[Mid to High-End PC] Performance Tweaks: List that improved overall FPS & gave more visual clarity

I doubt it's thermal throttling :


I have very good airflow, and a pretty good dust filter, though I guess it has been a while since I cleaned the CPU radiator... (ran out of the air bomb last time before I could get to it, thanks for making me remember to get a new one !)

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BlueTemplar85#0647 escreveu:

I doubt it's thermal throttling :


I have very good airflow, and a pretty good dust filter, though I guess it has been a while since I cleaned the CPU radiator... (ran out of the air bomb last time before I could get to it, thanks for making me remember to get a new one !)

Oh - the FX 8320 is just not really capabile of gaming modern titles. Next month itll be 14 years since its release.

If you want to game *right now* and have a nicer experience, give geforce now a try.
I dont want to advocate for it, but the price is actually not too bad if you consider that the majority of electricity is consumed on the server... (the ~0,4Wh my PC consumes while playing are not free afterall, but it would be much lower if the GFN server computes)

Hmm, I'd hate giving money to Nvidia...
(And as winter is approaching, I'll probably try my hand at overclocking.)

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noxxxus#0380 escreveu:

Oh - the FX 8320 is just not really capabile of gaming modern titles. Next month itll be 14 years since its release.

[...]

11 years. And how would you know ? Did you miss the part about Diablo 4 running fluidly on it ?
(Or Expedition 33, for an even more modern game of another kind, though there's one small issue that might be CPU-related.)

But I want to insist again on the problem of not being able to turn down settings for CPU-related matters, and especially on the few areas that are underperforming even in the campaign, like Utzaal, The Drowned City, and Act 2 Town, including by better CPUs than mine (see the other screenshot).
(It's not like in the Atlas where you have freedom of what maps and map modifiers you run.)

It's a shame especially that these haven't been improved for the first free weekend of PoE2.

(PoE2 currently downloading on my Steam Deck.)

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BlueTemplar85#0647 escreveu:

11 years. And how would you know ? Did you miss the part about Diablo 4 running fluidly on it ?
(Or Expedition 33, for an even more modern game of another kind, though there's one small issue that might be CPU-related.)

But I want to insist again on the problem of not being able to turn down settings for CPU-related matters, and especially on the few areas that are underperforming even in the campaign, like Utzaal, The Drowned City, and Act 2 Town, including by better CPUs than mine (see the other screenshot).
(It's not like in the Atlas where you have freedom of what maps and map modifiers you run.)

It's a shame especially that these haven't been improved for the first free weekend of PoE2.

(PoE2 currently downloading on my Steam Deck.)

Idk, its kind of like asking me to explain why X299 chips with the mesh topology instead of the ring bus just weren’t great for gaming.

The FX-8320 was fine for its time, but the architecture was never strong in single-thread performance, which is what most games rely on. That’s why even though it might “run” newer titles, it struggles compared to more modern CPUs.

Over the years, especially with AMD’s X3D chips, you can see how much of a difference architecture and cache design make in games. Ryzen (AM4 and onward) was the turning point where AMD actually caught up to Intel in gaming performance... and today with 3D V-Cache they’re way ahead in many cases.

So yeah, it’s not that your FX can’t launch modern games, it’s just that it’s holding you back compared to literally any mid-range CPU from the last 5–6 years.


Chances are unironically that the steam deck outperforms CPU-wise, but it does not have a great GPU, so the overall performance is still not great.

I really dont want to sound like a used-car-salesperson - i'd just get 1 month of GFN to be able to enjoy the game right now, while looking for an upgrade. Overclocking the FX is beating a dead horse..

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BlueTemplar85#0647 escreveu:

And how would you know ?

Even if you cranked your FX to 5 GHz, it wouldn’t matter - the single-thread performance is still far behind modern CPUs. Ryzen cores do much more work per clock, and X3D chips push that even further with cache. A GHz on FX is not the same as a GHz on Ryzen, and definitely not the same as a GHz on Ryzen X3D.

So I have tried with the Steam Deck, default settings.
- The default NIS upscale mode already has aliasing issues on my desktop's 1920x1200, but it looks really bad on the Deck's 1280×800. (FSR would be probably the way to go there.)
- Loading is slow, so are shader calculations. Sound also often lags on load. (That issue I have on my desktop sometimes with Exp33, though not during skill use.)
- Gameplay is fairly fluid indeed, even though it's mostly hovering around 35-40 FPS in the 3 areas tested. (Interlude 2 : Pools of Khatal as the area tested in comparison to.)

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Chances are unironically that the steam deck outperforms CPU-wise, but it does not have a great GPU, so the overall performance is still not great.

Yeah, maybe, I would have to try to lower graphic settings on the Deck to be sure.

It's kind of embarrassing though : I spoke too soon : while my desktop for some reason is really bad at The Drowned City and especially Utzaal (25-30 FPS in combat), I don't seem to feel any more those unplayable lag spikes that I have seen there in 0.1.
So good job GGG ??

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not being able to turn down settings for CPU-related matters

Ok, there is that one setting mentioned by OP that does seem to have given me around 1-3 FPS (and maybe more with a lot of enemies ?) : Sound => Channel Count => from High to Low.

(All the tests here after waiting for Shaders to be done.)

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BlueTemplar85#0647 escreveu:

(For me Act2 town isn't even the worst offender, since you're not fighting in the town − the worst offenders would be Act 3 The Drowned City and Utzaal, which, for some reason, are for me CPU-limited to 30-40 FPS even after shader calculations, and with spikes lower than 30 FPS once enemies show up.
Compare with Diablo 4, fluid for me (even at max settings), or even (mostly) PoE1.)

if you are having sub 30fps in campaign then you can def improve that. i pushed my old sandy bridge to get stable 30-40fps in act2 town with rest of the game getting 50-60.

set the hidden performance profile under win11 (do this dynamically aka only when the game is running, you can automate this with a shell script)

disable most of the OSs visuals under SystemPropertiesPerformance, this frees up a lot of CPU

if you are still struggling with fps dips then set core affinity making sure the OS will have at least one core for base process

all of this goes out the window in maps tho, you really need a better CPU there.

I am getting 50-60 FPS in most areas, with barely noticeable dips to 30 FPS in intense combat.

Under Linux now though, rather than Win10, but I might look into whether similar things apply there.

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BlueTemplar85#0647 escreveu:

I am getting 50-60 FPS in most areas, with barely noticeable dips to 30 FPS in intense combat.

Under Linux now though, rather than Win10, but I might look into whether similar things apply there.

hmm the picture you shared did show some headroom, i agree...

k lets beat the dead horse, why not, sounds fun :D

... the FX 8320 should have 2MB L2 cache shared per two cores (per module).

so you could move almost everything to 1,3,5,7 and then launch the game on 0,2,4,6 and see what happenes.

sth like

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for pid in $(ps -e -o pid=); do
sudo taskset -cp 1,3,5,7 "$pid" >/dev/null 2>&1
done

and then either use the steam launch option

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taskset -c 0,2,4,6 nice -n -5 %command%

(you dont need elevated priviliges for -5, thats already higher than default priority)

or use even higher prio

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sudo nice -n -10 taskset -c 0,2,4,6 wine "/path/to/PathOfExile2.exe"

... and then in the end possibly try stuff like 0,1,2,4,6 for the game and only 3,5,7 for the rest (some processes wont move anyways) - you get the idea. gl xd

Added some AMD-Specific details, for example a reminder to turn of "Radeon Anti-Lag" - activating this setting costs over 20fps on my setup.

It is basically the equivalent of setting pre-rendered frames to 1 in the nvidia driver.

Please do yourself a favor and get rid of these settings if you ever "optimized your pc for shooters"...