Already Fixed Bug Reintroduced - lower performance on high end AMD CPUs

nah77 · October 2016

This bug has been revived with the launch of K-13 holding.

Was fixed in April 28th 2016. Bellow is the link to those release notes.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9938063-star-trek-online:-release-notes:-april-28th-2016

Performance drops to a few FPS randomly and very often, and sometimes results in a crash. As it is right now, it's very annoying.
I have an AMD FX 8350 8 core.

Please re-fix this.
Thanks

khelderuk · October 2016

Check "Video Memory Limit" under Options > Advanced. Mine had defaulted to 128mb (also running AMD) so I put it up to "1024+mb". Since then I've not had any crashes or performance drops, with all settings maxed out.

kenthend · October 2016

khelderuk wrote: »

Check "Video Memory Limit" under Options > Advanced. Mine had defaulted to 128mb (also running AMD) so I put it up to "1024+mb". Since then I've not had any crashes or performance drops, with all settings maxed out.

Just wanted to say thank you for this. I am running AMD as well and about every 4-5 map changes I would CTD. After changing this to the 1024+mb no a single crash

nah77 · October 2016

well im running AMD FX 8350 as CPU and GTX 570 as gpu. My problem seems to be related to CPU rather than GPU. When it stalls my CPU throtels down to 1ghz and sto client shoots to 100% cpu loading and stays like that for ~30 seconds, then it comes back and in about 1 minute the cycle repeats. Video memory limit setting seems to prevent it from crashing to desktop only.

This behavior is almost the same to this bug:
---
General:

Resolved an issue that was causing lower performance on high end AMD CPUs.
This should also have a small improvement for players with Intel CPUs.
---

only that was not so often than the one happening today.

Also previously when this bug was happening for the 1st time, the name of the window and the name on the task bar would disappear.

This one seems to have the name "Star Trek Online" gone even from the launch.

nah77 · November 2016

I have sort of fixed it...

For those that have a motherboard that allows to set a static CPU spin, like Asus M5A97, might be worthwhile setting the cpu spin manually at whatever maximum frequency your CPU is rated at.

Also disable whatever power saving plans you have active.

This has sort of resolved the problem for all those maps without too much details in them.
But so far as:
- CE has improved from 1-2 FPS to ~ 13-15
- Badlands, from 0-1 fps to ~9-10 fps
- ISA from 6-7 to ~20 fps
- New Romulus from 3-4 fps to ~18-20 fps

Note:
My APC UPS reports an increase to power consumption form ~90W to ~170W, after making these changes.
this will be visible on the electricity bill and inside the wallet

So Cryptic... please fix this.

nah77 · November 2016

anything new on this ?

salvation4 · December 2016

Have you tried park control??

nah77 · December 2016

Thanks for the tip.

i've gave it a try.
So :
- parking AC
- Parking DC
- Freq Scaling AC
- Freq Scaling DC

All set on disabled. Also i have set as Active "Bitsum Highest Performance"
It made almost no difference. Actually now, the Gameclient.exe monopolizes all cpu to 100% leaving nothing to the system.
This is what i sent to dev's when he asked in private some details.

This is how it looks will park control:

I haven't been able to even move the mouse. It seemd like gameclient.exe took over every resource leaving nothing for keyboard, mouse etc. Only thing i could do was to pull the plug LOL.

PS:
I've loaned a cheap i3 with a TRIBBLE video card (I could not be bothered to use Lightning 2.0) and play on that. but yeah it sucks i can't play it on my main rig cose of some fixed bug and then reintroduced. Also other games work perfect with the AMD FX series. Only STO does not.

nah77 · December 2016

Here is what i have reported to dev. Maybe someone else that has this problem can chip in. But it seems is just going to die as it is.

laserduck November 3
Hello. Concerning the performance problems you are having with your AMD FX 8350, can you tell me whether you are running on Dx9 or Dx11?

nah77nah77 November 8
Hi, sorry i haven't seen this.
-I've started with DX11, graphics were really nice, but it wasn't playable, so i moved the sliders to Medium on both GPU and CPU. On these settings i had ~ 25-30 fps in areas that didn't had much detail, But in places like NR or CE or Badlands fps is like at best 10, so i have lowered the quality to low, with little to no improvement.
- On DX9 things were better, almost all regions were ~25-30 fps, but on DX9 cpu was shooting to 100% usage and the game was looking like it froze, but after ~ 30 seconds it would come back, with rubber banding until it synced. this happen until i have switched the option "video Memory limit" to 1024+ (as suggested by a player). It didn't froze after that but the CPU was going occasionally to 100% (maybe almost every 1-2 minutes) in wich time i observed that the CPU was throttling down to 1ghz for about 30 seconds. This cycle repeats regardless of the zone.
I also poked around the bios and set the CPU frequency to 3200Mhz manually and this seems to fix that stalling but not entirely.

This behavior is the same as a previously fixed bug regarding performance on high end AMD's

If you need more information, i can provide it.
Hope all this helps
Thanks

nah77nah77 November 8
As followup, i have tested this on AMD FX 8150 as well, and started up StarTrekOnline without logging in. I have let it like that for about 5 minutes, with both task manager and process hacker at the cpu graphs. As you can see attached, without playing or doing anything, it spikes to 100% cpu utilization for no apparent reason.
Again, this has happend like now before that bug fix.

Hope this helps.
Cpu_Usage_Game_Client.jpg

nah77nah77 November 9
Tested also on AMD FX 8120 8 Core, and two mainboards from ASUS M5A97 R2.0 and M5A88-V EVO and ASUS GTX 570
with similar bad results as the above.

Ive done more tests on
- i3 4130 / H87N-WIFI / ASUS GT730 worked ok, no crashes just some lower fps (~20) on CE,NR and badlands
- Intel Xeon W3520 / HP intel X58 / ASUS GTX570, no crashes just some lower fps on CE,NR and badlands
- AMD Athlon 64 x2 5000+ /M2N32SLI deluxe / ASUS GT9600 also had no problems but could test only DX9 fps ~30 anywhere
- AMD Athlon 64 x2 6200+ / M2N32WS Pro / ATI RADEON HD 5850 - no problems on both DX9 and DX11 fps ~30 anywhere

Hope this helps further.
Keep up the good work.

nah77nah77 November 13
Hi laserduck.

Have you made any progress regarding this ?
Im really frustrated I can't play properly... and with the CE event on, all this has become a nightmare.

Im sorry if I have offended you in any way.

Thanks,
and keep up the good work.

PS: Also my friends .. most of them anyway.. are having AMD's (like 15 ppl or so out of ~ 40ish). Only those that have the AMD FX series complained about performance problems. Those on Core2 Duo/Quad or i5's have said that the game works properly.

nah77nah77 November 19
We found a forced way to reproduce the bug and to make it more visible.
If it helps you to smash it down....

So on any AMD FX start more clients like 4-5 instances. Do not login, just let them idle at the character selection... or at the "duplicated login message" . Start task manager and look at the gameclients processor usage.
Every now and then 2 or 3 of the gameclients will shoot to 25-33% cpu usage at the same time for a total of 100% cpu usage.

My AMD FX 8350 wasn't able to start more than 2 clients, cose both gameclients hang.
Friends AMD FX 8150, AMD FX 8120 were able to start 4 clients and they also had the bug shown.

Friends with Intel processors had no problem running even 5-6 clients. The cpu would remain at ~ 30% usage without any freezes.

salvation4 · December 2016

nah77 wrote: »

Thanks for the tip.

i've gave it a try.
So :
- parking AC
- Parking DC
- Freq Scaling AC
- Freq Scaling DC

All set on disabled. Also i have set as Active "Bitsum Highest Performance"
It made almost no difference. Actually now, the Gameclient.exe monopolizes all cpu to 100% leaving nothing to the system.
This is what i sent to dev's when he asked in private some details.
This is how it looks will park control:

I haven't been able to even move the mouse. It seemd like gameclient.exe took over every resource leaving nothing for keyboard, mouse etc. Only thing i could do was to pull the plug LOL.
PS:
I've loaned a cheap i3 with a **** video card (I could not be bothered to use Lightning 2.0) and play on that. but yeah it sucks i can't play it on my main rig cose of some fixed bug and then reintroduced. Also other games work perfect with the AMD FX series. Only STO does not.

That is too werid..Mine is set to balanced and its workig fine..Whats the rig you run normally?? I'm on an Intel Quad Core 2.66GHz with a GTX560 (Yeah I know the card is old but she still runs everything pretty damn well..

)

dragonsbite · December 2016

Salvation, it's not Intel cpu related in any way. So you can't really compare vs your system.

With Intel we seldom have cpu problems. Even parking isn't really necessary for us. I let my cpu throttle down from 4.2ghz to 1.6ghz and it runs fine. As you said we can use Balanced for cpu. We're also usually fine using adaptive for nvidia gpus. Balanced is typically not a good idea though as it does some hidden things. For one it changes the pci express link state. If you use Balanced i'd strongly suggest changing pci link state to OFF. In the off position the pci express will stay synchronized as it will send and receive data just to maintain this state. Using moderate it has a time to recover from sleep state (latency). At maximum time to recover is even longer. And of course if people still have problems they can change all of the above as it can help fix problems depending on the game played and or their system.

nah77 · December 2016

Main rig is AMD FX 8350 + GTX 570 + M5A97 R2.0 (this is now only used for work since sto isn't seem to get going anytime soon)

2nd rig is AMD FX 8150 + GTX 570 + M5A88-V EVO (this fared better than the above for ~ one week after the "Artifacts" 2nd patch now its dead too. Game client just hangs - works - hangs - works and so on.. im not even logged in. Just at the
username and password screen and it does that.

3rd which i got like a week ago in preparation for winter event is an old i3 + GT210 + GA-P55-UD6 mainboard from Gigabyte, 3Gb of ram.

On this TRIBBLE one ...... it works.

I know for sure this is AMD FX series related. They fixed it once. but with "Artifacts" it got back with vengeance.

nah77 wrote: »

This bug has been revived with the launch of K-13 holding.

Was fixed in April 28th 2016. Bellow is the link to those release notes.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9938063-star-trek-online:-release-notes:-april-28th-2016

Performance drops to a few FPS randomly and very often, and sometimes results in a crash. As it is right now, it's very annoying.
I have an AMD FX 8350 8 core.

Please re-fix this.
Thanks

Already Fixed Bug Reintroduced - lower performance on high end AMD CPUs

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