Performance on a recent system

[minimii]

Hello togehter,

I am just wondering.

I got a PC with good specs (Ryzen 5700X, 32GB DDR4-3800 and RTX4090) but in some missions with many light sources I have high GPU utilization or even drops below 60fps.

CPU util is low.

My Monitor is an ultrawide wth 5120x1440 @ 60hz, FPS capped to 60fps.

Is there a trick ? 

[nbohr1more]

What TDM version?

Is "Frontend Acceleration" enabled in the Advanced Video menu?

You may want to try increasing to jobs_numThreads 4 in the console.

Also try:

tdm_lg_interleave 3

tdm_lg_interleave_min 6

Which missions?

What OS version?

What is AA set to ? ( 16x MSAA is still really expensive in this engine so we recommend using 8x or forcing AA in your drivers )

See also:

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance_Tweaks

for performance tweaking options.

[minimii]

@nbohr1more 

Thank you. It is version 2.11

The wiki side I already have seen.

I will try your parameters this evening, all through console ?

jobs_numThreads 4 

tdm_lg_interleave 3

tdm_lg_interleave_min 6

 

Regarding your other questions:

Which missions?

--> The Thomas Porter Series and "To catch a thief". There I have the most drops / stutter

What OS version?

--> Windows 11

What is AA set to ? ( 16x MSAA is still really expensive in this engine so we recommend using 8x or forcing AA in your drivers )

--> Youre right. Of cause I used the maximum, 16x. I will consider reducing this after trieing out the parameters you mentioned.

 

I must be something about the engine, right ? Becuase: raw performance should be there, in my system

 

Edited May 15 by minimii

[nbohr1more]

Thank you!

Yes, all the recommended changes you highlighted would be changed via the console. Typically invoking CTRL+ALT+~ ( tilde ) to open the console.

Yes, AA is quite expensive, especially in Stencil Shadow mode where fillrate is heavily consumed. I guess I should also suggest that you try "Maps" for Shadow Mode in the advanced menu.

To improve shadow map quality, you should set:

r_shadowMapSize 1440

and enable single pass shadow maps for better performance too:

r_shadowMapSinglePass 1

[HMart]

33 minutes ago, minimii said:

Hello togehter,

I am just wondering.

I got a PC with good specs (Ryzen 5700X, 32GB DDR4-3800 and RTX4090) but in some missions with many light sources I have high GPU utilization or even drops below 60fps.

CPU util is low.

My Monitor is an ultrawide wth 5120x1440 @ 60hz, FPS capped to 60fps.

Is there a trick ? 

That is slightly less than 4k but imo is still a really a high rez, specially for this engine, that is ~7.3 million pixels that the engine has to calculate/shade, per pixel 60 times or more, every second! also why MSAA (multisampling anti-alising) can be very expensive on this engine, it increases pixel count.

So like nbohr1more said, if you have it on, lower it or better disable MSAA, at that rez IMO you don't need it anyway and it has no effect on geometry faces/surfaces, only on geometry edges and if you really want AA, also like nbohr1more said, force a post process one (FXAA or better if possible TAA) using the Nvidia driver.

You can also try to lower the rendering scale and increase the sharpening filter to counter balance the loss of definition in the video options menu.   

About the CPU the fact you have low CPU utilization and high GPU utilization, shows you are getting GPU bound in this case, so increasing thread count in the game console, I don't think will help but try it.

Btw sorry if you already know this but if you don't, at lest may explain to you why this "old" game, is so heavy even for your modern very expensive GPU, this game uses a modified Doom 3 engine, with better support for multicore CPU's and other modern stuff making it way faster than original Doom 3 engine, but is still using the old forward render and unlike more modern renders like deferred render or forward+, that can render hundreds of (non shadow casting) dynamic lights, before getting slow, a old forward render like of Doom3/TDM, can get really slow with a relatively low number of dynamic lights in a scene, worse if they all cast shadows, and on this game all lights are fully dynamic and in many missions most of them cast shadows, real time shadows, there's no light baking of any kind.

 

[nbohr1more]

OH!!!

You have FPS set to Capped under the Advanced Menu eh?

Doom 3's old capped FPS mode is "not great".

Try setting it to Uncapped then set Max FPS to 60. ( Both under the advanced video options )

Normally this only helps on Linux but perhaps Windows 11 has the same problem.

[minimii]

Thank you very much.

I will try out your both suggestions this eve.

I am aware of the old engine, But still suprised how much load it takes

[minimii]

A one more Thing: Console should be "^"

I am a german krauter, normaly Its that key.

Edited May 15 by minimii

[minimii]

@nbohr1more@HMart

I tried all settings.

It did not change much.

Only the AA set to 8x resulted in siginificant less load.

But I tried one other thing. Through exzessive Skyrim modding I have some experience with Reshade. I just downloaded it and activated a few default effects without an extra profile.

Its a quiet good topping. I think I like the HDR effect.

One example (I had to cut the pictures because of the size)

WITH HDR through Reshade

Without

 

Or:

WITH

 

WITHOUT

Edited May 15 by minimii

[chakkman]

4 hours ago, minimii said:

@nbohr1more@HMart

Only the AA set to 8x resulted in siginificant less load.

16x AA is a complete hog in TDM for some reason. I also lowered it to 8x, and got about double the frame rate.

[minimii]

Yes.

The other settings did not change a lot.

Changing from stencil top map on the shadow settings resulted in more GPU load, but visually no difference for me.

I played one level (pearls and swine) yesterday with AA to 8x and with Reshade activated, that was pretty fine. In the mansion there are a few light sources and performance was still good.

 

[HMart]

14 hours ago, chakkman said:

16x AA is a complete hog in TDM for some reason. I also lowered it to 8x, and got about double the frame rate.

MSAA   is heavy specially at 16x because is more or less a type of super sampling (rendering the scene at higher rez than displayed), but unlike the later is way faster, but like SSAA, MSAA still increases pixel count.

6 hours ago, minimii said:

Yes.

The other settings did not change a lot.

Changing from stencil top map on the shadow settings resulted in more GPU load, but visually no difference for me.

I played one level (pearls and swine) yesterday with AA to 8x and with Reshade activated, that was pretty fine. In the mansion there are a few light sources and performance was still good.

 

Yes i'm not surprised AA was the main culprit good it was not something else. 

Btw Stencil shadows are mostly CPU based, shadow maps are GPU based and because you were already GPU bound, changing to to maps wouldn't make any diference, perhaps even make it worse, because maps are normally slower than stencil, thou today because of some exclusive effects to maps, I would recommend them to everyone.

[nbohr1more]

I am not sure but I believe that ReShade offers a temporal or morphological AA solution which might be much cheaper than using in-game MSAA.

Given your high screen resolution, I am surprised that 8x MSAA isn't sufficient.

One thing that MSAA doesn't cover is shader aliasing and transparency so cranking up to 16x won't help there. If ReShade doesn't have the needed options, you can also try forcing AA in your Nvidia driver settings. People complain about the blurry nature of FXAA but with really high pixel DPI it should have minimal degradation to image clarity.

Try setting MSAA to 4x and forcing FXAA for transparency coverage and see if the results are acceptable.

 

Depending on your aptitude with ReShade settings you might prefer it's SSAO and lighting mods... but I will humbly submit that you can improve the sense of scene depth with my own Fresnel Mod:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/addons/fresnel-mod-211-unofficial

 

Also you can achieve something similar to the ReShade HDR by modifying the r_postprocess cvars :

https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Advanced_TDM_Visuals_Tweaking

Setting r_postprocess_colorCurveBias to something like 0.2 or 0.25 should make the game look more like your ReShade screens but obviously ReShade has many more customization options for color behavior so you have more control there ( with some additional expense due to increased shader parameters ).

Note: Some options from that article are gone in favor of a newer bloom implementation controlled by r_bloom settings.

[chakkman]

37 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

Given your high screen resolution, I am surprised that 8x MSAA isn't sufficient.

Dunno how it is on other screens, but, 8x MSAA is perfectly fine here, on a 24" 1080p display. That said, I'm not really that demanding in terms of AA anyway.

Edited May 16 by chakkman

[minimii]

I think 8x is enough.

Togehter with the activated reshade Settings i like the visuals quality a lot.

Only picture frames on the Walls or similar Things Look better with 16x AA compared to 8x.

 

@HMartlike I said: I could not see a big difference between stencil and maps, so I Stick to stencil. That worth about 100W GPU Power i the worst Case I have Seen yesterday oO

@nbohr1more Looked At Fresnel. Tha should be the next cool addition.

After patching TDM it must be redone, right?

Patching TDM is another Point.

I think a simple file copy of the DIR will work for a Backup?

Edited May 16 by minimii

[nbohr1more]

Yes, I create new fresnel mod versions for each TDM release ( latest being 2.11 ).

You can copy your whole darkmod directory for backup but all you really need to backup for the Fresnel Mod is tdm_base01.pk4

[HMart]

41 minutes ago, minimii said:

 

@HMartlike I said: I could not see a big difference between stencil and maps, so I Stick to stencil. 

I comprehend but you do lose volumetric effects with stencil but only the really recent missions have volumetric lights.

Btw In reality there's a big difference between what shadow maps are capable off and stencil maps are capable off, unfortunately because of backwards compatibility with old missions and the fact that for a long time, only stencil was available, TDM team add to limit shadow mapping capabilities mostly to what stencil can do.

[minimii]

Installed the fresnel mod.

Looks good