M18x and Crysis 3 Performance Thread

Just thought I'd post up my findings thus far. I haven't played a huge amount as of yet - about 15 minutes or so. I am using Stock gpu clocks and voltage, cpu level 3. Default NV control Panel. Game settings are all maxed out with the exception of MSAA x2 and Blur disabled &vsync on. Running on my internal to keep things comparable at 1920x1080. So far, the game looks pretty damn good to me.

I would say that I've been averaging around the 45+ mark, some exceptions (as pointed out already) seem to be FPS drop (first kill) and shortly after where there is lots of rain/water/fog etc. (the point where there are big containers hanging from chains, swaying in the rain and fog - if I look up at them, FPS nose dive time) - I noticed that gpu utilization does drop in those instances to around 40% and frame rates plummet to 10-12fps.

Same goes for cut scenes, gpu utilization goes right down and FPS drops, consequently, stuttering and pretty awful. Those instances are split-second and as soon I am past them (or look away) FPS returns to a fairly respectable rate with no overclocking.

I've got a little bit past where you shoot down your first helicopter (yay for explosive arrows!) an FPS have gone up to a pretty constant 59.9. I haven't noticed any lag or stutter whatsoever (apart from those cut scenes and other scenarios mentioned) up to now. The game seems to play very well maxed out for me with those settings. Game play seems fluid enough to me - I haven't felt like "OMG - this sucks big style" yet......I wonder why there seems to be a wide variation for fellow 680m owners here.....I mean, I've got the same hardware under the hood....quite baffling.

Most of the time, gpu utilization is showing as around 97% for each card - temps for me are about mid 60c max for gpu's & cpu max 70c.

That's it - no tweaks, just plain Jane settings with no 3rd party apps. Pretty much "plugged 'n' played" this title so far.

As above, seems to running (for me) at around "advertised" performance levels. I'd like to see the utilization problem fixed, as and when, but for the time being, It's been a pretty good experience thus far for me, especially as the retail version has only been out a few days.....

 

Crysis 3 is definitely the new Crysis in terms of "making your PC cry for mercy".

Have to admit, I'm shocked at this development. I didn't expect to see an SLI 680M setup need ANYTHING turned down for at least another year.

 

Crysis 3 is certainly demanding, as all Crysis games have been, but it probably doesn't represent a limitation for 680M or 7970M. As mentioned previously, we suspect it is more of a driver optimization issue, or a game patch will cure this. The GPUs are being under-utilized rather than maxed out. Since we are only 5 days past retail release, it's too early to predict what kind of experience will follow in time. I expect it will improve for both red and green cards.

 

Well, maybe it's just a matter of waiting for the game to be optimized a bit better etc. It's still very early days yet - if you recall when Crysis 2 released, there were several large patch files for hi-res textures etc that made the game the great game it is. Of course, right now, it seems that Crysis 3 favours AMD gpu's more so, but that doesn't surprise me one bit when you see an AMD splash screen upon launching the game! - with Crysis 2, it was a TWIMTBP game....apparently, Crysis 3 is not, otherwise we'd be seeing the Nvidia splash screen upon loading - meaning it's AMD optimized, in my eyes.

Saying that, the only things I "dropped" down, if you like, were AA from max of 8x to 2x and I also turned off Blurring as I don't really like the effect that much. Everything else was as high as it can go - very high! - to be getting the FPS I am doing right now, with obvious under-optimization (and no gpu overclock) only goes to show that this title will be smooth as butter in (hopefully) a short time frame......it's not like it's crippling 680m Sli whatsoever. Even if I enable everything possible to maximum, I still seem to be able to play it at a decent enough frame rate to enjoy it - with a bit of an overclock, I imagine I can transfer the game over to my 2560x1600 U3011 and let rip

I reckon after a few tweaks here and there, 680m SLI will max this sucker out at a constant 60fps with everything enabled - the whole shebang. - I can live with not having a constant 60fps to play a game....to me, far lower fps can be enjoyed just as much but with more graphical detailing.

 

Crysis 2 gameplay is amazing with 7970M CF and 680M SLI. It is still my favorite of all games. I found that FPS is a little bit higher with 7970M CF, but the gameplay is much smoother and the environment looks much better under 680M SLI. Even with a slightly higher framerate, 7970M had some evidence of stutter. The 680M SLI does not have noticeable stuttering, anti-aliasing is better and colors are more vibrant.

 

I'm a proud 7970 guy, Crysis 3 is truly amazing!!! All settings maxed except blur, vsync on and Im seeing avg 57 fps. I only monitor GPU stats with new games, and with out looking I wouldn't even know that I was below the 60FPS vsync max. Way to go AMD and crytek. I still haven't found a game that stresses this beast yet.

 

Thanks for sharing stevejones. I believe that some people are having more issues than others because even if the engine under the hood is the same, every machine is "different," and every device is a story on its own.

Aside from trying to get rid of a general under-performance that seems to be affecting this game (the now infamous poor GPU utilization) I focused my tinkering on trying to reduce the lag present in combat (that's what the game is about after all) and while looking at heavily textured-loaded objects. Since the moment I loaded the game I haven't felt the 'OMG this suck' kind of rage either. Rather, I wanted and want to really find a way to enjoy Crysis 3 at its best, because I really love the series, and this last installment totally deserves it

We will get there

 

Indeed we will! - I'm not gonna get overly engrossed in the game right now because I want to enjoy it at it's best and not have to replay it when fixes have been made. Overall, right now, the experience on 680m Sli I would say is good, just not as brilliant as it could be with the right correctional measures. I'll play a bit more, but nothing major because I too love the Crysis saga and it warrants to be played TWIMTBP! LOL

 

So, Crytek released their Official CVAR configurator, which allows to adjust, and go beyond, the in-game basic graphics settings. Below are a few screenshots of the program and the direct link where to download it.

CRYSIS 3 CVAR Configurator LINK

 

Just thought I would cross-post this over here for comparative purposes. Maybe you've seen it, maybe not, but Brother Quagmire made the footage below with his M17x R4 with 7970m. I watched it and don't think I saw utilization drop anywhere near as badly as it does for the 680m Sli camp. Here, check it out for yourselves - one point in which I get drop in utilization is at around 1m 35s in......(of course, FPS in the footage is not representative of actual performance, as he points out in the annotations - if you click the annotation link, you will see his actual FPS is half what is shown in the clip below, due to an Afterburner glitch)

 

Interesting you bring that up, Stevie. Afterburner might be counting frames that are there, but should not be counted. I was recently reading a couple of articles about the fallacy of placing too much stock on frame rates and it help put things in perspective and explain some things I have seen but not understood. When I was working on the article with 5150Joker to compare 680MSLI and 7970M CF, we saw examples of this and it did not make a lot of sense to us. Even with a lower frame rate SLI is typically smoother than CF and has less stutter in most cases. This is very noticeable in 3DMark11, especially in Graphics Test 4. It's choppy with CrossFire and smooth with SLI even when the frame rate is less. As it turns out, CrossFire can sometimes appear to have a higher frame rate due to the addition of small frames which are useless and not even visible, which also seems to contribute to stuttering. They have some pretty amazing hardware they are using to explore this phenomenon. It looks like the days of defining performance purely based on FPS may be numbered.

Here are a couple of links that may be of interest.

Frame Rating: A New Graphics Performance Metric | PC Perspective

Frame Rating Part 2: Finding and Defining Stutter | PC Perspective

 

Just sayin 7970 is running crisis 3 perfect, funny how the tide has changed...

 

That's one game. Doesn't turn the tide at all. Nvidia is still far more reliable across the board.

 

Guys, let's not make this another VS. thread, please. I'm glad that AMD owners are lately enjoying more stability and have been able to play Crysis 3 without hassle, it was a much needed break.

As for us NVIDAonians, we will get there with this game. Personally, as I've already stated a few times, using the tips and tricks showed in this thread, I'm playing basically with all maxed out. Last night I installed Crysis 3 CVAR Configurator (link is a few post above this), which I used to further optimize the game. I gave it a try and was able to play with vsync on with Shadows and Shadowing set on very high, therefore virtually "fixing" my in-game stutter issues. Only "problem" still remain the GPU usage that stays lower than expected, which doesn't really bother me much since the game has the graphics cranked up and it plays smooth.




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^^^^^ I agree. About time that team red caught a break. Long overdue, and I am happy for anyone who can play whatever title they want with whatever gpu they have. Having fun is all that matters at the end of the day.

Rafix, maybe you wanna share your settings for the CVAR Configurator (unless those on the previous page ARE the settings you are using) - there's an awful lot of boxes there that I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, wouldn't really know what to change or by how much for optimal performance - of course, not everyone will benefit from identical settings but would be handy to know as a benchmark. Also, like you said, as long as the gameplay is smooth and enjoyable and not stuttering and lagging all over the place, that's all that matters really again. The only thing bugging me right now are the cut scenes which are like watching a bad slideshow. I know they aren't gameplay but I would still like to see them at their best.

On a side note, I tested it out on my U3011 Today for a little while - again, stock gpu/level 3 and everything maxed (blur off, MSAA x2) but running full native resolution of 2560x1600, and I was pleasantly surprised that I seemed to be averaging just over 30fps outside (where you get the mega-gun and blow up that tower) and it didn't dip below 24-ish (cut scenes not included). The gameplay itself was smooth and no sign of jitter/lag/stuttering at all. It was an enjoyable session of gaming and I can say I was not disheartened at all - the FPS counter can say what it likes - as long as I am having a good time LOL

 

Exactly, steviejones. We shall never forget that ALL of us are proud M18X owners--we are a family basically and shouldn't be arguing over whose card is the most butt-kicking one. We better focus our effort in finding ways to enjoy our product in the best way possible also by helping each other.

Today I played again with all maxed out (still using FXAA and medium motion blur) with core clock 1006 / memory clock 1025, using cvar configurator and noticed that GPU utilization spiked to 70/80%. During cut scenes fps drops to 30-40ish actually, but it doesn't bother me much; what counts the most is a smooth gameplay.

Stevie, as far as cvar configurator goes I'm using the settings showed in my screens, aside from Field of View that I set back to 60--80 was giving me motion-sickness . With those settings fps stay locked to 59/60 most of the time with a slight "dip" toward 50/55 during heavy loaded and busy scenes, but never losing too much smoothnessm such as those scenes were you jump around shooting all over like crazy while several calamari target you like there's no tomorrow). However, I'm sure that trying more settings and combinations in cvar conf we might be able to set things even better. As soon as I find some time, maybe later today I will make a video and post it, so we can see where we're at with this.

 

Excellent, mate. I'll look forward to watching it when you get the time. :thumbsup:

 

Well Rafix, after what I said in previous posts about Crysis working between 40-60 I somewhat take it back. This was for multiplayer, but I noticed in singleplayer it was a whole different story. The fps in singleplayer runs from 20-41 and struggles quite a bit.

 

chewbakaats58, you may want to try the various tips and settings we shared in this thread. You may want to start with using d3doverrider and force vsync and triple buffering. In game settings crank all up aside from shadows and shadowing and set Fxaa. Let me know.


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Yeah I'll have to play around with the settings a little bit. Don't really play singleplayer as much, so not really a big deal. I was already running everything on High settings with FXAA enabled. Multiplayer runs great..but I think the extra graphic enhancements in singleplayer is what is killing it.

 

OK, folks. Here's a video of some Crysis 3 gameplay after applying all the tips and tricks we've been discussing so far. As you will see at the end of the video graphics are maxed out, even the resource-eaters Shadows and Shadowing + FXAA. I recorded with Afterburner 2.3.0. I'm sorry about the grainy look, but I wanted to record a few minuets of gameplay during a boss fight and had to compress the video since full quality would have been too big (long upload time) and wanted to show this today. Unfortunately the video is so grainy that Afterburner OSD is not always clear. However, watching the video you can see that all is quite smooth and there's no major stuttering; reason why I chose a quite busy fighting scene to show what, after applying a few settings, these cards can do. If this is not enough I can post another one in higher quality.

 

Was that at stock clocks?

 

No, core +250 (1008mhz) and memory +350 (1025mhz) with evga precision x.


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Interestingly low memory overclock there! Any reason for that?

 

Yes. I'm still under an overclock testing phase and I'm taking baby steps to find optimal OC and stability balance


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I got to about +730mhz on the memory at stock voltage.

A quick pencil mod later took me to about 850mhz to give you an idea where my sample got to.

 

+730 over stock memory clocks? quite impressive

I'm taking it slow as my overclocks is mainly focused on game-play improvements (I don't benchmark), and I just try to implement OC that a game can actually use and benefit from.

 

Well the stock memory clocks are very low so run some tests with some slightly more aggressive memory clocks and I think you will see the FPS rise. It should not raise the heat too much either.

 

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, I'm still testing and raising the clocks taking small steps, but I plan on ending up with higher memory clocks. Thanks for your input Meaker :thumbsup:

 

Wow, do you actually see gains with that kind of memory overclock on stock voltage? Once I hit +500, anything higher is pretty much a waste. That's overvolted, too lol.

 

I can barely run this game at 30FPS on a mixture of Very High and High on my single 680m at 1920x1080.... Surely an SLI 680m doesn't give more than double the performance?

Using my card at stock clocks and I'm starting to think that that really isn't enough....

 

It depends on driver support, and from what I can tell at this point is the new WHQL is better optimized for SLI than single cards. Maxed out with 2xMSAA I get mostly 60fps with occasional drops to 45.

Try overclocking and setting everything to high instead of very high. It should run pretty well on those settings.

 

Vitor711, you should download the last nvidia drivers, and work a bit on optimizing your game settings. You may also want to download and use Crysis 3 CVAR Configurator Tool and try playing with it. I'd suggest to start maxing out the graphics settings in Crysis menu, deselect most of the options in CVAR Conf tool, play the game and see how it goes, and work your way up by adding one option after another inside the cvar tool. I know it can be frustrating (trust me I feel your pain), but don't get discouraged, be patience, and tinker a bit with your settings until you'll find a configuration that works well for you. Besides, we are all here to help.

 

I can't believe people are having problems with crysis 3. I running gtx460m's in sli with a 2630qm i7 in my alienware m18x. I can play with everything very high, no motion blur, and 2x msaa on and get 30-40 fps. If it can be turned on its on.:thumbsup:

Besides that i get artifacts on the first level they look like silver half domes. Seems to be only that level.

 

The more I hear of the wild swings in user experience, the more it sounds like an immature game that needs more work before it's ready for everyone. With 2630QM and two 460M performing that well, it clearly has nothing to do with hardware performance. Thanks for posting... that gives some useful insight on the nature of the issue.

What driver are you using with your 460M SLI setup?

 

Something definitely isn't right. Running everything max with AA x2 and motionblur off I get 28-60 frames at the beginning of campaign. I don't really like the up and downs in performance.
It might get better further into the campaign but its not encouraging me to play it that far.
Inside the ship at the start was mostly 60+ with dirty spikes down during gun fights.
Interestingly GPU usage on both cards was around 95%.
Going to www.yougamer.com and running a test suggests my setup to be slightly CPU bound..?

 

The fact is not that people are only suffering from performance issues. Truthfully many are experiencing 60 > 30 dives in matter of moments, which creates a quite annoying lag and stutter. Usually this was paired with stable clocks (no throttle) but with GPU utilization never higher than 50/60% top. At first, I was among those who had these issues; reason why I created this thread considering that I knew many other had already or would have stumbled upon them. In my case, after all the tweaking documented in this thread I've become able to play 45/60fps maxed out at flashed vbios stock (758Mhz). If I overclock (now I'm able to use core 1020mhz and memory 1175mhz) fps remains stable--most of the time--at 60. of course the game is "playable" at 30/40fps, but in personal opinion it deserves higher fps in order to enjoy the amazing graphical world the player is immersed while playing. In addition, i wouldn't mind if the fps was a constant 40. Unfortunately the heavy fluctuation and drops ruin the experience, making it a frustrating one.

 

You and your ing rope! (for those who remember the hotel shoot-out at boondoxk saints)



Semms like there game is still in BETA.

News: Crysis 3's performance on PC takes hit over "moving ropes" - Strategy Informer

 

Aside from the clip (funny ) I went ahead and read the various articles and it makes sense that unoptimized physics (they blame the cinematic related to the ropes, although it could have been anything that the wind would hit randomly) could affect performance. However, I believe it's not just about ropes but a general poor optimization, considering that the CPU seldom goes above 60% and GPU's struggle even in indoor (small rooms) scenes. This is suggested by fact that by setting shadows and shadowing to low GPU's performance improves dramatically. They will narrow down the problem and find the cause, so either a new driver or a patch will solve this annoyance.

 

There's a typo in your link (it takes to another quite random website). I took the liberty to post the one you most likely wanted to share: www.yougamers.com, which is a benchmarking destination.

 

So the consensus is to NOT buy Crysis 3 just yet then?

 

Well, it seems like it is one of the titles that most may want to wait for the first EA/Crytek patch and better optimized drivers before diving into their wallet. This trend of half-baked computer games being rushed to retail before it is ready is a shameful thing. It seems too common any more, unfortunately. I really hate seeing this, since Crysis is my favorite game series. I like the Crytek engine the best as well, but this is not a good show on their part.

I'm almost temped to break from my tradition of paying no more than $20 for any game and get it now to see if I can make it work better. It seems there is a wide variance in end user experience even between two machines with the same or very similar specs.

 

Take the dive Fox! We could use some extra hands on getting this game optimized correctly!

 

Personally, I think it's quite playable and runs smooth for me so far - obvious points of conjecture would be the cut scenes and some areas of gpu under-utilization which don't seem to last that long. Right now I'm playing it on my U3011, maxed out with the exception of MSAAx2 and motionn blur off - stock gpu clocks and cpu set at level 3 and it's smooth. No evidence of major stuttering but maybe I haven't got into the fray of things just yet. With those settings, my FPS seems to hover in the high 20's low 30's most of the time going up north of 40 - but no gpu OC yet.

Rafix has it working well with his tweaks so I wouldn't say "don't buy it" - even though my FPS is relatively low, the game still seems enjoyable to me so far....if I didn't have monitoring via HWiNFO & EVGA PrecisionX going on, I could swear my FPS would be much higher than what it's showing.....that's how it feels to me when playing it.

You guys should take the plunge and grab it........bring on Crysis 3 - c'mon!!!

 

Stock core voltage running 990mhz core clocks I see FPS gains right up to +850mhz

At such clocks I am seeing around 45-55fps at the dam on high settings with no motion blur.

FRAPS report:

2013-02-26 15:54:39 - crysis3
Frames: 7792 - Time: 120000ms - Avg: 64.933 - Min: 37 - Max: 103

 

Off topic but a guy with a desktop PC is insisting that he can run this game with Very High Textures, Very High Everything else with 8xMSAA at 1080p

His spec is

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~4.6ghz (OC'd)
Memory 8192MB RAM
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
Monitor - 50"

Laughable?

 

At this point it's possible, considering that tweaking and not so much hardware muscles seems to be a factor that allows to play better this game. As I mentioned before, a friend of mine has an i7 2600k over clocked to almost 5ghz, 16gb, ssd in raid and Overclocked 690 and gets 40 fps.


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Ah if only temperatures allowed me to game at this speed.....

 

This is really odd to me. My 7970Ms don't even hit 70°C at the MAX OC that they'll allow without freezing up. I would give lefty to be limited by temperature.

 

Well I have to drop down all the way to around 1ghz to keep chugging along below throttle though.