GPU Maintenence

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Hello all,

Just a few basic tips for GPU maintenance whether it be Desktop or Laptop

A few of you are having issues with stuttering or frame rate drops etc and here are some tips to maintain and diagnose some of those issues

Drivers

Drivers can be on the odd occasion temperamental and with so many settings at your disposal sometime things can go a little wrong. Sometimes after an update you may receive some dreaded Blue Screen of Death which isn't as bad as it sound, its just your computer telling you there is a problem that may require your attention. If you are receiving BSOD or Stuttering then a good first step is to a clean install of your display drivers

1) Find out if your machine has a Nvidia or an AMD GPU
2) Download the latest drivers from the linkies here >>Nvidia<< or >>AMD<<
3) Goto your control panel and uninstall ALL your Nvidia and AMD Drivers, this may require a few restarts. This should reset all the GPU settings and give you a good starting basis for further testing
4) Avoid beta drivers although these are generally quite stable they are still experimental and can have a few issues.
5) Install the fresh GPU Drivers, probably requires another restart.
6)Test your machine out again

Game Settings

Even though you have just bought a brand new machine it doesn't mean that its going to run all games at its full settings GPU's have their limitations. Before ordering your new machine its good to have a chat with the guys on this here forum, let them know your gaming preferences budget etc and they will be able to give you an indication of what kind of performance you will be looking at. Look at other websites to see how they have reviewed the machine and look at their benchmarks, pay close attention to the resolutions these games are tested at an what settings they are using. Most reviewers will measure performance with Frames Per Second (FPS) and as PC games we like to hit the Magical 60FPS however 30FPS is considered playable.

Setting to watch out for are

1)UBERSAMPLING[/U]:- BEWARE OF THIS ONE, switch this on and you may get whiplash, this setting will redraw your games image multiple times and merge it together giving you super HD and smooth edges, if you use this setting you may well not need settings below such as AA, this is for seriously powerful GPUs. This option is available on games such as The Witcher 2. Absolute Framerate killer
2) Resolution:- Depending on your screen this will vary, the majority of gamers will be gaming on a a resolution of 1920 x 1080. The higher the resolution the more demand this will put on your GPU. Just for those who weren't aware higher the resolution usually results in a sharper richer image.
3) Anti-aliasing:- Usually displayed as AA in your game settings will let you change, this comes in a variety of different flavors including MSAA, CSAA, FXAA, SMAA and Nividia's new MFAA. Each of these come in a variety of variations too including 2x 4x and 8x. However its pretty simple. This setting will do its best to get rid of jagged edges. Switched off strait items in the gaming world may apear to be Z or Stair shapped. Allocating an AA setting will let the GPU attempt to reduce these as much as possible giving you a realistic look. Personally i find this setting a must however this is again going to use up some of your GPU power and reduce your FPS. MSAA i believe is the least FPS hungry version and TXAA having a heave impact. I think that there is very little difference with the ones in the middle but game can still look amazing with this setting off.
4) Filtering:- Broken down into Bi linear, Tri linear and Anisotropic the best way i can describe this setting is that it sharpens textures. Off or Bi will cause textures such as the ground walls etc to look out of focus and blurry, increase the Filter to Tri or Anisotropic and textures will look better and sharper and again the higer the setting the more FPS your going to lose Anisotropic comes in 2x 4x 8x and 16x variaties,
5) Ambient Occlusion:- This setting deals with lighting in the game and can cause some really good effects with lighting and shadows. I tend to find that this setting is less of a burden on GPUs but will have some kind of effect.
6) Shadows:- Shadows can come with Off, low, medium, high and Ultra settings and this setting can give you some really good effects, switching off the setting may make games look a little bright and unrealistic and Ultra giving it a really dark and cinematic feel in areas, at low medium levels this wont have a major impact and some may prefer their games not looking to dark
7) Field of View:- Increase field of view to show more of the world; reduce field of view to increase performance.
8) Terrain High Detail Range:- Sets the level of detail for the terrain around your character and how far away it reduces the detail.
9) Render Non-Collidable Flora, Render Distant Radial Flora, and Render Nearby Radial Flora:- Turning off any of these may increase performance.
10) Object Detail:- Increasing the level of detail on objects decreases performance.
11) Depth of Field:- This setting will add the effect of focusing items close up and blurring items in out of focus areas. Nice effect, some people might like it and i this doesn't have too high an impace on framerates
12) Texture Quality:- Pretty much says what it means, texture can be set to low medium and high, obviously textures with higher setting look better i believe that this will eat up your Vram in particular for for games such as Shadow of Mordor require a GPU with a Vram of 6gb or higher which i wouldn't say is a common Vram at the moment.
13) Bloom:- Again to do with lighting, a stylish effect making bright lighting effect, i mostly see it as light reflecting off of light colored and reflective items in game. Dont think this is too intensive on the GPU
14) Blur Effects:- a style thing game giving the visual illusion of heat. Some like it others don't.
15) Motion Blur:- again a style thing, this will blur your motion when your moving your head around in game some like this effect others don't.
16) Vsync:-Vsync can be your friend with drawbacks. Vsync can limit the framerate to a select number usually 60 or 30. This means that you will get better stability and a more steady frame rate. If your monitor is limited to 60FPS you may want to set this option on, no point in having your GPU produce 120 FPS if your monitor can only handle 60, too high a framerate on a slow monitor can cause screen tearing, this is an effect that when you look around or scroll in a map for example it looks like the bottom image of the monitor isn't keeping up with the top and looks like there is a line on the screen. Switching Vsync on can help with this, however, in games like dota and twitch shooters like COD this can on occasion cause a small imput lag. If you are a competitive gamer you may avoid this setting. Another hand function of Vsync is if you are unable to maintain 60 FPS and seeing drops down to low 40s or 30, you can limit the framerate to 30 FPS. Though this setting is lower that the holy grail of 60fps i found it useful for Assassin's creed unity to give me a more balanced framerate. The best way i can describe the difference between 60 and 30 FPS in my own opinion is that a drop from 60 to thirty makes it feel like the game has slowed down a fraction and can make me feel a bit sick.

From a trouble shooting perspective i have found that when trying to diagnose low framerates, graphical anomalies, stuttering etc is to set every setting to the lowest setting and work your way up. Every system is different in software and hardware and sometimes things go wrong. If a problem persists and the lowest possible settings i would suggest that there may be a hardware issue. If it runs fine even though it looks bad start playing with the settings, one at a time fire them up to high or medium and slowly try to fine the setting that is causing the problem. This is also a good way of finding the sweet spot of for your game and your system helping you get your computer to the gaming experience that YOU prefefer whether it is a high framerate, an amazing looking image or a balance in between.
 
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SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Nvidia GeForce Experience and AMD Gaming Evolved

These two programs could be considered as your GPU/Game setting advisers. Both these programs will look at your hardware and software and give you a good guideline of what settings your system should be capable of running. Please be aware however Although a great idea the system is not prefect and sometimes strange results can present them self if this is the case i would recommend reverting back to default settings and manually optimising your game.

1) They will manage your drivers and notify you if you need an update or not and also list the benefits of this new drivers.
2) They will be able to scan your computer and have an idea of what your system can do
3) It will scan your games and be able to give you advise on what settings are recommended for what it considers it's best gaming experience
4) Simple click of a button will allow the program to go into the game, provided it has been run at least once, and change the settings for you.
5) If updated settings become available it will alert you too them

Nvidia Geforce can be downloaded >>Here<< aaaaaaaannddd the AMD one can be downloaded over >>Here<<

Game Monitor & Benchmarking

There a number of available software to you to monitor your system temperatures, usage and frame rate ets personally i use MSI's Afterburner which allows you to set up a display for graphs or may various facts and figures. One recommendation i do have while diagnosing or measuring the performance of your machine is to get yourself a second monitor. Most of the time you will be running your games on full screen and will be unable to see the software window monitoring your machine. I use an old square monitor and just keep it under my desk which is just dedicated to showing the computers stats.

When running your game you should look out for the following stats

1) Temperatures:- Vary between cards but generally you want to keep these low. Desktops with a large chassis and fans will be able to maintain temperatures more efficiently and you should be looking at about temperatures about 50 - 70 Degrees C under heavy load (REQUIRES CITATION) Your idle temperatures may be in the 20's or 30's. Laptops however due to there small form factor and reduced cooling capabilities are designed to cope with higher temperatures idle about 40-50's and can operate into the high 90s. Results showing high temperatures during idle especially may require your attention but might be something as simple as giving your system a clear our from dust and blockages. When you exceed recommended temperatures you will begin to receive reduced performance while the GPU tries to reduce its operating temperature and also BSOD's.
2) Framerate:-

SORRY WORK IN PROGRESS
 
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SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Smoke's Final Though

I hope the above helps some of you, I'm sorry if i ramble and if its not 100% but wanted to create somewhere to start with diagnosis of a problem or if you just wanted to know about some settings. You may be unlucky enough to have a hardware fault but my advice is to come here to the forums, speak to some of the the users and get some opinions and suggestions. We might be able to help. There is also PCS Email Support and Telephone support that will also be able to help you further if that fails and in the unfortunate event you end up with faulty hardware

Finally a special thanks to contributes Androcles, Drunken Monkey
Happy Gaming

Smoke
 
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Androcles

Rising Star
Some great advice there. Although I wouldn't recommend using the Nvidia Experience, there are some known issues with some hardware configurations that cause it to chew its way through your resources.

8) Shadows:- Shadows can come with Off, low, medium, high and Ultra settings and this setting can give you some really good effects, switching off the setting may make games look a little bright and unrealistic and Ultra giving it a really dark and cinematic feel in areas, at low medium levels this wont have a major impact and some may prefer their games not looking to dark

This one here is the number one framerate killer in most online games and a lot of other games. It's amazing how much of a boost you get just turning these off.

Some others to keep an eye out for in games are (they're more often found in mmo's than single player games and may be called something different):

Field of View: Increase field of view to show more of the world; reduce field of view to increase performance.
Terrain High Detail Range: Sets the level of detail for the terrain around your character and how far away it reduces the detail.
Render Non-Collidable Flora, Render Distant Radial Flora, and Render Nearby Radial Flora: Turning off any of these may increase performance.
Object Detail: Increasing the level of detail on objects decreases performance.
 
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SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Thanks :D

Ill update it at lunch time, can a Mod give me a couple of reserved at the start at all? I have ran out of space in the first post
 

Drunken Monkey

Author Level
nice work smoke, maybe add something about software that you could use to monitor temps/frame rates/gpu cpu usage etc whilst in games like fraps etc

personally I use combination of MSI afterburner + rivatuner and HWiNFO as it gives a lots of options to customise it your way

it would appear in game like this, depending on what you want to display and you can toggle it off and on,

[video=youtube;MgRus2W7aN4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgRus2W7aN4[/video]

[video=youtube;xS-CzcO81KQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS-CzcO81KQ[/video]
[video=youtube;3UQ2YRb_-_g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UQ2YRb_-_g[/video]
 

Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
Think i will also mention SLI too. Hopefully a mod will help me out with some space above.

As far as I know I can't insert new posts into the middle of threads (I can delete but not add), posts are displayed in datetime order and I'm not convinced the datetime can be manually set. If it is possible I suspect you have to be an admin at least (though I doubt they can either), or have direct access to the database.
 

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Alright Rakk, thanks for the reply.

Can you delete threads? If i start a new one and mark this one for deletion would that be a solution or is that just causing problems?
 

SmokeDarKnight

Author Level
Just get DED to delete his post and you will have two extra posts at the top then :)

the problem is i have ran out of space to write any more in my first post there's a 10000 character limit and i have hit it. So even if DED was to delete it wouldn't help me write any more in order.
 

Wozza63

Biblical Poster
the problem is i have ran out of space to write any more in my first post there's a 10000 character limit and i have hit it. So even if DED was to delete it wouldn't help me write any more in order.

Yes because the next two posts are yours, so you just remove the current text in them and replace with "RESERVED" and then replace that with dataz.
 

DeadEyeDuk

Superhero Level Poster
Hurray! Post saved for posterity! (Thanks Wozz)

Also, no need to message me Smoke, you know I check here every half an hour, especially posts with little green splodges on them (means I must have said something insightful in them and may have praise and thank you posts in reply)

Wait...if I delete it, does it...does it affect my post count?! :dots:
 

Androcles

Rising Star
As far as I know I can't insert new posts into the middle of threads (I can delete but not add), posts are displayed in datetime order and I'm not convinced the datetime can be manually set. If it is possible I suspect you have to be an admin at least (though I doubt they can either), or have direct access to the database.

As far as I am aware it's only possible to insert posts in VBulletin by physically editing the database, which would take quite a bit of knowledge about MySQL etc, so I don't think even an admin could do it.

Edit: Ah I see you got it sorted, nice workaround, reassign the ID's of the two deleted posts following the OP to his ID, est voila extra postage space :D
 
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Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
Edit: Ah I see you got it sorted, nice workaround, reassign the two posts following the OP to his ID, est voila extra postage space :D

Nah, it was just the extra posts by Wozza and DED between SmokeDarKnights first 3 posts were deleted (by them, not a mod), therefore meaning that the first three non-deleted posts are SmokeDarKnights.

I suspect it would require database access to reassign the posts (just as it would to change timestamps or insert posts)
 
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