Pillars of Eternity II - Performance Fix Mod

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A modder called Kaldaien has uncovered a way to dramatically improve the performance of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

[Special K] Fix for Inverse CPU Performance Scaling
Intro

  • I have determined one cause of extreme performance problems for systems with higher-end CPUs.

  • The game spawns one worker thread per-CPU core (logical, not physical), and does not assign thread priority. This causes starvation and the result can be a very substantial decrease in framerate.

    • My system goes from 24 FPS to over 100 at 4K after artificially decreasing my CPU's core count from 16 down to 3.
Download and Install

  • Grab a specially prepared version of Special K from here[github.com]

    • Extract the DLL and PDB (optional debug info) to your Pillars of Eternity 2 install directory
Configuration

  1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Backspace in-game, then expand the "Advanced" section of the Framerate Limiter settings.
  2. Enable "CPU Core Spoofing" and cut the number of CPU cores in half.
  3. Restart the game and test framerate

    • You may try reducing the number of cores even farther if framerate is stable.
    • Hitching may occur while panning the camera if core count is reduced too far.
Misc. Performance Advice

  • If you are having GPU performance issues, Ambient Occlusion is the most poorly optimized graphical effect in the game. Dynamic Lights also have a modest impact on performance.

  • These are the first things you should try turning off if using a lower-end GPU.
[…]
More information.
 
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Damn! Hope a fix for this gets included in the official patch.
 
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I have determined one cause of extreme performance problems for systems with higher-end CPUs.
...
decreasing my CPU's core count from 16 down to 3
16 cores in a "gaming" machine?
This is not a bug and I don't see any reason to put it in the official patch.

Gaming massmedia shilling for i9 and threadripper is the actual problem that needs official patching. Hopefully in countries with capital punishment.
 
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I've never had performance issues, but I hear people complain about them a lot.
 
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What people? You mean the same people who couldn't even start Risen 3 on i7?

People like this:

2CACE05500000578-3246300-image-m-105_1443017122931.jpg
 
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Guess no one had the famous memory leak or save game corruption Unity bug. No I must be dreaming then as it was well documented that Unity had flaws in certain games.

Oh and before I forget what about the long load times affecting a segment of players?

Unity RPG games that had problems.

  1. Might & Magic X: Legacy
  2. Wasteland 2
  3. Pillars of Eternity
  4. Tyranny
Problems caused by certain versions of Unity. Eventually fixed but it took months.
 
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Not to be a skeptic but something else is not quite right. The threads should only be consuming cpu when assigned work. I wonder if there is a fundamental flaw that unused threads are spinning or otherwise wasting resources. Has anyone actually examined what the threads are doing when the game is running ? That doesn't mean his fix greatly improved performance of the game it very well might have if the threads are not being properly implemented.

The interesting thing about this is what this fix could do for Tyranny and Pillars 1.
 
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Unity RPG games that had problems.

  1. Might & Magic X: Legacy
  2. Wasteland 2
  3. Pillars of Eternity
  4. Tyranny
Problems caused by certain versions of Unity. Eventually fixed but it took months.

You can add Battletech to that list (in general). I never had huge problems with it, but a significant amount of players did at release and that lead to negative reviews, which is a shame.
 
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Guess no one had the famous memory leak or save game corruption Unity bug. No I must be dreaming then as it was well documented that Unity had flaws in certain games.

Oh and before I forget what about the long load times affecting a segment of players?

Unity RPG games that had problems.

  1. Might & Magic X: Legacy
Problems caused by certain versions of Unity. Eventually fixed but it took months.

Might & Magic X: Legacy… No, No… must… resist the urge… to… open… old… wounds… ;)
 
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You can add Battletech to that list (in general). I never had huge problems with it, but a significant amount of players did at release and that lead to negative reviews, which is a shame.
Almost forgot as I put that game on hold.

Seems it was the long load times and save bug/memory leak again.
Might & Magic X: Legacy… No, No… must… resist the urge… to… open… old… wounds…
Sorry I had to open old wounds for them to heal properly.:hug:
 
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Might & Magic X: Legacy… No, No… must… resist the urge… to… open… old… wounds… ;)

The game still has problems. I bought it a few months ago and the game doesn't recognize the 3 Club Rewards (Meow Dungeon, Special Relic Set and Sana the Archmage) that I unlocked for the game. At the end of the chapter you can’t reach the Forge, so you can’t continue the game.
Apparently, it is a problem of the DRM with Uplay.
Opened a ticket 3 months ago but still no solution.
The game was released in January 2014.
 
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Guess it is a good thing I haven't had time to dive into this game yet.
Not that I have 16 cores(yet!) but I certainly have more than 3.
 
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Not to be a skeptic but something else is not quite right. The threads should only be consuming cpu when assigned work. I wonder if there is a fundamental flaw that unused threads are spinning or otherwise wasting resources. Has anyone actually examined what the threads are doing when the game is running ? That doesn't mean his fix greatly improved performance of the game it very well might have if the threads are not being properly implemented.

I agree the problem maybe elsewhere. Obsidian and Unity programmers need to get together and hash some stuff out.
 
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16 cores in a "gaming" machine?
This is not a bug and I don't see any reason to put it in the official patch.
He said logical cores, not physical cores. The latest gaming CPUs like the i7 8700K do have 12 logical cores (6 physical, 12 logical after HyperThreading). So it's not like the guy is using some crazy CPU, probably has an i7 6900K or an i7 7820X which would both have 16 logical cores.

That said, "you" is right, something doesn't add up here. Also, the "Note to Obsidian" on the Steam forums link indicates pretty clearly that this guy doesn't understand how HyperThreading works or what the point of it is. Hopefully Obsidian gets to the bottom of it all.
 
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The game still has problems.

Regarding M&M: Legacy, it worked fine for me when I replayed it last year. Just had some graphical artifacts crop up in the Elemental Forge (and shadow dragon) due to some differences in tech from when it was first released. Aside from that, ran perfectly - though I don't pay attention to achievements.
 
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I have only played one game of the Unity engine so far, I believe, and that was Wasteland 2. It ran very smoothly and nicely after I altered the settings to let the framerate go unlimited. I do remember that I had to adjust the setting because it was choppy before I changed that setting. But after I did, it was great frame rates, and no issues at all. My system is a very modest (for today) gaming laptop system. At one time it was considered very powerful for a laptop, but now its outdated by newer tech.

I think the Unity engine is beautiful, graphically speaking.
 
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Kind of impressive that, as an RPG player, you've only managed to play one game that used Unity? Are you sure?

My personal list would include... Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Dragonfall, Shadowrun Hong Kong, Might & Magic X, Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, PoE 1, Tyranny. Also tried Shroud of the Avatar. M&M X performance seemed a little meh, but as a turn-based grid-movement game, who cares really. No complaints about the rest.
 
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