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Some maps in STO cause extreme low framerates - [Potential Solution]
altran3301
Member Posts: 169 Arc User
For a long time now, I have been trying to resolve a low framerate problem on a handful of maps. These include Risa Resort, New Romulus, Starbase 24 Fleet Action, and Badlands. These have been unplayable, with framerates as low as 9FPS. No amount of graphics settings tweaking, driver re-installs etc would fix it. Lowering settings would not improve it by even 1FPS. CPU and GPU use were under 50%, usually only 20% or less. This issue pre-dates the lighting 2.0 update too.
It appears to affect many GFX cards on many different systems, from what I can find on a trawl through Google. It seems that some combinations of CPU/GFX/Motherboard cause a problem with the way the GFX drivers, DirectX and/or STO interpret the system clock. Why this only happens on some maps, I do not know.
The solution, for me, was the following:
1) Disable HPET (High Performance Event Timer) in your BIOS.
2) Disable the HPET service in Windows for good measure (do not do this part if you do not have the BIOS option!)
3) Open an admin command prompt, and do the following:
i) "bcdedit /enum" - look toward the end of the results for any of these: "useplatformclock", "tscsyncpolicy" and "disabledynamictick"
ii) If you are having the same issue as me, you will likely see one or more of those. You can remove them to hopefully solve the problem.
iii)
bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock
bcdedit /deletevalue tscsyncpolicy
bcdedit /deletevalue disabledynamictick
iv) Do "bcdedit /enum" to check it all worked.
5) Reboot.
Note: Do check that other more modern games are not adversely affected. It is safe to start from step 3 if you can't or don't want to mess with BIOS.
To put the values back use "bcdedit /setvalue [name] true".
Hope that helps someone!
It appears to affect many GFX cards on many different systems, from what I can find on a trawl through Google. It seems that some combinations of CPU/GFX/Motherboard cause a problem with the way the GFX drivers, DirectX and/or STO interpret the system clock. Why this only happens on some maps, I do not know.
The solution, for me, was the following:
1) Disable HPET (High Performance Event Timer) in your BIOS.
2) Disable the HPET service in Windows for good measure (do not do this part if you do not have the BIOS option!)
3) Open an admin command prompt, and do the following:
i) "bcdedit /enum" - look toward the end of the results for any of these: "useplatformclock", "tscsyncpolicy" and "disabledynamictick"
ii) If you are having the same issue as me, you will likely see one or more of those. You can remove them to hopefully solve the problem.
iii)
bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock
bcdedit /deletevalue tscsyncpolicy
bcdedit /deletevalue disabledynamictick
iv) Do "bcdedit /enum" to check it all worked.
5) Reboot.
Note: Do check that other more modern games are not adversely affected. It is safe to start from step 3 if you can't or don't want to mess with BIOS.
To put the values back use "bcdedit /setvalue [name] true".
Hope that helps someone!
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Win 10 doesn't use HPET nor does Win XP sp2 or older. Just an fyi so people don't mess up their comp or waste their time. You might also want to list after 1) step 2 must be done if you do step 1. I made the mistake of doing one without doing the other and messed up my win 7 system. Thankfully it was an easy fix. Some people will claim it does nothing and others will praise it. When I had 1 off and 1 on it immediately caused stuttering in games. Didn't notice any fps issues except for the bad stuttering. I was fine before this but wanted to test it as I do computer gaming support. So I had to see for myself and sure enough it does make a difference.
Also if it was already enabled in the bios and most are and you installed an OS between xp sp2 and win 8.1 along with that motherboard then it's already enabled in the OS if that motherboard had it enabled. Part of the initial install of the OS will check this. If you use win 10 or win xp sp2 or older you can either have hpet enabled or disabled in the bios as it will make no difference to the OS. Win 10 uses a different timing system (updated TSC possibly?) and win xp sp2 and older use the old TSC.
Anyway, you've missed the point entirely - it wasn't a post about the advantages or disadvantages of HPET being on or off. It was a quick guide to fixing a very specific issue where HPET had been forced on for Windows (by whatever means - cause is not relevant), causing different clock results to be returned depending on how it is queried (Usually one of two methods). This means one part of the system, let's say the NVidia drivers/GFX card, reading a system clock of 3.8MHz while another, say the audio drivers or DirectX, reading one at 14MHz (the HPET frequency). So they get horribly out of sync, which means high latency and excessive interrupts - leading to the judder problem.
Thanks for that
Rather than the specific cause of the slowdown (which tracks with certain kinds of vegetation. Ex. the grasses on Regulus which can be toggled on/off. The bug also started with or shortly after season 10) what you might have found is a general performance boost for your system. Now, the hit from whatever is going on isn't significant enough to have a big impact. I've found this to be the case from the lighting 2.0 update. It runs better on my system, so the Risa/New Rom slowdowns are only noticeable now. Ditto for a swap to an SSD (I was bottlenecked by my old HDD, replacing it most notably improved Risa because that's where I'm on a performance threshold.)
Incidentally, if Cryptic is still investigating this problem...a less technical stop-gap fix could just be to tag grass on Risa and New Romulus as a high detail object (like it is on Regulus). Then affected players might have some control over the slowdown, ie. turning that setting off, assuming it's the same trigger. Unaffected players (on lower end systems) would just be looking at a slight art change.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
You are correct - the problem with HPET is excessive interrupts. In normal use it's not even noticeable, and usually you might only notice it in real-time audio applications. I agree that STO is doing something a bit odd, and it is linked to just one or two effects and objects. If we take Risa as an example - the problem is worse when looking in toward the island, but also significantly worse during "night", even though we no longer see night, it's still there - something from the day/night cycle causes a significant problem and it doesn't increase GPU use when it happens - the framerate just drops. I didn't get into details before, as the fix makes it at least playable for people with the problem.
It could be something other that HPET too - a bad driver for example. Get hold of "LatencyMon" - it can show you which drivers are causing excessive ISRs. Common ones are motherboard SMB driver and USB driver.
Thanks, I ran latencymon. USBPORT.SYS is coming up as a problem. I looked around online and tried a few things people reported as fixing their problem (disabling specific system devices using the driver, unplugging usb devices). No joy. HDAudBus.sys, ndis.sys, and storport.sys also register a high number of ISR's.
Update: here's another test result (along the lines of flinging stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks) In running a more advanced troubleshooting method (performance log in windows dev toolkit) I've found that ntoskrnl.exe is the ISR/DCP leader above the .sys entries. It's a core process, so I don't know if it's worth investigating over USB issues.
Update 2: I'm starting to think that this could be a motherboard software/hardware issue.
Update 3: I've manually reinstalled all drivers with a plausible or reported connection to usbport/storport issues. I also reinstalled windows for the hell of it. Usbport and storport still come up as having ISR's and DCP's. That said it's often not enough to trigger a red flag in the performance monitor. There also isn't a noticeable increase when I run STO. So I am doubting whether latency fixes are at all relevant to the Risa slowdowns, except as a general performance improvement on badly affected systems that make STO's odd FPS issues less or totally irrelevant depending on where those builds are.
The connection ATM seems empirical and the latency on my system doesn't seem to correspond to the magnitude of latency problems posted around the net or to the once severe (now mild on my end, thanks to various upgrades+updates) Risa FPS slowdowns....unless it's a binary problem, where any amount of system latency causes a specific type of vegetation (ex. Risa/Regulus/New Romulus grass) to kill the framerate in STO.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
There is something wrong on the STO end, but it shouldn't be unplayable if other maps are ok.
I tried that with the SATA control drivers, I'll investigate the chipset and USB. Basically, it's a question now whether or not my ISR/DPC count is high. After disabling unnecessary audio drivers/devices I'm consistently in the green now for the Latencymon test results (down to USBport, ndis.sys, and storport.sys, lower frequency) . I'll pursue the issue further but it might just be the interaction of system components (I can only work with available drivers). The full solution on this one bug then would be to build a new PC on the assumption that the next hardware set won't have a weird interaction with Risa/New Romulus/Regulus vegetation introduced in season 10 (which isn't very practical ATM.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Ok, so now it's in the green with some devices disabled, has the framerate improved at all?
It's worth using "/fpsgraph 1" in-game so you can see how many purple spikes there are in the graph - it should be none, but one or two every now and then is normal.
I agree, building a new PC is NOT a solution. :-)
Nope, not at all. The improvement in latencymod results has not procuded any visible change in the game. There's the FPS graph spike every now and then, occasionally associated with loading a new asset (ex. ship warping in at ESD). But that's all normal. At this point I'm taking the latency issue was a sign that my system hardware doesn't get along as best as system hardware could. I'm pretty confident now that there is nothing more I can do with device/driver manipulation, besides down-right crazy experimentation with odd, incompatible driver choices (which is far more likely to cause things to break.)
It might explain why it's always undershot a little with STO but then again any number of hardware-specific bugs might do that too (which STO has variously added/subtracted over the years). Basically, the amount of latency I have now is probably "normal" for my system. The FPS issue with certain types of ground vegetation (ie. the grass) is a problem separate problem (since it was added only with Season 10.) Improving performance can get around it (which is the solution I've found) and maybe improving latency helps disproportionately to, say, just increasing processing power (which might explain your results and a small improvement when I moved to an SSD last year).
So, for affected users it might be something to look at. But some of us will still have to wait for a Cryptic-side fix (or an eventual PC upgrade) for a total solution.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
For those interested, my machine’s specs are as follows:
Dell Inspiron N4110
Intel® Core i3-2330M CPU @2.20GHz
8.00 GB RAM
64-bit Windows 7
Running with system-standard hardware
Now, this is how a typical session goes for me:
I load up the game and things are running normally and smoothly. I run through my daily DOFF, Admiralty, and Dilithium activities on my five characters with no issues, the process taking around 30-40 minutes. It’s around this time that things start to happen. The framerate drops significantly and all of a sudden, the drop being more pronounced if I'm on certain maps like ESD. This has also happened on PvE maps and I’ve noticed that the framerate drop is at its worst whenever enemies or large numbers of NPCs enter my field of vision. If I “look away” and focus the camera in a place without any enemies, the framerate improves but doesn’t completely recover. Then, when I look back at the enemy, the framerate falls again.
When this has happened, I quit the game, load it back up, and return to my main character. With this restart, the framerate has returned to normal and I’m able to play on any map with no ill effects. That is, until I’ve been playing for some time, then the issue returns.
It’s as if the game is “gumming its self up” over time. It starts out fine, but slowly builds up until the framerate goes kaput all at once.
That sounds like an overheating issue really, given the time element. It's probably worth cleaning up the cooling fan and heat dissipation fins inside, and perhaps replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU. Laptops are particularly good at storing dust, especially in a home. The thermal paste also degrades over time, and doesn't conduct heat as well as when new.
If you can't do it yourself, most PC/laptop repair people can do it for you and it should not be very expensive. Only attempt it yourself if you know what you're doing - the internals on that particular laptop are not as simple as some (fan removal is ok, but removing the mainboard and replacing thermal paste is not quite so straightforward).
It's possible you don't notice an issue outside of STO. The code for STO is not exactly efficient, and it certainly makes my desktop PC run a little hotter than most other games - even more modern ones. You could test whether it is overheating by running the graphics stress-test built into the GPU-Z information tool (https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/ the ? icon about halfway down on the right of the program's window). Run it for a while and see if the framerate drops. This tool should also show you the GPU temperature on the sensors tab, which you can monitor during the test.
Worth a try.
I've had overheating issues with older laptops, but the one I have now has been able to run STO for years without a hitch. Perhaps not at full graphics, but I've not had any trouble like this until now. This issue began the day Season 13 went live, and it was even more pronounced that first day before the follow-up patch. It's gotten better over the weeks, but it's not been fixed. If it truly was an issue with my laptop overheating, this would have come up when they made their graphical overhauls or when they phased out the lesser graphics systems. Such was not the case. Furthermore, I don't think simply quitting the game and immediately loading it back up would alleviate a overheating issue like I have been able to do.
Something else that I failed to mention in my post before: when the framerate drop strikes and persists, a gameclient crash almost invariably follows. It was for that reason that I took to restarting my game.
Cheers
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
FYI: The option may be listed as High Precision Timer depending on your motherboard. It's the same thing, and disabling it improved my performance across the game.
Altran3301 is not a Cryptic employee. Also, you just necroed this post since it is not a bug report.
Edit: I accidentally necroed it as well. This needs to be closed.
Not to mention this post is like 4 1/2 years old. Nice necro.
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