know that.

[Tyncale]

Well, it certainly helps when you have 3 clients running. :)

I have 16GB of Ram, and with one client it sits at about 33%, with 2 clients at about 48% and with 3 clients at 62%.

But yeah, 33% of 16GB is 5.28 GB of Ram used and that includes all the other stuff that is running too (windows).

[Thod]

Yes - I see a marked performance drop when I open a third client using 8 GB (handing over stuff between characters). But I doubt there is much of a benefit running a single account.

[Ryan Dancey]

Oh well yeah, multiple clients.