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BioShock Infinite PC Performance Thread
- Thread starter JaseC
- Start date
Non-update: Tried copying the entire "Content" folder over to a RAMdisk and create a junction point, didn't make any difference. Theory? That it's absolutely nothing to do with the reading of the data that's causing the problem... it's processing it that causes the slowdown.
I'd love to try shifting the processing of the audio to another core just to test, but I don't know any way that can be done. Hell, I'd love to even try disabling audio so it doesn't read that data, but it looks like it'd load, regardless of if you even have a sound card installed or not.
I'd love to try shifting the processing of the audio to another core just to test, but I don't know any way that can be done. Hell, I'd love to even try disabling audio so it doesn't read that data, but it looks like it'd load, regardless of if you even have a sound card installed or not.
Great info about the problem. I will avoid the game until Irrational release the patch but I have the same feeling that the XAKAudioDevice is the root of all evils. I wonder why they don't use standard audio device from ue3.
I tested some different configs for AKAudio.XAKAudioDevice parameters but no difference at all.
Videos I posted days ago were with game fully installed into a 20 GB ram disk (Bioshock Infinite entire folder).
I hope you will not be banned like me in 2k forums.
Why did they ban you maldo?
The game was originally meant to be about 30gb if I am correct, so maybe it is the audio compression, would be nice to have an uncompressed option, after all we have the space on pc.
I do not have my broadband installed till next Friday, I have been watching this thread eagerly waiting for a patch or solution.
The game was originally meant to be about 30gb if I am correct, so maybe it is the audio compression, would be nice to have an uncompressed option, after all we have the space on pc.
I do not have my broadband installed till next Friday, I have been watching this thread eagerly waiting for a patch or solution.
Haha, yeah... well, I only have the one post there, so it's no big loss 
I suspect you're right as well. I even tried finding a few games that used both UE3 and WWise audio, but have sort of given up. I tried using what I think is the default sound plugin as well (changing it from that other device) but it just crashed out :/
Pretty sure that we've done as much as we can do until there's an update from Irrational themselves, so I guess that's something!
I suspect you're right as well. I even tried finding a few games that used both UE3 and WWise audio, but have sort of given up. I tried using what I think is the default sound plugin as well (changing it from that other device) but it just crashed out :/
Pretty sure that we've done as much as we can do until there's an update from Irrational themselves, so I guess that's something!
Yes. It did seem to help at first, but I'd only had it happen once before I made the change. The problem appears intermittent, not happening for days at a time, so I think it's more of a placebo effect.. people change the configs, and the problem doesn't happen the next time they play, so they assume it's fixed.
Part of the confusion comes from people calling it the same thing.. the area-loading is actually just slowdown, a short-term drop in framerate, and not actual "stuttering". When the real stuttering happens, my system still reports that the game is running at 50-60fps, without dips. There's still some kind of processing going on there, that's probably looping and causing the hiccups, which is why it's only fixed by completely shutting down the EXE. Something's clearly eating cycles, because otherwise the game runs rock-steady at 60fps, and doesn't dip at all until it loads something.
I'm about to start another session for today. Has anyone noticed any changes since the patch?
Is anyone seeing these errors while playing the game in big picture mode?
Happens randomly when an Achievement progress notification pops up and causes the game to crap out. I then have to kill it via task manager. It's pissing me off royally, as I have to reload the last checkpoint.
Tried posting this on the 2K Forums - one thread basically got nuked and the replacement thread apparently needs to be "reviewed" before they'll post it. Last time I buy a 2K game at launch.
EDIT: Replacement thread is now up on the 2K forums. Mods had to step in apparently.
Happens randomly when an Achievement progress notification pops up and causes the game to crap out. I then have to kill it via task manager. It's pissing me off royally, as I have to reload the last checkpoint.
Tried posting this on the 2K Forums - one thread basically got nuked and the replacement thread apparently needs to be "reviewed" before they'll post it. Last time I buy a 2K game at launch.
EDIT: Replacement thread is now up on the 2K forums. Mods had to step in apparently.
spacemonkeynation
Member
Dipswitch: I'm guessing you're using Steam Big Picture mode? I get the same sort of parsing errors when I use it as well after some time with it running. I've basically sworn it off until the issue is addressed. Run Steam in normal mode and you won't have any issues (if it's the same bugs I'm seeing that is).
So to be clear, this is a Steam/Valve issue not a 2k/Irrational Games bug. Here's a Steam Forums thread of other people experiencing the same thing.
So to be clear, this is a Steam/Valve issue not a 2k/Irrational Games bug. Here's a Steam Forums thread of other people experiencing the same thing.
Ah. Thanks, that's useful info. I'll avoid using BPM for the time being then.
Oddly enough, this is the first game that's presented any issues for me within BPM. Played Spec Ops 2, JC 2 and Transformers: Battle for Cybertron all with no issues. They're all older games though, so not sure if BioShock is using more recent Steam functionality they aren't.
MrCompletely
Member
Is anyone seeing these errors while playing the game in big picture mode?
Happens randomly when an Achievement progress notification pops up and causes the game to crap out. I then have to kill it via task manager. It's pissing me off royally, as I have to reload the last checkpoint.
Tried posting this on the 2K Forums - one thread basically got nuked and the replacement thread apparently needs to be "reviewed" before they'll post it. Last time I buy a 2K game at launch.
EDIT: Replacement thread is now up on the 2K forums. Mods had to step in apparently.
Exact thing happened to me a few times. Played the whole game in big picture mode on my tv.
Bang-on. People are in the official 2K forums saying "I had this same problem and the poolsize fix works!". But they're not talking about the same problem.
PS. Is that the patch that came out around 24 hours ago or so? Didn't make any difference to me at all :/
BTW I'm 99% sure it's not an issue with UE3, either. I fired up Bulletstorm and it was as smooth as butter the whole time.
If you really want to, use nVidia Inspector to cap it.
There was a setting that I can't exactly remember from memory... I think it was something like MaxLockedFramerate and MinLockedFramerate or something. Think it'll be in xgame.ini
I don't really want to, but I'm starting to lose faith that Irrational will patch the game. The area loading fps drops (at a locked 60 otherwise) are bothering me too much. And I really want to play this game. I'm gonna hold out another couple of days though. Thanks for the tip.
In your user folder, search "bioshock infinite" profile folder and open xengine.ini. change MaxSmoothedFramerate to 30 (bSmoothFrameRate must be TRUE).
crisdecuba
Member
I guess this is the best place to ask this question.
I bought the game to play on my PC, but I have to possible ways of playing it:
On my desktop, using keyboard and mouse, Or in the living room, where I could use my 360 controller, or a KB and connect a wired mouse to the HTPC.
So here are my questions:
1. Does the PC version of BioShock support Xbox 360 controllers, and what I mean is does it support them as smoothly and straightforwardly as tomb raider does.
2. For those of you who typically use keyboard and mouse, but sometimes use Xbox 360 controllers for FPSs, what would be the preferred method of control for this game? Has it been designed primarily with a console controller in mind, or is the best experience still with a keyboard and mouse? I personally prefer keyboard and mouse, but wanted to know if it's been designed specifically around a console controller.
Thanks!
I bought the game to play on my PC, but I have to possible ways of playing it:
On my desktop, using keyboard and mouse, Or in the living room, where I could use my 360 controller, or a KB and connect a wired mouse to the HTPC.
So here are my questions:
1. Does the PC version of BioShock support Xbox 360 controllers, and what I mean is does it support them as smoothly and straightforwardly as tomb raider does.
2. For those of you who typically use keyboard and mouse, but sometimes use Xbox 360 controllers for FPSs, what would be the preferred method of control for this game? Has it been designed primarily with a console controller in mind, or is the best experience still with a keyboard and mouse? I personally prefer keyboard and mouse, but wanted to know if it's been designed specifically around a console controller.
Thanks!
1. Yup, plug and play. All on-screen prompts are Xbox controller cues.
2. I almost always use M/KB, and I tried it for a bit here, but I found the controller to work better. It can make combat on higher difficulties kinda frustrating, but I feel like the game plays better with the controller.
Controller support is seamless and excellent. I've been playing the whole game with it (on Hard, with steam big picture) and its works out great. If you tend to like console FPS's, which I do, then go for it!
Confusatron
Member
1. Works just fine. No setup required.
2. I've played the game at my desk on mouse & kb and on my tv with a 360 controller. I usually prefer mouse & kb, but I think the 360 controller works just as well here.
Have you checked to see if it is actually saving? I had this problem for a bit, but the game actually was saving fine.
It did go away, but I'm not sure exactly why. I have cloud saves off in Steam, so I made sure it was off in the game as well. Also, I changed the permissions on the BioShock game folder to full privileges, but have no idea if that made the difference.
It also could be something with backing up saves. I think I had done so shortly before the issue occurred, but I can't remember if I deleted those files during the troubleshooting process. Mostly likely I moved them to My Documents or something.
This appears to have not been posted here:
BioShock Infinite PC Patch Notes [04/05/13]
Also important to note, I can actually get to the 2K forums at work for some reason. Bizarre.
BioShock Infinite PC Patch Notes [04/05/13]
Bolded the important bits.
Also important to note, I can actually get to the 2K forums at work for some reason. Bizarre.
I think patching that is no way easy, the core engine was designed for consoles, with less than 512 MB of available RAM, those loading areas are really needed there... for PC players it's a bit of a bummer but the game is 95% silky smooth with 20-25 split-second loading areas throughout the entire game (I played through the game several times and counted, yes)
For sure they can optimize the engine for PC so the game takes all the RAM and VRAM available to prevent loading in the middle of a level, but does it make sense instead of focusing on DLC development ? nope when most players out there don't care nor don't ever notice the drops, they're less than a second and never happen during firefights.
I don't know if you've read anything on what I've posted here, but it's been narrowed down to a pretty fine point that it's the decompression/loading of sound files into memory at those locations that causes the slowdown. The fix should be a piece of piss... it might be large though, depending on whether they need to do something with the entire sound library.
I did read your posts both here and over Irrational forums, that's why I posted my comment : )
The very first sign of a compression/decompression process points to a memory optimization, the engine in some systems (consoles mostly) won't run well with those assets uncompressed due to a lack of RAM or storage, something the average PC user shouldn't need to worry about. Also, to my knowledge a lot of UE3-based games have had this same issue, I'm sure you can remember some other UE3 game in PC or consoles with a brief loading pause while the screen shows "checkpoint" or "loading"... so it seems a problem within the core of the engine and therefore not an easy one to fix without breaking something else, of course some games had been patched for good after a while, maybe they take the time and resources for BI but I doubt it.
I don't believe they would have released the game as it is had the fix been "a piece of piss" as you mentioned, even if Irrational claim they were not aware of the issue until recently, that cannot be true as it happens in every PC build you can imagine, granted they're testing the same retail code as we are.
I don't think it's a RAM thing so much as it's a CPU thing. I'm not sure exactly how CPU interrupts work, but I'm sure there's a way for them to palm off the sound overhead required over to another core rather than having it interrupt the game itself so it can be loaded in the background.
The reason I figured it might be easy to do is that they could possibly (I guess) just have the audio files sitting wherever they need to be in a raw format that can be loaded directly to wherever (RAM etc.) rather than loading the packed file, decompressing it into memory and then retrieving it when necessary.
I'm curious to know whether there's anything of the sort visible on the console versions (particularly the 360 one) but as I doubt this thread is populated by anyone whose double-dipped, I'm not liking my chances of finding that out
The reason I figured it might be easy to do is that they could possibly (I guess) just have the audio files sitting wherever they need to be in a raw format that can be loaded directly to wherever (RAM etc.) rather than loading the packed file, decompressing it into memory and then retrieving it when necessary.
I'm curious to know whether there's anything of the sort visible on the console versions (particularly the 360 one) but as I doubt this thread is populated by anyone whose double-dipped, I'm not liking my chances of finding that out
The system requirements state a dual-core processor as the bare minimum, so I wonder how far they can go fiddling with multi-threading in order to fix the split-second loading pauses without breaking those requirements or making the performance with such CPUs really poor, if the issue at hand is CPU related as you think.
On the other hand, I wonder how gamers running the game with insanely overclocked modern CPUs such as the i7 3770K (with powerful single-core performance) have the exact same downgrade in performance as those using an old Core2 Duo. It doesn't matter if the game is being played off some SSD or a traditional HDD either.
I still believe it's an issue within the engine itself, you can open XEngine.ini change some settings and observe changes, that tells you that by altering settings available to final users the game performance can be affected, now it remains to be seen if altering settings only visible to developers would do the trick or, on the contrary, if some optimizing or re-writing of some parts of the engine is needed.
This is what I wonder as well. I'm hoping that it's the case, because I don't think it's a lack of processing power that's causing the problem, I think it's an inability to perform different tasks at the same time. And from what I can tell, it's not a big task that it has to do, it's just that it has to be done *that instant* that's causing the problem.
Beats the hell out of me as well. I have a mid-high end rig (O/C 2500K@4.9GHz, 5850+5970 GPU, 16GB RAM, 2x SSDs in RAID0) and it baffled me why it was happening. That's why I got so involved with investigating it. If I could see that my GPU was limiting or most/all of my CPU cores were peaking, then I'd put it down to just not having a powerful enough PC. But that it's only using one core, is 99% utilised most of the time and runs fine most of the time except for those sections, it lead me to believe that I couldn't be the only one with that problem.
Oh, it certainly is the engine, but I think it's the engine in conjunction with whatever third/different party (to Epic) tool/plugin that's not playing well. For all we know, this Wwise sound engine/library (or whatever) could be amazing, but implemented within UE3... just a very bad choice. Which is why I suspect that they could well change whatever tool that is within the engine itself (which could be easy, could be literally impossible... I have no idea), the format in which the files are stored in, or like you said, some hidden variable that needs to be tweaked.
I seriously don't know how they could've missed this in their pre-release testing *and* when testing for the issue specifically. Hell, I'd like to know what hardware they were running which wasn't replicating the bug, because I'd like to run that myself! Best I can see, is that people who aren't able to run it over a steady 30fps (as in, 60+) aren't concerned because they're only seeing a ~10% dip when "hardcore" gamers are seeing at least a 50% decrease in performance.
Betta Lines
Member
That's why I find the whole thing suspicious. I've now tried the game on 3 very different PCs and they all behave exactly the same with stuttering.
those are the keys to the issue at hand, as evidenced by some UE3 games that don't show loading pauses/stuttering, Irrational most probably licensed or programmed a different plugin to stream whatever those files contain (going by the size can't be high definition textures for sure) which bogs down performance for a split-second and this becomes more apparent in high-end hardware, if a 3rd party plugin running on an already 3rd party engine needs to be fixed I guess we're pretty much out of luck except for some basic optimizations they will provide to smooth things out.
as to why the performance hit is the same in a Core 2 Duo + GTX 260 compared to a 3770K + Titan, I'm clueless, a PC with such specs should brute-force past whatever the game is doing once you hit the loading triggers, or at least the issue should be way less apparent, we could say this issue is a "constant" among every possible "variable".
99% sure they're sound ones that are causing it. At least, these are the only two files that are being accessed when backtracking from the first *major* slowdown point where the monks are just after the baptism:
E:\SteamDirect\steamapps\common\BioShock Infinite\XGame\CookedPCConsole_FR\S_OFB_Sound.xxx
E:\SteamDirect\steamapps\common\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Content\Audio\Packed\Windows\Banks\S_OFB_Sound.bnk
The .xxx files I suspect are just pointers (on reflection, probably contain information about the files... what effect/filter to apply over them, reverb, that sort of thing). S_OFB_Sound.xxx is only 8KB, while S_OFB_Sound.bnk is 372KB.
Baffles me that anything opening/analysing a file that's less than half a meg would cause any kind of a noticeable hitch, regardless of what it's doing to/with it.
I do love speculating though... if only so we can see how a developer reacts when we already have a small (but dangerous) amount of knowledge about the problem. It's good to be in this thread though, chatting to others about it who have a similar level of technical knowledge (as opposed to the thread on the Irrational board, which is some technical people sprinkled amongst a good amount of relatively clueless folk).
Edit: Two mainstream (ie. not "regular" users) outlets publicly mentioning the issue:
TotalBiscuit (says that he goes from 250fps down to 50fps w/ two nVidia Titans)
Machinema
(courtesy of this post on the Irrational forums)
Hopefully with those out in public (and actually getting a decent number of views) Irrational will be more likely to comment publicly on it.
E:\SteamDirect\steamapps\common\BioShock Infinite\XGame\CookedPCConsole_FR\S_OFB_Sound.xxx
E:\SteamDirect\steamapps\common\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Content\Audio\Packed\Windows\Banks\S_OFB_Sound.bnk
The .xxx files I suspect are just pointers (on reflection, probably contain information about the files... what effect/filter to apply over them, reverb, that sort of thing). S_OFB_Sound.xxx is only 8KB, while S_OFB_Sound.bnk is 372KB.
Baffles me that anything opening/analysing a file that's less than half a meg would cause any kind of a noticeable hitch, regardless of what it's doing to/with it.
I do love speculating though... if only so we can see how a developer reacts when we already have a small (but dangerous) amount of knowledge about the problem. It's good to be in this thread though, chatting to others about it who have a similar level of technical knowledge (as opposed to the thread on the Irrational board, which is some technical people sprinkled amongst a good amount of relatively clueless folk).
Edit: Two mainstream (ie. not "regular" users) outlets publicly mentioning the issue:
TotalBiscuit (says that he goes from 250fps down to 50fps w/ two nVidia Titans)
Machinema
(courtesy of this post on the Irrational forums)
Hopefully with those out in public (and actually getting a decent number of views) Irrational will be more likely to comment publicly on it.
Cuban Legend
Member
I mean like Need for Speed Shift 1 on PC can be "unpacked" the game files can be unpakced to allow for modding, etc.
Why can't UE3 games become unpacked?
Ah, I see. It could well be possible, but I wasn't able to find anything on it. I'm also guessing that the troublesome files are probably using some format that isn't a part of UE3, but the Wwise sound library thing... as in, UE3 says it needs X sounds in memory (hits a trigger point), calls the Wwise code to get the uncompressed sounds, Wwise decompresses them, causes delay, sends data back to UE3 to play in-game (or store in memory or whatever).
I had a look at the Audiokinetic Wwise website, but couldn't find anything that might allow for any kind of decompression... and it seems that devs can use their own internal file format/layout as well, so there may be other files in these packaged files we aren't familiar with.
For what it's worth, I thought I could get some sounds out of these files, but it didn't retain their original filenames (only had file0001.wav), there were other files (file0001.dat) and the wavs wouldn't play on my PC. Bunch of useless information there for ya.
I think my next step in toying around with this thing is to run that command that disables background scripting or loading or whatever (I forget what it is, but it's the one that breaks the game) and see if the same files get accessed at the same points with that program. I guess that'll tell us for sure exactly what's happening.
I had a look at the Audiokinetic Wwise website, but couldn't find anything that might allow for any kind of decompression... and it seems that devs can use their own internal file format/layout as well, so there may be other files in these packaged files we aren't familiar with.
For what it's worth, I thought I could get some sounds out of these files, but it didn't retain their original filenames (only had file0001.wav), there were other files (file0001.dat) and the wavs wouldn't play on my PC. Bunch of useless information there for ya.
I think my next step in toying around with this thing is to run that command that disables background scripting or loading or whatever (I forget what it is, but it's the one that breaks the game) and see if the same files get accessed at the same points with that program. I guess that'll tell us for sure exactly what's happening.
Minor update: I think I was on the wrong path with the sound thing, I suspect something else to do with it is that it's looking for .INT files (what they do, I don't know), doesn't find them in the paths it's supposed to (it checks the user profile dir then the game dir under both "Engine" and "XGame" subdirs, but fails on both... that's x4 failed reads, can't be good for overhead), then continues on with the next file.
From reading the link above, the files it can't find relate directly to ".xxx" and ".bnk" files (which I suspect may be texture and sound files respectively... each of which *do* exist) and it may also be wasting time by checking two different paths as well.
I'm going to try creating blank .INT files (the ones that already exist in the game folder are text-only, so this shouldn't cause an issue) with the names it's requested in the first path it's looking to see if that makes a difference.
In the meantime, here's a file generated by that ProcessActivityView program I was using, with the file access that occurs when backtracking toward the starting point after the baptism (as this is a much lighter load than the next one, so it's easier to narrow down where the slowdown occurs).
http://www.mediafire.com/?7l6kfffmbr3yael
From reading the link above, the files it can't find relate directly to ".xxx" and ".bnk" files (which I suspect may be texture and sound files respectively... each of which *do* exist) and it may also be wasting time by checking two different paths as well.
I'm going to try creating blank .INT files (the ones that already exist in the game folder are text-only, so this shouldn't cause an issue) with the names it's requested in the first path it's looking to see if that makes a difference.
In the meantime, here's a file generated by that ProcessActivityView program I was using, with the file access that occurs when backtracking toward the starting point after the baptism (as this is a much lighter load than the next one, so it's easier to narrow down where the slowdown occurs).
http://www.mediafire.com/?7l6kfffmbr3yael
Is anyone seeing these errors while playing the game in big picture mode?
Happens randomly when an Achievement progress notification pops up and causes the game to crap out. I then have to kill it via task manager. It's pissing me off royally, as I have to reload the last checkpoint.
Tried posting this on the 2K Forums - one thread basically got nuked and the replacement thread apparently needs to be "reviewed" before they'll post it. Last time I buy a 2K game at launch.
EDIT: Replacement thread is now up on the 2K forums. Mods had to step in apparently.
yeah happened to me couple of times in big picture mode.
the thing is i could alt tab and continue the game just fine but it wouldnt save my progress. lost about an hour of gmaeplay because of that.
by later occurrences of the parse error, i just restarted the game.
This fixed all of my problems. Even the menu screens were better after doing this.
man, you're going through a lot trying to fix this issue, I don't have the patience anymore... but will try this weekend to have a look both at those files and the part of the engine which picks them for decompressing, among others I'll use the tool you kindly provided, will post results... hopefully a patch is coming to fix this, but as I said somewhere above this post it doesn't look like an easy fix at all.
I still get some mid-level stuttering with the PoolSize cvar set to 1200 and the bISOD cvars set to true, but the frequency is noticeably less.
Hah, I just enjoy the challenge... I spend more time tinkering with games than playing with them.
A tool I found that you might be interested in is "extract" and "decompress" for UE3 by some Russian dude. I think games need explicit support, but it looks like that's something that might come in handy.
Ah, that's promising.
Sorry, here's the link. At least now they can reproduce it, they'll look like dicks if they don't fix it at all.