The Division / Graphic settings

[Derico]

Hi,

i'm trying to find out the ideal graphic settings.

I'm doing so by monitoring GPU usage and clock speeds of my titan x sli setup in-game via rivatuner. One thing i don't quite understand is the following:

If if use Geforce Experience's recommended settings, i get a good performance and both cards have a 98-99 percent usage (and 90-120fps). This recommended setting means neither PCSS nor HFTS are enabled.

Now, if i try to enable of those high quality shadow rendering settings + maxing out particle effects and volumetric fog, performance is really butchered. The weird part is that even though settings are now ultra demanding, gpu usage doesn't go higher than 76-80 percent. And even if i overclock my cards 225 mhz on the core, i dont seem to yield any more fps?

 

[RCFProd]

GPU usage can be a complicated one, a lot of games won't use 100% even though the CPU cores aren't fully utilised. Another thing is that this occures even more with SLI. Optimisation for 2 cards might not be great, so you're seeing inconsistency in performance.

The 'basics' to get the most out of your GPU's is by increasing both the core and memory clock, setting the power option through the 3D setting's of Nvidia's Control panel to optimal instead of adaptive.

 

[Derico]

The 'basics' to get the most out of your GPU's is by increasing both the core and memory clock, setting the power option through the 3D setting's of Nvidia's Control panel to optimal instead of adaptive.

Good point. I totally forgot about that one. It's probably been reverted to adaptive after all these driver updates in the past few weeks.

 

[Derico]

GPU usage can be a complicated one, a lot of games won't use 100% even though the CPU cores aren't fully utilised. Another thing is that this occures even more with SLI. Optimisation for 2 cards might not be great, so you're seeing inconsistency in performance.

The 'basics' to get the most out of your GPU's is by increasing both the core and memory clock, setting the power option through the 3D setting's of Nvidia's Control panel to optimal instead of adaptive.

Okay, so i found both the culprit and solution.
There seems to be a bug in Tom Clancy's division that causes the game to sometimes launch in windowed mode. It may look like the game is running in full screen. But when the gpu usage doesnt go much higher than 70 percent, all you need to do is go "alt + enter" to switch to full screen. You' ll see gpu usage shoot up all the way to maximum usage (unless you chose less demanding graphics settings for your gpu).

However, i chose to stick with Nvidia PCSS instead of HFTS because it simply butchers FPS/performance too much.
You might start out with 100 fps in some areas but then find moments in the game where the fps drop below 50.

 

[RCFProd]

You might start out with 100 fps in some areas but then find moments in the game where the fps drop below 50.

Yeah, this is unfortunately the case with many games. There is sometimes too big of a difference between FPS depending on where you are in the map. Same with the new Tomb Raider, at some points I have 90-100 fps, but a few metres ahead I'll drop all the way down to 48-50 fps.

 

[Derico]

You might start out with 100 fps in some areas but then find moments in the game where the fps drop below 50.

Yeah, this is unfortunately the case with many games. There is sometimes too big of a difference between FPS depending on where you are in the map. Same with the new Tomb Raider, at some points I have 90-100 fps, but a few metres ahead I'll drop all the way down to 48-50 fps.

Indeed. Same goes for GTA V. I guess untill further improvements are made driver-wise, we'll have to set the graphics options 'low enough' to prepare for those low-fps areas.