[Observation] Hosting prospect reduces GPU usage significantly

Comments: 23

• 05 Nov, '21
  Dilvish

  Even with a very capable cpu, it seems quite possible that when hosting you could wind up cpu capped (especially with a max size group). Have you compared cpu usage when hosting vs joining?

• 06 Nov, '21
  Kip

  Odd, it's the other way around for me. When other players join me, my system usage spikes. When I join them, it's smooth sailing for me.
  
  5950x
  32gb
  3090

• 06 Nov, '21
  Emi

  @Dilvish
  I haven't looked at CPU usage much. GPU usage keeps going down the more players join though, and 9% CPU usage by Icarus with 3 other players.
  GPU usage was 50% with 2 other players, and dropped to less than 30% with 3 other players.

• 08 Nov, '21
  Dilvish

  I think this comes from the vanilla thread mgmt Unreal Engine defaults to --" In unreal engine 4, the Game Thread and Render Thread are synced at each frame, so if either of them is slow, both will be slowed as the run at the same time. A game that has lots of blueprint usage and AI calculations in UE4 will have the Game Thread busy doing work in 1 core, and then every other core in the machine unused." And it sounds like the Game Thread is for both you and everyone you host.
  
  It's my understanding that UE4 does allow a dev to add additional threads to distribute the load on a variety of calculation tasks so long as only the game thread actually creates/destroys/modifies any ingame objects, but perhaps the Icarus team has not pursued that yet.

• 06 Dec, '21
  A user

  Seeing the exact same thing - each player joining costs 10-15 fps/10-20% GPU core usage reduction. Confirmed on a 2080S and a 2070, both with the latest Icarus-ready drivers. CPU usage does not seem to be affected (running an i9 9900k here and average CPU use seems to be 25-40% irrespective). Basically impossible to host more than two-three players in the current state.

• 08 Dec, '21
  zinya

  When hosting I have trash FPS (20-30), with 20% GPU usage and 35% CPU usage.

• 09 Dec, '21
  R

  Same problem here. Play alone, 110-200fps depending on where I am and what I’m doing. 2-3 friends join in, 25-50fps and the CPU and GPU util are both incredibly low. Doesn’t matter what settings I use. DX11 and Dx12 makes no difference. Very frustrating to play as a host with a 3080 and a 5600x with 32Gb of ram only for it to run like this.

• 09 Dec, '21
  hrp

  Same problem on my system, hosting a prospect for 5-6 players will cause my FPS to drop significantly (20-30 fps) after playing a while in same prospect. 100+ fps if I'm alone in a prospect. Tested with different graphics settings, but haven't found any solution.
  
  Specs:
  i7 9700k, RTX 2070S, 16GB RAM, NVMe SSD

• 09 Dec, '21
  Thomas

  Same problem as "R" is having, but on 3090 with 32GB RAM. Seeing only 30% CPU/GPU usage after 5 friends have joined. While getting only 20-30FPS at most.

• 10 Dec, '21
  R

  Had some drops down to single figures tonight and it was unplayable for chunks of time. This issue needs upgrading/changing to a bug rather than observation and it needs to be addressed. I noticed some comment in the release notes saying not to use default settings if you are seeing poor performance. The issue isnt the settings. The people having problems are those who are hosting the game. Without them the game dies.
  Please at least acknowledge that you (devs) have tested this. To validate the issue:
  1)Launch the game as a host
  2)Use something like Geforce Experience performance overlay (Alt-Z > Settings > Hud Layout > Performance > Advanced)
  3)When in game use Alt-R to turn advanced performance on.
  4)Now check your frames, CPU and GPU usage.
  5)Now get a few other people to join and watch your frames plummet and your GPU and CPU usage with it.
  
  Your guests will be fine. All of them will be running around having a great time while you sit there with 20fps and a £2000 system.

• 11 Dec, '21
  Matt

  This is making long missions unplayable as the host. See also the original post by author with other comments and details:
  https://www.reddit.com/r/SurviveIcarus/comments/raahso/multiplayer_hosts_seeing_performance_issues/

• 12 Dec, '21
  Dermodemon

  Same.
  5600x
  3070ti
  16GB 3200mhz RAM

• 13 Dec, '21
  BGK

  Same observations.
  Hosting a game has serious FPS impacts. I see a 20-30% performance hit while playing in a duo, and a 20-40% performance hit while playing in a Trio (as host). This performance hit is also inconsistent and seems to be linked to whatever the other players are doing at that time.
  
  Ryzen 7 5800X (watercooled)
  RTX 3080 (watercooled)
  64GB RAM

• 14 Dec, '21
  sWi7zLe

  It's bit disappointing when I can play Cyberpunk at 4k Ultra with RT, DLSS on Performance and get around 50fps
  
  But when playing this with just one friend at any resolution, I'm lucky to get as high as 40fps.
  
  Playing solo is fine, but as soon as I play with a friend, it almost seems like my CPU and GPU give up. CPU averages around 50% usage and GPU rarely gets above 30%, whilst I'm stuck with 25-35fps.
  
  i7 6700k, 3080ti, 32GB DDR4

• 

  14 Dec, '21
  sWi7zLe

  Could any of you try something that I discovered earlier which has given me an FPS boost?
  
  I haven't been able to test this in multiplayer yet, but I've gained around 15fps simply by turning on an option in nvidia control panel.
  
  Bare in mind this make no sense... Turn on MFAA!
  
  I have been playing on our Prospect alone in 4k, everything Epic with DLSS set to Performance. I have to use DLSS as, without it my GPU now runs at 100%
  Usually I get between 25-35fps, but now I'm getting 40-55fps
  
  I know this sounds silly, but anything is worth a try eh ;)

• 27 Dec, '21
  VonNeuman

  Just bumping by saying our group has the same issues. The host suffers greatly in performance, yet does not seem to utilize all resources of their computer. We did not see this in earlier missions. I can not pinpoint a single action that got this drop either.

• 30 Dec, '21
  Wizzkidy

  bump, I'm seeing this as well. When hosting my FPS tanks, playing solo FPS fine

• 02 Jan, '22
  Stephen Kiser

  Identical experience. Ryzen 9 3900x, 32GB RAM, RTX 3080, ~100fps with maxed settings when solo. ~20fps when acting as the host for myself and 4 others. CPU usage at 20% average from all cores. The first 6 of my logical CPU threads are alternating between 40-70% usage. Those 6 threads average around 50% usage. GPU usage tanks to 20% when I'm hosting for my friends. While the game itself makes sense to be P2P and the developers did an awesome job how anyone can leave and join and become the host for everyone else all on the same centralized project, this performance blocker demands the implementation of dedicated servers.

• 02 Jan, '22
  Stephen Kiser

  I should also note, none of the non-host players on the server had any negative impact. They were able to play with near same performance as they get during solo.

• 06 Jan, '22
  Carol Luparu

  Can we get an official response on this end? The performance when playing in a group of 4+ is horrible for the host. When solo I usually have around 100fps, while being the host for 3 more people I end up with horrible stuttering and fps in the 30s;
  If this spaghetti code they have can't be properly optimized we should at least dump the mp netcode and everything on a separate application that we can run on a dedicated machine; at the moment the current implementation is simply unacceptable!
  
  rtx2070, ryzen 5600x, 32gb ram and running everything on m.2 ssds

• 14 Jan, '22
  Gary Parkin

  I thought it was me, but as I read these posts, there seems to be nothing I can set.
  Game runs great in single player. I play with a friend and I notice some frame drops. Yesterday another friend joined and it was as if I was drunk. Frame rates dropped and the lag was bad at some points. Especially at our base. SSD Hard Drive was pinged).
  
  Neither of my friends reported ANY issues compared to their SP game. I'm hoping for a private server variant soon.
  
  AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core Processor.
  16G RAM
  DirectX 12
  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 16G RAM
  Updated Drivers

• 25 Jan, '22
  Warmen

  Without going into technical detail, this is definitely happening every time I host and other players join, very noticeable even with just 3 players in the session. My specs:
  
  Evga Geforce RTX 3090 FTW3 Oced (Stable)
  Intel Core I9 11900k
  32 GB Memory
  M2 SSD
  Latest Drivers 511.23
  
  What is happening with this game I can't explain. Performance takes a hit when at least one player joins the prospect, to the point frames take a dive until things get blurry when looking around. When playing solo on startup, at times I get vertical tearing which means I am hitting over 120 FPS on 120 Mhz panel. Also what I noticed is forest fire set anywhere on the biome , even ,if its kilometers away and not visible on screen, performance is still noticeably impacted for everyone as GPU still seems to render what goes on this far away, needless to say to the point it feels you are at 20 FPS which isn't right with this type of setup.

• 05 Feb, '22
  Thomas Brett

  When I join someone's game, GPU usage is 90% getting 80fps, when I host GPU usage drops to 40% and I get 40fps. CPU doesn't go above 30% usage. When I first start the game, it uses about 8GB of RAM but after about 30mins, its up at 19GB. Is there a memory leak?