Need For Speed Most Wanted - PC Performance Thread
- Thread starter Peterthumpa
- Start date
I'm willing to bet I was gaming on PC before you were even born, but that is really not the point.
I'm playing this in 1080p, full detail, downsampled on a 670. It mostly runs at 60fps and doesn't drop below 40 - compared to other games that run at the same level, the graphics is nothing to be ashamed of.
Apart from a few bad artistic choices, what is there about the graphics that you consider bad?
Texture quality is above average, drawing distance is as good as it gets, polygon count is huge, lighting and shadowing are great.
I'm not saying it is a huge step forward from NFS:HP, but it does look slightly better and performs about the same on my system. Believe me, I would also like steady 60fps, but let's not get carried away talking about 'crappy graphics' here.
Keep in mind that this game pushes a lot more polygons and has more advanced lighting. As I wrote in one of the forums before, if I drive on a highway, where the setting looks very similar to NFS:HP, it holds the same steady 60fps (above 60fps I can't comment, I usually play games, not benchmark them). The city setting is obviously a lot bigger strain on the GPU.
Ze germans are more efficient. I assume their gpus are as well.
The game looks ok, but considering what my PC is capable of in THEORY it should run at 60FPS. I hope there'll be a patch at some point.
Peterthumpa
Member
Hehe, indeed.
Yeah, the PC performance is frustrating. It runs at 60 fps most of the time for me but there are still areas where it dips and WHEN it dips the game just feels like a juddery, awful mess even if the framerate only drops to, say, 50 fps. Most of the settings seem to do very little. The geometry setting makes a huge difference but the rest don't really seem to improve performance much at all nor do they even leave a major visual impact.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Probably should have just gone with the console version to save yourself that trouble.
spindoctor
Member
Yea performance is fine for the most part but it dips in places and that's just really annoying. Hopefully an SLI profile will be able to solve that. I was expecting a completely jagged mess but it seems they do have some sort of antialiasing going on because the edges are fairly smooth for the most part. That's my pet peeve with these games so I'm glad about this.
I'd lock the framerate at 30 and downsample it, but I get an ungodly amount of input lag when I do. Any ideas to decrease it?
Man, I'm forcing FXAA through drivers on top of whatever they use because I think the amount of jaggies is insane. I can't play it stock.
Man, I'm forcing FXAA through drivers on top of whatever they use because I think the amount of jaggies is insane. I can't play it stock.
JRW
Member
I finally ended up with these settings for now and its maintaining 60fps after about an hour of playing.
I think Nvidia will eventually release newer drivers to address or at least help with some of the performance issues.
High res textures: On
Motion blur: High
Shadow Detail: Medium
Headlight Shadows: On
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Reflection detail: Medium
VFX Detail: High
Geometry Detail: Low
Light Scattering: On
Also Triple Buffering forced in D3DOverrider.
I think Nvidia will eventually release newer drivers to address or at least help with some of the performance issues.
High res textures: On
Motion blur: High
Shadow Detail: Medium
Headlight Shadows: On
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Reflection detail: Medium
VFX Detail: High
Geometry Detail: Low
Light Scattering: On
Also Triple Buffering forced in D3DOverrider.
Pimpbaa
Member
This isn't true at all. Games going all juttery when then go a hair under 60 isn't natural at all. There is something wonky going on with a lot of games on how they display frames. I played games with variable framerates for years (like almost 30 years) and excessive stuttering or juttery under 60 seems to be a somewhat new phenomenon. One game that plays alright under 60 is Saint's Row 3. The framerate is all over the place, but it doesn't feel stuttery. Which is great since it's hard to achieve 60fps locked in that game.
Same with HP. Those little dips to 58 or 59 FPS which happened ALWAYS no matter the track threw off the whole smoothness of the game.
It's not as noticable for all games, some are playable, most are not. But considering the sheer technology standpoint, he's perfectly right. If the framerate isn't properly aligned with the monitors refresh rate, you'll get judder.
I'm willing to bet I was gaming on PC before you were even born, but that is really not the point.
I'm playing this in 1080p, full detail, downsampled on a 670. It mostly runs at 60fps and doesn't drop below 40 - compared to other games that run at the same level, the graphics is nothing to be ashamed of.
Apart from a few bad artistic choices, what is there about the graphics that you consider bad?
Texture quality is above average, drawing distance is as good as it gets, polygon count is huge, lighting and shadowing are great.
I'm not saying it is a huge step forward from NFS:HP, but it does look slightly better and performs about the same on my system. Believe me, I would also like steady 60fps, but let's not get carried away talking about 'crappy graphics' here.
Well, all those years in gaming have apparently not excelled you very far, knowledge wise.
First off, like the other guy you don't seem to understand the meaning behind 'for a game that looks like this'. That does not translate into 'looking bad', that translates into 'a game of this graphical fidelity where the performance doesn't match'.
Draw distance is like hundreds of other games and it doesn't even have to draw anything in the distance of objects outside of buildings. Texture quality above average? You must be barkin', it's well below average if anything - So many muddy textures that break up the extremely few decent textures. Polygon count is huge? I'm sorry, where? There's tons of low-poly assets and the only thing that has a high poly count on screen are the cars and even they were outclassed, graphically by consoles years ago. Lighting and shadowing are great ... What's so great about the lighting? Seems like regular lighting to me with tons of dirt, light flares and a bit of car reflection. Shadows are what you'd expect from most games and it doesn't even have to draw much on-screen with the light traffic, few cop cars and some opponents.
You really seem out of touch with where we are graphically and performance wise on PC, did you just upgrade your PC recently from a relic machine and have been enamored with games running better or are you truly believing what you're saying isn't nonsense?
The game looks fine, artistically it's fairly middle of the range with stupid lens dirt and sun flares. However NOTHING in this game says it's a game that should be fluctuating below 60 at ANY point. You know why it does it? Poor optimization and bad porting, not because it's a graphical powerhouse.
So let's try and move past this weird belief that this game is some kind of graphical monster that is meant to push our high-end rigs when it's a game that looks like it could easily have been released in 2010. We have games today that look as good or a lot better with AA that can maintain a rock solid 60. This game is just a straight console port with DX11 crowbarred in, little QA and then out the door.
PrematureQuiche
Member
So I got a 660ti today and tried playing the game again and it started out at 60 fps until I hit a tunnel and dropped to 40 fps. It then kept changing between 30-60fps. Playable though.
There's some weird locking going on. When my game drops to 45 it's not fluctuating but stuck at 45, waits a bit and then 60 again.
spindoctor
Member
Yea I can see jaggies for sure but it's not as bad as I was expecting (with absolutely zero AA). I guess it's a matter of taste as to whether one finds it's acceptable or not. I think I can live with how it is until someone finds the correct Inspector bits for proper AA.
Also, is there any way to turn off the spots that show up on the screen all the time? I assume this is supposed to be some sort of post processing effect to enhance the visuals but I find it ridiculously annoying. It's like playing the game with a pair of dirty spectacles. I wish devs these days would realize that subtlety in lighting and post processing effects adds a lot more to the visual quality than just turning all possible effects up to 11 and calling it a day.
Sethos, you really need your eyes checked. Or head, for that matter... if you ever manage to pull it out of your ass.
The rest I'm not going to comment on, I already see how pointless it is.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
Although his tone was condescending I think his evaluation was accurate.
Well, everything you said so far was wrong. Flat out wrong. If you believe that it's somehow "right" that a game looking like NFSMW isn't running with a stable 60FPS even on a 680, you really need to educate yourself more.
It's just a "we don't give a fuck" port.
Source?
spindoctor
Member
You have got to be fucking kidding me. They actually refuse to make an SLI profile?! What the hell happened to Criterion.
Made this GIF last night and I feel it's very appropriate here.
CPU bound my ass. My 680 going 70* and working like a pig and CPU barely hitting 40% on single threads says otherwise.
So has anyone tried to see how CPU utilisation acts when you limit to fewer CPU cores? I suspect that the game just doesn't scale properly to more than a couple cores. You should see utilisation per core go up as you disable each core. I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually only allocating 2 threads worth of work over all the cores, should hit 100% utilisation on each core once you limit it too a few cores if so.
This is the last time I buy a NFS game on release. First it was NFS Run with the 30fps cap and bad performance, and now this. How can they release such a crappy port? I really hate how EA is treating there PC customers now a days.
But its not just this brand its other games to from other companys. I as a PC gamer is not gonna prebuy anymore games from now on. Its just upsets me how companys can release games in this state to its customers.
But its not just this brand its other games to from other companys. I as a PC gamer is not gonna prebuy anymore games from now on. Its just upsets me how companys can release games in this state to its customers.
Leon Belmont
Member
But it's not the company's fault, it's the customers fault for buying games like this, I can mentionate Capcom as an example... what amazes me it's all the people who still buy all those DLC content for their games (Like Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil, etc), we need to stop this!
Edit: I don't have such a big problems with the game (My rig is Core 2 Quad 2.5, 3.5 gb ram, gts 450 1 gb) just that it keeps disconnecting from Autolog!
That shouldn't have an impact, should be able to fully utilize an entire thread or how many it needs regardless of how many there are. Might work but having to disable cores for this game would just further cement that fact that the game is a lousy port. The threads that are being used on my CPU, none of them go over 40% so there's no CPU limitation whatsoever and the entire utilization of the CPU is below 10% ( However slightly skewed due to unused HT threads )
I posted this earlier
( The dip is when I tabbed out from a race )
And that has my GPU working like crazy. That tells me there's no CPU limitation, it might be heavier on the CPU than ... Other games perhaps but pretend it doesn't need an SLI profile baffles me. The only explanation would be horrible optimization that does not utilize the GPU correctly and just makes it work unnecessarily.
Criterion is a company that is well respected in the business, so the customers think that they are getting a good product without testing it first. With capcom its a whole other chapter, dont really know why people buy useless DLC.
Leon Belmont
Member
It's a shame that this is happening, I'm a bit disappointed with Criterion, first they closed the Burnout Paradise PC Store, so the people that it's getting the game recently can't buy any cars pack from the store, then they refused to release the Big Surf Island for the PC; Hot Pursuit it's a fun game for me, so I don't have any complain about it, and regarding NFSMW as I said I don't have a bad performace with the game at all, but reading that almost all the people here is having problems even with high end PCs, well that's a disappointment, why the PC gamers are treated like this?
Edit: I really hope they release a patch to fix all the damn issues!
That shouldn't have an impact, should be able to fully utilize an entire thread or how many it needs regardless of how many there are. Might work but having to disable cores for this game would just further cement that fact that the game is a lousy port. The threads that are being used on my CPU, none of them go over 40% so there's no CPU limitation whatsoever and the entire utilization of the CPU is below 10% ( However slightly skewed due to unused HT threads )
I posted this earlier
( The dip is when I tabbed out from a race )
And that has my GPU working like crazy. That tells me there's no CPU limitation, it might be heavier on the CPU than ... Other games perhaps but pretend it doesn't need an SLI profile baffles me. The only explanation would be horrible optimization that does not utilize the GPU correctly and just makes it work unnecessarily.
I have seen games that are CPU bound and just spread over all cores but only utilise each one at a fraction of peak.
For example
Notice how when limited to 2 cores the overall CPU utilisation is the same, and the GPU utilisation and bad framerate are both also the same as with all 4. I was just wondering if that was the case, but if it's just GPU bound I guess that is irrelevant.
Edit: I should remove that wallpaper from rotation...
Yes but that's also poor porting. When a game can't properly utilize 6 available cores then it's just poor design.
Multi-threading is fairly simple, you can't split a calculation among several cores, multiple cores are usually based on 1 core does the AI, 1 core does the physics, 1 core does the main calculations etc. because you can't just have multiple threads crunch the same calculation and then add it up - That's how I understand it based on Bohemia Interactive's long MT article they posted. That means there's usually one core that usually takes the brunt of the primary calculations and the rest of the core dealing with 'peripheral' calculations that will be holding until the primary calculation is done and then they add up to the full calculation.
Also why a lot of people go all crazy when they only see one thread utilized fully and the rest at 20-50% "Oh bad coding!" etc.
However based on what I've seen, there's no one core that does any significant calculation. It seems there's plenty of excess power because every single physical core is sitting at 30-40% and just lulling along. That's why I have a hard time understanding where the CPU limitation comes in.
I can understand a game is CPU heavy, I can't understand when it doesn't show any signs of usual CPU limitations and on high-end CPUs it barely makes a dent.
YET at the same time the GPU is working like a pig.
Something is off according to my head.
joeygreco1985
Member
Last night I tried disabling motion blur and I think it helped the framerate the most. I ended up putting everything maxed while disabling motion blur, and got a solid 60 FPS for about 95% of the time I was playing, with that other 5% resulting in drops to no less than 50 FPS
joeygreco1985
Member
Yup I remember playing through Saints Row 3 last year on release with my Radeon 5870. That game just refused to go any higher than 40 FPS for some reason, even if you turned the details down. I still played through it, great game. Switched to my GTX 670 this year and Sains Row 3 runs amazing now.
Perhaps this is just a function of their engine? Just because there are spare CPU cycles available doesn't mean the game could realistically put them to use in any meaningful way.
ATI!!!
SR3 definitely did not run well on my ATI card...but switching to nVidia completely eliminated all problems. It's still a much better port than Saints Row 2.
You could google the statement,
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/522796/sli/need-for-speed-most-wanted-2-sli-profile/
From the NVIDIA Forums Technical Advisor
And thus it can't be CPU limited as stated.
Right.
The thing that DOES make me wonder about what's going on under the hood is the difference overclocking makes. I bumped my 3570k up to 4.5 GHz from 4.0 and that actually solved the performance issue I was seeing in one area of the map (the industrial section). The building with the Subaru up top was dropping to ~50 fps for me which felt very jerky.
So it's clear that they COULD be making better use of the CPU.
I'm not ready to label this a "lazy" port, though, without understanding what's under the hood.
That being said, at time of release, this is the first Criterion PC racing game that I could actually achieve 60 fps in from the get go. Both Burnout Paradise and NFS-HP had performance issues on my PCs at the time of their release. BP had no problems hitting 60 fps but I ran into lots of hitching as data was being loaded while HP had both framerate and hitching issues. They are both flawless on my current setup, however, and NFS-MW is actually fine now at 4.5 GHz.
Not sure what technical information would accomplish? No matter what, the port is lazy because it runs poorly on high-end machines - That is the measurement standard. Unless it does NASA calculations beneath the game's calculations it just isn't acceptable. Plus, they didn't even bother scaling the HUD for PC resolutions.
They can't even have done much QA, the basic of the basic when you create a game.
Just screams lazy port and / or bad coding.
Yes, but when you claim "lazy" you're making very broad assumptions that I don't believe to be fair until proven otherwise. That doesn't mean the port is GREAT or anything, of course.
Something can be less than optimal without actually be genuinely lazy. I'd imagine this is a side effect of the way they designed their technology. They've always been a Sony oriented developer so I could see the PS3 acting as a base platform rather than starting with a direct-x PC based engine.
They also had just two years to pull this game off on consoles, the Vita, and the PC all sharing the same asset and code pipeline. They tried to streamline multiplatform development as much as possible within a two year time span and you simply aren't going to get flawless optimization across the board when doing so. That's why I don't feel the results should be considered "lazy".
I think the end results are still quite lovely. You seem to think the game is ugly, however, so I'm curious to know which PC racing games you hold in such high regard (that also deliver a large, open ended world).