11 replies to this topic

[HBZK100]

As some of you might know, I'm a nerdy PC enthusiast...so I play hawken with all the GPU monitoring software running in the background.

 

 

Anyways, when I played Hawken yesterday, I noticed that my GPU utilization was only hitting the low 80% (90s rarely) but my frame rate was dipping into the 50-70s. (Before you rant...my monitor is a 96hz 1440P panel. With a game this old I should be getting a solid 96fps with v-sync on.)

 

The frame rate drops only happen when theirs either A, lots of grass and trees like in Last Eco. And B, when theirs a lot of action/physX stuff going on. It's even worse with PhysX set to high.

 

Does anybody know what would be causing this? The best assumption I can think of is the DX9 API being a bit outdated by now.

 

Specs:

 

I5-4690K @ 4.5Ghz

8GB DDR3 2400Mhz

Gigabyte GTX 1060 6GB Gaming

QUNIX QX2710 1440P monitor.

[Amidatelion]

1) Take v-sync off

2) I don't think 1440p is supported

3) Poorly optimized Unreal 3 engine. Almost no one plays with full-on nerdgasm graphics because it prevents us from experiencing pc master race 120fps

[HBZK100]

Well no wonder.

 

I think 1440P is supported, I can select it from the drop down menu.

[ArchMech]

just dont post any unsavory reviews about it ok, we've got enuf of those

Edited by ArchMech, 16 November 2016 - 12:22 PM.

[CZeroFive]

It's mainly due to the DX9 usage. Highly CPU bound. When we relaunch PC this should be better as DX11 utilizes the GPU more and we have GPU optimizations in.

[HBZK100]

It's mainly due to the DX9 usage. Highly CPU bound. When we relaunch PC this should be better as DX11 utilizes the GPU more and we have GPU optimizations in.

 

Oh awesome, your going to DX11. DX9 is the only big gripe I have with this game so far.

[coldform]

Oh awesome, your going to DX11. DX9 is the only big gripe I have with this game so far.

hawken rolled out when XP was still on a majority of people's machines, and the intentions were to not roadblock players simply based on OS.

[Silverfire]

hawken rolled out when XP was still on a majority of people's machines, and the intentions were to not roadblock players simply based on OS.

 

Hawken was largely developed in 2011, if I remember correctly.

[HBZK100]

Hawken was largely developed in 2011, if I remember correctly.

 

It's hard to believe Hawken is approaching 5 years of age. The game still looks gorgeous compared to newer titles. 

[OpTiC_DeRpY]

1) Take v-sync off

2) I don't think 1440p is supported

3) Poorly optimized Unreal 3 engine. Almost no one plays with full-on nerdgasm graphics because it prevents us from experiencing pc master race 120fps

DirectX9 from the beginning was created before multicore or even hyper threading existed. Therefore DirectX9 is single threaded, thus only ever truly utilizing one CPU core. There is a multicore enable bit-flag in DirectX9 but even Microsoft themselves have stated it's only there for developmental use and hinder's pre-existing performance heavily. So much so that it's entirely counterproductive to use it, as CZeroFive said, the move to DirectX11 will open up GPU resources better, since DirectX11 is inherently multithreaded, there for keeping the GPU properly fed with data.

 

1440p is natively supported, same with 4K and even UHD and ultrawide, it's just the UI is not compatible with the resolutions larger than 1080p.

 

Unreal Engine 3 itself isn't really poorly optimized, it's the API behind it, there are many, many DirectX11 based Unreal Engine 3 games that run beautifully, but the DirectX9 ones have the same woes. Poor performance due to the lack of multithreading and multicore usage. Besides, Unreal Engine 3 is known for having a framerate cap built in by the men and women over at Epic Games, for network play which is 90fps, you can bypass it by using the Smoothed Framerate settings [bSmoothedFrameRate T/F MaxSmoothedFrameRate XXX], but it causes weird glitches and other stability issues. It's a cap put in place by Epic to stop garbage data overflow to the server. I myself have had issues staying connected to games with SmoothedFrameRate on and MaxSmoothed set to 240 which is my monitors' refresh rate. I'd rather stay locked to 90, then used SFR and get kicked after 5~6 minutes. 

[HBZK100]

Just figured out that if you disabled the Capped frame rate option in the video settings, your frame rate's go a lot higher at ultra settings.

[Xeonight]

There was also a thread once when Last Eco came out that was talking about how Shadows are the single largest 'worker' of the graphics card for the current engine etc. so maybe try turning those down, and see what happens. I don't remember if there's an option to change shadows in the settings, you might have to do an .ini edit or something like that.