Performance report

[TMarc]

To be honest, I did not see a even load of all my CPU using Valley recently, only one core was more than 50%, and the others all almost below 20% only. And this was relatively independent of the video settings.

51chicken, you should not restrict the fps of the game - or make the limit even higher.
Did you try to disable D3D9Ex, and also the lag detection?
One thing you could try, as you have such a high refresh rate - try to enable vsync, and put 0 at max FPS.
If your system is really powerfull enough, this would fix the fps at 144 also

[51chicken]

TMarc, just because a game is showing activity on more than 1 core doesn't mean anything.

Unreal1 from 1997 will show usage on multiple cores, I believe it's simply your system load balancing and not an example of a game that is optimized for multiple cores.

The fact that it sits around 25% on a 4 core system seems like it simply means it's using 1 core worth of my CPU.

I can go to the highest settings and get 40 fps and I'll still be at around 25%. Nothing is wrong with my system, runs much more powerful games just fine. BF3 being a different style game has nothing to do with engine optimizations and it actually utilizing my CPU (BF3 will use 6 cores, all of them).

And vsync doesn't magically make my fps stay at 144, it's going to drop below and be even worse that way, and also causes input delay. While I'm merely talking about drops from 160 to around 115 in Elite, that's only 4 active players at a time. The few times I've played Siege and other large gametypes, it ran much worse.

So unless somebody who knows wants to quote me as wrong here, I'm gonna say maniaplanet uses 1 core worth of CPU. TrackMania has always frustrated me in the past with it's poor performance on higher shaders, but it's a racing game and I can tolerate 60-80 FPS. Just not sure why multi-core processors have been around for years now and I can count the number of games on 1 hand that actually utilize them.

[jonthekiller]

The game engine use more the GPU than the CPU, it's a choice to be able to run on low computer. All graphics are on the GPU. Other move, network calculs... are on the CPU and don't need necessary several cores.

[TMarc]

TMarc, just because a game is showing activity on more than 1 core doesn't mean anything.

You're right, actually we don't know unless there is a very good performance measurement tool we could try
With all your descriptions, I think it is mostly related to ManiaPlanet or its video configuration.

I just looked again in your configuration: you have CPU/GPU synchro immediate.
Did you try to set it to none there? To let the CPU run free from GPU?

And just for completing, how did you configure the Catalyst Control Center, especially for ManiaPlanet?
Perhaps it forces some settings which the game can't set itself.
E.g. if you set the CCC to best quality, it will force it despite the low settings of the game.
Perhaps also not use 16x anisotropic filtering, unless the card is really fast doing it.
Also fullscreen or fullscreen windowed sometimes makes a difference.

And in rare cases, it helped the user to delete this configuration file as well as the amd settings file,
to let ManiaPlanet recreate it new.
The cause might be that sometimes driver updates are not recognized.
On the other hand, that you wrote it was same with TrackMania, speaks against this theory.
But perhaps still to try out.

I hope this helped, if not, I'm sorry

[51chicken]

The game engine use more the GPU than the CPU, it's a choice to be able to run on low computer. All graphics are on the GPU. Other move, network calculs... are on the CPU and don't need necessary several cores.

I don't see how that's a choice to be able to run on low-end computers, when anything you buy for low-end has multiple cores these days, and generally don't come with dedicated GPUs.

TMarc, I appreciate your efforts but none of that is going to make this game magically run well on anything but low settings. I've had all the TrackManias, they are the same way. Just another engine that's poorly optimized.

Just ask anybody who played in the QuakeCon tourney, they were forced to play on High Detail and 30 FPS cuz Nadeo would rather watch people suffer just to make the game look good when they can't be bothered to optimize it.

[torriz]

The game engine use more the GPU than the CPU, it's a choice to be able to run on low computer. All graphics are on the GPU. Other move, network calculs... are on the CPU and don't need necessary several cores.

I don't see how that's a choice to be able to run on low-end computers, when anything you buy for low-end has multiple cores these days, and generally don't come with dedicated GPUs.

TMarc, I appreciate your efforts but none of that is going to make this game magically run well on anything but low settings. I've had all the TrackManias, they are the same way. Just another engine that's poorly optimized.

Just ask anybody who played in the QuakeCon tourney, they were forced to play on High Detail and 30 FPS cuz Nadeo would rather watch people suffer just to make the game look good when they can't be bothered to optimize it.

That's insane! I'm so sad to hear that, it's a shame..