Run into my first CPU/GPU bottleneck situation COD Advanced Warfare

Ricardo Waitos

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Oct 10, 2014
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Finally ran into a clear bottleneck situation with my CUP/GPU combo. When playing any map my GPU never rises above 91% usage and most cores hit 100%.

One map (solar) causes my GPU to run at no more than 65%.

I have the FX 6300 and the R9 280x both overclocked. CPU- 4.4ghz, GPU- 1150/1600. My FPS fluctuates from 50-91, some maps between 80-91, others 50-70.

Is this down to poor game optimization? I have no issue running Titanfall, BF4, CS GO, Black Ops 2 or Ghosts. Single player games like Metro redux, AC, Crysis, Skyrim ect have also run with no bottleneck.

I cannot see this game being any more demanding than some of the games mentioned above, less so when you compare Redux and Skyrims notoriously high CPU/GPU usage.

What are your thoughts guys
 
CPU/GPU bottlenecks will vary depending on the game since some games are either CPU or GPU dependent and it seems like you have a good idea on what's bottle-necking. What's the temp of your GPU during your game play? I ask because I've noticed that when overclocking my GPU if there is to much heat it will cause the GPU speed to fluctuate wildly and it was killing my performance.
 
Temps seems fine, hit a maximum of 61C when playing for 3-4 hours straight yesterday. I have contemplated possible driver issues? But I am unsure if unoptimized drivers will cause the CPU and GPU to behave like this? New game and all, also COD is optimized for Nvidia.
 
If it is a CPU issue altering the graphics card settings will make no difference to the game... Besides I am never dipping below 50 frames overall and run most of the maps between 70-91 fps... I am certain this is a driver issue
 
Well, the game literally just got out, so yes, it may very well be a driver issue. For what I've read, it's actually faring nicely on most PC setups, with some people that even placed it close to Black Ops 2 in terms of day-one performance (going a bit too far IMO, but can't know for sure until I try too).
I too would've pointed out at a bottleneck if your hardware wasn't overclocked like that, and if it wasn't that framerates are just too different...

If it can help in marking this more as a non-updated driver issue, although I own a slightly more powerful system (GPU-wise at least, as we should be on par with that OC on your CPU), I'll report back my results once my cache integrity check goes through. Getting a power outage during download is just awesome >_>
 


Cheers fella, I am wondering if it is isolated to AMD GPU users (hence the drivers). I am getting a lot of random black screen crashes (4-5 in 4 hours of play) a reported fault though by all accounts.

 
OK, back with some info. Still skin deep into settings customization and only tried with 14.9 WHQL driver, so take it with a pinch of salt. SP mode (since it should put more strain on the system).
Both my CPU and GPU usage on MSI afterburner spiked between 50% and 100%; more precisely, GPU maxed out at 100% and CPU maxed out around 95% per each core.

I tried the game almost maxed out on a 144hz setting (Depth of Field, Motion Blur and "bugged caching options" disabled, FXAA, the rest maxed out), and it runs fluidly, yet it completely freezes for fractions of seconds at completely random moments. I re-played through entire checkpoints and there's not a single equal moment when it starts stuttering for no apparent reason.
Temps are in the norm (65°C max on GPU, 50°C max on CPU). I'll try with 14.9.2 beta drivers and edit this post ASAP.

The only bad thing I've noticed, other than the weird stuttering, is the insane memory leaking...
SP can consume 2 to 4GB a moment, and up to 6 the moment after; go back to menu or reload a checkpoint and it's back in order.

EDIT: Switching to 14.9.2 Beta tremendously increased the performance. Same settings, no more random stuttering, slightly less RAM used (but still horribly high...oh well), CPU usage now ranging between 50% and 80% with GPU staying more solidly between 70% and 100%. Looks like we have a driver to blame 😛

EDIT2: Looks like the game consumes 2GB of VRAM by just setting texture options to extra. Since you're on the 280x, I suggest you get down to high and set shadows/SSAO to normal, disabling things like motion blur and depth of field (and supersampling of course). Use FXAA, as the game's AA seems to be extremely heavy. Try and see if these settings improve the situation a bit while a new beta driver is released
 
Well, the consumed RAM screams "memory leak" all around the place, can't do much about that if not wait for Sledgehammer to patch the game (somehow).

Try lowering details as I suggested for the moment. 280x 3gb models should endure it, but 2gb models might need a further drop.
 
I manually increased my pagefile usage and that has drastically improved performance. However it still seems to be maximizing under pagefile usage, I manually increased this to 12000. My CPU is now topping out at 75% but my GPU is still performing strange, 55-90% usage only? Driver issue is my call for sure now. My physical RAM usage is 5000mb on MSI afterburner
 
Yes, I too have found that the game has memory leak issues. I'd suspected it by my findings before even chatting about it or checking RAM usage, but after I saw W1zzard at TechPowerUp say that it uses lots of RAM and that going from 8GB to 12GB RAM made it play better, I knew my suspicions were validated.

Reason being, even with moderate settings (optimal, eg auto), I could get the initial load screens of a session playing fine, but every one after that will usually be out of sync. The Manhunt mission hitched quite a bit during a long session, but restarting the game and playing that mission again via mission select made it run much smoother.

This and the reported high RAM usage, are clear signs of memory leaks. I'd also tried loads of so called stutter and general performance tweaks, the only one of which made a slight difference was playing in borderless window mode. It def doesn't fix the increasingly bad performance on long sessions though.

The sad thing is, dropping out of game and loading up missions one at a time isn't really an acceptable work around, because they also made just exiting and restarting the game laborious due to those lengthy load scenes. And if you disable shader preloading, then you risk more frame drops and hitching in game.

Damn, this is two games in a row I got that I feel like shelving until they patch them properly. The first was The Evil Within, and it's PC patch didn't do anything to improve optimization like they said it would, so I've stopped after only 3 chapters.
 
Just sharing some more thoughts, feel free to follow, agree with or disagree with 😛

Not only RAM is affected by leaks, even the VRAM is suffering. Changing settings on the fly or long game sessions made my game start stuttering heavily; the subsequent game restart eventually showed 3668 MB consumed on MSI Afterburner (even after raising the limit value from 0.85 to 0.90 in the config file, that's 100% the detected dedicated VRAM).
I've noticed this happens mainly when extra or auto textures are set, as manually setting them to high drastically improves things and still looks graphically more than nice (except for weapons looking very slightly blurry-ish).

Also, SSAA is extremely heavy above 4x (large but detailed areas at this level kill framerates, which otherwise stay high in closed areas), while 2x + FXAA/SMAA x1 non-filmic post processing looks nicely while being relatively lightweight.
Forcing AA through the GPU control panel (at least for me and my AMD) doesn't improve things much visually unless you enable edge-detect AA, which in turn can kill performance more than supersampling at times...

In the end, waiting for a better driver and for a product patch is unfortunately the best option right now. Luckily, it "seems" Sledgehamner wants to try and get a functional game instead of just rushing out with DLCs...one can only hope 😀
 
I just installed Cat 14.9.2 beta just for shits and giggles, even though there's no indication it does anything for a 7970, 280x, or this game in general. Played the Atlas and Traffic missions, which are not the best ones to test with since they always play fine for me.

The load scene of course played smooth for Atlas since it was the first one, but very out of sync for Traffic. I went back to Fullscreen mode though because I was getting tired of Windowed Borderless requiring me to change my desktop to 1080p to get the game to play in that res.

I probably won't know if 14.9.2b is helping any until I play Manhunt, but for now I'm sticking with the optimal settings.

Unless a modder comes up with a miracle cure, it seems we have to hope they can performance patch this thing properly.
 
COD advanced warfare
CPU amd 8150 fx oc@ 4.3ghz (watercooled )
RAM amd r9 gamer 2x 4gb (@2400mhz
GPU amd r9 290 oc tri x @1.1ghz
MB amd asus sabertooth 2.0
CASE Antec P280
PSU Corsair 850 TX @850 w


have loads of lag and stuttering could be a driver problem(need update 15.0 ???) or the game not well made??? <<<<<<<<
on latest beta driver have use every driver up to the newest
this system twice as good as a ps4 but runs very average for the specs i have why ?
 


CPU: 8350
GPU: R9 290

Having the same problem. I can run most games pretty well but i even get stuttering problems on low settings. I think this is just an optimization or driver problem. Should hopefully be fixed soon :) Many AMD users are experiencing the same

 


It could be, i remember when watch dogs was first released and it had bad fps for us AMD users. I stopped playing it and when i played it again it was very smooth.

 



yes a big a problem i run any game on my PC on full settings nightmare COD AW please fix amd !!!
 


i actually deleted watch dogs it was that bad
 
Interesting right after I commented on this post a while ago I started experiencing a lot of stuttering and a huge drop in FPS. I was able to resolve this by doing a clean uninstall of all AMD drivers then re-install using Display Driver Uninstaller. I'm currently running 14.9.2b with no issues at all right now.

I also want to add that Watch Dogs is going to be a mess no matter what drivers you use IMO.
 
I did a clean install of 14.9.2 drivers improved somewhat by the processor at the beginning is 75 and low 40 games and 45% if you spend as memory 4 gigs I think that the final solution is in AMD Released new drivers