Brand new graphics card but running at 50% and around 30fps.

[void]

So I bought myself a 4090 for my VR environment. Still I face some bad fps, I must say. Firing up the MSI Afterburner OSD it tells me that
the GPU is at 60%, the CPU is around 60%, all RAMs are fine (VRAM 12GB/24GB and RAM 30/64) but FPS are down to 30 and less. Running the resolution on 2x4K in SteamVR changing the in game render scale from 2 to 0,5 doesn't change almost nothing concerning frametime but ofc screen resolution.

Only Physics Cap and Physics Update Rate change fps drastically in both ways. So does the speed of the anymation.

Why isn't VAM not using the last little bit of the graphic card's ressource? My system can't be the cause, other ressource intensive games suck out 100% and reward me with top notch graphics.

 

[VamWizard]

VAM uses CPU PhysX to handle game physics. It's single-threaded and responsible for the bottleneck. Unity Physics is multi-threaded but was only released in 2019, and the version VAM uses is 2018.3 (IIRC). If you disable soft body physics, you should see some improvement in FPS as well. VAM 2 is being programmed in a way that uses PhysX less.

 

[DJ]

To add on to what VamWizard said, what's going on is that the main thread (running the physics) is at 100% and some of your other cores don't have much to do, so your system is averaging them out and reporting cpu usage as 60% over all cores. You'd need a utility that reports on each core's activity individually to see the bottleneck in action.

 

[SlimerJSpud]

I find that checking all the lights in a scene and setting one or two lights to Auto instead of Forcepixel makes a big difference. Find the lights that make the least difference in auto mode. You might have to turn them down a bit.

 

[void]

Thank you all, I'll try.

 

[MacGruber]

Why isn't VAM not using the last little bit of the graphic card's ressource?

Because you are likely CPU bound. You graphics card is just bored and waiting on the CPU.

other ressource intensive games suck out 100%

VaM is very different from other games.

FPS are down to 30 and less.

Such numbers are meaningless without knowing what exactly you are looking at, with what settings, etc. Just being 20cm closer to the character can already mean totally different FPS. Run the "official" Benchmark scene, because that forces various relevant settings and provides a standardized scene that is exactly the same for everyone. Then check your results against what people post in the discussion thread. There are plenty of people with a 4090 by now, you could see how much improvement another CPU might bring or maybe if there is something wrong with your machine.

Benchmark Result Discussion

This thread is intended to share and discuss result from the MacGruber Benchmark plugin. As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but...

hub.virtamate.com

 

[RiftWind]

Just to add to this post:

What would you consider to be the most "optimzed" settings and scenes for VR fps?
Ive recently been testing various resolutions and the openfsr mod to see if i can get decent sharpness but without too much fps loss.
Ive found sometimes the mod can be set to 0.67 render resolution, with 100% steam ss, and 100% per app, and it looks fantastic, with lights and 2-3 people, but sometimes it can look awful with a single person and only 1 light with major fps loss.
Also it feels at times like steam is rendering at slightly different resolutions, but after reading about throttling and motion compensation, i still dont really know if your supposed to leave it on, turn it off, force the fps, leave vsync on or not XD
On a vive cosmos elite, with a 3060ti rtx, some of the options arent available either - motion smoothing isnt an option in steam for me. I can get low fps with both cpu and gpu at 30-50% usage, or i can get 90% usage on both with decent fps. Thats confusing

*i also read recently that running the graphics card at low res can lower fps, as its "not taking the load off the cpu" - is that a thing? Will a gpu lower the system fps if its not "busy enough" ?

 

[adamgali]

Just to add to this post:

What would you consider to be the most "optimzed" settings and scenes for VR fps?
Ive recently been testing various resolutions and the openfsr mod to see if i can get decent sharpness but without too much fps loss.
Ive found sometimes the mod can be set to 0.67 render resolution, with 100% steam ss, and 100% per app, and it looks fantastic, with lights and 2-3 people, but sometimes it can look awful with a single person and only 1 light with major fps loss.
Also it feels at times like steam is rendering at slightly different resolutions, but after reading about throttling and motion compensation, i still dont really know if your supposed to leave it on, turn it off, force the fps, leave vsync on or not XD
On a vive cosmos elite, with a 3060ti rtx, some of the options arent available either - motion smoothing isnt an option in steam for me. I can get low fps with both cpu and gpu at 30-50% usage, or i can get 90% usage on both with decent fps. Thats confusing

*i also read recently that running the graphics card at low res can lower fps, as its "not taking the load off the cpu" - is that a thing? Will a gpu lower the system fps if its not "busy enough" ?

I have tested various vr mods including openfsr (RTX4090 + i9 13900k), none of them boosted fps even at the lowest resolution. I've come to realize the issue is cpu related specifically PhysX. You need a 10ghz cpu to run the game at 60+ fps in vr.

 

[Saint66]

I have tested various vr mods including openfsr (RTX4090 + i9 13900k), none of them boosted fps even at the lowest resolution. I've come to realize the issue is cpu related specifically PhysX. You need a 10ghz cpu to run the game at 60+ fps in vr.

Not really true, I have 13700K and 4090 and a simple scene with one person atom is running 90-100fps, all physics but high quality on. 2 atoms still over/around 60fps

 

[adamgali]

Not really true, I have 13700K and 4090 and a simple scene with one person atom is running 90-100fps, all physics but high quality on. 2 atoms still over/around 60fps

True for Desktop, in vr things are different, I've never hit 60fps in any vr scene.

 

[Saint66]

True for Desktop, in vr things are different, I've never hit 60fps in any vr scene.

No, these numbers are for VR.
In desktop mode I get like 200+ fps with single person

 

[RiftWind]

With some reinstallations and settings, using the openfsr (for the high detail centre ring thing) i can maintain a reasonably stable 65-80 depending on lights and physics. With hair physics disabled, reduced iterations and lower range lights the fps is higher, and i can even turn on soft physics top n bottom without too much jitter. VR really pushes the pc though - but i noticed for alot of heavy duty scenes - you can turn off alot of things and not notice - but that ffr render thing really takes the fps up - without it, im running constantly 30fps and lower. I do run a pretty high res in vr though, theres no point lowering the gfx then downloading 4k skin textures if you cant see it XD.

 

[rotorrr]

FPS depends on the number of files in the AddonPackages folder, by deleting all files from there and downloading the scene, I got 2.5 times higher fps in VR and 4 times for the monitor. But still the hardware resources are not fully utilized.

 

[Seraphim]

True for Desktop, in vr things are different, I've never hit 60fps in any vr scene.

In case you havent heard of it yet, here is a CPU performance mod that should give you much better fps.

Other - CPU Performance Patch (Up to 30% faster physics, up to 60% more FPS)

As requested in this thread https://hub.virtamate.com/threads/benchmark-result-discussion.13131/page-37 here is a release of the cpu performance patch. FAQ at bottom Only VaM 1.22.0.3 is supported! Please share before and after benchmarks with...

hub.virtamate.com