Poor performance despite modern hardware

[SubZippo]

My rig can easily handle the likes of GTA V and Resident Evil 2 remake on high settings, but City doesn't run any better now than it did when it went dark.  I've seen people post videos of hami raids that appear to be at least 30 fps and silky smooth but I can barely keep it above 15 fps when I'm fighting as much as an AV, much less hami.  During the Halloween event I was trying to troubleshoot with someone in the middle of Trick or Treating and they suggested I try lowering myself to minimum settings for a benchmark.  I was getting maybe 28 fps then.  Asking on facebook groups the only things I get told are condescending and not helpful in the least.  What can I do to optimize the game for my hardware?  Please help, I'm at my wits end.

 

AMD RYZEN 7 1700 8-Core 3.0 GHz processor

CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM

ASUS Prime X370-Pro AM4 AMD X370 motherboard

EVGA 03G-P4-2667-KR G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 660 FTW Signature 2 3GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 graphics card

WD Blue 3D SSD

Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Blue Edition - High Air Flow Full Tower Computer Case (Cleaned regularly)

Windows 10 64 bit

Edited February 2, 2020 by SubZippo

[GM Korvin]

To my knowledge, OpenGL games (such as City of Heroes) do not perform that well on Windows, due to the operating system not really supporting OpenGL all that much - some quick searching also seems to suggest that AMD drivers for Windows are partially to blame as well.

 

This is a long shot, but I've heard that it's sometimes possible to get better performance on OpenGL games using Linux because of this - their implementation of it is more up to date, and as a result works better, even when being run through Wine. But then you're using a different operating system, which might not be ideal.

[GM Tock]

It's really luck of the draw concerning hardware.  Spending top dollar on components doesn't guarantee COH will play perfectly, and it's possible to pick up a Garage Sale laptop off the street for $200 that will get as hot as a toaster but will still play it well, too.

 

If you're looking at further upgrades, you can peruse the Graphics Card Survey in here for ideas on a replacement card (the GTX 660 isn't really dated, but my GTX 550 Ti started sputtering out a year ago... then again, I ran it playing The Secret World in 115 degrees before our AC was fixed, so I had it coming.)  Also, check out the G-Sync/Freesync displays that are out today, as it helps keep visuals near 60 FPS consistently.  And they don't break the bank, most displays with frame rate sync cost just as much as their non-synced counterparts.

 

Otherwise, like most of us, the battle will be tweaking the visual settings in a compromise: 1) visual effects (like depth of field, bloom, and ambient occlusion), 2) higher framerates, or 3) draw distance.  You can knock one out of the park, or pick two to be happy with.  All three isn't likely without changing out your hardware, (which doesn't guarantee success anyway.)

Edited February 3, 2020 by GM_Tahquitz

[Seigmoraig]

Your rig looks very good, all the parts seem fairly recent, the one sore thumb though that I can see is the Graphics Card. It is a model that was released in August 2012 so it's getting on 8 years old which is mostly what I would call the "End of Life" phase of hardware. While it might run modern games like RE2 Remake and GTA V, if the hardware was not properly optimized to run CoH back in the day and it didn't run it well in 2012 at the shutdown, it won't run it any better today unless some miracle driver was released.

 

All I can suggest past getting a new, modern card (something like this will do very nicely in your build and will modernize you for the foreseeable future, easily as long as your 660 lasted you  https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-gtx-1660-06g-p4-1067-kr/p/N82E16814487448?Item=N82E16814487448&quicklink=true ) is to make sure it's clean (free of dust build up in the heat sink and the fan fins) and the drivers are up to date from Nvidia https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/156780 .

[WanderingAries]

On the game side, try setting your GFX settings to the baseline and slowly step things up until you find a series of settings that doesn't seem to lag. It'll take a bit of tuning, but probably one of the few no-cost solutions.

[microc]

make sure the mb has the newest amd bios code. on the nvidia gpu make sure under power settings it set to max performance and one screen. also make sure you installed the newest chipset drivers for your amd mb. sometime the ones from ms may not be as good as newest from amd. on your 660gpu there is two issues. one it a directx 9x card and your running in under windows 0 that mostly written from directx 12. the last issue is with a 12 year old card is it may not support pci 3x speeds. at the time of that card the only pci 3x chipset was the x77 chipset from intel. yuour gpu can be fine for the game but if the pci bus is a bottle neck there only so much data the gpu can pass to the cpu and mb. that why vendors like amd now support pci 4x for the bandwith speed on the mb

[Noyjitat]

the amd processor should be fine but that gtx 660 is pretty ancient. Even if that combo runs gta coh isn't an optimal game and likely never will be.  I for example can play black desert online on remastered mode just fine on my amd fx8350 with r9 295x2 system but it can't run ultra mode coh with 60 fps.

 

edit: also this might sound stupid but  when is the last time you put new thermal paste on that gpu? It could be that with coh being so un optimal that the card is throttling due to heat and the paste is probably very old on that card. You can look up how to remove the heatsink and then apply some arctic silver or whatever you're comfortable with using on it.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Noyjitat