Dedicated Nvidia Physx for performance increase?

[Gosukusan]

Anyone know anything about this? I get a solid 60 fps (with vsync obviously) for 95% of my play time during beta. The only time I can get the game to go below 50 is when there's a large group of skeli's and I kill them all at once with my Wizard's "Wave of Force" spell.

The frame rate drops pretty significantly, and I'm fairly certain that its due to the massive physics calculations load in the 2-3 seconds following the blast.

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my game performance, and 45 fps is not acceptable to me, especially considering that this number could become much lower later in the game when far more monsters are present. Does anyone think a dedicated physx card would solve this problem?

Here's my current PC:

Core i7 920 @4ghz
6 gigs Corsair Dominator @1800mhz
Geforce 480GTX

I'm also considering upgrading to a Geforce 590GTX... Though I really wanted to wait for Keplar chip :(

[TheWanderer]

Does D3 even use PhysX? I thought it used a modified Havok engine.

Even if it used PhysX, a card for about 150$(or less) would be enough for dedicated PhysX.

[Gosukusan]

Perhaps you're right. I know Blizz has some sort of collaboration with Nvidia, but I'm not sure if D3 uses physx or not. After testing some more with Mooge though, I've come to the conclusion that physics processing is most definitely the biggest culprit for performance decrease.

Any ideas on how to negate this problem?

[Exile]

If that money is burning a hole in your pocket then I would suggest another 480GTX for some nice SLI. From what little specs you have shared with us, you have a great rig for this game. I would maybe focus on other bottlenecks? A big culprit is the HDD. Have you considered snagging a nice SSD to replace your current bootable hdd?

Other ways to blow your money would be to consider things that don't need updating as often, like a really great, top of the line:
- Monitor (currenlty have a 27" LED and loving it)
- Sound System (had the same 5.1 altec lansing system since 2001!!!!)
- Comfortable Keyboard
- Comfortable Mouse
- Gaming mouse pad (trust me, these do in fact make a difference)

And if you are super neurotic like myself, you can focus on fan quality, heat emissions/flow, and the noise the fans put out when running games. Nothing better than a nice cool (And quiet!) gaming machine. :thumbup:

[Yab]

Anyone know anything about this? I get a solid 60 fps (with vsync obviously) for 95% of my play time during beta. The only time I can get the game to go below 50 is when there's a large group of skeli's and I kill them all at once with my Wizard's "Wave of Force" spell.

The frame rate drops pretty significantly, and I'm fairly certain that its due to the massive physics calculations load in the 2-3 seconds following the blast.

I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my game performance, and 45 fps is not acceptable to me, especially considering that this number could become much lower later in the game when far more monsters are present. Does anyone think a dedicated physx card would solve this problem?

Here's my current PC:

Core i7 920 @4ghz
6 gigs Corsair Dominator @1800mhz
Geforce 480GTX

I'm also considering upgrading to a Geforce 590GTX... Though I really wanted to wait for Keplar chip :(

Have you tried lowering physics settings in game options? Switching to low could give the answer if this is the problem in your case. My point is that you have a pretty good rig and it SHOULD handle the game on max settings, withoout a sweat, so the problem may lie elsewhere..

[HardRock]

If I were you, I would wait until the release of the full game and for a few patches. This is a beta after all. You may not even see this performance problem in the final game, so buying new hardware now seems like an overreaction to me.

Does anyone think a dedicated physx card would solve this problem?

D3 doesn't use PhysX, so no. Even if it would, if 20-30 skeletons dying slows your system down, then it's either Blizzard's problem or a driver issue. Your card is more than capable of handling that many physics objects.

[Gosukusan]

If that money is burning a hole in your pocket then I would suggest another 480GTX for some nice SLI. From what little specs you have shared with us, you have a great rig for this game. I would maybe focus on other bottlenecks? A big culprit is the HDD. Have you considered snagging a nice SSD to replace your current bootable hdd?

Other ways to blow your money would be to consider things that don't need updating as often, like a really great, top of the line:
- Monitor (currenlty have a 27" LED and loving it)
- Sound System (had the same 5.1 altec lansing system since 2001!!!!)
- Comfortable Keyboard
- Comfortable Mouse
- Gaming mouse pad (trust me, these do in fact make a difference)

And if you are super neurotic like myself, you can focus on fan quality, heat emissions/flow, and the noise the fans put out when running games. Nothing better than a nice cool (And quiet!) gaming machine. :thumbup:

Yeah, an SSD is going to be my next upgrade.

I've already got a sweet 24 inch 120hz 3D monitor, an amazing set of headphones, a Razer Mamba gaming mouse, and more high end fans/heatsinks than I'll ever need, all nestled cozily in my Cooler Master HAF 932.

As for the performance, the game runs near flawlessly. Only framerate hits come from massive amount of skeli pulverization, so I assumed it was a common thing considering my system. However, performance has gone up considerably after installing the new Nvidia beta drivers today, so perhaps it is just a matter of time before they perfect it :)

New drivers even lessened the stuttering I was experiencing by a solid amount. It's barely noticeable now, and I'm sure a nice SSD would get rid of it completely.

[Yab]

I'm sure a nice SSD would get rid of it completely.

I'm not so sure. I'm currently using OCZ RevoDrive X2 (on pci-e) and Diablo 3 runs pretty smooth with one exception - leveling. When my character is surrounded by monsters and leveling animation shows (energy explosion) the game sometimes (not always but once per few levels) drasticaly lowers fps. It happens just for a second but it's noticeable. I'm saying that cause my system is very similiar to yours except GPU - I'm using Radeon HD6990 from Sapphire.

[MrFeeny]

The hard drive is not the issue here as far as I can tell. I highly doubt that switching to an SSD would fix the problem. Generally, SSDs do not provide a boost in fps. All they do is load applications/programs faster than a normal hard drive. So since video games are programs too, they will load faster. Pretty much everything on the computer loads faster, even Windows. SSDs help with the initial launch of a program and can also help when in the game, like if the map were to change as it would be new information to load. SSDs are most beneficial when doing editing, such as video editing, photo editing, animation, etc etc. I am 99% sure on this. Do a little research.

Your computer is overkill for Diablo 3. I would consider the following:

1. It's a beta. It's not completely stable. Still has things to work out. Part of beta is to test it out on a wide range of systems.

2. I think you mentioned that you are using mooege emulator as opposed to the real beta? I would assume the real beta is more stable than some emulator that unofficial developers are working on.

3. Might be a video card driver issue. Do you have the latest version?

4. Are your overclocks stable? I noticed your cpu is overclocked. Do you have any other overclocks, like the video card, and is it stable?

5. Is your game completely downloaded or is it still streaming the download?

6. Do all of your other games work perfectly? If you are having issues elsewhere, then maybe your component(s) are not working properly, such as your video card? I would refer back to the question about stable overclocks as a possibility as well.


Again, it is a beta. Still has things to work out. Plus I'm sure nvidia will release better drivers if issues like these are not just on Blizzard's part. Your computer is overkill for Diablo 3.

[Tilitoon]

Hello fellow spongy friend ! I would agree with MrFeeny for the most part. Especially if you are testing with mooege, I'd say the performance might not be accurate and representative of the final version of the game. As others have pointed out PhysX is not used so you won't have any benefits from it. Most of the physics calculations will be done by your CPU.

As for the SSD, it seems to be the next logical part to upgrade as the rest of your system is very good. MrFeeny : You are right about the benefits of having an SSD, but I just want to add that it will, in theory, reduce the latency when reading and writing to the disk while playing the game. Since the game levels are mostly streamed, it constantly needs to read from the disk and write it into memory. BUT, I do not think you will see that much improvement on that front while actually playing the game and I do not think it is what is causing the problem. I would definitely wait for the release of the game before messing too much with that. Of course I would still suggest to upgrade to an SSD if you can afford it but I would not expect it to solve this particular issue.

[Exile]

yeah I was only throwing the ssd out there just for boot/load times. To get the FPS near perfect I would say SLI what you have to extend the life of the product for a fraction of the price of a brand new card.

[Gosukusan]

The hard drive is not the issue here as far as I can tell. I highly doubt that switching to an SSD would fix the problem. Generally, SSDs do not provide a boost in fps. All they do is load applications/programs faster than a normal hard drive. So since video games are programs too, they will load faster. Pretty much everything on the computer loads faster, even Windows. SSDs help with the initial launch of a program and can also help when in the game, like if the map were to change as it would be new information to load. SSDs are most beneficial when doing editing, such as video editing, photo editing, animation, etc etc. I am 99% sure on this. Do a little research.

Your computer is overkill for Diablo 3. I would consider the following:

1. It's a beta. It's not completely stable. Still has things to work out. Part of beta is to test it out on a wide range of systems.

2. I think you mentioned that you are using mooege emulator as opposed to the real beta? I would assume the real beta is more stable than some emulator that unofficial developers are working on.

3. Might be a video card driver issue. Do you have the latest version?

4. Are your overclocks stable? I noticed your cpu is overclocked. Do you have any other overclocks, like the video card, and is it stable?

5. Is your game completely downloaded or is it still streaming the download?

6. Do all of your other games work perfectly? If you are having issues elsewhere, then maybe your component(s) are not working properly, such as your video card? I would refer back to the question about stable overclocks as a possibility as well.


Again, it is a beta. Still has things to work out. Plus I'm sure nvidia will release better drivers if issues like these are not just on Blizzard's part. Your computer is overkill for Diablo 3.

Oh I'm totally aware of what an SSD will give me. The reason I feel that it will eliminate the rest of my "stuttering" is because I have narrowed the problem down to a file caching/thrashing issue. The game takes longer than it should to pull files from the hard drive when something needs to be cached. I'm sure this is mostly a problem on Blizzard's end, but I'm also fairly certain that an SSD should alleviate this problem. The stuttering has nothing to do with framerate, as it's inconsistent and, for the most part, unrelated to other framerate killing scenarios. It happens when walking through an empty field, or casting arcane orb, or just walking around New Tristram. All these things require file pulling.

And no, I'm playing the real Beta, not mooege. I used mooege to test my theories on game performance by spawning monsters. The leveling up animation is a major framerate killer, just like other large displays of physics with lots of bodies around. I'll spawn 50-100 monsters, kill them all very fast, then as soon as I level up, the framerate goes blurp. It's just a lot happening on screen.

[MrH]

I have a similar PC and I was expecting to hit 60fps rock solid with no dips, hopefully it's just an issue on your end :D

As for SSDs, they are well worth the money. I bought an 80GB Intel x-25m for around £250 when they first came out and it's fantastic. While it won't give you higher FPS it will make your PC feel slick and it'll just be more enjoyable to use. Plus these days SSDs are cheaper and faster so why not? I have just over 50GB left on mine so Diablo III will sit nicely on it.

[Gosukusan]

I have a similar PC and I was expecting to hit 60fps rock solid with no dips, hopefully it's just an issue on your end :D

As for SSDs, they are well worth the money. I bought an 80GB Intel x-25m for around £250 when they first came out and it's fantastic. While it won't give you higher FPS it will make your PC feel slick and it'll just be more enjoyable to use. Plus these days SSDs are cheaper and faster so why not? I have just over 50GB left on mine so Diablo III will sit nicely on it.

Don't get me wrong, the game runs amazingly well, and with the new Nvidia drivers, the performance seems to have taken a noticeable increase in the spots where it use to suffer a little. Bring on the full game plz.

[MrFeeny]

Gosukusan, I just wanted to add that perhaps there is an issue with the actual Diablo 3 installation? Maybe a corrupted file somewhere. Try reinstalling.

Better yet, try deleting the Battle.net folder in C: \ProgramData\. I could be wrong but I think this could be some kind of cache folder for Diablo 3 beta. I noticed that Diablo 3 creates it. Once you delete it (with the game closed of course), open the game and you will notice it will create a new one. You never know, maybe there's a corrupted file in there?

But if that doesn't help, I guess you can just try reinstalling the game.

You can also try deleting the Diablo III folder in your Documents. That folder holds the config file for Diablo 3. You didn't mess with any of its settings, did you? Maybe that's another possibility? But anyways, after you delete it, launch the game and it will create a new one with fresh settings.

[Dnttryme]

I'm also considering upgrading to a Geforce 590GTX... Though I really wanted to wait for Keplar chip :(

590 is an insane waste of money. Either wait for the next chips like you said or get a 580 if you really want to spend a lot on a card. Down the road you can always get another and SLI them. A 580 can handle BF3 on Ultra at 1080p quite well, so I dont think it will be a real issue any time soon.

[Dnttryme]

double post