So the slideshow framerates finally got to me yesterday and after my knee rehab appointment I tripped and fell into Fry's Electronics where I accidentally picked up a 4GB GTX 1050Ti.
Now some interesting observations care of MSI Afterburner.
I have seen my GPU usage go from essentially constant 100% with the 2GB R7 360 (even with a mild OC) to more 30% with GTX 1050Ti, occasionally 50% but it is not working very hard. GPU Mem usage averages 3.5-3.7 GB so I believe that a lot of my spikes/freezes were GPU Mem related.
I now hit 15+ FPS in the PU at 1080 and High/Very High (does not seem to be a big difference there or down to Medium), and am now down to what I believe are either pagefile access issues (an SSD will fix that), and network performance. This is about 5-7 FPS better than the R7 360.
Since I put the extra 4GB RAM I had lying around in, the RAM Mem load is better but Afterburner shows a total Mem usage averaging 15GB with SC and basic Windows, etc. When I only had 16GB this too was contributing to spikes and freezes.
Now, out and about in the PTU, even if FPS indicates 15 or less, the actual display is substantially smoother and has been a completely different playing experience.
Thanks to the Cryptocurrency miners GPU prices have gone up along with memory costs, and I figured less than $170 was OK since more than that would be a substantial fraction of a new gaming rig which I plan to put off until much later in '18/possibly '19 even.
I will still put a 250GB SSD in soon and see if that also helps but I have already enjoyed a substantial improvement in stable FPS and as a result in playability - I suspect I'll see much better FPS in a less-busy server as well.
I also learned a very important lesson - I was moving cables around and unplugged the USB cables for my joysticks with the game active - big mistake, I had to rebind everything since when I put them back in I reversed them by accident and after putting them in SC will only see them as reversed. If you need to hotswap cables be sure the game is not active.
'Gimp
Now some interesting observations care of MSI Afterburner.
I have seen my GPU usage go from essentially constant 100% with the 2GB R7 360 (even with a mild OC) to more 30% with GTX 1050Ti, occasionally 50% but it is not working very hard. GPU Mem usage averages 3.5-3.7 GB so I believe that a lot of my spikes/freezes were GPU Mem related.
I now hit 15+ FPS in the PU at 1080 and High/Very High (does not seem to be a big difference there or down to Medium), and am now down to what I believe are either pagefile access issues (an SSD will fix that), and network performance. This is about 5-7 FPS better than the R7 360.
Since I put the extra 4GB RAM I had lying around in, the RAM Mem load is better but Afterburner shows a total Mem usage averaging 15GB with SC and basic Windows, etc. When I only had 16GB this too was contributing to spikes and freezes.
Now, out and about in the PTU, even if FPS indicates 15 or less, the actual display is substantially smoother and has been a completely different playing experience.
Thanks to the Cryptocurrency miners GPU prices have gone up along with memory costs, and I figured less than $170 was OK since more than that would be a substantial fraction of a new gaming rig which I plan to put off until much later in '18/possibly '19 even.
I will still put a 250GB SSD in soon and see if that also helps but I have already enjoyed a substantial improvement in stable FPS and as a result in playability - I suspect I'll see much better FPS in a less-busy server as well.
I also learned a very important lesson - I was moving cables around and unplugged the USB cables for my joysticks with the game active - big mistake, I had to rebind everything since when I put them back in I reversed them by accident and after putting them in SC will only see them as reversed. If you need to hotswap cables be sure the game is not active.
'Gimp