Lagging in Port (port lock ups and slow reactions)[potential fix?]

[cherry2blost]

Well, myself and a number of other people in our clan have been having the same issue with the port being very unresponsive... also I am aware that a % of general population have also been afflicted with the same issue.... so I looked at ways to try to fix it.

 

Now, firstly, I am running a vanilla (mod free) build of WoWs as this has always been blamed as the culprit by those who do not suffer from this affliction also many have stated in the past that brand /type/age/drivers of graphics cards may have been the issue... so I decided to try a few little fixes...a combination of which appears to have worked (for me at least)...

 

1) Go to 'Res' folder find 'engine_config.xml'

made these changes:-

<cacheEffects>false</cacheEffects> to <cacheEffects>true</cacheEffects>

<streamCacheSizeKB>2048</streamCacheSizeKB> to <streamCacheSizeKB>4096</streamCacheSizeKB> (or 8192 for systems with more than 16GB Ram)

 

If you are going to change these settings, exit the game first if it's already running, back up your original file, make the changes, and give it a try.

 

2) reboot PC go into Bios and look for powerstate S1/S3/S5 etc..... most PC will ship with S3/S5 change this to S1... seems something within the port coding is allowing the CPU to throttle down and the lags 'may' be the effect of waking states each time.

 

In my case instant fix of the issue no more 'sticky' port.

 

Hope it helps! If not... oh well it worked for me anyway, just thought would share.

 

Also just as an aside (running Win10) it appears that the game actually works better AND smoother... installed on a 2nd (older SSD) seperate from the OS... very very wierd this one and will take further investigating, but very noticable "SNAPINESS" when running alone on an old 240GB SSD......

 

Just for the record my system as follows:

Gigabyte X58A-UD3R

12GB Crucial 1600DDR3 (triple channel)

Xeon W3680 @4.47Ghtz

AMD HD6970

System drive: SanDisk UltraII 240G (2016)

Game drive: Sandisk UltraII 240G (2015)

SoundCard: Asus Zonar DGX

 

Refs: fix 1,  Nato101 from NA forums (8/15)

[von_chom]

nice1, will try for sure !

thx

[OldGrandad]

Installing on another drive other than that of the OS will definitely help. My OS resides on an SSD and all games on a separate hybrid drive and I have never had problems you describe (Win 10). But, your little experiment may indeed help those just with a single HD.

[cherry2blost]

nice1, will try for sure !

thx

 

This really has become a case or try everything and anything. As my MoBo is an antique I 'know' that there are issues with early iterations of EIST as well in these cases it is always advisable to disable EIST when playing WG products (found this in Tankies when I played that too) I will post my results each time... also it seems that not all SSD's (even identical models) are created equally. My newer (system) drive is noticably slower than the old one, now that I am on Win 10 and it is much slower in general than when running Win7.....

[cherry2blost]

Just an update, but the above two fixes are definitely secondary to the 2nd SSD.... is better even on single drive !

[von_chom]

Just an update, but the above two fixes are definitely secondary to the 2nd SSD.... is better even on single drive !

one of mine friends has two SSD (one of the newest and fastest), on one is OS , on other WoWs.

He has the same lags in dock i get with old HDD.

 

didint had the time to test above yet :/

[von_chom]

I have tried the first step ( cache size increase, since the i dont think that the bios stuff will work) with couple of friend and it seems to work !

so thanks again !

[Loran_Battle]

Will test this out. Hopefully it works.

 

As a sidenote:

The game itself runs at max settings on 58-62 fps most of the time with my setup. Yet in port it is just so freaking slow and stutters all the time. Running a fps counter reveals port fps to be sometimes as low as 10 fps as I move the camera around. I did watch the processor usage for warships on a second screen once a few days ago. In battle its about 20%, so fine there, but in port, even when I do nothing, it is 35%. When simply moving the camera it goes up to about 40%. Clicking on things lets it go up to 45-50% even...

I wonder what the hell the game is doing in port? (If I can remember they use "good" old Flash for the port UI, that might explain things...).

 

Even in World of Tanks I always noticed the same thing. The garage requires more of a PC than the game itself.

 

Edit: making the changes to the engine_config.xml file made the port stutter significantly less, so thank you!

 

The stuttering is not completely gone, but that is fine, since my game is still installed on a normal HDD instead of a SSD.

The game is installed on different partition then windows, but still on the same HDD, so I might at one point try to install it to a secundary drive. Though I cannot remember the Test client running much smoother for me, and that one is installed on a secundary drive.

[G01ngToxicCommand0]

Well, myself and a number of other people in our clan have been having the same issue with the port being very unresponsive... also I am aware that a % of general population have also been afflicted with the same issue.... so I looked at ways to try to fix it.

 

Now, firstly, I am running a vanilla (mod free) build of WoWs as this has always been blamed as the culprit by those who do not suffer from this affliction also many have stated in the past that brand /type/age/drivers of graphics cards may have been the issue... so I decided to try a few little fixes...a combination of which appears to have worked (for me at least)...

 

1) Go to 'Res' folder find 'engine_config.xml'

made these changes:-

<cacheEffects>false</cacheEffects> to <cacheEffects>true</cacheEffects>

<streamCacheSizeKB>2048</streamCacheSizeKB> to <streamCacheSizeKB>4096</streamCacheSizeKB> (or 8192 for systems with more than 16GB Ram)

 

If you are going to change these settings, exit the game first if it's already running, back up your original file, make the changes, and give it a try.

 

2) reboot PC go into Bios and look for powerstate S1/S3/S5 etc..... most PC will ship with S3/S5 change this to S1... seems something within the port coding is allowing the CPU to throttle down and the lags 'may' be the effect of waking states each time.

 

In my case instant fix of the issue no more 'sticky' port.

 

Hope it helps! If not... oh well it worked for me anyway, just thought would share.

 

Also just as an aside (running Win10) it appears that the game actually works better AND smoother... installed on a 2nd (older SSD) seperate from the OS... very very wierd this one and will take further investigating, but very noticable "SNAPINESS" when running alone on an old 240GB SSD......

 

Just for the record my system as follows:

Gigabyte X58A-UD3R

12GB Crucial 1600DDR3 (triple channel)

Xeon W3680 @4.47Ghtz

AMD HD6970

System drive: SanDisk UltraII 240G (2016)

Game drive: Sandisk UltraII 240G (2015)

SoundCard: Asus Zonar DGX

 

Refs: fix 1,  Nato101 from NA forums (8/15)

 

Thx a lot this really helps

[cherry2blost]

 

Thx a lot this really helps

 

Glad it also worked for you, been faffing with this for a a few days and yes it does appear to be a lot more stable, also as a side note have also noticed that the port seems to be not  thrashing Graphics Card so hard now as well !

[_mir_doch_egal_]

Thank you very much!

I just made the changes to engine_config.xml and believe that the changes not only improved the portview, but actual gameplay as well. Is that possible?

[von_chom]

Thank you very much!

I just made the changes to engine_config.xml and believe that the changes not only improved the portview, but actual gameplay as well. Is that possible?

 

could be

[cherry2blost]

Thank you very much!

I just made the changes to engine_config.xml and believe that the changes not only improved the portview, but actual gameplay as well. Is that possible?

 

Personally I believe that WG need to begin looking at [optional] optimisations away from the base spec for low spec PC's and give options to improve gameplay on 'meatier' builds.....

 

Yes it was originally conceived as a method to smooth gameplay in WoT but has been forgotten due to optimisaions that have take place within THAT game... some of these thing ie the 'fullproc' command and the use of 'affinity' controls does also still improve WoWs.....  so it is time now to trawl back to 2011/12 for some insight into improvements that 'may' be available....

 

If you remember back to Alpha days here are the minimum specs that the game was designed for...

 

Minimal requirements:
Windows XP, Vista, 7
DirectX 9.0c or higher
CPU: 2.2 GHz or higher
RAM: from 2 GB
GeForce 8600GT or ATI HD 2600 (shaders 3.0, 512Mb memory)
Internet from 128 kb/s

 

The game automatically restricts the cache at the top of OP due to there not being enough available memory for Windows, WoWs etc etc to run with 1/2 the RAM being taken as a cache... WG it is time to fix your game (ie make the auto detect settings more inclusive) for more 'modern' machines.....

[Doerte]

1) Go to 'Res' folder find 'engine_config.xml'

made these changes:-

<cacheEffects>false</cacheEffects> to <cacheEffects>true</cacheEffects>

<streamCacheSizeKB>2048</streamCacheSizeKB> to <streamCacheSizeKB>4096</streamCacheSizeKB> (or 8192 for systems with more than 16GB Ram)

Just on a side note: 8192KB are just 8 Megabytes, not Gigabytes (as people tend to think). You should be able to even go WAY higher than that without any problem.

I am running WoWS on 16384KB  of effects cache for months now (is always reset after any patch). I am pretty sure, since 0.5.8 this is not necessary anymore, though. But back in the day, it really helped with

frame drops caused by newly spotted ships and especially with frame drops while switching ships in spectator-view.

 

And as I always tell AMD-GPU Users: DO NOT USE DYNAMIC CLOCK SPEEDS! Set them to a static number as long as you are playing WoWS! You do not want any "power saving", "hibernate" or "dynamic shenanigans"

active while playing WoWS. The client really does not like it. 

[cherry2blost]

Just on a side note: 8192KB are just 8 Megabytes, not Gigabytes (as people tend to think). You should be able to even go WAY higher than that without any problem.

I am running WoWS on 16384KB  of effects cache for months now (is always reset after any patch). I am pretty sure, since 0.5.8 this is not necessary anymore, though. But back in the day, it really helped with

frame drops caused by newly spotted ships and especially with frame drops while switching ships in spectator-view.

 

And as I always tell AMD-GPU Users: DO NOT USE DYNAMIC CLOCK SPEEDS! Set them to a static number as long as you are playing WoWS! You do not want any "power saving", "hibernate" or "dynamic shenanigans"

active while playing WoWS. The client really does not like it. 

Have had this conversation many times over... Couple of clan mates using GTX980 same issues.. so port lagging is unlikely to be an AMD specific issue...