Low FPS after trying FAQ fixes

Hey there everyone, I've looked through the forums and FAQ to try to find fixes for lag, but I've yet to find a fix that works. I attempted putting my graphics settings on minimum and disabling all the fancy PostFX's yet my fps goes from 7 to 13. I've tried the lighting on low, which increases my FPS from 7 all the way to 10, but nothing else seems to increase my FPS. I've even tried using "Lowest" which puts me up to 11 if I'm lucky. The odd thing is, I tried the 2.0 demo and on minimum settings I was getting 60-70 FPS, and on medium I was getting 20-30 FPS. Is there anything I can do besides decreasing settings? I've read things saying allocating RAM is a necessity for Drive, yet I've also heard things saying it won't help at all. I'd rather not have 20 dollars I spend go down the drain, especially considering that this game is really awesome.

Just in case you need some info, I have one car on any map. I'm probably going to be laughed at for this, but I have an AMD Radeon HD 7640G with a Radeon A8-4500M Quadcore. It also contains 6 gigabytes of ram, with 5.47 usable and Windows 8 64x.

 

The demo is limited to a small car on a barren map, you can't expect to run multiple cars on fancy maps with a computer like that. I have a laptop with similar specs, it's an AMD A10-4600M and a HD 7660G which pumps out about 18FPS before overheating and throttling. I believe your computer is graphically bottlenecked but the CPU isn't far behind the graphics, this is why reducing the settings only does so much.

There's not a lot you can do, I would suggest making sure you're not overheating and thermal throttling, changing power settings to High Performance, and sticking to one small car on Grid Map. However, you can't blame the game, as your computer is simply not strong enough to play it - and in most cases it would struggle with most other modern games, so you can't expect anything different.

But why did you buy the game when your specs did not even meet the minimum requirements?

 

Based on what you're saying, I shouldn't be able to play Planetside 2 on Ultra with 20 FPS, Mirror's Edge with 50ish FPS, TF2 on Ultra with 60ish FPS, and so on and so forth. 90% of games I play, I can play on medium to max settings with great FPS. You're saying I shouldn't be able to play a lot of modern games, yet I can.

Also, you're lecturing me about running multiple cars, yet I said that I was running only one car on the default maps. When I add more cars or change maps, I really don't notice a change in FPS anyways. That is, unless I do something stupidly ridiculous. Either way, if what you were saying is true, I should be fine with 1 car on Grid or Grid Empty, but I'm not, and I should lag more on like Cliff or East Coast USA with 2-3 cars, and I don't.

You also say I don't meet minimum requirements, yet according to my cross-checking of stats I appear to. I've got a quad-core AMD, which is recommended for moderate gameplay. 6GB RAM which is indeed DDR3, so that's 2GB MORE than they reccomend. The two things are debatable are my clock speed, which is HP's stupidity for putting an AMD in a "gaming system", and my graphic's card, which I believe is fine. Even then, it meets the minimum specs.

I believe it's the fact that the laptop loves throttling, due to the fact that in a lot of semi-demanding games I notice an FPS drop quite a way into the game, and BeamNG happens to pull it a bit sooner. Something else that leads me to think that way is because last night when I got the game, I was running 20-25 FPS most of the evening, but then today I started running slow. God I need to include more info in my main posts.

 

No, you can't. Playing at 20FPS is not playable. Also, Mirror's Edge is an old game (2008) with simplistic graphics and runs well over 120 FPS on a 750ti at the same settings. TF2 is extremely low load and along with LoL barely use any GPU power to run. Integrated graphics can run it maxed at 40 - 50 FPS.

Whatever crazy framerates you're getting aside, it's not like the demo runs any different from the full game, and you can trust me on this, as said before I have a very similar laptop and it produces extremely similar results as the ones you are seeing.

You can't selectively chose what components matter for the system requirements; quad-core MOBILE processor and adequate RAM will not get you FPS. ALL PARTS MUST BE ABOVE THE MINIMUM SPEC.

At this point in time, RAM is like hard drive space; once you have enough, it doesn't matter how much more you have. Also, you have a MOBILE CPU, which is significantly less powerful compared to its desktop brethren, and AMD CPUs are weak in single-threaded performance. I'll explain later.

Your GPU is one step beneath my GPU, which I use day-to-day. The mobile 7640 is a weak card. Let's go over AMD's old naming scheme;

7990 < 1440 high, equivalent to R9 290 or 780
7970 < 1080 ultra, equivalent to R9 280x or GTX 770
7790 < a tier down, 720p ultra or 1080p medium - equivalent to a R9 270x or 750 ti
7770 < 1080 low or 720 high, equivalent to R9 260x or GTX 650

and wayyyy down here is your card and my card - additionally, the fact that they are mobile makes them have power limits and further weakens the card

Let me introduce you to the world of AMD CPUs. AMD CPUs have terrible single-threaded performance because their architecture is extremely poor in design (not just an opinion; go look up some reviews of bulldozer FX 8320s) and have poor design choices like 1 FPU per core and therefore suffer when it comes to BeamNG because it's one car per core (so that way you can have multiple cars without halving or quartering framerates), and with weak cores, it struggles to simulate the thousands of nodes which are to be updated 2000 times a second.

That would be my main guess, as mobile CPUs cannot run at 100% for any extended period of time without throttling.

please don't take my response as hostile; I only mean to inform you. I also take no bias to companies; AMD makes competitive products and is a worthwhile investment, just not in specific cases like this one.

 

The whole "20 fps is not playable" is user opinion, because I can play at 20 fps just fine, I mean it's kind of annoying, but being that I can successfully play, it is technically playable for me. However, based on what you're saying, I obviously don't play many "modern games" cause I can run 90% of games I play at 30+ FPS, which being that my screen supports only 30 FPS, is fine.

I'm afraid that explanation, although useful, has went to waste. I have somewhat fixed the issue temporarily, until I can get a half-decent computer. With that said, hopefully when I do get a half-decent computer, I'll get an Intel, meaning that I don't have to worry about all the AMD stats and such.

It was most definitely the throttling that was giving me issues. I've manually went in and disabled the throttling, which is probably the best thing my computer has had in ages. It hasn't gotten hot in the past half an hour and it's running much smoother, which is excellent considering it used to get hot within 15-20 minutes of most demanding games. FPS has bumped up to 25 area, on all settings medium except lighting, which is on low. That is definitely workable for me. Thanks for the help.

 

Great to hear it's working, concerning the 20 FPS issue; to each their own. I can't stand dips to 55 FPS on my PC, and I can't use my PS3 for very long before I get disgusted by the 22 FPS framerate of GTA V. Whatever.

I gave up on solving the thermal issues with my laptop, I think the thermal paste is gone or maybe the voltage is wrong but I can't be arsed to fix it, as we speak I have a lot on my plate now, and that's why my response was so scatterbrained.