Should I be getting better performance with an RX 480?

[stargatedalek]

Genuine question.

I swear there was a point where I was stable at over 60 FPS with ARK using maxed settings, but lately I've even nuked my settings down to medium* everything and yet I've been lucky to push 45 and in a lot of places if I so much as look in the wrong direction my FPS drops to 15! I've heard rumors this game has some "borderline-in-bed-with" NVIDIA specific optimization but even if that was the case it wouldn't explain such an incredible drop in performance. I'm concerned this may be damage to my system and not just ARK being ARK.

*There is no noteworthy difference between low and medium settings in performance, even high or epic settings aren't significantly changing my FPS unless I use full resolution scale (which I used to be able to run at full with high frames). Full resolution tanks everything to roughly 20 no matter the settings.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40GHz

Installed RAM 16.0 GB

And display;

Spoiler

Name    AMD Radeon (TM) RX 480
PNP Device ID    PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_67DF&SUBSYS_0B371002&REV_C7\4&109211B5&0&0008
Adapter Type    AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x67DF), Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. compatible
Adapter Description    AMD Radeon (TM) RX 480
Adapter RAM    (1,048,576) bytes
Installed Drivers    C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0313676.inf_amd64_96bbc33bec5c7fae\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0313676.inf_amd64_96bbc33bec5c7fae\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0313676.inf_amd64_96bbc33bec5c7fae\aticfx64.dll,C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\c0313676.inf_amd64_96bbc33bec5c7fae\amdxc64.dll
Driver Version    22.19.162.4
INF File    oem9.inf (ati2mtag_Polaris10DS section)
Color Planes    Not Available
Color Table Entries    4294967296
Resolution    1920 x 1080 x 59 hertz
Bits/Pixel    32
Memory Address    0xC0000000-0xCFFFFFFF
Memory Address    0xD0000000-0xD01FFFFF
I/O Port    0x0000E000-0x0000E0FF
Memory Address    0xDFD00000-0xDFD3FFFF
IRQ Channel    IRQ 4294967291
I/O Port    0x000003B0-0x000003BB
I/O Port    0x000003C0-0x000003DF
Memory Address    0xA0000-0xBFFFF
Driver    c:\windows\system32\driverstore\filerepository\c0313676.inf_amd64_96bbc33bec5c7fae\atikmpag.sys (22.19.162.4, 516.37 KB (528,760 bytes), 5/16/2017 6:06 PM)

 

 

 

[GrumpyBear]

For myself and I've seen this on a couple different pc's I have.  Windows sometimes after some big update will undo a setting in your msconfig.ini.   

I just checked my own and found the setting set to default as well, ty for complaining about this.  

go to the spyglass by your windows menu icon and type in msconfig

Now in msconfig, click on the boot tab.  Then select Advanced options...

Now look at box for Number of processors.  If it is unchecked and u see a 1 grayed out below - you are not using all the cores on your cpu.   If you want to use more cores, check the box and select the dropdown menu w/ the 1 in it and chose the # of cores you do want to use.  I go for the max of 6 on my cpu.

 

Most people actually don't realize this, but this setting will be defaulted to 1 on every pc and even people w/ expensive rigs often don't know to adjust this setting for better performance.  Also, now I think I can confirm that this setting can restore to a default w/out user intervention.  Thank you for complaining, I was thinking there's no way i'm down to 1 core, I know I had it set to 6 and you forced me to check and find it not set right.

[stargatedalek]

44 minutes ago, GrumpyBear said:

For myself and I've seen this on a couple different pc's I have.  Windows sometimes after some big update will undo a setting in your msconfig.ini.   

I just checked my own and found the setting set to default as well, ty for complaining about this.  

go to the spyglass by your windows menu icon and type in msconfig

Now in msconfig, click on the boot tab.  Then select Advanced options...

Now look at box for Number of processors.  If it is unchecked and u see a 1 grayed out below - you are not using all the cores on your cpu.   If you want to use more cores, check the box and select the dropdown menu w/ the 1 in it and chose the # of cores you do want to use.  I go for the max of 6 on my cpu.

 

Most people actually don't realize this, but this setting will be defaulted to 1 on every pc and even people w/ expensive rigs often don't know to adjust this setting for better performance.  Also, now I think I can confirm that this setting can restore to a default w/out user intervention.  Thank you for complaining, I was thinking there's no way i'm down to 1 core, I know I had it set to 6 and you forced me to check and find it not set right.

Wow, apparently I was only using 1 of 8!? I for whatever reason thought I had a max of 7. Thanks for the information, I had no idea it would have ever reset itself.

I've adjusted it to use 6 cores and will report results. May try 8 and compare.

 

My AMD settings HUD also had a bug where it wasn't showing new updates, so I installed the latest manually and that already helped significantly.

 

[Guest]

If you leave the tick box clear, windows will use all available cores on your CPU.  You don't need to change the value in the drop down box.

The setting is there because some software such as virtualisation tools and licencing tools won't run if you have more than a certain number of CPUs.

To see if Windows is using all cores, open task manager and go into the performance tab.  Right-click the CPU graph and change graph to -> logical processors

Leave the box unticked, there's no need to change any of these settings for Ark.

 

[DirkInSA]

1 hour ago, DuoMog said:

If you leave the tick box clear, windows will use all available cores on your CPU.  You don't need to change the value in the drop down box.

The setting is there because some software such as virtualisation tools and licencing tools won't run if you have more than a certain number of CPUs.

To see if Windows is using all cores, open task manager and go into the performance tab.  Right-click the CPU graph and change graph to -> logical processors

Leave the box unticked, there's no need to change any of these settings for Ark.

 

This is true - no need to mess with msconfig settings if the CPU box is NOT ticked!

[stargatedalek]

Results were interesting, if ultimately very disheartening.

I don't care much about where the FPS sits at, it's stutter that bothers me, it's disorienting and immersion breaking. ARK stutters for me horribly pretty much any time it isn't also sitting at 60 frames, if it was stable at 45 I'd still be just as happy as if it was stable at 60.

 

AMD update bug seems to have been the biggest issue, after updating manually I'm able to achieve a decent 60 with infrequent drops into the 40s when running single player. Hosting a non-dedi server my FPS takes hits depending on the direction I face, and sudden drops from 60 to 40 just from turning around is disorienting to say the least. Perhaps it's time to look into renting a proper server, would that give significant performance boosts relative to single player? Or only relative to non-dedi?

 

Sadly this is only possible for me right now with resolution scale set at about 3/4 of full, but at least it's possible now, before no amount of fiddling with settings would do it. I was previously able to get it stable at above 60 (I know, silly me wasn't using a cap) and at full resolution scale with all settings at or near max details, so something has clearly changed.

 

GPU seems to be my bottleneck according to task manager (it flickers around the high 90%'s), which doesn't make a lot of sense to me given what I've been told to expect from a 480 and the performance I used to get in ARK (not even going to compare other games that's a nasty can of worms), but at least it's a lead.

 

Increasing the number of cores did not improve performance directly, however, it seems to have minimized performance hits from having other programs running. Previously having Youtube or (especially) Netflix loaded (not necessarily playing) in a hidden browser window would do huge hits to performance, but now it's hardly noticeable.

 

My PC is only about three years old, potentially going on four now, and it seems to be virus and malware free, or at least free of any major infections. I've never physically cleaned it inside, it has a clear plastic segment on the case and it doesn't look to be completely coated in dust nor does it seem to be any hotter than it used to be. I assume I should try to get another opinion from a different antivirus, but does anyone have any tips in regards to physical cleaning? There is some buildup of dust, so I probably should get to it while I'm going through all of this just in case.

 

[shiny]

I can say only one thing - i switched from RX480 to 1060 6GB NoVideo. The 480 should be outperforming the 1060 in any way, but sadly, the game just runs better on NV  I can have the same FPS with more details on, or WAY more FPS if i use the same config as i had on my 480.