Improving SF2 Performance on Modern PCs

[Arthur07]

Hi there. I’d like to know if there’s a better way to improve SF2 performance on modern PCs. I have high-end hardware, but the game won't go above 60 FPS—and sometimes it even drops below that. I followed advice from various forums—like disabling mirrors and lowering the draw distance—but my frame rate still isn't going up. Can anyone help?

[Muesli]

Welcome!

Please make the effot to use the Knowlegde base and all the existing topics, before asking something that has already been discussed before.

Cheers

[Major Lee]

@Arthur07 That's your machine settings, SF series is just not that resource intensive. You've got frame rate locked to refresh rate, or a monitor with a low refresh rate, or refresh rate is set at 60HZ, or some such setting. I'd start with your monitor settings... 

[Gene_Wolfpack]

Hi everyone, I’m experiencing the exact same issue even though my hardware is more than capable of running SF2, even at the lowest performance settings.

My specs are an RTX 2080 GPU and a Core i7 CPU. My monitor has a 240Hz/3ms refresh rate.

In most campaigns, my FPS stays well above 200. However, during takeoff, if my camera is close to the aircraft and facing toward the hangars, the FPS drops immediately. It gets much worse on the North Atlantic map; when taking off at the airbase there, my FPS plummets to under 20. On top of that, in my custom campaigns, the FPS drops to just 8–14 whenever multiple ZSU-23 or ZPU AA guns fire (strangely, this doesn't happen with KS-19 AA guns, no matter how many hundreds of them I place). Furthermore, whenever any AI aircraft attacks ground targets-ranging from B-52s dropping bombs to other attackers strafing the ground; my FPS takes a massive hit, tanking down to a miserable 4–6 FPS.

SF2 obviously shouldn't be a demanding game for my rig, considering my PC handles The Witcher 3 and RDR2 on max settings perfectly fine. It’s baffling why the FPS drops so drastically in those specific moments. I used to think it was a graphics setting issue, but after double-checking, I couldn't find any errors and made sure the game is definitely utilizing the dedicated GPU.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If possible, please share your graphics settings so I can use them as a reference, since I'm not very tech-savvy.

[Wrench]

IcelandNA is a know framerate killer. Simply because it's LOD based not TFD/HFD based like the other terrains. Meaning: the entire map is a ungainly mess of polygons and meshes, just like the aircraft models

As to terrain objects, who's hangars??? The stock ones are very low poly, some of the add-ons run a lot higher, and eat into the 'draw time'. Also, WHICH terrain? There's boatloads of terrains out that are EXCEEDINGLY heavy on objects and TODs that drag things down (I should know -- a built a lot of them)

Gene_Wolfpack, you didn't mention if you've added any effect packages, which also eat up FRs. 

Quote

My specs are an RTX 2080 GPU and a Core i7 CPU. My monitor has a 240Hz/3ms refresh rate.

And how much ram on the vid card? How much system RAM??? How many cores? What speed? Desktop or laptop?? 

Honestly, between the 2 poster having issues, there simply isn't enough data to give an accurate response.

[Gene_Wolfpack]

11 minutes ago, Wrench said:

IcelandNA nổi tiếng là "kẻ hủy diệt khung hình". Đơn giản vì nó dựa trên LOD chứ không phải TFD/HFD như các địa hình khác. Điều đó có nghĩa là: toàn bộ bản đồ là một mớ hỗn độn các đa giác và lưới, giống như các mô hình máy bay.

Còn về các đối tượng địa hình, nhà chứa máy bay là của ai vậy??? Các nhà chứa máy bay mặc định có số lượng đa giác rất thấp, một số tiện ích bổ sung lại có số lượng đa giác cao hơn nhiều và làm giảm thời gian vẽ. Hơn nữa, địa hình nào? Có rất nhiều địa hình ngoài kia cực kỳ nặng về đối tượng và TOD (Time of Detail) làm chậm mọi thứ (tôi biết điều này - tôi đã xây dựng rất nhiều loại địa hình như vậy).

Gene_Wolfpack, bạn không đề cập đến việc bạn đã thêm bất kỳ gói hiệu ứng nào chưa, vì những gói này cũng tiêu tốn tài nguyên hệ thống (FR). 

Card màn hình có bao nhiêu RAM? Tổng dung lượng RAM hệ thống là bao nhiêu? Có bao nhiêu lõi? Tốc độ xử lý là bao nhiêu? Là máy tính để bàn hay laptop? 

Thành thật mà nói, với việc cả hai người đăng bài đều gặp vấn đề, đơn giản là không có đủ dữ liệu để đưa ra câu trả lời chính xác.

Regarding the aircraft hangars, everything is completely stock. I have never modded anything into the game, so it's safe to say the entire game is in its original state. Joining this forum is actually my very first time intending to mod SF2, and as of the time I'm writing this comment, my SF2 is still basically 100% stock.

I experience this on almost all terrains like Vietnam, Europe, Israel, Desert... Just panning the camera towards the hangar during takeoff drops the framerate, but if I look in another direction, everything is fine especially when I zoom in close on the aircraft with the hangar in the background. And as I mentioned above, the framerate takes a massive hit, dropping below 20 FPS, when the area I'm flying in has bombers or attackers performing ground strike missions in a custom campaign. This happens even though I don't include more than 40 aircraft total (counting both Red and Blue forces) in the battle (it affects both sides). Furthermore, if I fly near positions with multiple KPV/ZPUs or ZSUs firing simultaneously, the only way to describe it is an absolute disaster for the framerate. Yet, other AA weapons like the KS-19, no matter how numerous, do not cause this issue at all. It's incredibly strange because this FPS drop seems to happen selectively.

As for my specs, I have 6GB of VRAM and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Regarding VRAM, I'm not sure about the remaining capacity while the game is running, but monitoring software shows the game doesn't actually consume much system RAM. In fact, it runs lighter than when I'm using Google Chrome or opening Discord.

[Gunrunner]

Check these :

- Increase your monitor refresh rate beyond 60Hz if you can.
- Deactivate Vsync (it can lead to screen tearing though if your FPS doesn't align with your monitor's refresh rate, so it's only if FPS is THAT important to you and you can't increase your monitor refresh rate beyond 60Hz) in the game and/or driver.
- Deactivate or increase FPS limits in your GPU driver (in some cases the nVidia drivers defaulted to 60 FPS for SF2).
 

Once this is done, you can start optimizing, but all these factors contribute to limit the maximum FPS output of the game, regardless of inefficiencies. This won't do much for your lows, but it will increase the maximum FPS.