Shadowplay significantly impacts fps?

[Trail Mixorz]

I hear all over the place that running shadow mode on shadowplay has no consequence on your fps, but when I have it running, even for recording the last 5 minutes, it takes a noticable toll on my fps. For example if I'm playing BF4 at 50 fps, it will start to play at 25-30 fps with shadowplay enabled. What can I do to make it not do this?

[ZetZet]

Your cpu is obviously bottlenecking that 670, so when you start recording it chokes even more and fps drops hard.

EDIT: Might be RAM too.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Your cpu is obviously bottlenecking that 670, so when you start recording it chokes even more and fps drops hard.

EDIT: Might be RAM too.

The specific 264 hardware encoder on the 670 is there to stop the CPU being used more for recording.

I'd say RAM being 4GB, your recording to a drive and not RAM right..?

Your recorded files, are being saved directly on ANOTHER drive right? <- if not this is probably it.

@Trail Mixorz

[Deddie]

I have/had the same problem, turning the FPS in Shadowplay to 30 may help it. I can't confirm it because I haven't played BF4 for a long time but in other games I had similar problems and turning the FPS to 30 in Shadowplay fixed it.

[Feeterican]

I kind of noticed that with my old PC so I changed it to manual and it help out a lot. Shadow mode will always be recording what ever your playing even though you don't want to record what your doing at the moment, once you hit the alt F10 then it captures the last 5 -20 minutes of what you were playing. In manual mode it only records what you want it to.

[Trail Mixorz]

The specific 264 hardware encoder on the 670 is there to stop the CPU being used more for recording.

I'd say RAM being 4GB, your recording to a drive and not RAM right..?

Your recorded files, are being saved directly on ANOTHER drive right? <- if not this is probably it.

@Trail Mixorz

It's being recorded to a second HDD

[Analog]

It's being recorded to a second HDD

 

Perhaps the HDD is just too slow and can't handle that on the fly transferring of huge amounts of data. There is also the option that you might be running out of system memory.

[StormEye]

If all your components are up to par, Shadowplay introduces single digit % performance loss.

 

I have tested in both BF4 and (unintentionally) 3DMark/11.

 

On 3DMark/11 it was exactly 1%+- performance loss, which basically means nothing to be concerned about in real-world scenario.

[Trail Mixorz]

Perhaps the HDD is just too slow and can't handle that on the fly transferring of huge amounts of data. There is also the option that you might be running out of system memory.

I was thinking maybe because I only have 4GB ram?

 

If all your components are up to par, Shadowplay introduces single digit % performance loss.

 

I have tested in both BF4 and (unintentionally) 3DMark/11.

 

On 3DMark/11 it was exactly 1%+- performance loss, which basically means nothing to be concerned about in real-world scenario.

So what's wrong in my build that's making it a more than probably single digit % loss?

[colonel_mortis]

Is it just in BF4? Because that game screws around with shadow play.

How much page file do you have? Turn it way up because shadow play (and BF4) like RAM (ideally get more ram), and swap/page file is the next best thing.

Is the GeForce experience window open? I have noticed that it uses large amounts of my CPU for no reason and impacts on my FPS, so try closing it. Shadow play will still work.

[Trail Mixorz]

Is it just in BF4? Because that game screws around with shadow play.

How much page file do you have? Turn it way up because shadow play (and BF4) like RAM (ideally get more ram), and swap/page file is the next best thing.

Is the GeForce experience window open? I have noticed that it uses large amounts of my CPU for no reason and impacts on my FPS, so try closing it. Shadow play will still work.

ill try it in other games tonight, but what is page file?

[StormEye]

Is the GeForce experience window open? I have noticed that it uses large amounts of my CPU for no reason and impacts on my FPS, so try closing it. Shadow play will still work.

Yes, this is absolutely true.

 

I have no idea why this thing uses so much CPU power when its opened as a window. When closed, it doesn't have any impact on anything, just when its open it becomes attention whore...

[MasterJV]

The rest of your system is probably bottlenecking your GPU. Upgrading your CPU and Ram will probably remedy the problem(Add 4 gigs or ram, upgrade the CPU) If you don't have cash, try lowering the quality Shadowplay records at.

[colonel_mortis]

ill try it in other games tonight, but what is page file?

Linus made a good video on it:

[StormEye]

There are just so many different point of views when it comes to page file optimization I don't even know whats really correct.

 

I just set it at safe minimum of 1GB (actual safe minimum is 400MB for crash report) and left it like that on all my builds.

[colonel_mortis]

There are just so many different point of views when it comes to page file optimization I don't even know whats really correct.

I just set it at safe minimum of 1GB (actual safe minimum is 400MB for crash report) and left it like that on all my builds.

There are a lot of different approaches, but I have found that a large page file is needed for bf4, and probably shadow play, so if you turn it up and it has no effect then fine, turn it down again, but it's certainly worth checking imo. I now have mine set to about 8gb I think, and it works alright now.

[StormEye]

There are a lot of different approaches, but I have found that a large page file is needed for bf4, and probably shadow play, so if you turn it up and it has no effect then fine, turn it down again, but it's certainly worth checking imo. I now have mine set to about 8gb I think, and it works alright now.

Currently I am running 32GB of RAM, and I am pretty sure Microsoft has figured out not to touch page file if there are plenty of RAM left. Of course, there are programs that will plain old refuse to work properly if there is no page file, but I don't think there is a program out there that will benefit much from increase in page file, if there are plenty of RAM to work with.

I will try it out when I get a chance (or to better put, when I don't feel lazy) but I doubt there will be any change. Except, of course, amount of free space on my storage device. LoL

[colonel_mortis]

Currently I am running 32GB of RAM, and I am pretty sure Microsoft has figured out not to touch page file if there are plenty of RAM left. Of course, there are programs that will plain old refuse to work properly if there is no page file, but I don't think there is a program out there that will benefit much from increase in page file, if there are plenty of RAM to work with.

I will try it out when I get a chance (or to better put, when I don't feel lazy) but I doubt there will be any change. Except, of course, amount of free space on my storage device. LoL

Those great for you, but I have 8gb and it needs a page file, and he said he has 4gb so the page file will get a fair bit of use. But if you have enough ram, sure, there will be no problems unless you need the crash dump, and even then you should be alright

[StormEye]

Those great for you, but I have 8gb and it needs a page file, and he said he has 4gb so the page file will get a fair bit of use. But if you have enough ram, sure, there will be no problems unless you need the crash dump, and even then you should be alright

Jar~

 

BF4 requires 8GB minimum to run optimally (4GB is just absolute minimum) so page file definitely would help in that case.

[Trail Mixorz]

Linus made a good video on it:

I'm still so confused about what it is. Is it virtual ram? I have 2 hdds, one for main storage and os, and one for my games. Should I put it on the one with my games? How would it benefit me? The video didn't really help sorry Linus

[colonel_mortis]

I'm still so confused about what it is. Is it virtual ram? I have 2 hdds, one for main storage and os, and one for my games. Should I put it on the one with my games? How would it benefit me? The video didn't really help sorry Linus

Basically it creates a file on your hard drive or ssd which it treats like RAM, although it's obviously slower and therefore only used as an overflow. I don't think it makes a significant difference which drive you put it on if they both perform the same and are both HDDs, so windows would prefer you to use the drive with windows installed on. It will benefit you specifically because BF4 is running out of ram and having to unload textures, which is impacting on performance and causing potential instability, so you should expect an increase in performance if you increase the page file, assuming it was not large enough before. It is also likely to be a significant factor in issues with shadow play, which works in mysterious ways but almost certainly would like as much "ram" as possible. Ideally you would get more ram, but that's obviously not practical, so this is the next best thing.

Hope this cleared it up a bit for you (probably didn't but hey).

[Trail Mixorz]

Basically it creates a file on your hard drive or ssd which it treats like RAM, although it's obviously slower and therefore only used as an overflow. I don't think it makes a significant difference which drive you put it on if they both perform the same and are both HDDs, so windows would prefer you to use the drive with windows installed on. It will benefit you specifically because BF4 is running out of ram and having to unload textures, which is impacting on performance and causing potential instability, so you should expect an increase in performance if you increase the page file, assuming it was not large enough before. It is also likely to be a significant factor in issues with shadow play, which works in mysterious ways but almost certainly would like as much "ram" as possible. Ideally you would get more ram, but that's obviously not practical, so this is the next best thing.

Hope this cleared it up a bit for you (probably didn't but hey).

no this definitely helped. But why did Linus say to put it on a second hdd? And in the near future when I buy an ssd, I should put the page file on that? And how big should I make it, 4 gb because bf4 wants 8 total?

[Cwazywazy]

If I have anything using HDD bandwith (Converting a video or something) I would get maybe half the FPS when recording videos with Shadowplay so I just plugged in my old 4GB flash drive and I use that to record to. (It's enough space for me. The videos I record aren't that long.)

[Riddler356]

Need more ram is all i canthink of.