High UPS, Low FPS

[MythicalWarlord]

Earlier this year I was able to run Factorio just fine. I had 60 FPS and 60 UPS. I then took a break for a while to focus on school work, but when I came back I was no longer getting that level of performance. My UPS is the same, but I’m now getting on average 17 FPS. Vsync is off, and all my graphical settings are the same as how I had it earlier this year.


Between now and then, I switched over to Manjaro Linux, so I thought it might have been an issue there. I made sure I wasn’t running Factorio through Proton, which changed nothing. So I switched over to my Windows partition because I knew for a fact my performance was fine on Windows, and I got the same issue. I’m very sure that I was using the dedicated GPU, I told Windows to run Factorio with high priority and in high performance mode. No change. All the other games I play have been running fine. I am capable of running Satisfactory on Ultra settings with only minor lag, but it runs on high just fine.


Next, I checked my hardware. I am running a Ryzen 5 3550H with a GTX 1050. I have 16GB of DDR4 RAM at 2666 MHz. I downloaded hwinfo to check all my timings, and everything is running fine. After some googling I found people talking about Factorio needing high single core CPU and RAM clock speeds. I saw that my CPU was not ramping up as far as it could, so I figured that was fine. A friend of mine lent me his stick of DDR4 RAM at 3200 MHz to see if I got any performance increase at all, which caused no change. Hwinfo read the RAM clock speed at 3200 MHz, so everything was running correctly.

I've attached my log file should that be of any help.

[Silari]

Take a screenshot of the game showing the FPS issues with the debug options on to show usage - see the instructions in viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68653 (it's the second OBLIGATORY line)

CPU/RAM isn't going to change FPS that much if UPS is fine, it's almost certainly something on the graphics sides of things - possibly a driver or setting.

Check the graphics options and see if "use flip presentation model" is on - if so, try turning it off. Sometimes it causes issues, though normally it should improve FPS.

[MythicalWarlord]

I changed that setting, but it didn't work. I'm doing this on windows for sake of making problem solving easier. My graphics driver is up to date. Here's the show usage menu in the attached screenshot.

I also accidentally keep leaving things out, this issue isn't restricted to my save, it happens on a multiplayer server being hosted by someone else.

[Koub]

Code: Select all

   0.353  [0]: \\.\DISPLAY1 - AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Graphics  {0x80005, [0,0], 1920x1080, 32bit, 60Hz}
   0.815 [Direct3D11] Display: 0, Output: 0, DisplayAdapter: 0, RenderingAdapter: 0; d3dcompiler_47.dll
   6.938 Initialised Direct3D[0]: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050; id: 10de-1c91; driver: nvldumdx.dll 30.0.14.9649

This part bugs me. Can't understand if it's the integrated GPU or the nVidia GPU that's used, or a mix of both.

[MythicalWarlord]

If I'm remembering task manager correctly, both are being used but I dont know if factorio is using both or if the whole system is using both.

[orzelek]

Did you try to disable the integrated GPU in the APU (if thats possible?).
I'm thinking running NV and AMD GPU at the same time might not be a good thing for a PC.

[posila]

Hmm, something is really bad since Render preparation is spiking to over 1 second. It is highly multithreaded task (can use all the cores) and it shouldn't take more than 10 milliseconds on zoom levels that the game normally allows. Can you also make a screenshot with just show-gpu-time-usage enabled, please?

Your CPU might be thermal throttling, I would suggest you to clean fans on your laptop. Also, do you run the game with power adapter plugged in or from battery? Maybe the battery is dying and is not providing enough power for the peak performance, or the laptop is running on some power saving mode when running from battery.

Code: Select all

   0.353  [0]: \\.\DISPLAY1 - AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Graphics  {0x80005, [0,0], 1920x1080, 32bit, 60Hz}
   0.815 [Direct3D11] Display: 0, Output: 0, DisplayAdapter: 0, RenderingAdapter: 0; d3dcompiler_47.dll
   6.938 Initialised Direct3D[0]: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050; id: 10de-1c91; driver: nvldumdx.dll 30.0.14.9649

This part bugs me. Can't understand if it's the integrated GPU or the nVidia GPU that's used, or a mix of both.

Windows reports the Display1 as connected to the AMD graphics. But Direct3D is initialized on GeForce, so that's the one which will accelerate rendering of the game (but final frame will be sent to the Radeon for final composition with Windows desktop, or to just outputting it on screen)

[MythicalWarlord]

This whole time, I've been running it while plugged into the wall. I made sure that wasn't the issue. But when I booted up factorio to try the things you guys told me to try, everything started running fine. I have 60 fps again on both windows and linux. The only thing that changed is that I turned off power management on linux because I started having an issue with my usb ports turning off. I don't think that is what fixed it, I don't understand why that would fix it. I'm just going to give it a week or so, if I get issues again, I'll try the things said here and report back. Though I hope there won't be issues, this was annoying to try to figure out.

[MythicalWarlord]

Ok, the problem reared it's ugly head again, but I think I finally figured it out. It was actually a thing I thought I could rule out because other things seemed to be running fine. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with my charger, which is causing my computer to throttle the cpu when plugged into the wall. My cpu gets throttled to 400 Mhz. On battery power everything runs as expected, but as soon as I plug it into the wall it throttles down. My best guess is that it's a BIOS setting as this happens on linux as well and altering the power plan settings on windows helped nothing. This weekend I'm getting a new charger, hoping that fixes this issue. Thanks for all your help, it's great to know that this is a place I can go for actual help.

[lyvgbfh]

Ok, the problem reared it's ugly head again, but I think I finally figured it out. It was actually a thing I thought I could rule out because other things seemed to be running fine. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with my charger, which is causing my computer to throttle the cpu when plugged into the wall. My cpu gets throttled to 400 Mhz. On battery power everything runs as expected, but as soon as I plug it into the wall it throttles down. My best guess is that it's a BIOS setting as this happens on linux as well and altering the power plan settings on windows helped nothing. This weekend I'm getting a new charger, hoping that fixes this issue. Thanks for all your help, it's great to know that this is a place I can go for actual help.

Is your laptop a Dell?

[MythicalWarlord]

It's a HP. But I have a plan to fix this. I found some things online and people have encountered this before on my same laptop so this should work.

[lyvgbfh]

It's a HP. But I have a plan to fix this. I found some things online and people have encountered this before on my same laptop so this should work.

Let us know if you find a working fix

[MythicalWarlord]

Ok so I got a new charger to see if that would help. Turns out that wasn't the issue so I took it to geek squad, they said it's not a software issue and that either my cpu, motherboard, or both are screwed. Thanks again for the help everyone. You all have made troubleshooting this issue bearable.

[lyvgbfh]

Ok so I got a new charger to see if that would help. Turns out that wasn't the issue so I took it to geek squad, they said it's not a software issue and that either my cpu, motherboard, or both are screwed. Thanks again for the help everyone. You all have made troubleshooting this issue bearable.

If it becomes an issue enough that you consider replacing the PC or not playing factorio, give me a PM. From the cases I've seen repairing PCs professionally, there are workarounds.