PC setup
 

Hi Guys, well I am back again after another 2 month ban, I was banned for suggesting that the dev's didn't know what they were doing and that every patch seemed to break as much as it fixed, and for that I would like to apologize.

In fact the very next day Black Six announced that the dev's had made even more gains in FPS on top of the 50% increase that most of you had already enjoyed in the previous patch.

It is these FPS claims that kind of led me to getting banned, in that not only did I not see an increase in FPS but mine actually dropped considerably, not only that but the graphics appeared to me to have been dumbed down, whilst at the same time flying through cloud/smoke or dust particles still caused a tremendous FPS drop when this was supposed to have been fixed.

So you can imagine I was somewhat frustrated after waiting so long for this patch, considering a statement had been made previously that the reason we had waited so long was because they wanted to 'get it right'.

Anyhow, whilst enjoying my ban, I got to thinking, we all know that the dev's do not tell lies, Luthier has made a clear statement saying as much, and we know that suggesting that they might be prone to telling the occasional porky gets you a rather lengthy ban from the forums, I have enjoyed several of these over the years.
So how is it the devs are seeing these massive FPS increases when most of us are not? I'm sure you would all agree that to make such claims and then release a patch that does the opposite would be shear madness right? However to many of us this is exactly what we are experiencing, take the last beta/alpha patch, my FPS as dropped yet again, and yet more things appear to have been broken, so how can this be after so many months of tireless work and testing from the dev's?

The conclusion I have come to is the same as some of my arch enemies on this forum. Ace of Aces to name one of very many as always said that it is a poorly optimized PC's at the root of our problems, and I am coming to this very same conclusion myself. If the dev's aren't spreading male cattle dung then it must be our PC setups/configurations.

The dev's have never told us what spec PC they use for their testing or indeed how it is setup, if the PC they use is optimized in some special way it would surely explain why they are getting such tremendous performance increase's. It could also explain other issues the customer as struggled with such as SLI that the dev's seem to dismiss as being fixed.
We also know that some of our forum members have said that they have never had any problems with stutter or CTD's or even the famous sound loss bug.
This same reason would also explain why the game appeared to run so well in the pre release videos.

Some of you may know that I build gaming PC's for a living and have been doing so for the last 10 years, and I have built very high end systems for customers who just want to play Cliffs Of Dover, they are all experiencing the same problems as me, some play other games also and they all run perfectly on the highest settings.

In conclusion would it not be useful for the dev's to produce a walkthrough of how best to setup or optimize our PC's or give us the exact spec that they use so we can enjoy the gains that they have made in the last 16 months since release.

Love, peace and happiness

Tree x

My PC Spec

i7 2600K Overclocked to 4.7Ghz
16GB DDR3 Corsair Ram
GeForce GTX680
Asus Sabertooth Motherboard
3 X Western digital 1TB hard drives
Corsair 600T graphic series case
1000 W Corsair PSU
Corsair H80 Hydro CPU Cooling Kit

welcome back!

try turning trees off. completely. i rarely have stutters now.

Thank you Pupo, I would prefer to fly with the tree's on if possible.

mee too, but when i came to the conclusion that i prefer to fly high alt, where trees are nowhere to be seen, and i rather have a russian plain england, than those stuttering shadows at low alt... it was fine for me.


good luck with your search for the setup.... pheraphs buying one mroe 680 ? :grin:

Hi tree, I have a very similar rig to you, and few, if any problems. Here's the differences,

1. My CPU is not overclocked
2. I have 2x gtx 570
3. I lower in game resolution to get better frames

Apart from that specs are pretty much same.

Good Boy! :)

Just want to re-state something I posted in the beta thread....

"Although max FPS is down AVG is definetly higher and more consistent with much smoother gameplay.
At least for me! I ran in 6048x1080 last night for a while and its finally playable with all settings on max with 2xAA. AVG 30FPS and lows 24 and max 80 in ATAG. With the last official patch (which I tried again back to back) I struggled to get 18FPS out of it so they have definetly done a lot of work on the code for that kind of improvement."

There's almost a 100% improvement (30vs18 )... maybe they were talking about a 50%+ improvement for average FPS all along and it was nothing to do with MAX.
This would make sense if you ask me! Whats the point of having double the FPS if it still stutters or shoots from single digit to 100FPS. I have definitely noticed an improvement in smoothness and minimum FPS and a nice increase in AVG FPS. P.S. My Max FPS went down too.

Another thing you may have missed during your break...

1. The .net files have had some MS security updates that have been proven to introduce issues including stuttering and crashes. By repairing .net files it removes these updates and appears to fix a couple of the issues with CTD.

2. The ini files between versions also seem to have some subtle differences and deleting them (after backing them up for control settings etc) from both the CLOD steam directory and 1C softclub folders and doing an integrity check in steam to replace them and reset your game to a clean state fixes some issues also.

3. Deleting the cache files too in the 1c softclub cache folder also helps between versions

Did you get a fps increase in the patch before last?

That sounds good but i'm not getting that, with vsync on my max FPS is 60, my min is 4 and my average is down dramatically to 40, where as it used to be 57 prior to the last 2 patches. All this on the death track. In game I still get massive FPS drop when approaching airbases or flying through cloud/smoke/dust particles.

Some people that are getting less with the new patches have updated or reinstalled .net framework and directX and it has solved this problem. ;)

It was macro or JTDawg or someone that found it out.

Someone mentioned switching off vsync in game now with latest patch and let nvidia control panel handle it. I did this and got rid of stutters and sit at avg 94fps with top 160 and still the odd spike to 40 fps.

Here's JTDawg's original post that seems to have helped a lot of people, including myself:



"Hey Guys, Got 2 things worked like a charm, no stutters , no slide show for ati an nvidea users . Win7 USERS , Go into control panel to Programs an Features Go into Microsoft. NET Framework 4 Client Profile. double click on it , An repair it , After repair it will ask restart do it . Then go to C PROGRAM FILES X86 , Then Steam Then Steamapps, Then common . il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover Then redist Then go into DirectX Folder , Scroll down til you see When you see DXSETUP Double click on it , an run it!! For they guys that did this , THE CHEERING SECTION IS OUT, All of ur had the same results. NO SLIDE SHOW NOT A STUTTER. Even with 3 spits an 7 or 8 109s at 1000 feet above the the 3 base close together north of the French point ( our normal slide show, Repeated 3 times , Stayed hard on 60 fps an high 75 my vsync on all setting high an original , For the first time since i bought this game , it was amazing!!! If this helps tell others ( for me an several others who did this ) All i can say is WOW !!"

Ok thats something I have not tried. Looking at your max fps though it would suggest that vsync isn't on at all, this isn't good with trackir because i personally get terrible screentear.

Thanks snapper :)

well, this seems to only work for some people, in our squad we tried this, and nobody confirmed a increase in fps, nor a decrease of the stutters.

Must have me on the ignore list :rolleyes:

No not at all Farbs, sorry mate I had missed your post, thank you I will try this later. :grin:

I just did the last retail patch back to back with the latest patch and got the following results. Notice the lack of detail on the land in the newer patch. They have been playing around with LOD quite a lot! You can also see that less of the plane furthest away is rendered.

So I guess from the figures below you can say they have added more to the max and the AVG has dropped at this lower resolution compared to running it in surround.

This is @ 1920x1080 everything maxed out and AA off.

Retail - AVG 54 MAX 151 MIN 4
Latest- AVG 42 MAX 198 MIN 7

Retail
http://public.blu.livefilestore.com/...2022-58-28.jpg



Latest
http://public.blu.livefilestore.com/...2022-52-02.jpg

Also try to switch to "Pseudo" mode in the video-settings. It helps with some Vidoe-Cards...

Cleaned up. This is a performance help thread. Keep it on topic.

To be sure.

JTDawg posted this over at the ATAG Forum as well and I think we got about a 50% of those it benefitted, the other half saw no benefit. Others, including JT, found that they had to repeat the process for it to "take". It could be that some of us have installed/uninstalled so many other net-using programs and apps that files get corrupted or missing. Dunno. One person here at 1C mentioned a DECREASE in performance (!), so setting a system restore point would be wise, as always.

Still, if a few people benefitted, then why not try it?

@Phat: excellent comparison shots!

The clouds are interesting. The latest beta shows no high cirrus, but the lower cumulus clouds are much better defined -- this may also account for the lower fps in the beta at that moment and perhaps the overall avg, too.

First things first..

Welcome back!

And based off your post may I say welcome to reality? ;)

I am glad to hear that your coming around to the idea of at least considering the possibility that some, if not most, of the issues your are experancing could be PC related!

By PC I mean the PC Hardware, OS, Other installed Software, Drivers, Service Packs, etc..

I must admit I am a little sadden to hear you consider me an arch enemy?

In that I never viewed you as an enemy as much as I viewed you as the most persistent and closed minded opponent to the possibilitie that some, if not most, of the issues your are experancing could be PC related!

Who needed people like me to point that out to you!

But based on your post..

It looks like your mind is now open and thus my work is done! ;)

Which IMHO is a big step forward and one worth me extending my hand and saying lets let bygones be bygones!

With that said..

I do want to point out one more thing I think you need to consider changing your point of view on..

Where you said the following, i.e.

IMHO you have to get past this idea that your experiences equate to most experiences..

Along that same line of reasoning you have to get past this idea that the posts counts in this forum some how reflect any useful statistics to justify saying all, most, some, none. (something I catch myself doing sometimes and thus guilty of too)

There are so many mathematical reasons as to why this forum does not provide a good statistical base to make such claims

More reasons than I could or would mention here

But one reason that stands out in my mind is the poll furbs did a few months back where the mods discovered some members of this forum were using multiply forum accounts to vote more than once.

But I digress.

With that said..

I hope you don't go too over board (pendulum swing) with your new found 'hardware is the problem' point of view!

Because we know from what the devs tell us that there are CoD software issues that need to be fixxed!

Reason being if you don't, you could loose site and thus miss actual CoD software issues..

The same way you were previously loosing site of possible PC issues when you were blaming CoD software for every issue.

Balance is the key here!

Which stems from having an open mind that is willing to consider both as the source of the issues your experiencing is the best approach IMHO to getting CoD fixed!

Such that we can all enjoy it enough to log in online and shoot the S out of each other! ;)

Hi again tree.
I was able to turn up gfx settings to max, since tge latest patch with no FPS change. On balance I had them around 80% of max before.
Although, I get tree stutter now when at very low alt.

I have not appllied the net/dx fixes.

I am still getting stutters down low, haven't noticed much difference between vsync before/after. Time to upgrade my GPU but in no rush until a 'good' patch is released.

Well-written OP, Tree. It's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron.

Hi TREE,

welcome back. I see you have a GTX680. I have bought me one of these monsters too. I do not use the alpha / beta patch for the first time but after installing my new GC i was very pleased. Before i had a GTX295 with many stutters, no cockpit shadows or no clouds.

Now i have everything maxed out. Its smooth for me, the only stutters i have is when flying over London or Le Havre, big cities.

The rest is very enjoyable for me. I had some help from some great guys concerning my G940. (prop pitch) Now, this is working too so with every little step forward i am very glad.

These are my experiences on my rig.

I know tree its not a help for you just wanted to let you know. Sure i would be happier if most of the bugs were fixed but honestly its the best WWII sim with great potential. This is my opinion.

Great to have you back!

LC

Welcome back Tree! Agree with all points.

As i have a I72600K@4.6, a 580GPU and 8Gigs of fast RAM i also would help to find why my setup lost 15 FPS with the beta, im sure it must be something wrong in my PC's config.
Hopefully, if we all pull together and compare systems with the devs and Luthiers very well running systems with the 50% increase we can finally enjoy COD as its supposed to be.

What would be especially helpful is the specs of PC's they did all the patch testing on.

Im trying everything to get that last bit of FPS out of my rig so im following this thread closely..

Well done Tree.. great thread

One thing I noticed the other day. I had Task Manager running, and when I finished CloD, the CPU traces were jumping up and down, on all the cores, up to 100%, then down again to 0%, then back up again, then down again. None of the cores seemed to be staying at 100% for any length of time, and none of them stayed at 0% for long either, but they all seemed to have been jumping between the two.

Of course, you only get 5 minutes or so of record with Task Manager, so I don't know what it was doing before that, but that was what was happening for the last five minutes of the time I was playing.

The CPU is an i5 2500 at stock speed.

holla tree!

just a quick one thats worth a try that hadnt been noted since u got an intel, turn off hyperthreading if you already havnt. can also help to reduce stutters.

Yes thanks for that mate, I have already got that turned off and yes it did help a little. :grin:

I too "lost" fps but I use to get the square box that would loose the land detail at the edges.

Since the latest patch(and a reinstall) I no longer have the box but reduced performance from the extra rendering.

I hated that box so I am glad its gone but man I want those 10fps back;)

The Average FPS are definitely down and the Maximum FPS up, but the clouds look to have been completely re-done so they along with other detail changes that have been added back in is probably the reason for the slight drop in averages.

Regarding the clouds I've got to say that they are delivering much better results now. The huge fps drops when looking at clouds (even with one tiny cloud in sight) are now gone. If I look at my plane with no cloud behind the fps are pretty much the same as if i change the view to a sight with some clouds in the back.

So concerning the clouds I am satisifed with this patch ^^