[DX11] Help regarding Nvidia Profile Inspector (NPI)

[a1337cookie]

@Draftlight

I'm not all that experienced, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I would try checking the GPU usage. If you use MSI Afterburner, you can monitor it using the graph or the OSD, and see if your GPU is maxing out when your FPS dips. If so, then you might just need to turn down your graphics settings.

In case it helps, my current setup is R5 5600X and RTX 3070. I run minimal mods, mid to high settings, and 4xAA in ATS. I'm using 1x1440p monitor and 2.5x1080p monitors, totaling ~8.9 million pixels. I lock my framerate to 36, which I can maintain at all times, even in cities.

If it turns out to be just your GPU being pushed too hard, I can offer a compromise. You can try reducing the resolution of just the side screens, while leaving the center screen at native. If you integer scale down to 720p and use 4xAA, it might still look fine, and should give you a ton more performance. My guide on how to do this: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2163

[Draftlight]

Thanks a lot both of you for the time.
Yeah I noticed the terrible performance as well over the years it's gone worse and worse. Sure some updates were nice but they've been changing so much even modders having issues with it. I mean best and newest example as you mentioned is the new sound system. It basically broke every sound mod out there and promods as well, the whole team had to redo they way tunnels worked if I understood correctly.

I mean I love this sim in general, but I don't get why a realism sim is so badly Optimized.
That's why I just wanted to make sure I'm not just going down a rabbit hole without realizing it.
I swear, I've tested so much shit I forgot half of what I did, I've literally been trying to solve this for at least 1 month now.
In the end I even broke my own promise to wait with reinstallation of my machine (need it for work too and there's tons of programs, data and changes on it) and installed win 11.
Well I had some issue anyway and went to bug track a program issue with a developer at the same time, so it was more than overdue in the end anyway.
However everytime I saw someone playing the game and seeing their rigs and performance they get, I kept asking myself what the fuck I did wrong. I've seen worse systems running much more smooth.
Sure, I'd like to get the best out of this game in points of looks, but I'm fine with finding a compromise as long as it doesn't break the realism and still looks fine.

And this is where I come to the lowering resolution situation, right before I went out today I checked exactly this, lowering resolution to 3x fhd which I already had to put into the config file manually cuz the game itself didn't let me.
It went up to about 50 to 60 fps., but...... The game looked so terrible, everything was... Well how do I say it.... Mushy and super blurry (even with changing LOD in npi) it was really unbearable, this might also be caused since the 2 Dell's are supposed to run on 4k for native resolution which I always use in qhd. So going down to fhd might have had a bigger impact than on a qhd monitor downscaling to fhd.
What I couldnt test anymore was putting the scaling up again with 3x fhd to see if it looks better then.

Gpu is actually running on 99% that's why I even started looking into a new gpu, I check that before with afterburner.
I felt like I was asking way to much out of that poor thing, like my expactations might have been too much.

So what I shoukd test next, disable all mods (shame on me I didn't do that before, but I wouldn't miss them since they make the game more enjoyable), upscale on 3x fhd.
And mix all of that once again with lower settings ( I did that before too but randomly cuz I lost track of what I was doing).

[JHTrucker]

@Draftlight - Are you really comparing the same resolution with our 4xAA when looking at youtube stuff?
Your 7680x1440 = 11,059200 pixels and then you are forcing 4xAA on to it.
a1337cookie 3070 = ~8.900000 pixels.
Forum member Foxman was using 1080ti 3x1920x1200 and got ~60 but that was with game version 1.36 when I first got triple AA working and that's only 6.912000 pixels.

So as you can see, your resolution is the problem.
Your gpu is 99% load and therefore can't render more frames unless you lower gfx settings.
If you can set your monitors to 1080 (Integer Scaling) as stated by a1337cookie you'll be able to turn all the gfx up and have good fps and 4xAA. Just lowering the game resolution will blur but changing to interger scaling won't, although I can't test or prove this.
Look at the link he posted at this part:

Integer Scaling
Method: You can scale monitors to exactly half their width and height using integer scaling. For example, you can scale 4k monitors to 1080p or 1440p monitors to 720p perfectly. Only certain GPUs or monitors will have support, look it up for your system.

But if you can't use that then try 2xAA instead and you'll get a nice increase in fps.

For the record I only have a gtx760 @ 3840x1024 & 2xAA with locked/smooth 30fps.
I also turn on FXAA in NPI and increase -LOD to compensate for the extra blur that provides.

[a1337cookie]

@Draftlight

Ah, I missed the fact that your two Dell monitors were 4k, that's my bad. Knowing that, you should definitely try integer scaling them to 1080p. I have a 27" 4k screen as well, and if I use a normal scaling method to run it at FHD, it looks very blurry like you described. However, when using integer scaling and 4xAA, it looks great. In fact, I think it might even look better than having it at 1440p, since there's no blur at all.

Your RTX card should support integer scaling, use it as the scaling method in Nvidia Control Panel. To get it working in triple screen though, you're going to have to bypass Nvidia Surround by following my guide that I linked earlier. I recommend you use 1440p on your Acer and integer scaled 1080p on your Dells, so that there's no blur applied on any monitor. It should look great, maybe even better than before, and the total rendered pixels drops down to about 7.8 million, which is a 30% reduction. If you have any troubles setting that up, let me know.

[0xExtern]

@Draftlight

Ah, I missed the fact that your two Dell monitors were 4k, that's my bad. Knowing that, you should definitely try integer scaling them to 1080p. I have a 27" 4k screen as well, and if I use a normal scaling method to run it at FHD, it looks very blurry like you described. However, when using integer scaling and 4xAA, it looks great. In fact, I think it might even look better than having it at 1440p, since there's no blur at all.

Your RTX card should support integer scaling, use it as the scaling method in Nvidia Control Panel. To get it working in triple screen though, you're going to have to bypass Nvidia Surround by following my guide that I linked earlier. I recommend you use 1440p on your Acer and integer scaled 1080p on your Dells, so that there's no blur applied on any monitor. It should look great, maybe even better than before, and the total rendered pixels drops down to about 7.8 million, which is a 30% reduction. If you have any troubles setting that up, let me know.

How can I perform Integer scaling on my 4k monitor.
I have a RTX 3060 Ti. Will it support? Is there any specific tutorial I can follow?
Thanks in advance!

[JHTrucker]

@0xExtern - a1337cookie gave the link in his previous post - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2163
Scroll to "Scaling Methods" - may just work for one monitor without doing anything else?
There's a lot to read, any questions, just reply in that topic and he'll help you.

[Draftlight]

Thanks a lot for your replies, I´ll check that as soon as im back home, that makes sense with the integer scaling, I´ve somehow never tested this.
Sorry I´ve been replying so late, but somehow I didn´t get a notification from the forum eventhough i scubscribed and turned them on (Might have missed an option).
I´ll post the results in a bit when i tested that.

Thanks guys

[Draftlight]

Hey, so finally some good results, im really enthusiastic again
So what I did now was lowering my resolution on the 2 Dell monitors (4k) to FHD, put on integer scaling and main one on QHD without Scaling of course. ETS2 is on 400% scaling, eventhough it didnt seem to have changed much
And I´m honestly really surprised, it still looks really good and on some small distance not even noticable.
Integer Scaling sadly didnt work with QHD on the 2 Dell´s, otherwise I´ll have Black bars all around.
Now im struggling with AA, it seems like there is none at all, but since I changed so much, that I lost track, I´ll just redo the steps and see if it gets better.

But if I understood correctly, SRW needs to be done manually everytime, correct?

[a1337cookie]

@Draftlight

Yes, you must use SRWE every time, although it's pretty easy when using a profile.

Integer scaling does not approximate the colors between pixels; each pixel is mapped to an exact pixel or square of pixels on your display, thus eliminating blur. Fundamentally, this means that if your resolution isn't exactly half (or one third, fourth, ect) of the native resolution, then there will be black bars.

For NPI AA to work, the game's render scale has to be set to 100%. 4xAA with 100% scale looks better than no AA 400% scale anyways.

[Draftlight]

Ok i found the issue, for some reason the Antialiasing compatibility (DX1x) setting wasnt saved to the changed value.
It reset itself to the default value eventhough I didnt install a driver update, so Im assuming my changes caused that somewhere somehow.
But its looking great now and my performance has improved quite a bit even with 50 mods enabled.
Im running between 60 and 40 fps with 2xMSAA + 2xSGSSAA on 2 FHD and 1 QHD monitors which is super awesome for me.

Now i gotta see what else i can tweak to gain a little more performance without much of a quality loss to get steady 60 fps. (any quick idea on that?)
Sometimes you can feel the quick dip to 30 fps in heavy areas which causes a little bit of stuttering but even that is still acceptable for me.

Thanks so much, that just made my day, after 1 month of frustration i can finally enjoy the game again