<20FPS | RTX 2060 Max-Q | Hoi4 1.9.3 | Sudden Performance Bug

[SupremePox]

I've posted a discussion on the Steam forums as well, however, it has not had any attention, and I'm desperate for a solution.

Hardware:
ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2020
RTX 2060 Max-Q
AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS
1TB SSD
16GB DDR4 RAM

I've been playing Hearts of Iron IV a lot with my laptop. The performance I received was stunning, even on five speed. About a week ago, as I launched the game, I noticed a shift in performance. I was no longer getting desirable performance in the game. I'm receiving between 15-20 FPS while on five speed, and lag spikes on four speed or anything lower. I looked into numerous threads on different forums regarding similar problems with other users. Nothing has solved my problem. I've done countless things to try and resolve this problem. I've reinstalled the game, verified the files, reinstalled Windows 10, followed forum instructions, etc. Nothing appears to work. Task Manager tells me that my CPU is being used less than 20%, and the GPU is being used less than 30%. I'm wondering why it suddenly has changed from the typical high percentage values down to such a low number. The game worked fine one night, and the next it doesn't.

Can anyone help me resolve this problem? I am willing to cooperate and provide assistance on my end if anyone is willing to assist me.

 

[Borsk]

I know that this might be a silly question but are all of your drivers update ? including things like chipset and GPU drivers ? and make sure power plan is set to the AMD High Performance (or whatever they call it for laptops) and if all of that is in order then maybe make a ticket in customer support sub-forum and see if they have any suggestions

 

[SupremePox]

I know that this might be a silly question but are all of your drivers update ? including things like chipset and GPU drivers ? and make sure power plan is set to the AMD High Performance (or whatever they call it for laptops) and if all of that is in order then maybe make a ticket in customer support sub-forum and see if they have any suggestions

Yes, I have made sure to install the latest drivers for my chipset, graphics card, etc. Nothing has made a difference. I've also tried to max out performance with power settings and other AMD and Nvidia control panels. Still no luck. Thanks for clarifying with the question though.

 

[sekelsenmat]

The bad performance occurs even if the computer is cold and you boot it and start the game? My MacBook disallows usage of CPU above a certain level (not sure how much, like 30%) when the CPU is too hot. Maybe Windows also does it? I don't know. For me the game gets absurdly slow when this happens and is lightning fast when the notebook is cold.

Also running other stuff in the background consuming CPU will starve the game of resources. Try to turn off background stuff, maybe even antivirus.

 

[SupremePox]

The bad performance occurs even if the computer is cold and you boot it and start the game? My MacBook disallows usage of CPU above a certain level (not sure how much, like 30%) when the CPU is too hot. Maybe Windows also does it? I don't know. For me the game gets absurdly slow when this happens and is lightning fast when the notebook is cold.

Also running other stuff in the background consuming CPU will starve the game of resources. Try to turn off background stuff, maybe even antivirus.

It's about two months old with minimal use that would get it dusty. I tried looking in background processes but nothing stands out that is using a considerable amount of power. Also, I have a box fan next to the laptop and the internal fans running at turbo. The laptop doesn't get incredibly hot. I do have an AC to try and prove your theory, so I'll give it a shot. Thanks for your input.

 

[XselenS]

I would suspect thermal throttling as well. Easiest way to test this is run HWMonitor in the background, and immediately run HOI4 after your computer boots and loads everything in until it is idle. Play HOI as normal and if and when it lag spikes ALT-TAB to HWMonitor and check the CPU parameters for high temperatures.

That being said your laptop is fairly new, it could be a BIOS issue and you may need to wait for ASUS to post an update. Perhaps the motherboard isn't communicating effectively with single cores in the CPU. I know you said you updated drivers, but have you updated your BIOS?

 

[SupremePox]

I would suspect thermal throttling as well. Easiest way to test this is run HWMonitor in the background, and immediately run HOI4 after your computer boots and loads everything in until it is idle. Play HOI as normal and if and when it lag spikes ALT-TAB to HWMonitor and check the CPU parameters for high temperatures.

That being said your laptop is fairly new, it could be a BIOS issue and you may need to wait for ASUS to post an update. Perhaps the motherboard isn't communicating effectively with single cores in the CPU. I know you said you updated drivers, but have you updated your BIOS?

See, that's the thing. Everything is up to date, including the BIOS. And the weird part, as mentioned before, is that Hoi4 ran fine two weeks ago, and stopped working right one night. I'm going to be uploading a few screenshots of some information regarding performance and other tasks in the background. Maybe it could help? And yes, I am playing with mods on at this moment, however, I've done tests in the base game with no mods on and performance is similar.

 

[XselenS]

See, that's the thing. Everything is up to date, including the BIOS. And the weird part, as mentioned before, is that Hoi4 ran fine two weeks ago, and stopped working right one night. I'm going to be uploading a few screenshots of some information regarding performance and other tasks in the background. Maybe it could help? And yes, I am playing with mods on at this moment, however, I've done tests in the base game with no mods on and performance is similar.

For the sake of testing you cannot use any mods. Anyways, open the "Resource Monitor" and analyze your CPU usage on a per core basis, then upload those screenshots here. I am curious what it shows. Remember, no mods we need to isolate the issue.

 

[SupremePox]

For the sake of testing you cannot use any mods. Anyways, open the "Resource Monitor" and analyze your CPU usage on a per core basis, then upload those screenshots here. I am curious what it shows. Remember, no mods we need to isolate the issue.

Alright, I'll isolate it to the base game and perform the test as you mentioned. It will be much later in the day though, as I'm heading to work. I will respond later on with screenshots.

 

[SupremePox]

For the sake of testing you cannot use any mods. Anyways, open the "Resource Monitor" and analyze your CPU usage on a per core basis, then upload those screenshots here. I am curious what it shows. Remember, no mods we need to isolate the issue.

With base game only, on five speed, and the charger plugged into the laptop for maximum power, these are the results according to Resource Monitor and Task Manager as a general overview.

The results vary from Task Manager and Resource Monitor. According to Resource Monitor, from CPU 0 - 15, 100% is being used, despite it clearly not being, and Task Manager says only 21% of the CPU is being used. Unless I'm stupid and or blind, these are the results I have collected. If I did something wrong or if you would like me to look further into something, give me the request. Thanks!

 

[XselenS]

With base game only, on five speed, and the charger plugged into the laptop for maximum power, these are the results according to Resource Monitor and Task Manager as a general overview.

The results vary from Task Manager and Resource Monitor. According to Resource Monitor, from CPU 0 - 15, 100% is being used, despite it clearly not being, and Task Manager says only 21% of the CPU is being used. Unless I'm stupid and or blind, these are the results I have collected. If I did something wrong or if you would like me to look further into something, give me the request. Thanks!

Something weird is definitely going on here hardware side. I need to see what each core's utilization is though to further troubleshoot this problem. In the resource monitor pictures you only provided pictures of a few of the cores utilization. Can you send multiple pictures that cover every core?

 

[Mousetick]

20 FPS on speed 5 is normal for HOI 4. FPS is not an indicator of performance with this game. The display is only updated at certain times, not in realtime. At speed 5 the game runs as fast as it can (hence why you can see your CPU running at turbo speed, 3.84 GHz, in one of your screenshots), but it doesn't refresh the display faster. If you decrease the game speed gradually from 5 to 1 you'll see the FPS increase (e.g. 40 FPS at speed 3, 60 FPS at speed 1).

Less than 20% CPU utilization at speed 5 is also normal for your setup. You have 16 logical cores, and the game uses a limited set of threads, I don't know the exact number, but closer to 4 or 5 than 16, so even at full speed, it can't utilize more than 4 or 5 cores at 100% out of the 16. If you have 1 CPU core out of the 16 used 100% (and other 15 unused) Windows will report 1/16 = 6.25% CPU utilization, not 100%.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with your laptop or with the game. You have to look more closely at the mods you're using. Steam updates mods at any time, and if you leave it running while AFK it could have updated one or more mods overnight for example, and the next day you played and noticed a difference in performance.

Can you reproduce your 'feeling' of degraded performance (without looking at the FPS or CPU numbers) in vanilla, without ANY mods?

 

[XselenS]

20 FPS on speed 5 is normal for HOI 4. FPS is not an indicator of performance with this game. The display is only updated at certain times, not in realtime. At speed 5 the game runs as fast as it can (hence why you can see your CPU running at turbo speed, 3.84 GHz, in one of your screenshots), but it doesn't refresh the display faster. If you decrease the game speed gradually from 5 to 1 you'll see the FPS increase (e.g. 40 FPS at speed 3, 60 FPS at speed 1).

Less than 20% CPU utilization at speed 5 is also normal for your setup. You have 16 logical cores, and the game uses a limited set of threads, I don't know the exact number, but closer to 4 or 5 than 16, so even at full speed, it can't utilize more than 4 or 5 cores at 100% out of the 16. If you have 1 CPU core out of the 16 used 100% (and other 15 unused) Windows will report 1/16 = 6.25% CPU utilization, not 100%.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with your laptop or with the game. You have to look more closely at the mods you're using. Steam updates mods at any time, and if you leave it running while AFK it could have updated one or more mods overnight for example, and the next day you played and noticed a difference in performance.

Can you reproduce your 'feeling' of degraded performance (without looking at the FPS or CPU numbers) in vanilla, without ANY mods?

Without knowing if at least one core is operating at 100% we cannot determine if this is or isn't a problem.

 

[Mousetick]

Without knowing if at least one core is operating at 100% we cannot determine if this is or isn't a problem.

Sure. But seeing that the CPU is running at increased frequency (turbo in the first batch of screenshots, less so in the second batch) rather than nominal speed is a good indication that at least one of the cores is maxed out.

 

[XselenS]

Sure. But seeing that the CPU is running at increased frequency (turbo in the first batch of screenshots, less so in the second batch) rather than nominal speed is a good indication that at least one of the cores is maxed out.

Yes you are right. But again, without seeing the actual core usage you cannot be certain, you can only assume. It is still possible that the OP's hardware is not handling the software properly due to some sort of driver/bios/software issue.