Clients FPS drops down to 5-15 - Bloodmoon - Server Issue?

[AnotherPat]

Hi there!

we are playing with 5 player on a paid dedicated Server with the following Specs:

Version: Alpha 20.6 (b9) Compatibility Version: Alpha 20.6, Build: WindowsPlayer 64 Bit
System information:
OS: Windows 10  (10.0.14393) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz (cores: 40)
RAM: 131037 MB
GPU: Null Device (128 MB)
Graphics API: NULL 1.0 [1.0] (shader level 5,0)
Last played version: Alpha 20.5

And here are the Server Logfile:

Server - Logfile

And here are a Client Logfile: ( unfortunately not the right for the Server Logfile)

Client - Logfile

that was on my testserver with this Logfile:

Testserver - Logfile

So i ve checked every Video option to improve my Client FPS on the Testserver and yeah, even on the lowest settings they are dropping down to 15 FPS on the Testserver.

The other player have the same issue with better computer dropping down to 15 as well, but there i got arround 5 FPS.

Is my computer really that bad?

What can i do? What can the other player do to improve the FPS?

Or is it just a server issue?

I would really love to play the game with 30-60 FPS in a bloodmoon night so what can i do?

for any tips i would be really thankful!

 

[joshwa0816]

E5 2680 V2 may serve it's purpose for server things and some other games but for this game it's from 2013. Nearly 10 years old! It's adding to the lag everyone gets during horde night, it simply cannot keep up. Amount of cores doesn't matter either. 

 

[Fox]

From my understanding, servers don't render fps, they just send and receive data and if they can't keep up, long delays with teleporting zombies happen, but at your end, you still see normal fps with the world and everything in it just not loading properly.

That server, while definitely old, should still work ok in my opinion unless the server isn't able to benefit from all the threads (which is possible since the client side still doesn't). Also, it's a 10 core cpu (20 threads), not 40... unless a motherboard with 2 CPU sockets still existed in 2012 (I can't remember that far back). I also doubt the game is coded to even accept 2 physical cpus.

A few years back, I hosted a server of only 3 players, but it was on an AMD FX 8320 (4 cores) which we all know to be a terrible cpu even for it's time and yet the server never had a single issue ever and the cpu never reached passed 40%. I imagine that Xeon is roughly a similar performance given the GHz but with 10 cores instead of 4, and the server hardware requirements really haven't changed too much over the years from what I've seen. But I could be wrong on that as it has been a year since I hosted the game.

I also noticed no mention of hdd or ssd. If the server is hosting the game from an hdd, then you might have problems as hdd's are incredibly slow and struggle to keep up, if on an ssd (even if it's just sata ssd), then nvm.

 

[AnotherPat]

E5 2680 V2 may serve it's purpose for server things and some other games but for this game it's from 2013. Nearly 10 years old! It's adding to the lag everyone gets during horde night, it simply cannot keep up. Amount of cores doesn't matter either. 

The Server FPS is like in the Logfile between 20-40 FPS even in a horde there is now breakdown so its for me, that the server does the job and like Fox said, normally Client FPS dont have anything to do with the server so the zombies would stuttering or everything like rubberbanding but my Client breaksdown to 5FPS and it feels like i would play a 32-Bit Game so there is not enough power in my system or the game cant access to all my ressources.

From my understanding, servers don't render fps, they just send and receive data and if they can't keep up, long delays with teleporting zombies happen, but at your end, you still see normal fps with the world and everything in it just not loading properly.

That server, while definitely old, should still work ok in my opinion unless the server isn't able to benefit from all the threads (which is possible since the client side still doesn't). Also, it's a 10 core cpu (20 threads), not 40... unless a motherboard with 2 CPU sockets still existed in 2012 (I can't remember that far back). I also doubt the game is coded to even accept 2 physical cpus.

A few years back, I hosted a server of only 3 players, but it was on an AMD FX 8320 (4 cores) which we all know to be a terrible cpu even for it's time and yet the server never had a single issue ever and the cpu never reached passed 40%. I imagine that Xeon is roughly a similar performance given the GHz but with 10 cores instead of 4, and the server hardware requirements really haven't changed too much over the years from what I've seen. But I could be wrong on that as it has been a year since I hosted the game.

I also noticed no mention of hdd or ssd. If the server is hosting the game from an hdd, then you might have problems as hdd's are incredibly slow and struggle to keep up, if on an ssd (even if it's just sata ssd), then nvm.

So than it sould be a Client issue... but at all 5 Players at the same time?

Its a 2x CPU Mainboard but i dont think, that i'm the only one on this server ^^'

but the clock speed is 2.8 GHZ and boost up to 3,2 GHZ

i have 10GB RAM for me what is enough i would say to play with 5 Player- and yeah its on a m2 ssd as well.

And i dont know much about the Logfile at all but like you said the Server FPS is between 20-40FPS and the Client FPS drops from 80 FPS down to 5 FPS, even on a other Server its dropping to 15 FPS so yeah...

The real question is now, what can i change on the client side to improve the stability of the FPS?

I've also tried to full clear the game from my system to play with "vanilla" settings but it hasnt changed anything...

Also to play with low FOV or low Resolution

It makes no sense for me...

Do i need start parameter like -USEALLAVAILABLECORES -sm4 -d3d10 ???

Or i saw the trick with a boot config:

gfx-enable-gfx-jobs=1
gfx-enable-native-gfx-jobs=1
wait-for-native-de@%$#=0
hdr-display-enabled=0
gc-max-time-slice=3

is that a real thing?

 

[Fox]

I've never felt the need to use any of those launch settings so I have no idea if they're just placebos or if they do much but it doesn't hurt to try.

20 - 40fps for the server is completely normal and as it should be. Is there any consistencies between all 5 players? Like, are you all using the same network / internet? What kind of hardware are you using? Did you set the server to spawn too many zombies or animals (because there's a reason why limits exist)? If playing on an old map, I think random corruptions might be able to cause performance issues too.

 

[AnotherPat]

I've never felt the need to use any of those launch settings so I have no idea if they're just placebos or if they do much but it doesn't hurt to try.

20 - 40fps for the server is completely normal and as it should be. Is there any consistencies between all 5 players? Like, are you all using the same network / internet? What kind of hardware are you using? Did you set the server to spawn too many zombies or animals (because there's a reason why limits exist)? If playing on an old map, I think random corruptions might be able to cause performance issues too.

Nope, we are living in different towns, using different provider...

i ve tried the launch settings but yeah nothing changed at all.

So this are my 2 Systems i'm playin on (at home and from a hotel)

Version: Alpha 20.6 (b9) Compatibility Version: Alpha 20.6, Build: WindowsPlayer 64 Bit

System information:
OS: Windows 10  (10.0.22000) 64bit
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight-Core Processor  (cores: 8)

RAM: 32701 MB
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (4071 MB) ( R9 290x)
Graphics API: Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1] (shader level 5,0)
Last played version: Alpha 20.6

droping down from 120FPS to 15FPS in a bloodmoon night

Version: Alpha 20.6 (b9) Compatibility Version: Alpha 20.6, Build: WindowsPlayer 64 Bit
System information:
OS: Windows 10  (10.0.22621) 64bit
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3550H with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx  (cores: 4)
RAM: 16193 MB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (3949 MB)

Graphics API: Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1] (shader level 5,0)
Last played version: Alpha 20.6

droping down from 80FPS to 5FPS in a bloodmoon night

One more system i know is:

CPU: Intel Core i9 9900K (cores: 8 )

RAM: 16GB

GPU: 2080 TI 11GB

droping down from 120FPS to 15FPS in a bloodmoon night

The max zombies in a bloodmoon night are capped at 50 at the same time!

so what do i miss???

Its really frustrating.

 

[Fox]

50 zombies per player or on the map? I imagine 50 per player would put even my own computer down on it's knees begging for mercy.

Here's what I usually set my config file as:

"BloodMoonEnemyCount" = 8 -16 depending on number of players and skill level, more players usually means lower number cuz that's a lot of zombies spawning in at once. 

"MaxSpawnedZombies" = 64  I never go higher than that.

 

[AnotherPat]

50 zombies per player or on the map? I imagine 50 per player would put even my own computer down on it's knees begging for mercy.

Here's what I usually set my config file as:

"BloodMoonEnemyCount" = 8 -16 depending on number of players and skill level, more players usually means lower number cuz that's a lot of zombies spawning in at once. 

"MaxSpawnedZombies" = 64  I never go higher than that.

GamePref.BloodMoonEnemyCount = 50

GamePref.MaxSpawnedZombies = 50

i will change it and give it a try. thanks

 

[AnotherPat]

OK, i ve changed it and also tried! and yeah it works better with less Zombies BUT!

i heard a streamer that is playing with 512 MaxSpawnedZombies!!! with no problem so yeah it would be a solution just to cap the Zombies at 30...

Otherwise maybe there is something other we miss here?

Time: 28.23m FPS: 115.37 Heap: 2658.2MB Max: 2733.5MB Chunks: 225 CGO: 144 Ply: 1 Zom: 0 Ent: 8 (54) Items: 2 CO: 1 RSS: 6106.6MB

Can someone explain this line for me?

Its the Time i spend on the session?

The currently FPS?

Head should be the VRAM?

Max VRAM used?

Chunks dont know

CGO donw know

Ply dont know

Zom dont know

Entdont know

Items dont now

CO dont know

RSS looks like used RAM???

On this System i have 32GB RAM so that could have a huge impact on my performance right?

But how can i get the game to use all ressources???

 

[Fox]

512 max spawned doesn't mean that's what he gets (I imagine he just says that for clickbait nonsense)... it just means he essentially didn't really set a limit. The true limit is based on your game stage, so as you level up higher (and not die) the amount of zombies spawned during bloodmoon goes up. I very much doubt anyone has ever had that many zombies spawn at once without the use of cheats (or modifying the game stage files), and I'll bet their fps was terrible despite having the best hardware on the market too.

Quantity of ram is meaningless to performance, unless you didn't have enough in which case you would maybe get issues like crashing or hitching (this only occurs if you have 8GB or less available for the game, though some have reported issues at 16GB due to their own bloatware running in the background).

Using all resources is impossible for any and all games. The game will use as much as possible until bottlenecked by something, usually CPU since it only benefits from maximum 4 core threads client side (sometimes only 2 depending on game update and bios version, and I don't know how much server side benefits from as I've never been able to peg it to the max). So if you see an 8 core CPU reaching a total of around 50% usage and "spread out across all cores" for stability reasons, you'll know why.

 

[AnotherPat]

512 max spawned doesn't mean that's what he gets (I imagine he just says that for clickbait nonsense)... it just means he essentially didn't really set a limit. The true limit is based on your game stage, so as you level up higher (and not die) the amount of zombies spawned during bloodmoon goes up. I very much doubt anyone has ever had that many zombies spawn at once without the use of cheats (or modifying the game stage files), and I'll bet their fps was terrible despite having the best hardware on the market too.

Quantity of ram is meaningless to performance, unless you didn't have enough in which case you would maybe get issues like crashing or hitching (this only occurs if you have 8GB or less available for the game, though some have reported issues at 16GB due to their own bloatware running in the background).

Using all resources is impossible for any and all games. The game will use as much as possible until bottlenecked by something, usually CPU since it only benefits from 4 cores client side (I don't know how much server side benefits from as I've never been able to peg it to the max). So if you see an 8 core CPU reaching a total of around 50% usage and "spread out across all cores" for stability reasons, you'll know why.

That sounds fair and i'm really thankful for your information!

Now, the problem is: i dont come to 50% CPU usage not even 25% in a horde night with 50 zombies.

It's really like i play a ■■■■ game in a 32-bit mode that cant use any ressources what makes me really mad, cause i like the game, my friends also, but not be able to play a horde night with arround 50 max zombies is really frustrating! and if it's like you said, that there are coming more and more later... i dont know.

 

[SylenThunder]

Most games are only single-threaded and will not use more than one CPU core.  7 Days is multithreaded, but is still primarily tied to a single core for the most part.

Also note that without some serious modding to the core of the game, maxalive higher than 90 will have issues. Just because a streamer claims to do it, doesn't mean it's actually happening.

 

[Beelzybub]

Your test server is a 12 year old laptop and you have this setting:

Setting for 'BloodMoonEnemyCount' does not match the default (server will go to the modded category): current = 100, default = 8

Your laptop would struggle at the default of 8 so 100 is not a good choice. Try 6.

 

[AnotherPat]

Your test server is a 12 year old laptop and you have this setting:

Setting for 'BloodMoonEnemyCount' does not match the default (server will go to the modded category): current = 100, default = 8

Your laptop would struggle at the default of 8 so 100 is not a good choice. Try 6.

The Testserver is not the problem Sir...

Why is everyone tryin to blame my old hardware? haha

Sure, in 10 years there are some new features for cpu's but 2,4 GHz are 2,4GHz 4 cores are 4 cores... we are not living in the time of changes like 500MHz single cores to 4GHz on 10 cores in 10 Year...

If you take a closer look into the testserverlogfile you see, the Server-FPS are still over 20 and yeah @%$# that @%$#...

and i just changed it to TEST.

Happy new year btw.

I hope our all wishes come true and we get some more avaible POWER for the game!

 

[joshwa0816]

Why is everyone tryin to blame my old hardware? haha

I bet an i5 12400 would perform better than that 10 year old CPU. If you don't want to upgrade. You only have a few options, wait until the game goes full release for the best optimizations and see if it helps your troubles.

Install the mod that replaces glass windows that are being fixed in A21. That made a difference questing in tier 5 pois

Limit the AMD CPUs to 4 real cores excluding the very first one in affinity/task manager and see if that helps. 

Limit the power profile of the mobile ryzen to reduce heat, thermal throttling during horde night was contributing to a friend's Ryzen 4800H laptop

If shadows and/or reflections are turned on, turn them off exclusively for horde night

If you have gens, battery banks, solar panels try turning them off. I looked at half of our base with 2 generators going and found it reduced the fps by almost 20 for me and our 2nd PC and went up as soon as it was turned off tested this 3 times across both PCs because I was in disbelief. We now use candles and torches. Hello screamers

Keep dynamic mesh to disabled or landclaim only. Disabled during horde night. 

The rtx 2080ti PC can use Nvidia's control panel nis image scaling to render the image at 85% with almost no difference in image quality unlike the in game built in image scaling option. 

If you have a tree farm around your base chop it all down and replant after horde night, same for any farm. I chop all trees up to 100 away Ina full circle around the base the morning of horde night. Replant everything after base repairs

Mod the zombie bodies to disappear after 5 to 7 seconds. You can even swap it in and out for horde night only. It's a server side mod so nobody needs it except the server. 

This all helped the worst of the group, the Ryzen 4800H rtx 2060 laptop. His experience improved significantly though not awesome, he dies way less during horde night.

 

[Pernicious]

Why is everyone tryin to blame my old hardware? haha

Sure, in 10 years there are some new features for cpu's but 2,4 GHz are 2,4GHz 4 cores are 4 cores... we are not living in the time of changes like 500MHz single cores to 4GHz on 10 cores in 10 Year...

Oils ain't oils, as they say (or maybe that was just an Australian advertisement).

No, a core isn't a core, and 2.4Ghz, isn't 2.4Ghz. Improvements in Instructions Per Clock (IPC), improved and larger caching, higher bandwidth to RAM and peripherals, means that newer CPUs are far faster than the clock speed or the core count would indicate. Let's compare your CPU to Intel's flagship processor:



Despite being only 200Mhz faster by clock speed - less than 10% faster, on single core performance, it's 3.4x faster (+240%). From optimisations with multi-core processing (most likely through optimised cache and lower memory latency so each core isn't waiting on another for access to RAM), by the time you get to 8 core performance, it's a massive 5.5x faster (Not that 7d2d can take advantage of that).

This synthetic benchmark could also be understating it. My understanding is that RAM access speed has a higher than usual impact on 7d2d's performance.

7D2D is a very compute intensive game, unlike most games on the market. I don't know how much TFP have done this, but it isn't unusual for developers to write games in anticipation of the compute and rendering capabilities available when they intend to release. E.g. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided upset a lot of players because the highest settings were very low FPS even on Nvidia's flagship card at the time. Sure, there might be settings that work on 10 year old equipment, but expecting it to be a smooth experience might be expecting too much.

 

[Fox]

Now, the problem is: i dont come to 50% CPU usage not even 25% in a horde night with 50 zombies.

I already answered that part. 

Using all resources is impossible for any and all games. The game will use as much as possible until bottlenecked by something, usually CPU since it only benefits from maximum 4 core threads client side (sometimes only 2 depending on game update and bios version, and I don't know how much server side benefits from as I've never been able to peg it to the max). So if you see an 8 core CPU reaching a total of around 50% usage and "spread out across all cores" for stability reasons, you'll know why.

Depending on bios version and game version (and maybe other factors), the game (client side) will either only benefit from 2 cores or 4 core threads total (but it spreads out to all cores for stability). Most games are either like this or worse (being single threaded only). This is apparently a game engine limitation.

Also, generation of CPU matters more than core count and frequency. A first generation quad core cpu would be complete garbage compared to a 2022 generation quad core with the exact same frequency (and it's the same for both AMD and Intel). Things get optimized and improved on with every single new release of CPUs (usually around 10 - 15% each time).

More info here: