Poor framerate on ridiculously OP computer.

So I typed a lot of stuff but then I realized I didn't ask a basic question. If you disable the 4k monitor, does PSO start playing like it used to?
 
Thanks everyone. Changing the priority to "High" in Task Manager fixed everything. It now runs at full framerate and rarely drops even while streaming and at full settings. With all of that running including the game, stream program, and Twitch Dashboard / chat, my CPU is only at 26% usage and my RAM is only at 21% usage. Thus, I don't think it's going to hurt anything to give PSO a "high" priority.

Please leave this thread open in case the problems crops back up, but I think we're good. Thanks again, everyone!
 
I figure something is wrong in the background that's pretty hard to determine for a lot of people. I have a 6700 too and the game is unaffected by setting the priority to low with 4x Supersampling at 1440. I had to run a video encoder that used up pretty much whatever the CPU was offering before PSO started to stutter (and that was in Seabed!)

Obviously the priority band-aid works for many, but something is iffy in the background.
 
I figure something is wrong in the background that's pretty hard to determine for a lot of people. I have a 6700 too and the game is unaffected by setting the priority to low with 4x Supersampling at 1440. I had to run a video encoder that used up pretty much whatever the CPU was offering before PSO started to stutter (and that was in Seabed!)

Obviously the priority band-aid works for many, but something is iffy in the background.

I'm gonna guess virus scanners or something.
 
I started getting slowdown again even after changing the priority to high. (Yet I was running Fallout 4 on Ulta averaging 45 to 65 FPS that same evening). I went ahead and just turned the graphics settings down. I don't care if the shadows are circles. The only thing I care about is draw distance, so I left that the same. So far it's worked.
 
I started getting slowdown again even after changing the priority to high. (Yet I was running Fallout 4 on Ulta averaging 45 to 65 FPS that same evening). I went ahead and just turned the graphics settings down. I don't care if the shadows are circles. The only thing I care about is draw distance, so I left that the same. So far it's worked.

Do you run a virus scanner?
 
Schthack used to run fine.

Now its 2018. New laptop. Alienware. 4K. 32GB. 6820HK. SSD. Win10. Radeon M390X.

My system is more loaded than ever before but yet the game crawls. Episode 1 seems ok. Episode 2 where the seaside level is crawls. Pretty sure episode 4 mas starts crawling.

Had to use the ENB shader package just to get the game running on the Radeon...

Running game at 1080 just to reduce lag. Does not help.

Game settings all at max but no AA and 8x AF.
 
Schthack used to run fine.

Now its 2018. New laptop. Alienware. 4K. 32GB. 6820HK. SSD. Win10. Radeon M390X.

Radeon M390X (released in 2015) isn’t a card you can even come close to running 4K with, unfortunately. It is barely faster than a GeForce 970M (released in 2014) and that is barely a 1080p graphics card. (Still have to reduce details on some games to get decent framerates at 1080p)

You’ll most likely have to run PSO at 1080p or less (not sure how ENB will affect that recommendation, if you’re running crazy shaders you may need to lower the res even more) and you may need to change the fog setting in the config from pixel to something else, also try reducing the draw distance if you cranked that up too.
 
Radeon M390X (released in 2015) isn’t a card you can even come close to running 4K with, unfortunately. It is barely faster than a GeForce 970M (released in 2014) and that is barely a 1080p graphics card. (Still have to reduce details on some games to get decent framerates at 1080p)

You’ll most likely have to run PSO at 1080p or less (not sure how ENB will affect that recommendation, if you’re running crazy shaders you may need to lower the res even more) and you may need to change the fog setting in the config from pixel to something else, also try reducing the draw distance if you cranked that up too.
Sodaboy turns out the problem is as so:

PSOBB does not support the modern CPUs with integrated graphics chips or multiGPU configs, so it cannot switch from one GPU to another. This causes it to run on Intel graphics / integrated chip which do not support 4K res even for low end games because it goes with the first graphics adapter in the pipeline. It does not support optimus or graphics switching.

However all modern AMD and nVidia GPUs do support 4K on low end games. You got to recall PSOBB is a game that runs on old hardware just fine at maximum resolution. Today's hardware is 10-30 times faster.

The only known way to run PSOBB on a discrete GPU in a laptop was ENB. It has a hook for directx8 which forces it to run a specific GPU. It adds post processing effects.

However ENB is quite old and it turns out very buggy. I identified the followed flaws with ENB:

1. Has not been updated since 2010 or so when the group who made it disbanded.
2. It causes frame rate drops by massive margins all over even if you disable all the post processing effects and only use it to switch PSOBB to your discrete graphics. It disables all resolutions above 1154p. Even running the ENB at 480p does not fix it.

So last night I found the topic about the new ReShade compile for PSOBB. I immediately had hopes it would work. It is based on a modern post processing code base. Yep, upon uninstall of ENB and install of ReShade I was able to run PSOBB on my laptop for the first time using the 4K resolution, 4xEQ AA, 16xAF, pixel fog, all settings maxed, and absolutely no frame rate drops.

Prior to this using ENB I couldn't even achieve that at 640x480.

I knew my hardware could do it and the problem was PSOBB, and it turns out ENB.

By the way with ENB I was running the updated 1.4 shader they released..

https://www.pioneer2.net/community/threads/reshade-for-psobb.10353

It is my opinion this ReShade tool is the one all laptop users should be using if they have optimus or switchable graphics.
 
Last edited:
I recently started to experience performance issues with my PC, frames were dropping like crazy and the audio was choppy. This was super weird because it was running flawlessly in 4K a couple days prior to this. My GPU is an RTX 2080 so there is no lack of horsepower there.

What I Tried:
Rebooting, reinstalled PSO, adjusted compatibility settings, checked for a GPU driver update, but nothing was working...

That's when I found this post and changed the priority of PSOBB.EXE. This did.. nothing at all.

Ultimately I decided to reinstall my GPU driver using "clean install", and it fixed all of the frame rate and audio issues.
 
A trick I have found is that PSO defaults to software emulation for rendering of "fog" (these can be particles in game or the actual distance fog as well), and apparently it plays hell with modern PCs, because I was pulling about 10FPS in big packs of enemies, or gifoie spam. Turned on hardware rendered fog, and I was able to actually crank the settings to max with no issue after that, and even push the clip distance way out.
MfsdWX8.png


Also, doesn't matter whether vertex or pixel fog is selected, as modern GPUs are equally good at both thanks to unified shader pipelines.
 
Well, it matters a little bit in that the fog option determines which graphical bugs you'll see. If one option causes particularly annoying artifacts, try the other option. ;)
 
A trick I have found is that PSO defaults to software emulation for rendering of "fog" (these can be particles in game or the actual distance fog as well), and apparently it plays hell with modern PCs, because I was pulling about 10FPS in big packs of enemies, or gifoie spam. Turned on hardware rendered fog, and I was able to actually crank the settings to max with no issue after that, and even push the clip distance way out.
MfsdWX8.png


Also, doesn't matter whether vertex or pixel fog is selected, as modern GPUs are equally good at both thanks to unified shader pipelines.
My man, you did it! you absolutely helped me fix my problem! thank you. I has having insane FPS drops in lower seabed levels in Ep2, turns out it was just the fog effect.
 
Back
Top