Dynamic Shadows Killing Performance? [Archive]

TRMcDee

10-27-2009, 03:28 AM

First, I'm not here to complain. Let me state my problem: With Dynamic Shadows enabled, my frame rates are very low (20-25)for the rig I have. Turning them off makes the game run very nicely at 50-60 FPS, all other settings maxed at 1680x1050. Im not trying to force AA.

My Computer: 3ghz Intel Quad, 5gb RAM, Radeon 4850, Vista 64

I've been experimenting with different shadow settings, reading tweaking guides for other games that use the Unreal 3 engine. I've toyed with the shadow resolution values, and other quality settings but the shadows always began to look horrible before I could lower the settings enough for meaningful improvement.

This is the section of WillowEngine.ini I tried:
(Your settings will differ by default)

MinShadowResolution=256
MaxShadowResolution=256
ShadowFadeResolution=64

I ask for help in finding a way to decrease the distance at which these dynamic shadows are drawn. I think this is the key to the problems myself and many others may have with getting acceptable performance out of their machines. The only thing I've tried for distance is this line:

ShadowFadeExponent=2.200000

I can't bring any notable difference out of altering this value, in spite of an UT3 tweaking guide I read claiming otherwise.

Anyways thanks for reading that crap so, are any of you Unreal Engine tweaking gurus out there good enough with shadows to take a stab at this? If we can share the wisdom here maybe we can get a lot of people up to speed.

Don Punch

10-27-2009, 03:30 AM

Sgt Jigglebelly

10-27-2009, 03:30 AM

i'd say we're in the same boat - i've also got a quad and a 4850 and am getting lower framerates than i think i should get, dropping below the 30s a lot of times when i'm looking at lots of objects or into the distance

dropping settings doesn't seem to help too much either so it's gotta be some kind of bug

infurnus

10-27-2009, 04:13 AM

I got a decent performance boost by changing MinShadowResolution=1024 to MinShadowResolution=32
I kept the other settings the same. (MaxShadowResolution=1024 ShadowFadeResolution=128 were my defaults)

Since you're using Vista, maybe you could try putting -DX9 in the launch options. (Right click on Borderlands in your games list and select Properties, then "Set launch options..."). Other people with Vista and Win7 seemed to get performance boosts by doing that.

I'm using a GeForce 9500 GT though so it might be some glitch with ATI cards or something if that's not the issue.

dubbs

10-27-2009, 04:22 AM

Fangoram

10-27-2009, 04:36 AM

can u run it max with your 9500gt? and what AA? and what FPS?

i dont have a 9500gt but juust wondering

I can run it max on my 8800gt 512 it's not that bad I get around 45-50 fps at all times.

The game isn't that demanding I think ut3 runs a bit lower then it lol.

LupinMupin

10-27-2009, 04:38 AM

why do u guys have a high end cpu combined with a kinda low end gpu? if u got the money to buy a core i7, Then why not invest in a hd4870 or better?

JefCostello

10-27-2009, 04:41 AM

I have a Gateway P7811FX (2.2 duo cpu and 9800GTS) on the 187.62 Forceware drivers and have the same problem. Both Dynamic Shadows and Flare hurt my frames per second. Is there anything I can do besides turning them off?

dubbs

10-27-2009, 04:53 AM

why do u guys have a high end cpu combined with a kinda low end gpu? if u got the money to buy a core i7, Then why not invest in a hd4870 or better?

a 4850 isnt a low end gpu,

my 4670 is a mid range GPU

Cleric

10-27-2009, 05:20 AM

you must have some other issue interfering.

I have the i7 @ a slower clock speed 2.87 and the 4850 on windows 7 64bit and everything runs primo

A/V software, hamachi, anything else running in background?

i envy your I7 *DROOOLS*

i'm running the game on an e8500 DUal core cpu (3.9) and gtx 285 gpu. everything runs great without dynamic shadows on. (i usually play all my games with shadows off anyway as it is always a major FPS drainer).

nocturnefoxx

10-27-2009, 05:52 AM

noobdeagle

10-27-2009, 05:58 AM

2.1GHz triple-core
ATI 4850
Vista 32
3GB of RAM

Drivers are up to date, etc.

Dynamic Shadows is the only thing I can't turn on. I'm running at 1440x900 with everything else on/high, and I rarely drop below 40FPS. But turn Shadows on and it drops to 30 or lower.

I haven't tried any tweaks yet, though. I'll post here if I do come up with any work arounds or solutions.

ok both this guy and the op have the same video card (4850) and os (vista) this indicates a strong correlation between these two factors this is furthur exasurbated as someone else said they have the same card on a differnt OS (win7 i believe) and its perfect

this leads to one logical conclusion from this thread and that is that its an ATI driver issue with vista and the 4850's

if anyone has evidence to suggest otherwise speak up otherwise change your OS or wait for a driver fix :)

nocturnefoxx

10-27-2009, 06:02 AM

ok both this guy and the op have the same video card (4850) and os (vista) this indicates a strong correlation between these two factors this is furthur exasurbated as someone else said they have the same card on a differnt OS (win7 i believe) and its perfect

this leads to one logical conclusion from this thread and that is that its an ATI driver issue with vista and the 4850's

if anyone has evidence to suggest otherwise speak up otherwise change your OS or wait for a driver fix :)

I'm not sure that two users on a message board = evidence of anything, much less requiring changing of an OS.

Personally, I'll try a few tweaks, and if that doesn't work I'll leave it off.

left4gold

10-27-2009, 06:06 AM

If you have a 4850 make sure you are not using 9.9 drivers, they have known performance issues with the 4850. Use 9.8 and I am not sure if the new 9.10 fixes it.

I have a 4870 and play it maxed at 1440x900 with 16xaf and vsync and its perfectly smooth all the time using win7 64 bit and cat 9.10

Sgt Jigglebelly

10-27-2009, 06:08 AM

i'm using the 9.10 drivers for my 4850 and i'm having similar probelms, i may go back try the 9.8's today...

phantasmic

10-27-2009, 06:23 AM

9800 GT here, was getting poor frame rates with dynamic shadows on, turned them off and now I've got 60 fps. Thought the card is getting too old, but perhaps that's not the case yet.

noobdeagle

10-27-2009, 06:28 AM

I'm not sure that two users on a message board = evidence of anything, much less requiring changing of an OS.

Personally, I'll try a few tweaks, and if that doesn't work I'll leave it off.

yeh thats why i said from this board and offered people to provide evidence against it but on the vista thing i always got and still do even after service pack 2 horrible framerates in vista on my system with a quad core and GTX260 when running vista counterstrike source fps will drop to below 50 but in Win7 and XP its close to the 300 limiter but so far it seems to be a driver and vista issue so wait and see

NJuice

10-27-2009, 06:32 AM

All on high
Dynamic shadows enabled
1920x1200
5870
Doesn't drop under 45fps.

JUDOHAWK

10-27-2009, 08:59 AM

HD4830 and XP here, dynamic shadows lowers my fps more than it should. Playing at 1680x1050, granted with shadows on it still runs good, but I love it butter smooth. So no shadows for now.

TRMcDee

10-28-2009, 07:14 PM

Completely agreed judohawk.

mesaone

10-28-2009, 07:30 PM

I have a GTX 275 overclocked, i'll some pics and detail the graphics settings, FPS, and resolution. I thought I would get higher than I do as well, I guess there's alot going on compared to other UT3 games.

Conker1985

11-04-2009, 11:00 PM

I've messed around with the shadow map resolutions, and yes they do improve the frame rate at resolutions like 64, 128, and 256, but man they look bad. Honestly, the game looks better with shadows turned off, thanks in part to it's cel-shaded art style.

I don't understand why Gearbox didn't simply bake the shadows of the environments in the game, and fake the shadowing for characters to gain substantial performance. The primary light source (i.e. the giant planet/sun/ball thing in the sky) never changes its location, therefore the shadows for the environments never change perspective. It would've at least been nice to have an option to switch from dynamic to static. Though, they kinda f'd up the graphical interface to begin with (gotta love dickin' with .int files).

YahooElite

11-05-2009, 04:52 AM

Personally i think the game looks better with Shadows, Bloom and Depth of Field off. looks great too, and for those lacking in the GPU department should give a lil performance boost. try it, you may like it.

9800GTX+, 1680x1050 native res. no slow downs/lag.

Edit: Replacing FOV with Depth Of Field.

NalgasDLemur

11-05-2009, 03:09 PM

I'm surprised people with video cards as good as or better than mine running at lower resolutions are having issues. Something weird must be going on, because I have all in-game settings maxed out, plus v-sync, and it runs great on a 4770 (should be comparable to a 4850 for the most part) in Win7 x64 at 1920x1200. Once in a while it'll slow down slightly, but it's still completely playable, and that was maybe half a dozen times out of 40 hours playing.

Psy-Phi

11-05-2009, 03:28 PM

Try disabling Ambient Occlussion if it's on (do ATi Cards do that now?)

I've messed around with the shadow map resolutions, and yes they do improve the frame rate at resolutions like 64, 128, and 256, but man they look bad. Honestly, the game looks better with shadows turned off, thanks in part to it's cel-shaded art style.

I don't understand why Gearbox didn't simply bake the shadows of the environments in the game, and fake the shadowing for characters to gain substantial performance. The primary light source (i.e. the giant planet/sun/ball thing in the sky) never changes its location, therefore the shadows for the environments never change perspective. It would've at least been nice to have an option to switch from dynamic to static. Though, they kinda f'd up the graphical interface to begin with (gotta love dickin' with .int files).

The shadows do move as the day shifts to ight. At least I think they do (I could swear I've seen them shift when I'm standing still long enough, but it could have been another game). And there's something so cool about seeing the shadows move in real-time, and realistically over objects. Like the windmills, and even the shadows of the environment as you move through the level. Just adds to it.

Z{}{}M

11-05-2009, 05:21 PM

Q6600 @ 3.6 Ghz
4 GB DDR2 1066
Evga 780i A1
GTX 280 + 8800 GTS for physx
Windows 7 64 bit
Latest drivers,updates

1920x1200 16xAF no AA

Fps dips as low as 34 with dynamic shadows on.
With it turned off im vsynced to 60FPS almost all the time no matter what.
Changing resolution doesnt seem to have any effect so i keep shadows off for now.
Enjoying the game very much. :D

YahooElite

11-05-2009, 05:32 PM

Conker1985

11-05-2009, 08:16 PM

The shadows do move as the day shifts to ight. At least I think they do (I could swear I've seen them shift when I'm standing still long enough, but it could have been another game). And there's something so cool about seeing the shadows move in real-time, and realistically over objects. Like the windmills, and even the shadows of the environment as you move through the level. Just adds to it.

I'm actually fairly certain they don't shift during the day cycle, but I could be wrong. I think I only played a total of a couple minutes with shadows turned on to test performance, then switched them off. However, I completely forgot about the spinning windmills, so thank you for reminding me. In that case, YES dynamic shadows come in handy, but those could have easily been faked using static textures akin to the good ole' days of 3D. There should have been an option for users to switch from dynamic to static for those of us with lower-end cards. I agree shadowing adds a lot to a scene, but luckily the art style of Borderlands doesn't need it in order to look good.

sneakbyte

11-20-2009, 04:04 AM

anyone find a solution?

LupinMupin

11-20-2009, 04:16 AM

I only found one, Turn them off :( im playing without dynamic shadows.

C4Chaos42

11-20-2009, 06:03 AM

Hmmm I found a little option both in UT3 and Borderlands which by default in ut3 is set to false and in borderlands set to true.

Go to your WillowEngine.ini and find this line
OneFrameThreadLag=True
and set it to
OneFrameThreadLag=False
that helped me quite a bit and made the game run a little faster.

Lemming Face

11-20-2009, 09:00 AM

It seems to be a problem that a lot of people including myself are having, there are some people with pretty mediocre pc's that can max it out with dynamic shadows while people with high end pc's cant, It's the one thing that is stopping me from playing this great game. Hopefully there will be a patch or fix for this issue sometime soon, I have done clean reinstalls tried all sorts of drivers & hours of tweaking the cfg files but nothing has helped.

muzzleloader

11-20-2009, 11:24 AM

I too am having frame rate issues that shouldn't be happening on my rig

8800gtx
2.4 intel quadcore
3.5gb Ram

I play siren and I get tremendous slow downs that kill the game play during intense firefights, I think it has something to do with bloom effects maybe? I get it the worst when all the mobs are slowed ad also taking various elemtal dmg, it seems to really tax my comp. Ive tried lowering texture and detail to lowest settings, and lowering anti aliasing at different combinations, still no luck with chopping, laggy firefights :(

*edit: Ive also tried disabling dynamic shadows due to the shadow problem that came with the last patch, helps a little but not much

NalgasDLemur

12-10-2009, 04:17 AM

Well, crap. I WAS getting good performance with everything turned up, including shadows, but one of the two updates has borked it. I just played for a couple hours for the first time since before the first patch came out, and I was dropping frames in pretty low-intensity areas until I turned shadows off. Most of the time it was still fine with them on, but Skag Gully, of all places, was choppy in the northern end. Aren't patches/updates usually supposed to make it better, not worse?

Core i5 750
Radeon 4770
4GB RAM
Win 7 Pro x64
etc.

Formerly enough to run the game smoothly with all settings maxed out, but not anymore. Meh.

YahooElite

12-10-2009, 06:50 AM

NalgasDLemur

12-10-2009, 10:26 PM

as i said on the previous page, i honestly think the game looks better with Shadows,(Bloom doesnt even appear to do anything so thats Disabled), and Depth of Field disabled ESPECIALLY DOF. Borderlands looks wonderful with those disabled.

and as for the patch we supposedly got at some point, it appears to have reset the ini's/settings to default.

I remembered someone saying that and started fiddling around with all the other settings while I was at it. I kind of think DoF looks better in some ways, at least partly because it compensates for the lack of AA (really getting sick of UE3 games because of that), but it's a whole lot easier to see stuff and tell what's going on with it off.

I was just complaining to someone about the setting reset to someone last night, too. I was bored waiting for something to finish downloading, so I figured I'd fire up the game for a little while, and I had to spend 15 minutes going back and reconfiguring everything first. Pain in the ♥♥♥...

frifri369

12-10-2009, 10:31 PM

A few patches ago, my game consistently had giant grey and black bars covering most of the screen. The only thing that fixed it was turning off "dynamic shadows." Still can't turn them back on without getting the big bars.

So in my case shadows don't kill performance, they're just among the plethora of things that have prevented me from playing the game.

YahooElite

12-10-2009, 10:57 PM

Yep.. The Shadows do look great though, in addition to those settings i have Foliage set to Low, i mean come on, theres barely any grass n crap to begin with so it might as well be.

All in All tho BL does look great.

as for the settings only 1 ill have to change is Vsync, the Stat FPS key trigger wasnt changed for some reason.

StingingVelvet

12-11-2009, 02:06 AM

I remembered someone saying that and started fiddling around with all the other settings while I was at it. I kind of think DoF looks better in some ways, at least partly because it compensates for the lack of AA (really getting sick of UE3 games because of that), but it's a whole lot easier to see stuff and tell what's going on with it off.

Force AA using your graphics card and then turn depth of field off, it looks a lot better.

Though honestly I have never liked depth of field ever, so I am bias.

Anyway dynamic shadows cost me 20fps on my rig which is very annoying. I can still play the game with them on, along with 4xMSAA and vsynch forced, but I get 40-50fps instead of a locked 60fps and it feels a little sluggish.

I have a GTX 275.

madhias

12-11-2009, 02:22 AM

Disabled Dynamic Shadows here, low framerates :( I have E6600 Dual Core 2,4GHz, 4GB RAM and a 4890 Radeon with 1GB.

StingingVelvet

12-11-2009, 03:26 AM

Disabled Dynamic Shadows here, low framerates :( I have E6600 Dual Core 2,4GHz, 4GB RAM and a 4890 Radeon with 1GB.

No reason it should be that bad with a 4890, are you forcing some massive AA or something?

NalgasDLemur

12-11-2009, 06:26 AM

Force AA using your graphics card and then turn depth of field off, it looks a lot better.

If only there were a good/simple way to enable per-game profiles with an ATI card. It's times like this that I miss the Nvidia Control Panel. CCC is kind of...crap.

Sgt Jigglebelly

12-11-2009, 10:21 AM

still no patch for what is obviously a bug with the shadow performance, and dlc being pitched at us? ah well, forget this game...

tonster181

12-11-2009, 10:49 AM

as far as i know Ambient Occlusion is only for nVidia cards so those with ATI cards may benefit from it being off.. plus from what ive seen it doesnt really do anything like what it does in L4D, so its prolly better to have it disabled

QFT, this guy knows what he's talking about :) I can run with shadows if I turn off ambient occlusion. That I believe is most of your performance problems. Try it, like it, live it. +1 to the educated answer from YahooElite!

StingingVelvet

12-11-2009, 11:15 AM

QFT, this guy knows what he's talking about :) I can run with shadows if I turn off ambient occlusion. That I believe is most of your performance problems. Try it, like it, live it. +1 to the educated answer from YahooElite!

Must be an ATI think because ambient occlusion off gives me like 2fps more.

tonster181

12-11-2009, 11:45 AM

Ambient Occlusion should be around a 40% performance hit from what I've read. I haven't actually read anything on this specific game though, so don't skewer me if I'm wrong :)

YahooElite

12-12-2009, 12:57 AM

Ambient Occlusion imo isnt really important..

From what ive noticed in its use in L4D, the end of a Tunnel will continue to be black until you get close to the enterence/exit, whatever the case may be.

so on so forth, not really important unless you like something being realstic, but it does decrease performance so may be better to have it off.

Leox001

08-19-2010, 06:01 AM

I'm experiencing stuttering problems with shadows on.
However after changing these values;
MinShadowResolution=
MaxShadowResolution=
To smaller ones, the stuttering gets better, with 1024 max it stutters when turning the camera, with 128 max the stuttering is away completely, but it looks terrible, now I'm trying with 512 max.

EDIT: Still stuttering, I will leave it at 128 max just to see interiors properly colored

NitrousX

08-19-2010, 06:24 AM

The game runs fine on my setup (i7 860, 4GB RAM, HD5870). Disabling ambient occlusion and dynamic shadows has zero impact on my performance whatsoever (for me at least).

mesaone

08-19-2010, 12:04 PM

The game runs fine on my setup (i7 860, 4GB RAM, HD5870). Disabling ambient occlusion and dynamic shadows has zero impact on my performance whatsoever (for me at least).

when entering a new area, do you get texture pop in after about 1 second?

Leox001

09-14-2010, 09:59 PM

To improve performance with shadows I did the following;

Set "-DX9" in the steam launch options for the game (major imrpovement)
Set shadows @1024 to make them look acceptable, as reducing the size didn't change much and looked horrible.
Configured Smoothing Framerate to min-15 max-62, it smooths everything from the high fps areas to the low ones.

Hope this helps!