I'd set up a data collector set and have that run every so often, i'm pretty sure it's something taking up all your IO and blocking.

liamsmithuk wrote:Resource Monitor tells you in great detail what's using cpu, disk, network and memory

You will find it in Administrative Tools or just search for resource monitor on start menu

I'll try it tonight

Loui5D wrote:I'd set up a data collector set and have that run every so often, i'm pretty sure it's something taking up all your IO and blocking.

Yeah........... WUT?!?!?

Sippiecup wrote:

EmitzDevil wrote:Need some help :S

Got this issue which has been going on for a while but when play PS2 it didn't really matter too much.
But when it happened in CS:GO, I flipped because it stopped me getting a bomb defuse as last man alive

Basically at least once a day my HDD or SSD not sure which one gets this massive data surge as if it's running a backup of some sort taking up a huge amount of computing power

Monitor locks up, audio freezes, red light on PC case stays permanently on for the duration, however, TeamSpeak can be heard, I can talk over it fine and I can hear people fine, heres the best part.

In PlanetSide if i'm dead and it happens I can't respawn, If I'm alive, I can keep playing so long as I don't die or pull a vehicle, when flying in my Reaver once when this happened I crossed the entire continent, when I got from Saurva to Dahaka the textures where super plain, long distance low res textures but everthing like mountains and vehicles appeared and move around perfectly fine, got back to the WG in the South east of Indar waited about 2 minutes and then all the textures rendered back to high quality.

Can anyone think of anything I can do to check what process causes this massive issue or what a likely cause might be??

Cheers ;)

Does it happen at random or it happening the same time every time? Have you checked the schedule on your anti-virus? Do you have the drives set to go to sleep mode when they're not in use?

Completely random :S

EmitzDevil wrote:

Loui5D wrote:I'd set up a data collector set and have that run every so often, i'm pretty sure it's something taking up all your IO and blocking.

Yeah........... WUT?!?!?

Send me a message on steam or teamspeak in the evening and I'll explain.

Resource Monitor is perfect for this kind of thing, you can easily see what's hammering the disk. My bet is the AV doing a scan, or a backup of some kind.

Start > Run > resmon works too.

I really need some help finding upgrades at low cost! I am since many years really low on money, hence why my computer is old and consists of parts that was not new when I got them.

cpu: Intel i7 860 @ 2.80GHz
ram: 8 GB (can check later for version)
gpu: gtx 560ti
motherboard: P7P55D LE http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55D_LE/
harddrive: SATA (don't know to check for versions or info other than size or if it is important)
OS: Win 7 64

I generally get gpu locked, but it is all because of settings I suppose. My FPS isn't actually halfbad (40 ish) but plummets when anything straings it (25+ fights). This is frustrating during OPS naturally as it becomes a very painful slideshow when the fun beginns.

I have gotten very wide recommendations on what to upgrade bare minimum: either cpu is 'actually fine even though it is really old, not much has happened on the cpu front, go upgrade gfx and you are okay' which had me starting to look on swedish ebay versions for used 600-700 gpu's sold, to 'nah, cpu is horribly outdated, you need to focus on that one' which is more expensive as I have to find more than just a new cpu (I dont think buying used ones is a good idea, not that used gpu's is, it is just worse).

I don't look for the latest gear to buy, I can't afford it at all. I need to up my FPS and still be able to pay rent :p Any suggestions are more than welcome! Thank you in advance.

edit: added hd and os

yes i think a new gpu would do the trick. I have similar fps, i'm fine with little activity but on ops hot drops in 48+ hexes i'm down to 20-25 fps. But i have an even older pc, except for the graphics card.
I've got a Q6600 2.4Ghz overclocked to 3.4 on an Asus P5Q-E with 8gb DDR2 ram, Samsumg 840 Evo SSD and Radeon HD 7870.
I'm always CPU bound.

Your cpu should be good enough for smooth gameplay, some light overclocking could bring even more frames.

I'm surprised you're gpu bound. PS2 is much more about cpu. If you're gpu bound there's something wrong in your settings. PS2's bottleneck, as any MMO out there, is the cpu. So you need to find the good settings to balance between cpu bound and gpu bound. Otherwise you're demanding too much to both organs, when only the cpu should be at its edge.

Until last year I had a very old core2duo E8400 running with a 470 gtx. Overclocking helped to keep up despite a pretty old rig. Then I upgraded cpu/mobo/ram for a i5 3570k but stayed with the 470 gtx until a couple of weeks ago.

The 470 gtx was doing pretty fine with a more recent cpu to feed it data to process. Even if an evolution to a gen6 or gen7 will bring you much more confort, I do think your 560ti can still have not a bad run if you pair it with a more recent cpu platform.

Look at this chart (which is just for performance comparison, the transposition to PS2 might not give the same result): http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Your 560ti is very close to my 470 gtx. So you should see the same improvement as I did. And god knows how my budget was limited last year when I hadn't graduated yet.

For now I would advise you to look for a sandy bridge or ivy bridge which you can overclock (cause PS2 is all about cpu frequency), and use your current gfc until you get more money.

I don't think used cpu is a problem, if the former user was using proper cooling.

Food for thoughts: http://mercenarys.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=3134
http://mercenarys.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2910

You will feel the pain of the low budget student looking for stuff to properly pewpew bad guys on PS2.

yeah some optimizations with settings, graphicscard driver setting might also have a huge impact. You can do a lot more to impact the graphics performance than cpu. turn off AA, AF, AO, these use a lot of gc power

Just bear in mind that I'm pretty certain a new CPU will also require a new motherboard, and potentially new RAM (!) such is the way of things.
Shame you can't plug and play with CPUs like you can with graphics cards.

If you've got a mate who'd help you out, you could borrow their GPU and see what happens. For my money though, I think your CPU is capping performance (as I mentioned on TS). An old (aka less powerful) CPU will also bring down the real world performance of a newer GPU, and you might find a new processor gives you more bang for your buck than just the processor upgrade itself as it frees the bounds.

fyi; I'm on a Sandy Bridge 2500k w/ 570GTX. Hardly cutting edge: our GPUs aren't far apart, but our CPUs are at a generation apart and I get 50-60+fps (VSync) on high @ 1920x pretty much all the time.

That's my advice, but people like Phattie know more than I :)

Your CPU is fine. It's very similar performance wise to the i7 920, and that CPU is what I was using until my recent upgrades. If you want to eek out some more performance, overclock it. If you can get maybe 500 more Mhz out of it, you'll probably get 5 more fps across the board. Hell, you should be able to get 3.6-4Ghz out of that chip. Try and follow this guide: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/263 ... king-guide. People have managed to get up to 3.8Ghz without any issues, so as long as you have a decent cooler then you should be able to get a lot more out of that CPU. Make sure to read the guide thoroughly, take everything in, then attempt it afterward. Printing it out or having it open on a tablet or laptop is advisable.

Graphics wise the 560Ti is quite dated. Have you tried messing with your UserOptions.ini file at all? I'm sure we could get a bit more FPS with that before looking to upgrades. If you can pick up a GTX 660 Ti for cheap, you'll be able to get maybe 10-15 more fps.

Phattie wrote:
Graphics wise the 560Ti is quite dated. Have you tried messing with your UserOptions.ini file at all? I'm sure we could get a bit more FPS with that before looking to upgrades. If you can pick up a GTX 660 Ti for cheap, you'll be able to get maybe 10-15 more fps.

EVGA GTX 760 goes for £189.99 (there's also some cheaper from other brands if you trust them), if that's too much there's some GTX 660 TI's going on ebay for around £135-150 buy it now.. that's probably the best you're going to get low budget

If you wanted to replace your CPU, Mobo & RAM then you're looking at £280 minimum really, but as Phattie said you should be fine with what you have

SoldierBeast wrote:yeah some optimizations with settings, graphicscard driver setting might also have a huge impact. You can do a lot more to impact the graphics performance than cpu. turn off AA, AF, AO, these use a lot of gc power

I'm not sure what all those are, Anti Aliasing I think i got :)

Phattie wrote:Your CPU is fine. It's very similar performance wise to the i7 920, and that CPU is what I was using until my recent upgrades. If you want to eek out some more performance, overclock it. If you can get maybe 500 more Mhz out of it, you'll probably get 5 more fps across the board. Hell, you should be able to get 3.6-4Ghz out of that chip. Try and follow this guide: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/263 ... king-guide. People have managed to get up to 3.8Ghz without any issues, so as long as you have a decent cooler then you should be able to get a lot more out of that CPU. Make sure to read the guide thoroughly, take everything in, then attempt it afterward. Printing it out or having it open on a tablet or laptop is advisable.

Reason I haven't meddled with overclocking is that the default fan that I menat to replace but never did, had faulty springs or something so it wasn't tight. When I many years later did a check of temperature ("RealTemp") I could find peaks at 99 degree Celsius (!!!!). I did change the fan immidiately (like 15 euro one) and the temp is down to 60-70 degrees now. Someone on TS told me that the temp messurement in the CPU might be off. If that is the case then I won't dare overclock as I cannot monitor the heatincrease reliably.

Phattie wrote:Graphics wise the 560Ti is quite dated. Have you tried messing with your UserOptions.ini file at all? I'm sure we could get a bit more FPS with that before looking to upgrades. If you can pick up a GTX 660 Ti for cheap, you'll be able to get maybe 10-15 more fps.

Like Jon said, if i can borrow a card from a friend then I could see what increase I could get, I might try that. My current inifile settings is as following:

Code: Select all

[Display]
FullscreenRefresh=0
Maximized=0
RenderQuality=1.000000
FullscreenWidth=1920
FullscreenHeight=1200
WindowedWidth=1904
WindowedHeight=1120
Mode=Fullscreen
FullscreenMode=Fullscreen

[Rendering]
GraphicsQuality=3
TextureQuality=3
ShadowQuality=0
RenderDistance=1007.000000
Gamma=0.050000
MaximumFPS=250
UseLod0a=0
OverallQuality=-1
LightingQuality=2
EffectsQuality=1
TerrainQuality=3
FloraQuality=4
ModelQuality=2
VerticalFOV=74
ParticleLOD=0
ParticleDistanceScale=0.650000
FogShadowsEnable=1
MotionBlur=0
VSync=0
AO=0
Smoothing=0
UseFences=0
BloomEnabled=0

[Controls]
CameraAutoAdjustment=1
ClickToMove=0
ClickToMoveRightButton=0
RailCamera=1
MouseSmoothing=0

[Sound]
Master=0.400000
Music=0.000000
Game=0.240000
Dialog=0.270000
UI=1.000000
UseFloat32Output=0
ExclusiveMode=0
HitIndicator=1
LowAmmoIndicator=1
VehicleChatter=1
IdleMusic=1
Maxvoices=96
OutputDeviceName=System Default
UseHighQualityReverb=0

[ImageCapture]
OutputFolder=C:\Users\stone\Pictures\Planetside2
OutputFilePrefix=screenshot.jpg

[VideoCapture]
Resolution=3
Quality=100
WorkingDir=C:\Users\stone\Videos\Planetside2
OutputFile=C:\Users\stone\Videos\Planetside2\PS2Video_0021

[VideoStreamer]
Resolution=1
Fps=30
Kbps=0
MicRecordVolume=0.000000
SpeakerRecordVolume=1.000000
Username=

[Terrain]
RenderFlora=Off

[AutoRefuse]
FriendInvitation=0
DuelInvitation=0
GuildInvitation=0
HideUi=1
TradeRequest=0
HousingInvitation=0
GroupInvitation=0

[General]
AutoDetectPerformanceSettings=0
MouseSensitivity=0.050000
FlightMouseSensitivity=0.470000
FixedMinimap=0
VehicleMouseSensitivity=0.080000
InvertVerticalFly=1
Profanity=0
ReduceInputLag=0
ScopedMouseSensitivity=0.100000
InvertTankSteering=0
ADSMouseSensitivity=0.070000
JoystickSensitivity=1.000000
JoystickDeadzone=0.200000
InvertVerticalLook=0
MouseRawInput=1
ToggleCrouch=0
ZoomToggle=0
SprintToggle=0
DrawHud=1
GamepadSmoothing=1
GamepadSensitivity=0.500000
GamepadInvertLook=0
GamepadInvertFlight=0
GamepadEasyFlight=0
MouseSmoothing=0

I have tried to balance needed settings (to see infiltrators and generally see things). Some values I have increased after reading they were gpu heavy (and I at the time were CPU bound). My mindset is to mix settings to make sure I am never constantly CPU or GPU bound ingame. These settings pretty much makes that happen. That said, I could be wrong and/or have more heavy settings than I need. :)

liamsmithuk wrote:EVGA GTX 760 goes for £189.99 (there's also some cheaper from other brands if you trust them), if that's too much there's some GTX 660 TI's going on ebay for around £135-150 buy it now.. that's probably the best you're going to get low budget

If you wanted to replace your CPU, Mobo & RAM then you're looking at £280 minimum really, but as Phattie said you should be fine with what you have

Thanks man, I'll look around on swedish versions of Ebay. I'm currently hoping to get lucky, but I don't want to commit to a buy until I hear what you guys think. At the moment I would love to just buy a new computer and bam done, reality has it that I will most likely try a friends gpu (which has to be much better ofc) and see what happens, and if improvements show then ill look out for a new/used gpu.

8 RAM and SATA disk enough?

stoneshank wrote:

SoldierBeast wrote:yeah some optimizations with settings, graphicscard driver setting might also have a huge impact. You can do a lot more to impact the graphics performance than cpu. turn off AA, AF, AO, these use a lot of gc power

I'm not sure what all those are, Anti Aliasing I think i got :)

yes anti aliasing (graphic driver panel), anisotrophic filtering (adjust in graphic driver panel), ambient occlusion (set to 0 in useroptions.ini)

also fogshadowsenable=0 should be set to 0

and you might wanna try UseLod0a=1

stoneshank wrote:

liamsmithuk wrote:EVGA GTX 760 goes for £189.99 (there's also some cheaper from other brands if you trust them), if that's too much there's some GTX 660 TI's going on ebay for around £135-150 buy it now.. that's probably the best you're going to get low budget

If you wanted to replace your CPU, Mobo & RAM then you're looking at £280 minimum really, but as Phattie said you should be fine with what you have

8 RAM and SATA disk enough?

8 gig is enough, but I'd recommend a SSD disk, they're very cheap now, you can find some good deals around 60 euros when there're some sales.

A friend that i got a Benq screen available to me for 80 euro (he bought three, noticed that he had aimed a bit too high as he only uses two) said I could get a 120 SSD from him.