FPS Slowly Drops throughout gameplay until unplayable

2009-11-21 23:54:26

#1

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

First off, I have been writing config files, doing computer cleaning and av runs and maintanence, and showing people dream memory tweaks and bf2 tweaks for years. I have no clue why this is happening though and I've never heard of these factors before.

My System:
OS: Windows 7 (64 bit), LEGAL version, not release candidate
CPU: i7 920
Memory: 6gb triple channel OCZ gold
Hard Drives: 2x300gb 7200rpm SATA drives in Striped RAID
Video: Geforce 295
Monitors: 2x24" HP w2408h monitors (hooked up using HDMI cables) at max resolution of 1820x1200 (while gaming)
Case/Cooling: Antec P193 with over the Video ginormous fan (no liquid cooling)
Security: Windows defender thingamajiggy (latest one). Comes in second to NOD32 here: http://www.av-comparatives.org/ who I trust completely, and I don't feel like paying for Eset anymore
Background Apps: Xfire and Teamspeak, ALL UNNECESSARY APPS AND PROCESSES CLOSED
Last Build Date: Assembled and installed the whole computer in September, 3% fragmentation on the disk

I run the game with compatibility mode (XP Service Pack 2 / 3, same results for either) and aero disabled.

I set the fps cap to 300 just to see what it might do, and constantly watch the in-game fps.

Temperature:
I had video temps monitoring and idle, they average around 45-48 C, the whole time I was playing the game, they went up to about 53 C and never went about 55, so it's not heating

Problem:
With the limiter off, it can jump up to 220. On a fresh instance of BF2 it averages around 90 give or take 10. During gameplay the fps average will slowly drop. By the end of 1 round it can be around 60, 2 rounds 50 or 40, and eventually the fps will get down to 30, then 20, then even 15. By that time I have to bail. The whole time I see no discernable increase in temperature. Once the average drops, no matter what, it does not recover more than 10 fps.

2009-11-22 17:14:45

#2

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I'm having the exact same problem.

specs: win7 HP x64 (legal retail), q6600, 4gb mushkin, raptorX hdd, bfg 8800gtx-oc2, nvidia 191.07 x64 driver.
I monitored max temps in bf2: cpu: 45c, gpu 65c.

I'm thinking the problem might be a driver issue, xfire overlay, or disabling bf2.exe desktop composition (aero off). I have tried different compatibility modes, etc. coincidentally i started a thread about this over at tgn a few days ago.

someone asked if alt-tabbing out and returning to game fixes it, but I haven't tried it yet.

2009-11-22 17:27:41

#3

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

Alt tabbing does absolutely nothing. I do it consistently. I performed a test today, closing every single process, application, and service I could find, meanwhile checking the fps for improvement to no avail. I disabled xfire, teamspeak, my messenger, pretty much had EVERYTHING disabled down to no sound in game, all to no avail.

I DO however have a annoyingly shitty internet connection where I live now (barely 1.5mbit down, 768 up) and was recommended to monitor the traffic. Also before a round begins the FPS slowly moves up to a bit more of an acceptable level, but as soon as everyone spawns it drops. I haven't tested if this occurs when I spawn or due to server load, and I doubt this acts as a good sign honestly. The annoying thing is after rotating maps, the FPS does not improve sadly . Signa if you find out the solution can you be sure to respond here? Or post a link to that other thread?

2009-11-22 18:58:52

#4

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I will respond here if I find a solution. my fps is generally fine until about 30 min. played, then it starts having that problem. I may try some older drivers and see if that solves it.

2009-11-22 19:06:17

#5

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

Use 'renderer.drawfps 1' to monitor the in game FPS, it's not an immediate drop (although it does take 30 min roughly to get seriously bad) it's a gradual drop of the average fps. Anything below 40FPS will start to become noticeable, so just because it's above 40FPS doesn't mean you're system isn't being affected yet.

2009-11-22 22:04:38

#6

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I have another thing to try.
install the bf2 1.5 alt-tab fix and see if that helps. (backup the original file before installing).
I installed it and played a little bit, but never got to see if the problem was fixed.

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/batt … b-fix.html

2009-11-22 22:06:43

#7

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

I've been playing with that patch for some time, as I originally had the pre-patch symptoms.

2009-11-24 09:02:01

#8

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

any update on this? I've found nothing.

2009-11-24 12:39:35

#9

mtb0minime: minimember; +2,418|6867

I suggest playing a round on Single Player against bots. If it still happens, then it must be a memory leak of some sort. If it doesn't, then it's something to do with your internet (as mentioned with the lagging when a whole lot of people join a server).

2009-11-24 15:45:27

#10

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I'm pretty sure its not my internet, I have 16mb down, 3mb up and its rock solid no lag.

2009-11-24 18:08:52

#11

mtb0minime: minimember; +2,418|6867

I was meaning for GameGod, mainly. But try it anyway. Won't hurt.

2009-11-24 22:53:00

#12

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

@ GameGod, what nvidia driver are you using?

2009-11-25 02:51:55

#13

hintakaari: Member; +113|6151

i i remember righ, i had problem like this with amd dual core processor. i installed some dual core fix and it was ok again. But you both have intel so i dont know

2009-11-26 22:20:11

#14

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

update:

- tried beta drivers 195.62, no change.
+ I have had some good improvement by manually setting my page file size to 2x ram. so with 4gb ram, I set it to 8192 and it seemed to lessen the problem.

2009-11-27 05:57:50

#15

steelie34: pub hero!; +603|6593|the land of bourbon

definitely sounds like a memory issue. try disabling your page file completely to see if it still happens.

https://bf3s.com/sigs/36e1d9e36ae924048a933db90fb05bb247fe315e.png

2009-11-29 01:22:07

#16

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

I am actually quite confident that setting the core affinity to only 1 core by itself has resolved my problem completely. Keep in mind I play on 64 man servers, and have not played more than I'd say 3 rounds, but my FPS seems to safely remain around 100.

This I believe may resolve the issue, not the symptom (which increasing the pagefile size I can guess only extends the length of time before the memory maxes out, not fix it). I declined to test both disabling the pagefile or increasing it, however I have 6gigs of system memory and doubt that this was ever a true problem.

My conclusions for why this might be a solution is based on the issues hintakaari mentioned, and although I am unable to use the driver patches, manually adjusting the number of cores to just 1 seems to have worked. The FPS does not drop slower, it ceases to drop at all.

HOWEVER: I have started leaving the task manager running on my second monitor and have been monitoring the system performance charts during gameplay. Most notably I will notice that the memory consumption will ever-so-slowly rise during gameplay from 2.24 to 2.32 and perhaps longer during the course of a round. However, from what it seems this usually gets reset back down after a round ends. It would be best to run more tests (WITHOUT core affinity set) to see what happens to the memory size, and also tests to confirm that the memory is NOT just slowly growing for no apparent reason (it's almost too slow / small to note the change in size).

2009-11-29 15:17:08

#17

steelie34: pub hero!; +603|6593|the land of bourbon

if setting the affinity solves ur problem, it sounds like you have a cpu cache memory issue. i think intel has a diagnostic tool to test all the benchmarks, and will replace under warranty if its defective.

Last edited by steelie34 (2009-11-29 15:17:29)

2009-11-29 17:14:49

#18

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

GameGod wrote:
...(which increasing the pagefile size I can guess only extends the length of time before the memory maxes out, not fix it)...

yes I'm finding this now. While it worked at first, increasing pagefile only made it take longer to happen initially, then it was back to that problem starting up 10 min into a round. I will check out the affinity thing.

2009-12-01 21:23:54

#19

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

wow this is getting bad, I reached a new low of 19 fps. nothing suggested has helped yet. I may try reinstalling bf2.

2009-12-01 21:41:34

#20

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

signa wrote:
wow this is getting bad, I reached a new low of 19 fps. nothing suggested has helped yet. I may try reinstalling bf2.

Ya like I've said, my game has gone down to 15 fps in the past. Setting the core affinity so that the game only uses 1 core didn't work? You have to set it every single time you launch the game btw (or tweak the shortcut)

2009-12-03 09:07:34

#21

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I have to try the affinity thing again. I tried it once and didn't notice improvment.

I have some time today so I'm going to reinstall bf2 and see if that does anything.

2009-12-03 17:13:34

#22

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

tried a few things today:

did a full manual uninstall
installed [bf2 > 1.41 > sf > 1.41 > 1.50]
updated to new driver: 195.62 WHQL
tried a few different settings in nvidia control panel (disable physx, set: let 3d application control)
tried 1 core affinity.
tried different bf2 video qualitys.

No Improvement.
with 1 core affinity the lag feeling is lessened and seems to take longer for it to build up. frame rates still low though.
frame rates seem to be ok in singleplayer, but in multiplayer they are terrible.
noticed bf2 memory seems to increase the longer the game runs.

2009-12-04 02:05:37

#23

GameGod: Member; +1|5683|California

Ha you're lucky you can still play. I installed a new optical drive and it wiped out my computer. It'll be a few days before I can get ahold of a Windows 7 x64 cd and a few days longer to just get my old build up and running lol. Sorry I'm not able to give much more input, but I definitely agree the issue may pertain to the memory slowly creeping up.

In conjuction with my own personal conjectures and what steelie mentioned, it may be that there is some sort of cpu-related memory leak, and using 1 core instead of multiple is reducing the number of times this leak is being hit. Not that this really solves anything. I have yet to get a consecutive run long enough on a single core to see game play drop, so I have no way to be sure of things, and it will be some time before I am able to run more tests.

2009-12-08 17:00:46

#24

signa: ~~~~~; +50|6941|Michigan, USA

I noticed the framerate issue doesn't happen in singleplayer, so I did some testing.

PB doesn't run in singleplayer, so I turned off PB (in bf2 menu) and joined a non-ranked, non-PB server and my framerates were great. then I turned PB back on, and joined a ranked+PB server and my framerates were still great, although not 100%. I was able to play for a couple hours until the problem started happening again.

so it seems this is a PB problem.

2009-12-08 17:20:26

#25

mtb0minime: minimember; +2,418|6867

Maybe the PB checking your game/HDD is what's slowing you down. You can change the rate that it checks your computer.

(From here)

PunkBuster Refresh Rate

Punkbuster is checking your PC every 20 sec. for cheats etc., which canmake your game lag. You can adjust the time between checks by simply opening the console ingame.

1. Open Console
2. type pb_sleep(space) 500 and hit enter
3. type pb_writecfg and hit enter again

Now Punkbuster will check your pc every 500 seconds instead of every 20 seconds. Dont go higher then 500 because it wont be excepted.

So changing that will probably just delay your problem and not actually solve it, but it's the best I can come up with

BF2S Forums FPS Slowly Drops throughout gameplay until unplayable

GameGod wrote:

signa wrote:

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