Very inconsistent framerate issues, videos included

The game seems to run poorly on my computer regardless of the settings I use. To try and describe just how inconsistent it is, let me describe the best it can run vs the worst it will run no matter what. I've had the game work on the absolute maximum settings, all post processing turned on, with same-computer full HD video capture and Flash and Firefox running in the background, at 36 FPS. (I didn't keep this video because YouTube happened to be playing in the background and I didn't notice until I watched it over. The second recording had worse performance even with Firefox closed because I assume my computer consciously hates me.) And this is with the physics running, driving from the start of Small Island towards the bridge. Then, as soon as I get on the bridge, the frames dip dramatically down to around 15-17 FPS. I've also run the game in absolute minimum settings, all post processing off, 640x480, only the video capture running in the background. It still dips to that 15-17 FPS range as soon as I get onto the bridge, or reach any other of the problem spots you see in my Rally video of the full Island.

I've also run the game in windowed mode while watching my performance in Task Manager, and it seems like my CPU is getting decent usage when the game is running well, and then as soon as I start to approach the trouble area, my CPU usage goes way down almost exactly as the slowdown starts to build up. There's been times when the framerate is dropped at that aforementioned range and my CPU isn't even being used more than a 33% across the entire PC. My power settings are set to performance mode and my CPU has no limits on it, and all of my fans are running well, so I would think it isn't an issue with my settings, though I won't rule it out either.

My specifications:
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
Power Supply: HEC X-Power Pro 650
RAM: G.SKILL Sniper 8 GB (2 x 4) DDR3-1600
GPU: HIS Radeon 6950 IceQ X Turbo 2GB GDDR5
CPU: AMD FX 4-Core Black Edition FX-4100
System Drive (Installed BeamNG on this drive): Samsung SSD 830 128GB
HDD: Hitachi Deskstar 160GB
Monitor: eMachines E233Hbd Black 23" 5ms Widescreen LCD

Videos (using Lua Debug and Ctrl+F to show the performance stats):




Edit:

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

i do also have similar (poor) FPS

i have Nvidia 680 GTX, 8gb of RAM & i5

 

This is not that bad lol, I get 30 fps average and I have 9800GT and AMD II X2 Phenom 565 be

 

Downloaded the new version, made very little, if any, difference in graphical performance in those same trouble areas. Does seem to run a little bit better in the sections it was already doing fine in.

 

Yes to resolutions before your post, tried messing with the vsync and refresh rates after your post. Didn't seem to have much impact, it always dipped to that magical 17 mark over the bridge. I found a trial for a program that would let me capture my desktop in full HD with a stable 30 FPS and fairly unobtrusive performance drain, set the game up in windowed mode with task manager and resource monitor alongside it, and left my other capture program on and unrecording to provide a persistent frame counter to provide as much live information of what's happening with my CPUs and the game as possible. The video is fairly large and may take a couple hours to upload to YouTube, so I'll edit it into the post once I wake up tomorrow.

 

As you say there is no improvement changing the video settings it could be your CPU bottlenecking, which will limit your GPU power and result in low frames or inconsistent frame rate. Though I could be wrong .
Try doing following the steps from this forum post by almighty15:

What goes on when you play a game. Simplified

- The CPU sends draw calls to the graphics driver, These draw calls could be anything from rendering a little tree to a mega battle with loads of explosions.

- The graphics driver then turns the draw calls into a scheduled rendering list and feeds it to the graphics card.

- The graphics card renders the list sent to it by the graphics driver.

My quite rubbish explanation

Now as we all know CPU's have varying amounts of power, And we also know that games don't just consist of graphics.

There's sound, Physics, artificial intelligence and general game management code all running and requiring processing at the same time that these graphics draw calls are being processed.

Now if a large part of a CPU's resources are being consumed by sound, physics or artificial intelligence then there's not a lot of spare CPU processing cycles left over for processing the draw calls.

Now if you have a relatively weak graphics card this isn't a problem as the CPU could easily keep the graphics driver and thus, The graphics card fed with rendering information.

Now throw in a high end graphics card and you're in trouble, With the CPU using it's processing power on other aspects of the game the monster GPU is sat idle waiting for rendering information.

And that is a CPU bottleneck.

It's also the reason why games benefit from quad core support as there's more cores and CPU cycles to generate these draw calls while other cores handle other aspects of the game.

How to tell if you're CPU bottlenecked :

- Running at higher resolutions doesn't affect your frame rate.
- Low GPU usage
- High GPU usage with low on screen action but usage drops when loads of enemy's/physics work loads are being processed on screen.
- Adding a second or third graphics card has provided no change in frame rates

What to do if you're CPU bottlenecked :

- Overclock your CPU
- Upgrade CPU
- Turn off as many back ground programs as possible to try and free up some CPU cycles
- Turn up graphics settings to try and move the bottleneck over to the graphics card by giving it more work to do.
- Turn up anti-aliasing ( Works best for me )

Source: http://www.overclock.net/t/953305/how-does-a-cpu-bottleneck-a-graphics-card

 

also, for the amd user's, from what ive been reading around the forums, the game isn't optimized well for amd cpu's

 

Put the video into my original post. Also decided to put it in 1920x1080 fullscreen, throw Anti-Aliasing to 4x, move mesh, texture, and lighting to normal, and keep shading at low for now. Don't think it did anything to improve my framerate, but there's no point running the game worse than is necessary. Definitely feels like a CPU bottleneck further impeded by poor optimization for AMD CPUs. I will probably move to an Intel processor if I can find something good around the Black Friday/holiday sales, as it always seems to be the first choice for optimization regarding most developers. I'm really not looking forward to it though, since I also have to get a different motherboard which will drain a bunch of my funds before I can even put money into the CPU.

 

My desktop (AMD A8 CPU overclocked and 7750 GPU slightly overclocked) runs the game just fine. My laptop, however, has a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo which is not that good, but it is SEVERELY bottlenecked by the GPU. Intel GMA X4500MHD. When at lowest settings and a pretty low res it gets like 25 tops in the grid map. When I press J it shoots up to like 60. I know there's not much to do in terms of improving that, but I would love for options to actually turn off stuff like shadows and skid marks instead of making them look like crap.

The CPU in my desktop (A8, basically a 2.9GHz Phenom II) doesn't feel like it's not working to it's full potential, but it does show that the cores are working at like 80% tops.

EDIT: Even with the CPU overclocked to 3.4GHz and the GPU not overclocked at all I still get about a 10-15 FPS gain when pressing J.

 

I get like 60-70 fps and then out of no where it will drop to like 14-17 and stays like that until I re spawn again. That isn't a fix every time, so sometimes if I re spawn 4-5 times in a row it will go back up to 60+ fps. I've tried messing with a lot of the settings and nothing seems to fix it.

System specs:
AMD FX-8350 eight-core processor
Geforce GTX 670
8GB DDR3

 

Do you know what your CPU/GPU usage is when the fps drops?

 

I just tested it.
GPU is usually hovering at about 75% while at 60 fps with vsync on and then the frame rate drop causes the GPU usage to drop to about 35%

The CPU usage was at about 30% and the frame rate drop didn't affect that however the Maximum Frequency popped up and stayed around 90-100% for a few seconds then dropped back down. I'm not too sure what Maximum Frequency is but could that be the problem?

 

The maximum frequency is the fastest speed your CPU can work at (although that can change depending on the type of CPU as some have a 'Boost' feature that will increase it's frequency beyond its normal speed when it's under heavy load, or if the CPU has been overclocked.)

I don't think that your CPU going to its maximum frequency is the problem (if anything I think it would improve the fps). But something in game is causing your CPU to bottleneck. While the game is running go to Windows Task Manager then Processes and look for BeamNG.drive right click go to 'Set Priority' and select 'High'. I doubt it will completely fix the problem, but it should allow your CPU to concentrate harder on Drive which may help fight the bottlenecking and improve the fps. That may work for any other people who are getting poor fps with a AMD processor.

 

That was the first thing I tried once I realized the graphical settings were having no effect actually. The process priority was set to above normal when I did my set of 3 laps for the rally competition. Certainly worth trying for anyone else who hasn't, but it only offered minimal improvement for me.

 

All I could suggest is a problem with chipset drivers, gpu drivers, or possibly a process running in the background eating away resources(such as AV doing a scan).

 

I tried that and it's hard to tell if it helped because the fps drops were so erratic. I really wish there was a fix for this, it's so frustrating!

 

Dealing with lag is one thing, but dealing with lag spikes is another.

I personally had huge issues with lag spikes, regardless of car or map. I could run at 20-24 FPS but then it would drop down to 11 or 10.

Now I've tried over-clocking and running as high priority and stuff like that but none killed the lag spikes.

But then I stumbled across the problem, then a solution. The 'lag spikes' are caused by your computer 'throttling', or under powering itself to save energy and cool down. Throttling is not easy to stop, most people disable it in BIOS. And then their computer burns. But here is the AMD solution.

1. Download & Install AMD OverDrive (http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/amd-overdrive/Pages/overview.aspx)

2. Put your computer into 'high performance' in power options (this automatically over clocks your computer)

3. Open OverDrive. Create a Profile for BeamNGx86.exe (or whatever the executable is called) and set it to High Priority (this disables throttling)

4. Open BeamNG via the executable or a shortcut to the executable (NOT the launcher)

5. Enjoy

Hope this works for you as it did for me. Please 'Thanks' if it does.

 

I tried this, but it had no effect for me. On the bright side, I have a more detailed view of my CPU and GPU stats. Even driving around on the beaches of Dry Rock Island on max settings in a fairly high windowed resolution with all PostFX but HDR on doesn't bring my GPU above 85% or so, and yet I lag going over that god damned bridge on Small Island on those same near max settings with my overall CPU usage only at around a 33%, maybe 40% of their max usage, my GPU barely over 25% of its max usage, and my fans running at around half speed.