I recently bought a dedicated pc and new RX 570 graphics card for zwifting to get a way form the choppy apple tv.
But i have ended up with worse on group rides. I can only get the high profile in 1080 and 1440 I would of expected this card to get the ultra. and a decent frame rate.
I should of bought a GTX 1050 or 1060 as they are getting 50-100fps in 1440 ultra with a similar spec PC to me where as i’m getting 14-40FPS in 1080 high and 1440 high.
Do you have the most recent AMD driver installed? This link could be helpful and getting a little better performance out of it: Zwift Community KB | How do I tune my GPU for maximum performance in Zwift? (Windows)
The RX570 is better than the GTX1050ti and about equal to or better than the 1060.
I’m all up to date I’ve tried it my other PC in the house and similar results I have tried vertical refresh off and on.open gl tripple buffering on and off not much difference may be a couple of FPS.
It’s a card that has been on the market for awhile now I would think that Zwift would have a ultra graphics profile for it (Zwift doesn’t for the AMD 590 or the Nvidia 1660).
Could anyone help finding the bottle neck on my system? my GPU and CPU both sit at around 30-40% in a big group ride and peak at 57% usage. Reducing resolution does not increase FPS by much at all. Nvida GPU’s with my CPU seem to get much better fps. I have tried a new i5 cpu and the results were the same I assume its the GPU should I sell and buy a GTX 1050? or will my GPU improve when/if Zwift get round to releasing the graphics profile. screen shots are from one ride in london.
Thanks in advance
From your screenshots it looks like you have an issue with overclocking software. Your MIN and MAX CPU and GPU results on both pics show a possible issue. You want to lock your frequencies at a value with the hardware setup. If you are running a motherboard with OCing software built in and at the same time running an in Windows OCing software (even from the motherboard manufacturer) (for either GPU or CPU) you may run into this scenario where your CPU and GPU will underclock all the time unless there is load.
For Zwift to detect your system at its max performance and give you optimum settings you’d want all your clocks high whether your system is under load or not. I suspect those MIN values are the stem of your issues. Hope that helps.
thanks for the reply. only motherboard is overclocking the CPU I have tried it without but i get better FPS with OC. GPU is out the box but with gaming mode on.I must of opened HWmonitor before I launched zwift. When zwift is running GPU clock stays at 100% * edit* checked other screen shots and the HWmonitor did record the CPU at 800mhz . However HWmonitor has recorded 0% on the GPU but when I watch its always 34,35,36,37 or 38%
below are some screen shots from today this time I started HWmonitor after zwift
Thanks again
CPU looks better. But your graphics card still has some wacky MIN values. (Not saying fixing to a static frequency on your GPU will fix the FPS issues, because it probably does run at max while Zwift is running and the issue may be an AMD profile for Zwift issue.)
The issue with the MIN values on the GPU may be competing softwares within Windows causing the no load underclock. ie. motherboard software within windows and something like msi afterburner running at he same time.
Either way good to get that GPU running a high static clock regardless if it fixes the Zwift issues i guess.
Where’s your RAM at? Any bottle necking there?
Thanks again for the reply. I have removed all Graphics drivers and cleaned up using AMD clean up utility and installed only AMD Adrenalin driver. Not much change in performance but less ram usage it was averaging around 43% now its dropped to 34% but that may be down to Richmond’s poorer textures.
I do have 16gb(4x4gb) corsair vengance DDR3 1600mhz in my other computer I could swap and give it a whirl tomorrow.
It still looks like you have the CPU and GPU under-clocking issue in that screenshot. I’d continue to look into that. Though it may not be the cause of your low FPS in Zwift, it’s not an ideal hardware setup.
It wouldn’t hurt to install a benchmark tool like 3DMark or Unigine. After running the benchmark you can compare your score with similar systems to see where your system stacks up.
This would at least let you know if your system has any issues with gaming outside of Zwift and if your system performance lines up with where it should be.
My guess is windows power saving mode of any kind.
Check those power profiles and switch to optimum or max power.
And please use i.e. ‘it should have’ and not ’ it should of’.
Thanks for the reply. I have checked them before and set everything to performance. Today I increased the minimum CPU from 11% to 20% no noticeable difference to frame rated but to I did have an hour where my CPU clock did not drop.
The bottleneck is the single core performance of the Phenom II 4x 965 CPU from 2009 combined with AMD’s OpenGL drivers that tax the CPU hard (core #3 at 95%, while GPU only at 57%). Get an Nvidia card because their OpenGL drivers make more efficient use of the CPU. The 10 years old CPU will still be a bottleneck to a GTX 1050, but it will be better. Also, check temperatures and make sure the CPU isn’t being throttled down to 864 MHz to prevent overheating. What’s you cooling like?
Think you have hit the nail on the head. I had noticed that AMD CPU especially the older one have very poor performance with all GPU’S. i3 and i7 seem to excel witch I assume is down to the hyper threading. I5 4core’s some where in the middle due to not having hyper threading.
I had also noticed (after i bought my equipment and studying zwiaftalizer) that AMD GPU’s are always lower performing. I found this thread and this thread backing up you.
Cooling CPU temp is around 39C with 200mhz OC I recently increase my OC to 3900mHz with a 5-10 FPS improvement and still only maxing at 44C.
In hindsight I should of bought a PC with intel and Nvidia and I would of got 30-50FPS comfortably.
Yup, I’d agree with you and Mike as well. Zwift does not seem to like older AMD processors.
My old system (i3-8100 4 core no HT, GTX 1060 3GB) scored a very similar score to your system in the Fire Strike benchmark, however in Zwift I was getting over 60 FPS easy.
Looking in Zwiftalizer even any of the newer AMD CPU’s produce decent results with the RX 570.
So it’s upgrade time for your PC if you want better FPS. Sucks a bit because you’ll need a new MOBO, CPU and RAM at minimum, but at least you are future proofing yourself with a new setup.
Update after getting nowhere with zwift support I decide to bit the bullet and go green I bought a GTX1060 and the zwift is now smooth enough even on my favourite group ride bacon rolls which is the Achilles heel of my system. I now have the Ultra profile and can Zwift in 1080, 1440 and 2160 with similar frame rates with the ultra opposed to high profile with the RX 570 so it looks great.
Frame rate comparison
bacon rolls RX570 1440 high
avg 20, min 10, max 30
bacon rolls GTX 1060 1440 ultra
avg 35, min 22, max 113
TDW group ride RX570 1440 high
avg 34, min 10, max 61
TDW group ride GTX1060 1440 ultra
avg 77, min 27, max 131
Solo ride RX570 1440 high
avg 56, min 26, max 75
Solo ride GTX 1060 1440 ultra
Avg 75, min 48 max 95
The new graphics card has a lower fire strike score due to a lower graphics score.
AMD open GL is poor the difference changing only the GPU is amazing I’m so happy now its smooth. Still no explanation why the my cpu sits between 30-60% utilisation and my GPU is sat waiting for frames. If I run a game (directx11) you can clear see the CPU bottle neck CPU sit a 99% and GPU is up and down.
That’s great news Daniel. Pretty much the same performance difference I see when I swap out an AMD 7870 for a GTX 960 with an old quad core Xeon box. I don’t known what it is with AMD OpenGL - drivers, or something else that the game can do more easily with Nvidia, but takes more CPU with AMD, shadows??. Something for sure. Out of interest, does your FPS go up if you disable the network interface in Windows? I’ve been trying to figure out what effect networking overhead has on rendering. See this thread CPU Selection can a i3 handle group rides - #8 by Daniel_Hunt_LEQP
the spikes are when I disconnected the internet around 80fps. I will look for a nvidia screen shot and upload later
I also have an RX570. It’s a perfectly good graphics card, running 90+ FPS at 1440 in the High profile. I also wanted to know why it wasn’t an Ultra profile, and I got this from Zwift tech support
“There isn’t an option that will allow you to increase your graphical setting, the game auto directs what graphics card you are using, and applies the most optimal graphics profile. While your GPU may be able to display our Ultra graphics, it may lead to a decreased frame rate or other graphical issues. Because of this, our development team currently has the card in the High graphics category.”
His suggestion was to put in a feature request for an Ultra profile.
FurMark benchmarking put the card at a score of ~4000. I think that’s plenty good.
