Rig setup and settings

General Discussion
1

is there a guide to optimal OW settings? im sure there is.

im actually playing on a compter that’s quite old, as far as modern computers go. I think i built this rig back in 2015 and hasnt had any updates since then

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Intel i7 4790K @ 4Ghz
16 GB ram
this is set up on triple 27" Acer XF270H freesync monitors (not using freesync since my video card is not ATI), but still able to take advantage of the 144Hz refresh rate. all 3 monitors are using either DP or HDMI>DP connections.

in game, it seems i run between 100 and 120 fps…as far as I can tell (cant watch the fps meter through the whole game)

i have the triple monitors from my sim racing days, and im wondering…are they a hinderance in OW? possible that running 3 monitors is robbing the video card of resources that could be better served being used in OW? i dont really use 3 monitors much any more, but they are nice for when i want a browser on one screen, and something else in another.

2

Put everything on low apart from the texture quality or the setting above that I can’t remember what it’s called and have your resolution at 100% (or 75% if you wanna sacrifice graphics for fps boost). This shouldn’t drastically increase your FPS but it should help if you’re experiencing fps drops within team fights.
There’s loads of fps boost guides on YouTube that you can checkout that can help you find the balance between pure fps, pure graphics or a sweet spot inbetween.
I have a 2060 RTX and an AMD ryzen 7 3700x and I usually get around 220 fps in big team fights with pretty much every setting on low apart from the texture ones. I originally had a 1050 and an intel 5 7400 and was experiencing massive fps drops in big team fights, deciding to commit to the upgrade was the best choice I’ve made :slight_smile:

3

i need to upgrade…unfortunately, here in oklahoma, there are no computer supply stores for me to purchase everything from, and im not keen on ordering all the components from newegg. im waiting for a long weekend so i can make a trip down to dallas and visit a friend, while im there, ill make a run to micro center and purchase everything i need :slight_smile:

if you post a VOD code with your FPS counter on in game…will it show your FPS in the game or does it only show the FPS of the person viewing the VOD?

4

I’m not sure if the fps shows on the vod.
Upgrading for the future and new games is always worth it if you’re passionate about gaming. I tried to upgrade with the future in mind, looking at games like red dead redemption 2 and how they require expensive rigs to run at decent graphics made me bite the bullet in preparation for the future of gaming.
I’d upgrade your cpu first, it could be being bottlenecked and overwatch seems to be cpu intensive.

5

well, the issue with triple monitor would be the VRAM on gpu. Even on lower settings having huge resolution could be a bottleneck.

Most likely the issue it’s about configurations on Nvidia painel and game settings.

This post most of it helps a lot to sort the settings:

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6

Guide for settings here: https://prosettings.net/overwatch-best-settings-options-guide/

1070 card is actually fine. OW is a CPU intensive game and you are being bottlenecked by yours.

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7

Sure, here’s one:

  • Change everything to low settings

That’s as optimized as it gets. :slight_smile:

8

But if you only use for general stuff and not using heavy resources on browser. Most likely wouldn’t affect much the game. I would suggest to reduce the HZ on those secondary screens to see if will impact on overall responsiveness on the game. One way to check when you framerate drops also are using the hotkey “ctrl+shift+n” to check the performance pattern. I think on the link in earlier post show the details about how to sort most of the things.

9

interesting, i figured, OW, being a game that is 5 years old, that the core of the game would not have been upgraded enough to make my 4GHZ i7 4790K a bottleneck. i kinda thought it was fairly top of the line at the time. now, when OW2 comes out, im assuming THAT would have been a bottleneck on my older CPU, but you say that it’s a bottleneck…

hmm, i really need to get to dallas then lol…it’s time for a new build :smiley:

ctrl shift n just brings up inprivate browser on edge…

lol, thanks, thats pretty cut and dry.

is this how most people play? they sacrafice all graphics for pure performance?

i run my graphics on…epic quality? i think? i will lower it down though to see if my fps raises any. like i said, the FPS meter in game seems to jump between 100 and 120, which, jumping probably isnt good. is there a way to cap framerate and would that be a good idea to maintain a constant FPS, rather than it bouncing between 100 and 120?

perhaps cap it at 100, would that make it more stable and better for gaming?

i forgot when i built this computer, but i pulled up task manager performance monitor and it says 1904Mhz.

yep, probably just need a whole new build…im due anyway, really.

yeah, when im playing OW, nothing is going on, on the other two screens

10

OW uses very little VRAM, and a 1070 has 8GB of VRAM. Triple monitors even at 4K wont even come close. 4K is 32MB per back buffer - worst case scenario for something like OW would be triple buffer on the desktop (3x3x32) plus triple buffering enabled in OW (3x32) which would be <400MB.

I believe OW itself even on the highest quality settings wont go over like 600-700MB. Combined with any background stuff, I would be shocked if his GPU was using more than 2GB.

11

Memory speed also makes a large difference. My old build was a 4770K and outside of total mayhem (where way more is happening) I routinely achieved like 180-200fps stable in a normal match. What is your RAM speed in that build?

12

new cpu. I’ve had a i7-3770k clocked to 4.5 GHz and the game still dropped below 100 fps on a gtx 1070 @ 1080p (any settings). I’ve changed the CPU to ryzen 3 3700x and that instantly got me to 200 fps @1080p (med-high settings). Triple monitor shouldn’t change much as long as you’re not running the game on all three or doing gpu heavy tasks while gaming.

13

I would be surprised, most of gpu drivers aren’t that great for older hardware. I have a gtx 1080(non-ti) and r9 380 both can run just fine high framerates at 1080p. If I put 4k my gtx 1080 will suffer a bit. Because if he uses the pc for more than gaming while he plays the memory are in several spots, not only on the application. Even if you run the game at 1080p you will consume more than 400mb of vram if you doing other stuff while you play and the setttings are somewhat “fine”. Windows without doing much will consume around 32-200mb with 2 screens at 1080p. When I ran 4k at highest settings with all effects the gpu got around 2-3k VRAM at like 120-200fps on gtx 1080 and 40-120 fps on r9 380. The game itself at “default” settings often consume at least 400-800mb VRAM.

If you have features enabled on Radeon Settings or Nvidia Panel. Your vram can be increased a lot. Also windows profile can add some more. With 3 screens and gpu drivers and settings not optimized it’s easily reachable to beat.

Gaming on multiple screens isn’t that well optimized. There are several problems that can happen that hinder your performance in unexpected ways.

Most likely his issue would be RAM speed or unoptimized profile for gaming. If you have ton of stuff running on background can eat a huge amount of cpu time, gpu, network and disk access. The CTRL+SHIFT+N could help to know here the bottleneck is after tweaking the settings both o nvidia panel and game.

The best way to diagnose anything it’s following the tips on the fixed post on tech support forum, then after tweaked by that profile we could try to “hit-miss” what it causes. I ran more than 160fps at 1080p with a couple of months ago a Fx-8350 that has worst IPC than his current cpu, so really depends on several factors than just one. Ow1 isn’t that great at multicore cpus, higher than 4 either way.

Edit:
A system with bad optimization even with great hardware can perform poorly. To sort problems we need first stabilish a pattern and solve the most common issues. Anything that could impact the latency of GPU, RAM, CPU, Network or Disk can be a bottleneck in any system. Intel had some fixes that impacted on their cpu performance, but most of FPS related issues are software based not hardware.

14

It’s in-game metric system:

`https://www.mystgraphics.com/OverwatchForumImages/MaximizingPerformance/ScreenshotSIMRate.jpg`

Try to check the link I mentioned before:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/guide-maximizing-system-performance-for-overwatch-pc/30

For competitive edge, most of them does. I Enjoy some quality some stuff I enable for better visual appeal, but most of the folks will put low settings and huge fps to get less input lag + more framerate. After certain threshold it’s diminishing returns because most of the gear will have some input lag. The post points some stuff that you could try to turn on or off to make you be happy on both situations. Some settings are reliant on CPU while others are on GPU.

15

There is almost zero chance that even a triple monitor 4K setup while gaming will come close to consuming 8GB of VRAM, even with extra features and non-optimal usage of video memory. You would need to have a crazy amount open in the background to even come close.

2-3GB isn’t even remotely close to 8GB, and adding two 4K monitors without the game running on them is not going to double or triple usage. Maybe like 200-300MB more, if that.

16

It’s how most high tier players I know play the game. Personally i have the game on lowest settings except for texture quality (on highest).

That would probably make a difference. OW is not the most demanding game, but on epic quality there’s definitely a lot of extra work happening.

A stable framerate is often better than one that fluctuates a lot, so this could be beneficial, but it’s totally your call. It will give you less micro stutter, but some people dont really notice it anyway.

100-120 isnt a huge fluctuation, but if you want it stable you can just use the fps limiter in the video settings. Change it from display based to custom and set it to 100 or something.

17

There is memory fragmentation. It’s a common issue. Not always applications are bugfree and clears memory the right way or can use the best way. Sure it’s uncommon if you only use one app per time, but multitasking I spent 8gb vram of my gtx 1080 with gpu scheduler from windows 10 and spent 3gb from mine r9 380. Just playing ow for like 6 hours. To the point that I started getting alert window from overwatch app itself and windows.

Every software can be resource hog, even if in a unplanned way. So adapting the game for performance and gpu settings for performance. Removes part of the issue from equation. Sometimes even the an updated/older driver can be the issue.

18

ill give it a shot, thanks. i guess, there are so many things that happen on such a small scale, that we, as players may not notice visually, but really do impact performance. for example, on my screen, things look fairly smooth, i dont notice any stuttering, or tearing, but, if framerate drops, it can cause issues with aiming and things like that, or, if having a much higher framerate may improve aiming precision and such…things we wouldnt know or actually be able to see, but are still there non the less.

ill try lowering quality to lowest setting and put textures on high to see how that affects framerate, and see if it causes any unnecessary fluctuation.

19

Oh I’m actually well aware of the memory fragmentation - in fact I’m fairly familiar with the inner workings of how Windows actually manages video memory, and the WDDM driver model.

Fragmentation is rarely an issue at the scale you’re talking. 2-3GB on an 8GB card isn’t even close to fragmentation playing a significant role. Memory is also used very opportunistically and then trimmed on demand when it is needed - somewhat similar to the typical memory manager’s working set vs commit charge. You can consume quite a lot of memory, but a lot of it can go unused. Even doing something like opening 100 chrome tabs that all use a ton of memory does not mean those resources are actively used and unavailable for the game. Apps that track video memory usage do not distinguish this since it is not directly exposed as an available statistic, nor to the driver in a way that it can be exposed.

20

Well, happened at least 6 times in the past. With gpu scheduler. So it’s better to put in a equation when you have unexpected behavior on a hardware which would run fine the game. Also the settings could be the issue, both said on your post and the tech support post