[Tech] FPS dip

[Nanor]

I was playing CoD and I noticed that when I play I seem to get FPS dips. I sit constantly at 125FPS and then I drop to about 80-85 FPS and then it climbs again to repeat. This happens constantly and doesn't seem to be trigged by anything (Flashes, bursts of fire etc).

Playing CoD I see that my CPU stays at a constant temperature of 56°C. My graphics drivers have also been fully updated.

I've lowered the graphics to almost as low as they'll go but I still get it. I used to be able to play the game on almost full at a constant FPS of 125.

Ideas?

 

[elDiablo]

Probably to do with disk access, I'd guess. You got anything running in the background?

Also, stop complaining about a constant >60FPS.

 

[Nanor]

Rapid changes in FPS are bad no matter what you're getting.

 

[Rai]

An fps of 80 is 20 times more I have.

 

[thatbloke]

Rapid changes in FPS are bad no matter what you're getting.

Yea but a 60Hz monitor can only display 60 of those 80FPS you are getting.

I expect something in the background is causing disk access, which then causes the game to be interrupted slightly.

Tell your AntiVirus program to ignore the the whole steam folder (I did and steam is now 3x faster).

Also turn off the windows search indexer thingy if you havent done already, and if you have some kind of disk defragmenter running in the background tell that to sod off while playing too.

On that note, will probably be worth a defrag and also if you are perhaps playing music in the background as well as playing the game that could be causing the HD to have to skip all over the place, causing the drop

 

[waterproofbob]

Yea but a 60Hz monitor can only display 60 of those 80FPS you are getting.

Although this is true, if your FPS is dropping rapidly and shifting around, the game will only tell you the average FPS not the minimum. Even if you are getting a solid 125 and you get a rapid FPS crash you will notice it. I find in particular in CoD if I get an FPS spike that it is very very noticeable.

 

[elDiablo]

I suppose you are correct bob. Doing some maths (though easy, I'm tired, so it might be wrong), I get the following.

Let's assume the game is keeping track of the FPS on a second by second basis. At it's peak (125FPS), we are using 8ms/frame:

1 second = 1000 milliseconds
1000 milliseconds / 125 FPS = 8ms

Now let us assume that the each of the frames at the 80FPS "low" runs at the same speed as each frame at the 125FPS peak.

8ms * 80 = 640ms

Assuming (yes, lots of assumptions, fuck off) that all of this lag is happening together, you're getting a 360ms lag spike (worst case), which is well above the ~150ms time it takes the brain to notice things.

 

[Wol]

Tell ya what nanor, how about you send me your graphics card, and I'll give it a try instead?

Its not the end of the world if you have a very fractional jump in speed anyway so stop moaning. heh.

Can you get a graph of processor usage / disk usage? Do the fps jumps happen at regular intervals / how often (e.g. every 10 seconds, or something regular like that, or like randomly every minute or so?)

 

[Haven]

Assuming (yes, lots of assumptions, fuck off)

I like the cut of your jib sir.

 

[Nanor]

Happens about every 5 seconds and if it didn't affect me I wouldn't complain, would I?

 

[PsiSoldier]

Happens about every 5 seconds and if it didn't affect me I wouldn't complain, would I?

Probleh only noticed because you have cg_drawfps 1

 

[Tetsuo_Shima]

Just to double check, make sure that, in your Graphics options, the 'Dual Video Cards' setting is set to 'Yes'. I had some real bad fps problems before, even with a single card set up, when that option was set to No, so I'd check that 1st of all.