Evolve Alpha performance report

Only played 1 game so far because I'm sleepy as hell, but I figured I'd post about this while I'm at it.

System status at testing:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
4800MQ @ 3.8GHz
780M @ 850/5000 (stock modded vBIOS)
1600MHz RAM
Installed on Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD

Game settings:
Executable is DirectX 11 x64
1920 x 1080
60Hz (doesn't let you go above 60fps)
"Very high" graphical quality (only low, medium, high and very high are options; no individually set options available)
vSync off (no triple buffering option for this)
Tessellation on
SMAA T2x (game does not use SLI)

Average FPS: 45
min FPS: 34
peak FPS: 55

vRAM usage: 4000MB+

Honestly? The game runs fairly ok. I didn't notice much issue with the lower FPS and the controls weren't sluggish. It looks pretty good; mainly lighting and the shadows more than supreme texture quality or anything. There is no reason for the vRAM usage that I can see; likely a side-effect of the consoles again. I think it might actually use more vRAM if I had a 980M or something; it's very rare games ACTUALLY crack the 4000MB vRAM usage when gobbling vRAM. Usually if they just want to hit 4GB as a "max", they stop at 3.9GB. The ones that crack 4GB exactly tend to like more (from benches seen elsewhere using titans etc).

OCing my 780M would have likely helped quite a bit, however 344.48 drivers are butts for OCing and it already ran fairly hot (and the day is REALLY hot right now). When SLI support comes in, 780M SLI should be more than overkill with 70% scaling or better.

On the flip side, my buddy with a EVGA 680 superclocked said he was dropping from 60fps to 5fps and getting massive stuttering. He COULD be having power issues, but those of you with 2GB vRAM be wary of this. You all may need to stop at medium settings or something. Unfortunately in the game's menu currently there's no way to adjust texture quality on its own while leaving other settings intact. I will update this when he lets me know if medium settings work fine.

Game runs on Cryengine 3 from what google tells me, so expect some heating of the CPU/GPU while playing. It's not as bad as Crysis 3 in my opinion however. I'd say CPU heat mimics what you would get in BF4 on unlocked FPS and mostly ultra settings, but CPU utilization was higher than BF4 goes. Here is a picture of my max utils according to HWiNFO64 below; note the max utilization counts? BF4 tops out about 72% max for reference:

Spoiler

 

I'm finding the game doesn't heat up my system nearly as bad as BF4 on the CPU side. I barely broke 70ish CPU and around 70 GPU with my system fans running full tilt and an OC of +100 on CORE of GPU.

Definitely taxing on my system. I was getting mid 30s to 40s on max settings, default 1x AA, and Vsync turned off. Setting Tess OFF and to High didn't seem to make much of a difference.

I am going to up it to +135mhz and +100mhz on the MEM to see if anything gets better.

 

Well it depends on your GPU and CPU usage for you; you share your cooling. BF4 doesn't heat up GPUs as much as this game does (from my experience), so a hotter GPU would by default equate to a hotter CPU for you.

 

Very very ironically, this game is exceedingly easy to record. There's basically zero performance hit from it, which is interesting.

Good for anyone who likes to make videos I think =D

 

How is your experience mate? Are you liking the game??

 

Honestly? I quite like the LITTLE I have played of it. Matches can end quite quickly, or they can take a good while. PC players appear to be WORLDS better than console players, trapping and usually killing monsters in under 5 minutes. It's quite difficult to escape them; whereas every single stream from Xbox I've seen have had long, 30+ minute battles almost all the time. There is no other way to describe the differences between my experience and that which I see on twitch tv.

That being said, it's a lot more fun than I thought I would have. It has this unique quality where you get immersed into each match without getting inherently bored. Both as the monster and as the hunters. I prefer the monster though.

I still do not know what its long-term playability would be like. I initially thought I'd only care for 1-2 matches before being bored, but each time I played I didn't feel that way; I only stopped playing because I was tired or needed to do something else and initially only wished to launch the game for a single run, but the fact that it made me WANT to continue was great.

The game runs very well for what it looks like on PC; the performance seems to have gotten slightly better from my initial run; I usually don't go below 45fps for any reason whereas the initial run had many 40-fps and less drops, even though they suggested that the only patches they brought out were for matchmaking I disbelieve that and believe they did a little performance hotfix.

I think the game will do fairly well on release if it just adds more variety of things, but they need to fix the aiming of the monster's melee attacks; it's slightly off-center. Some of the skills also are hard to aim too, but that will get better with time. The Kraken is probably going to be a different story, but I have yet to unlock him. He looks quite fun though.

 

^^ good news indeed!

 

Hmmm I wonder if adding the Evolve executable to Ryse game profile in the latest driver with special SLI fix would enable SLI. They are both CryEngine 4 games.

 

Is this something I need to do with nVidia Inspector? I didn't try any of that, nor did I try AFR1 or AFR2 with it.

 

Yes Nvidia Inspector.

 

Will try this later; currently engrossed in Xcom

 

Okay. Forced SLI using Ryse's SLI bits. Interestingly enough, Shadowplay assumed the game was "Ryse: Son of Rome" when I used it to record. Anyway, the usage scaling was split ~60-70% across each card, but the FPS did not improve in the slightest. Also human gameplay has less FPS than monster gameplay.

So basically, SLI is sort of worse. 70% usage on each card for 99% usage on 1 card is just awful, but since that's a forced thing on a game that actually might still be in Alpha, I again forgive it.

Next, there is flickering in SLI. When jumping or looking at large sources of light, there is a lot of flickering taking place. I recorded two videos; one as the monster and one as an Assault guy, both using TXAA 4x (which seems to have no performance difference to 2x SMAA oddly enough).

I'll post the videos of each (my overlay is captured by Shadowplay in each) where you can see vRAM usage and GPU usage and CPU usage and whatever by tomorrow.

 

I assume you followed my instructions and added Evolve's exe to the Ryse game profile as well as applied the SLI fix in the undefined section? Because without the fix, the official SLI profile for Ryse is completely broken with the symptoms you described.

 

I'm not sure. I DID add the Evolve profile to the Ryse profile, but I don't think I did much with a fix. I wasn't very clear though:

When jumping out of the ship (before hitting the floor) there is light flickering. When looking at large view distances where a source of light is taking place from behind a structure (like looking at a mountainside where the moonlight is illuminating it from a spot I cannot see) there is light flickering. Aside from this, there is no real problem and both cards do get used, but of course SMAA 1Tx and 2Tx won't work.

Edit: Does this work? https://hostr.co/RYpzy6DeC4g2

 

First video up. Will still be using single GPU as far as I can see though; SMAA T2x is still a nice benefit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW_9Yo63cck

 

OK, just to verify you did this correctly:

1. Click to reset the Ryse game profile to default, click apply changes.
2. Click to add Evolve's executable to the current profile. A window will pop up, make sure you navigate to Evolve's actual game executable and not the executable of its launcher. I don't know if "staticlauncher64.exe" is the game or the launcher. An easy way to see what is the game executable's name is to run the game in a window and read it at the top.
3. Click to show hidden undefined flags. Scroll down to the "undefined" section and find the flag 0x0013FEC2. Set it to 0x00400001 (Crysis 3). This is the SLI fix I showed earlier.
4. Click to apply changes. You may now exit Inspector.

 

Did steps 1, 2 and 4. Did not check 3. Will check, record and report.

 

There is only one exe in the Evolve folder so that has to be the one.

 

Okay. Using that fix, performance improves ever so slightly. I still drop in fps, but it sits FAR closer to 55-60 most of the time.

Also, the flicker is still a thing. I'm recording the video I made while testing it though, because I'm a really bloody good monster.

 

Okay, here we go @Octiceps (I have no idea if this alerts you) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40t0Ka8iAY

This is using that same Crysis 3 compatibility fix you told me about.

 

It looks like performance does noticeably improve, still far from ideal scaling though, but oh damn, dat flickering. :\

Oh well, I guess this the end of my little SLI experiment. Thanks for playing along and testing.

It's still early yet. Hopefully SLI support will be added to the game and/or driver at or before release. Nvidia and game devs' track record this past year has been really poor. This is one game I'm really looking forward to.

BTW did you try Force AFR1 and Force AFR2?

 

I haven't tried it yet, I wanted SMAA T2x too much XD.

Honestly, either way the game plays mostly fine. I'll try AFR1 and 2 a bit later.

 

TESTED:

Forcing AFR2 via NCP = worse performance than Single GPU; dropped under 30fps multiple times as monster. No flickering however.

Forcing AFR1 via NCP = 15fps. DO NOT USE