Switched from 60Hz to 165Hz playfield, it's much LESS smooth.

[Powerus]

Hi,

I just replaced my old 60Hz playfield by a new 1440p 165Hz one.

I noticed instantly that VPX didn't feel smoother, it felt worse than 60. Especially on VPW tables but not only.

Unplayable during MB and when a lot of flashing lights turn on.

 

I tried playing with the settings, frame pacing/vsync/adaptive.

I tried running 144Hz instead.

I tried gsync.

I tried updating everything. Went from 10.8 rc4 to rc6 and I updated my vpinmame and b2s as well.

I tried using pinaffinity or disabling hyperthreading.

Nothing can make it smooth.

 

PC is ridiculously overpowered for the job (had some good price on parts).

10700k at 5.2GHz chilling at 50°C with a PA120 on top.

RTX3060

16GB 3200CL16

Windows 10

Dude's cab

 

GPU isn't the issue, it's chilling at ~40% use. The frametime graph in F11 looks unreal. Physics and script are literally spiking through the roof. Like some spikes reach the middle of my playfield screen.

What can I do? I suppose the problem was present when I was playing at 60Hz but I couldn't notice because the frames may have been ready just in time.

I know 120Hz and up playfields are now the norm. I can imagine people are playing a choppy mess like this so it must be possible.
Please help. 

[Thalamus]

Oh boy. I saw you frustration post over at vpf. I have no clue as to why this is unfortunately. I might end up in the same boat ?! Most of today' has been used to upgrade my cab to 4070 Super, 42" 144hz. Unfortunately, that made me have to install bloatware m$ 10. Crossing my fingers. Will replace plunger etc, so, I probably won't know much until the weekend. I hope it is and easy fix for you and that I don't get the same issue. If I'm able to get it working well, then - let's compare. Good luck. I'm sure it is fixable - some way or the other.

[Powerus]

Many people play at 120Hz 4k with much slower CPU than mine so it should be fixable.

[tjaf]

How much memory does that RTX306 have and did you play with the "Max. texture Dimension" setting in the VPX Video/Graphics option? On my RTX4060 (with 6GB),  I have to reduce that setting from unlimited to 4096 to get smooth gameplay at 165Hz and that setting really has a huge effect on the more demanding VPW tables. The fact your GPU shows only 40% usage, might be that the memory feeding your GPU just isn't large/fast enough to push all those textures fast enough.

 

Also make sure to test also disabling Supersampling and post-processed AA completely to see if those settings don't affect anything. 

[Schlabber34]

You can also try to turn off reflections in thr video preferences. You can do that for that particular table only.

Try to run the table without a backglass and see what happens. No matter what i do, i have stutter with tables that have running lights in the BG like Xenon. Ball stutters to the beat of the rom sound and lights. Deleting the lights from the BG solved the stutter.

[panterro]

12 hours ago, Schlabber34 said:

Try to run the table without a backglass and see what happens. 

Is the start as exe Option activated in the b2s? Had also bad Frame Drops when this was disabled. Now only Fish Tales and Metallica are going down a bit, even on not maxed out settings.

 

Still have to try that memory setting mentioned above.

[Schlabber34]

Yes, always enabled.

[Powerus]

Thanks for your answers. Sorry for ghosting it's just that people answered faster on another forum so I kinda forgot I asked the same question here.
 

It seems that my CPU isn't as future proof as I thought and won't do for 165 or even 144Hz. Physics are just too demanding at 144Hz and a thread is maxed out and that's what is either limiting my framerate (on some tables) or making it unstable and stutter on others.

I'd need a newer CPU with faster single core performance.

 

For the moment I have proven that everything at low or everything maxed doesn't make a single difference, it's 100% CPU bound. Unless I go crazy with the supersamipling.
Vram and ram are OK.

Fullscreen mode is always on, doesn't help.

 

I have achieved better smoothness by doing :

- turning off hyperthreading.

- forced VPinballX.exe to run on cores 1;2;3 with Process Lasso. More cores actually harm performance, 3 is what's working best. I can change time in real time and the difference in night and day.

- overclocking even more (slightly).

- reduced target fps to 120 (monitor and vpx) to reduce the power needed for physics (obviously helped tremendously but that's more a workaround).

- added windows defender exceptions for VPX (didn't seem to help, maybe a little but not enough to be sure).

- b2s in exe actually no, I can't prove that this helped

 

Improvement measured not only by feeling but also by looking at frametime graph. Much flatter.
 

Still won't be perfect and will always stutter during multiballs or when recent table flash many lights. It seems that the only thing I can do is either wait for VPX updates or buy a 14600k and everything that goes with it.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2024 by Powerus