Tip: Limit FPS to improve performance

[dvnitycker]

I recently discovered that modern graphic cards have so-called "throttling", where they limit GPU performance if the GPU gets hot. This seemed like the cause why my EU4 would become really slow after 10-20 minutes of gameplay, even with limited graphics, so I looked into how to disable this throttling. I didn't find how to do exactly that, but some people recommended to limit FPS in graphic card settings, as some games (such as a board strategy game) didn't need high FPS. I limited mine to 30 fps, and lo and behold, my issues with performane were mostly gone.

I don't play other games on my PC so I made this a global settings, but there are probably ways to localize this to EU4. So if you're struggling with performance, this might help.

 

[gigau]

I recently discovered that modern graphic cards have so-called "throttling", where they limit GPU performance if the GPU gets hot. This seemed like the cause why my EU4 would become really slow after 10-20 minutes of gameplay, even with limited graphics, so I looked into how to disable this throttling. I didn't find how to do exactly that, but some people recommended to limit FPS in graphic card settings, as some games (such as a board strategy game) didn't need high FPS. I limited mine to 30 fps, and lo and behold, my issues with performane were mostly gone.

I don't play other games on my PC so I made this a global settings, but there are probably ways to localize this to EU4. So if you're struggling with performance, this might help.

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Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

For 95% of users, the game will be CPU bound, not GPU bound. Your advice is for people with REALLY poor performing GPUs, like integrated GPUs from laptops from 2010. Everyone else can disregard this.

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

Do people not know basic stuff like this nowadays?

 

[Less2]

For 95% of users, the game will be CPU bound, not GPU bound. Your advice is for people with REALLY poor performing GPUs, like integrated GPUs from laptops from 2010. Everyone else can disregard this.

While I don't have his problem with EU4, this is not how this works. If you have a fast GPU and the FPS is somehow completely uncapped, the game can run at 900 FPS and cause the GPU to overheat (or just work it too hard and cause your fans to be maxed and your room to get hot) because that's what they are designed to do. And even if the GPU doesn't have problems, running that 900 FPS will still add SOME extra CPU overhead per frame, potentially reducing the game speed.

There are actually a lot of games that have this problem. He should probably be capping his FPS at his monitor refresh rate though.

 

[grotaclas]

For 95% of users, the game will be CPU bound, not GPU bound. Your advice is for people with REALLY poor performing GPUs, like integrated GPUs from laptops from 2010. Everyone else can disregard this.

Each rendered frame might also cost some CPU time. so this can still have an impact even if the GPU is not the limit. And there are some indications that (some) notifications in eu4 are recalculated for each frame(or each X frames) and this can be quite CPU intensive in the late game. The following bugreport has an example: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...lties-to-both-tick-rates-and-frame-r.1536273/

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

While I don't have his problem with EU4, this is not how this works. If you have a fast GPU and the FPS is somehow completely uncapped, the game can run at 900 FPS and cause the GPU to overheat (or just work it too hard and cause your fans to be maxed and your room to get hot) because that's what they are designed to do. And even if the GPU doesn't have problems, running that 900 FPS will still add SOME extra CPU overhead per frame, potentially reducing the game speed.

There are actually a lot of games that have this problem. He should probably be capping his FPS at his monitor refresh rate though.

Your GPU shouldn't overheat ever. On stock settings, it's designed to ramp the fans to full power way before it hits the temperature limit.

 

[Less2]

Your GPU shouldn't overheat ever. On stock settings, it's designed to ramp the fans to full power way before it hits the temperature limit.

Shouldn't? Sure. Doesn't mean that either poor drivers, poor silicon quality, unusual GPU utilization patterns, or high ambient temperature can't cause it to still happen. Most of these are going to be out of your control as someone who just buys a GPU and puts it in your PC.

Also you're ignoring the fact that modern GPUs will automatically boost past their stock clock speed, which can be right up against the thermal limit.

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

Shouldn't? Sure. Doesn't mean that either poor drivers, poor silicon quality, unusual GPU utilization patterns, or high ambient temperature can't cause it to still happen. Most of these are going to be out of your control as someone who just buys a GPU and puts it in your PC.

Also you're ignoring the fact that modern GPUs will automatically boost past their stock clock speed, which can be right up against the thermal limit.

GPUs are to standards. Every card has to meet a minimum, and if your card overheats at stock (warranty-eligible) settings, it's faulty, and you should return it.

The second point is because of the first. Most cards will be way above the minimum standard, and they will safely boost up to what they can handle. This is still stock behaviour, and if your card throttles below the advertised base clock, again, it's faulty.

All you're achieving with an FPS cap is (possibly) remove a GPU bottleneck.

You still totally should set a cap at your monitor's refresh rate (most likely 60Hz), because anything above that doesn't actually help you with anything other than giving your monitor a bit more of a render buffer, I guess.

 

[Less2]

GPUs are to standards. Every card has to meet a minimum, and if your card overheats at stock (warranty-eligible) settings, it's faulty, and you should return it.

This literally just isn't the case. Especially in unusual games like EU4 which are stressing the GPU in ways that GPU makers don't expect. It's trivial to code something that will cause your GPU to overheat and start downclocking on a stock cooler. Or maybe your GPU is older and the silicon has degraded such that it has to push more voltage to hit clocks. Or your ambient temperature is 95+ F. Or drivers have an insufficiently aggressive fan ramp by default. Or the rest of your system generates too much heat such that the GPU can't dissipate its as well. Or you're running on a laptop which pretty much automatically means heat issues and a GPU that constantly downclocks to compensate. There's a multitude of real things that can happen to cause heat issues.

I can tell you that I am literally running a GPU right now where I have to manually adjust the fan curve every time I update the driver because there's a sort of midpoint in GPU utilization where the GPU bounces back and forth between a fan % that is too low and too high. It works fine by default if the GPU is constantly at 100% utilization and the fan is always at high speed but in a lot of games I can see stuttering because the fans are not aggressive enough and the clock speed goes back and forth causing the FPS to oscillate which gets very obvious and irritating. The fix is to just force the fan % to a higher level at a lower temperature so GPU clock speed is consistent.

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

This literally just isn't the case. Especially in unusual games like EU4 which are stressing the GPU in ways that GPU makers don't expect. It's trivial to code something that will cause your GPU to overheat and start downclocking on a stock cooler. Or maybe your GPU is older and the silicon has degraded such that it has to push more voltage to hit clocks. Or your ambient temperature is 95+ F. Or drivers have an insufficiently aggressive fan ramp by default. Or the rest of your system generates too much heat such that the GPU can't dissipate its as well. Or you're running on a laptop which pretty much automatically means heat issues and a GPU that constantly downclocks to compensate. There's a multitude of real things that can happen to cause heat issues.

I can tell you that I am literally running a GPU right now where I have to manually adjust the fan curve every time I update the driver because there's a sort of midpoint in GPU utilization where the GPU bounces back and forth between a fan % that is too low and too high. It works fine by default if the GPU is constantly at 100% utilization and the fan is always at high speed but in a lot of games I can see stuttering because the fans are not aggressive enough and the clock speed goes back and forth causing the FPS to oscillate which gets very obvious and irritating. The fix is to just force the fan % to a higher level at a lower temperature so GPU clock speed is consistent.

Bullshit. I have a 6 years old 1060, and it's a blower to boot. Sometimes I forget to re-enable the fan curve in Afterburner after a driver update, and the card will still go way above any advertised speed, in fact it goes even above my overclock, never actually reaching 90c, and the ambient has been consistently above 30c, sometimes above 35c, all summer.

 

[Zaddy]

I'll say this: I have a 170 Hz monitor. If I set the game to borderless windowed (which is required for the game to go above 60 FPS for some god forsaken reason), the game becomes unbelievably choppy and looks more like I'm getting 20 FPS as opposed to the consistent 120+ the Steam FPS counter reports that I'm getting. Setting my framerate back to 60 returns it to (relatively) smooth, normal performance. I definitely have the hardware to run this game well, but SOMETHING weird happens when trying to use higher refresh rates.

My specs:

R5 5600
6800 XT
16 GBs CL16 3600 MHz RAM

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

I'll say this: I have a 170 Hz monitor. If I set the game to borderless windowed (which is required for the game to go above 60 FPS for some god forsaken reason), the game becomes unbelievably choppy and looks more like I'm getting 20 FPS as opposed to the consistent 120+ the Steam FPS counter reports that I'm getting. Setting my framerate back to 60 returns it to (relatively) smooth, normal performance. I definitely have the hardware to run this game well, but SOMETHING weird happens when trying to use higher refresh rates.

My specs:

R5 5600
6800 XT
16 GBs CL16 3600 MHz RAM

This sounds like a vsync issue. Try turning it off in-game, and forcing it through the AMD control panel.

 

[Zaddy]

This sounds like a vsync issue. Try turning it off in-game, and forcing it through the AMD control panel.

Sadly disabling vsync doesn't fix it. Trust me, first thing I tried.

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

Sadly disabling vsync doesn't fix it. Trust me, first thing I tried.

Only other thing I can think of is ticking "disable fullscreen optimisations" in the .exe's properties. Some people have issues with it.

 

[dvnitycker]

For 95% of users, the game will be CPU bound, not GPU bound. Your advice is for people with REALLY poor performing GPUs, like integrated GPUs from laptops from 2010. Everyone else can disregard this.

That's not true. I have a Dell XPS flagship laptop from 2017 with 7th gen i7 CPU and GTX 1050 and the game runs through GPU.

 

[Less2]

Bullshit. I have a 6 years old 1060, and it's a blower to boot. Sometimes I forget to re-enable the fan curve in Afterburner after a driver update, and the card will still go way above any advertised speed, in fact it goes even above my overclock, never actually reaching 90c, and the ambient has been consistently above 30c, sometimes above 35c, all summer.

OK, and? I didn't ask you what your graphics card does.

 

[MachopPower69]

I think Minecraft can do this, and it is very successful. EU4 should have an option to limit FPS

 

[Maxwell Tornado]

OK, and? I didn't ask you what your graphics card does.

Neither did I, but you told me anyway, so I figured I'd return the gesture.

 

[themrspartan]

I looked into how to disable this throttling

Cut out the middleman and toss your GPU into the fireplace