Performance issues?

I’ve recently upgraded to an RTX 2070, and have been using a 4790K. I consider a few months “recently” in contrast to how long it’s been since I’ve played the game with my old setup, and since then I haven’t seen any performance improvements in Surface Tension after my upgrade. I can’t break 60 frames, neither can I pinpoint the issue. The in game settings SEEM to negate it as they’re set to satisfy a lower spec, but then comes the problem. Performance hasn’t increased since my change in hardware, no matter the setting.

I’m trying to run the game at max. The best example I can give of the performance I SHOULD be getting is that I get over 100 frames in Battlefield V on Ultra, which is currently the most demanding game I play.

That’s DX9 for you. It doesn’t have the same optimization capabilities as for example DX11. That’s why Battlefield V runs well, it actually uses all your hardware. Black Mesa doesn’t utilize your hardware efficiently so upgrading wont do much.

Sadly… But still, Source is capable. Titanfall and Titanfall 2 are large arena based games with a lot going on, and they still run on Source, so I have faith they’ll fix it when Xen releases.

Nope, it has nothing to do with dx9.
It’s more about making the engine do things it was never meant to do and being to stubborn to back off when framerates plummet 150% even if you have a $400 dollar gpu.

But dx9 is not the problem.

I get well over 100fps all through Surface Tension using a GTX 1060 and i7-4790 so, don’t understand what you’re particular issue is. Here’s my settings .

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The issue with that is you’re not even running max settings. I clearly stated that I’m trying to run it at max, and my setup should be fully capable of that. My old 1060 was also capable of 100 frames constant at Medium-High.

I could turn AA + Filtering + CSM down like you’re doing, which would proably get me the performance I’m aiming for, but that’s not the point. I’d prefer to have them fix performance than find a workaround.

“making the engine do things it was never meant to do”

Yeah and the biggest the reason it can’t do those things efficiently is because of DX9. There’s no proper multithreading, it’s not using all of my cores. The frame rate drops below 60 and my GPU usage is at 22%, so obviously it’s not using my CPU. While in for example BF1 which is way more complex in both physics and graphics, I get a much higher frame rate, because it’s using every single one of my cores. DX11 is way better at multithreading.

I went back and set everything to max and still am able to get way over 100FPS. I was curious what the solution might be and saw something that might be the issue.
Select ‘Properties’ on the game and set ‘Forced Off’ on ‘Steam Input Per-Game settings’

Try that and see if it helps.

A couple of things worth checking, are you monitoring your cards performance, via something like afterburner? You can also monitor how your cpu is handling it as well. Have you gone through your nvidia control panel settings? checking your vsync, is it on or off, what is your monitors refresh rate…

Sorry, I forgot to come back to mention that I kind of found the solution. I already monitored it via Precision, and the GPU usage is a constant 100%, while the CPU is around 50-60%, which is all about where it should be.

The issue was that something in the update process screwed up some of the files, and I’m assuming they were old conflicting settings mixed with some of the new features that came along the way. I suggest re-installing the game entirely if anyone else is having issues, and definitely do the same once Xen releases.

The game is still pretty unoptimized in a lot of areas, but for the most part the frame-rate is constant now.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.