sounds like you need the anti-lag mod now :yep:

yep ,
[config]
RenderAheadLimit=2
FPSlimit=38

I'll try it. It's dead easy to use but it didn't do anything for me in the past. The thing is, there is nothing wrong with my new card, it's running like a champ, I can't believe the difference, it's just that there is a huge difference between what CTRL+F8 tells me and what I'm actually seeing.

If the in-game fps counter was truthful, I should be seeing jerky movement and changes but I'm not. SH5 has never run better. I don't even have horizontal tear when panning like crazy, but still the game insists that I'm only running at 15-20 fps, which is nonsense. I know what that looks like and I'm not seeing that at all. Even with everything cranked up to maximum everything is running smooth no matter what the game is telling me.

Which is why I think that the game doesn't know how to handle DVI interfaces. Because based on what the game tells me about my frame rates I should be hating it, but the actual truth is that it has never looked better. I just can't crank the settings up high enough to make it stutter now, no matter what CTRL+F8 tells me. Which is obviously not a problem, it's just strange.

But I'll run a test on it, just to satisfy my curiosity. I'll try the anti-lag even though I don't need it, and I'll even try to switch it back to the old DVI to VGA adapter and see if the fps fit better with what I'm seeing but, bottom line, I have never seen it run better than it does now no matter what the game tells me. I'm a very happy camper, my new card has changed everything for the better, I just don't understand the disconnect between the game fps counter and what I'm seeing. Because what I'm seeing is a card that I can't push too hard no matter what I try.

It takes everything I throw at it and laughs at it.

I guess what I'm trying to find out is just how informative the fps counter is. Because I'm seeing performance that I couldn't get with a reported fps of 60 on the old card on a reported 20 fps on the new one, and that just doesn't make sense.

If you want to increase even more the dynamic shadows resolution (and kill even more FPS) , change the "HighResolution=1536 " number of the Shadows settings to 5000 or above 5000 and you will see a huge FPS dropping

Ubisoft/Silent Hunter 5/data/Cfg/Shadows

[Shadows]
NumCascades=3
LowResolution=1024
HighResolution=1536

[Interior]
FarPlane=1.0
ExtrudeCamera=5.0
DepthBias=0.0005
DepthSlopeBias=1.0
Split0=0.07
Split1=0.27
Split2=1.0
FilterSizeSplit0=1
FilterSizeSplit1=1
FilterSizeSplit2=1

[Bridge]
FarPlane=15.0
ExtrudeCamera=12.0
DepthBias=0.002
DepthSlopeBias=2.0
Split0=0.07
Split1=0.3
Split2=1.0
FilterSizeSplit0=2
FilterSizeSplit1=1
FilterSizeSplit2=1

[Exterior]
FarPlane=160.0
ExtrudeCamera=50.0
DepthBias=0.0015
DepthSlopeBias=1.0
Split0=0.1
Split1=0.33
Split2=1.0
FilterSizeSplit0=2
FilterSizeSplit1=1
FilterSizeSplit2=1

ctrl+F8 works correctly for me (framerates locked at 60 due to having v-sync on). I don't use the anti-lag mod and have a GTX590.

misha1967: Just read your post about your new 570. Looks like money well spent. Enjoy the performance and SH5 with everything maxed out. Just wondering though what is your cpu clock? Because SH 3/4/5 are very cpu demanding especially when there's lots of things going on (harbours especially). I have 560 Ti slightly oveclocked from 900/1800/4200 to 950/1900/4400, but then I got Core i5 760 2,8 GHz set to 4,0 GHz. Nothing special since Intel Core family cpu overclocking is a piece of cake (in most cases) and there are much bigger beasts than my Core i5 760. But with default clock I can be easily minus 10, 12 fps in cpu demanding situations. At 4 GHz everything is butter smooth well few hickups here and there when I load the game first time and walk through the sub first time. After that no problem whatsoever. I have antilag in the game folder set to 45 fps and that's it. I am very immersion addict player, when something's not running the way I want I just don't play it at all. My opinion is that fps hunting is nonsense. The task of a day is to make the game run smooth according to the preferences of the player. !PREFERENCES OF THE PLAYER! So when you say you had 30+ fps with your old card and it was fine for YOU I totally understand. Because I'm same at this point. Of course when something runs at 60 V-Sync On it's good. But with the settings possibilities of the games, settings in control panel of gpu and other utilities it is possible to bring to life nearly any game today. And if anyone tells me that anything below 60 fps is not sufficient then I don't listen, because it's not true (ok, MP player need high fps). I played Fallout 3 in 37-38 frames locked in ini file and I enjoyd 198 hours playthrough. But guess what - I had this framerate in any possible situation, my whole living room could explode and I still had the constant framerate. And for me that's one of the main reasons why I enjoyed it so much. No immersion brakers, no 'what ifs', no switching to menu in the middle of action etc etc. Same with SH now. 45 fps when leaving Kiel, 45 fps when refitting in Wilhelmshaven, 45 fps when being depthcharged and watching it with camera under water...and that's it. Maybe focus on your cpu clock a bit (no harm to oc it little bit especially when you play SH), lock your frames in antilag or nV Inspector, with your 570 maybe you'll be able to go to 50 or even higher. The point is to set the fps limit to the in-game MINIMUM. Than you'll enjoy clean gameplay with no surprises. All right then, I can see that we're two talkative skippers here:yep:

Sink them all:salute:

Tell me about it! :haha: Everybody I know will say that the biggest problem with me isn't to get me to talk, it's to get me to shut up again once I get started :haha:

Anyway, I know by now that it's the in-game fps counter that is confused by my setup, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with the card. If I go to options and turn off everything, and I do mean everything that can be turned off in-game, including zeroing out particle density and environment details, the fps doesn't budge by as much as a frame. It stays ticking along at about close to 30 fps just as it does with everything cranked up to awesome, and the subjective measurement tells me no difference as well. Still smooth as silk, and that's just not possible. There has to be a difference between "all max" and "all off" if the counter is working properly.

Not that this is a "problem." All I care about is that it looks, runs and feels right and boy does it ever. With everything cranked up it is running, by my eyes' measurement, way way higher than 30 no matter what, so who cares what the counter says?

I think I've also sussed out what causes the confusion for the counter. When I switched to pure DVI instead of the adapter, nVidia Control Panel installed a new display setting and switched to it, called "HD 1080i, 1920x1080", as opposed to the old setting with a DVI to VGA adapter, which was "1920x1080 (native)". Also, I can't switch to the old setting anymore. Well, I can, but the Control Panel automatically reverts to the new one whether I accept the old setting or not. Also, and I think that's the real clue here, the new DVI setting that nVidia insists on using now has a refresh rate of, wait for it, 29Hz, as in "29 refreshes per second." Which, when I think about it, is remarkably similar to the "about 30fps" that the counter insists that I'm running in no matter what my lying eyes tell me :03:

I suppose I could confirm by slapping the DVI to VGA adapter back on the card and hooking up my monitor that way but, hey, I'm not sure I even care. OK, I probably will out of silly curiosity, but it's certainly not because I'm concerned or bothered by anything. :DL

EDIT: OK, now I know that something happened to make my CTRL+F8 delusional :haha: I couldn't help myself, so I went back to the VGA adapter just to check it out, and it didn't change a thing. FPS doesn't change a bit no matter how much I play with the settings, and at all settings it runs like a champ. Also, when I went to the nav map (F3) and used TC, my FPS dropped to single digits above TC128, however, it didn't change the actual performance one bit. And I know from previous experience when I'd messed up my mod soup something fierce in the past, that if FPS are in single digits on the nav map, then the controls are sluggish, the movement of your sub stuttery and your keyboard doesn't respond instantly to changes in TC. In this case, however, none of that happened. Still smooth and responsive as ever, even though CTRL+F8 reports frame rates from the 1980s :haha:

I have no idea what I did that caused this, nor is it really that important as everything is running famously well, I guess I'll just have to stop paying attention to what the silly FPS counter is trying to tell me :03:

OK, I'm completely at a loss here
 

I've tried everything I could think of. Re-installing the graphics drivers, re-installing the game, even replacing all of my mods with "clean" ones from download, but this thing keeps acting strange.

(EDIT: It shows the same behavior in "stock" mode prior to enabling any mods, although with a higher FPS, but it still shows no response to changes in graphics settings).

I can't for the life of me push the FPS above 20-30 with high activity and, what is even more strange, I can turn the detail on the options screen in-game up and down from "all low" to "all high" without even the slightest change in FPS. It's as if the game completely ignores my input.

I also checked NVIDIA control panel to make sure it didn't have any overrides, and it doesn't, so everything should be controlled from within the game.

Oh, and I tried anti-lag too. No change from that either other than my mouse moves "jaggedly" when it's enabled. The FPS are unchanged.

:hmmm:

Misha, I hope I'm not missing the point here. But from what I've read it still seems to me that your 570 needs more juice from the cpu. My previous card was 275 combined with Core2Duo E6600 at 2.4 GHz stock clock. I've installed 275 and the boost was not exactly what I've expected. So I've oc'd my cpu one day to 3.24 GHz (anything beyond was unstable + I didn't have sufficient cooling back then). And after that I got performance boost from gpu I was finally happy with.

Then I've upgraded cpu to Core i5 running at 2.8 GHz stock and with Turbo Boost function it's running at some 3.4 (not sure right now and I don't care - will explain later). And 275 performed even better. I was already happy with the boost I got from oc'd Cor2Duo, but this Core i5 took it up couple of notches again.

And finally few months later I bought 560 Ti. Again the gpu performance boost was more than noticable, but I thought there's no harm to squezze the maximum out of my rig. Got the new and bigger case, bought decent cpu cooler and oveclocked Core i5 from 2.8 to 4.07 GHz. New case, new cooler, Turbo Boost Off so it's 4.07 GHz all the time. Temperatures in idle around 40 C°, heavy load around 70 C°. 560 Ti nails anything I throw at her within some reasonable settings of course. I play all my games in 1920x1080 so no need to go crazy with FSAA, but still even this SH5 runs with everything maxed out with 4XFSAA (not sure about the value, but I have that FSAA in-game slider in 3/4 to the right, or could be 4/5? Definitely above above 50% of its range).

I do have noticable framerate differences when I adjust different settings which means the gpu has enough cpu power you know? Because when fiddling with settings and not noticing any framerate differences that's a sign of weak cpu in most cases. And especially in case of SH. It is very cpu demanding game, there's lots of things going on not only around harbours. I'm no programmer or developer, but I can imagine that the engine still has to generate certain events, shipping movement etc. even we don't see it on the screen. My suggestion is that your Phenom X4 is not enough for 570.

I think you're on to something there, Swat.

It would make sense, after all. In that case it would be a matter of the GPU sitting around waiting for the CPU.

Hmmm... Before I crank open the case and start plopping in new CPUs or even (shudder), start from the bottom and put a new MoBo in there, I think I'll hit the CPU with some OC to see if that makes a diff. If it does, then I've identified the problem. If it makes enough of a diff (and the CPU is still stable), then there's no problem :DL

Thanks for the tip, Swat! :up:

So far, Swat, it looks like you nailed it!

I guess I should have thought about that, the Phenom 9850 is getting a bit old in the tooth (I could've sworn it was a II), but I'm so old that I'm not used to the CPU being the bottleneck. It used to be that programmers couldn't throw enough at the CPU to tax it (unless it was really, really old), so upgrading usually meant putting in a new GPU and some extra RAM. Those were the days :O:

You're right. SH5 really is CPU intensive. It's also the most beautiful sim I've ever seen.

Anyway, I OC'ed the CPU and managed to squeak it up to almost 2.9GHz (I tried for higher, but that bricked the box :eek:. A bit of CPR brought it back, though), which helped quite a bit. It can get me out of Kiel in the middle of rush hour with both OHII and DynEnv enabled without going below 20FPS and staying comfortably around 25 to 28 most of the time. Outside of port it's smooooth sailing, and I'm not planning to have any naval battles in Kiel anyway. I think the OKM might disapprove.

The OC seems quite stable, I ran SH5 for 3 hours without a hiccup, so I think (touch wood) that I'm good. I guess I'll just have to build a new box around the 570 one day :03:.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :salute:

Just another random thought Misha - just noticed this in the OHII thread:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=829
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=830
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=832


Looks like running the screen capture (intentionally or not) will also give your fps a good kicking as it tries to snap each frame. If your SH5 folder looks like the one in that first link, it might be that - seems CTRL-F11 takes a single screenshot, while SHIFT-F11 starts the screen capture, where it runs until it's switched off by the same key combination.

I never use those keys, but it does occur to me if you're using F8 etc for fps counter, maybe you hit SHIFT-F11 by accident, started the capture (since it only occurred at the end of your patrol) and seen the frames drop?

CPU explanation is also very likely - you want a Core i5 to get the best out of the GTX570 - but figured it couldn't hurt to check this too :salute:

Misha1967: Glad I could help. Now take this as my personal opinion. First I tell you that I'm no particular fan of AMD or Intel. I just want performance and whichever cpu performs better and will be within my financial capabilities then I'll buy it, no matter whether it is AMD or Intel. Honestly your new 570 would deserve some more 'easy going' cpu brother. Because now it seems that all that 570 performance is not available to you. And you've payed for that right? You've payed for performance. Obviously it's non of my concern how much you can afford to spend for some new cpu. But if you decide for cpu upgrade then go for Intel in these days. AMD is cheaper indeed, but you can get Intel's for some reasonable prices today and it will be proper performer for 570. And overclocking of Intel cpu's with some average cooler is easier than you would think. After that I believe that 570 will send that sub off the screen ramming your face. No really it's a shame running this game at 30 fps when you have 570 under the hood. (I mean 'hood, not Hood'):arrgh!:.

Edit: I wouldn't even go for Core i5 that I have any more. I guess Orpheus above me also meant Core i5-2500, you'll be more than happy with that one. Maybe you will not even have to touch it, but if you overclock it little bit then I can guarantee that 570 will go berserk.

A good AMD Phenom II X4 or X6 will do it justice also :yep:

Been running AMD for over 15 years. I love the underdog because it's always cheaper ;) My 590 had no problems with an X4 when I was using that CPU.

Yeah, sorry, should have made that more clear. An i5 2500 is basically the best gaming CPU (for the price point) at the moment (I don't know about AMD systems though). Pretty much every mag, website and personal recommendation I've seen has been for the 2500 - great stability and good overclocking.

I have a Core i5 750 overclocked to 3.6gig, and it's holding up well, but I think I'll probably move up to the 2500 in a year or so. Copes with SH5 and my 570 just fine though. :up: