FPS drops to ~15 when looking at 100+ troops. 50 FPS in Native looking at 300+

[chuhrros]

System specs:

Intel i5-2500
GTX 960
8 GB RAM
Windows 10


Is this normal? DX7 is an insignificant improvement of abotu 2 or 3 FPS. I'm 99% sure it's a GPU issue because when I look away from the troops, FPS goes back up to 50+. I've set my resolution from 1920x1080 to 640x480. No difference. Max settings, min settings, no difference. Every combination of settings in the "Configure" menu, no difference. Every combination of nVidia's control panel 3D setup, no difference.

My hardware monitor shows that my CPU is mostly fine, working up to no more than 50%. But my GPU hits 100% every time I look at a large group of troops. Like I said in the title, it's no problem in Native:

100 vs 100 in Floris = 10-15 FPS when looking at troops fighting each other, plus constant stuttering
200 vs 200 in Native = 50 FPS, no stuttering

All troops are also loaded at once since my battle size is set to 500 (4.0000 in config text file). I've done hours of googling. I read a lot of people saying it's terrible for newer hardware. None of the results I've found come close to a GTX 960 example since they're all from 2013 or earlier. My GPU runs 2016 games that look a million times better than any M&B mod at 60 FPS no problem, without reaching 100% load on my hardware monitor. It's constantly at 100% in Floris during large troop battles.

Other info:
- I'm on Floris Expanded
- I've Floris' horse dust options turned off during install, and even downloaded the particle_systems.txt file to replace what is probably the same file anyway

I'm guessing there's nothing that can be done since I've come across dozens of google results facing similar problems, with none of them ever reaching a solution. But just on the off-chance that there's someone knows something I can do, like replace or remove some Floris files, here I am asking.

 

[Crossbow Pig]

This is strange, I have a gtx 750TI and i play on max settings with a battle size of 200 and I have , most of the time, 60 fps, it can drop in sieges but never below 30, also with causes most stuttering in WB are the poorly coded AI, so try disabling formations for the Ai and see if it helps.

 

[Michiko]

Also textures are poorly optimized in Floris. Try running them through a texture optimizer and see if it helps. It helped me a bit. Even with a lot of VRAM, unoptimized textures leads to more stuff for your video card to do before rendering. It may not help you a lot since you got a good card, but yeah it doesn't hurt.

 

[chuhrros]

This is strange, I have a gtx 750TI and i play on max settings with a battle size of 200 and I have , most of the time, 60 fps, it can drop in sieges but never below 30, also with causes most stuttering in WB are the poorly coded AI, so try disabling formations for the Ai and see if it helps.

I've tried enabling and disabling and running the same battles multiple times. I've also tried many combinations of the "Force Use Spear/Pike/Bows/Lance" settings in Floris' mod options. I can get over 50fps in large battles as long as I look away from the troops fighting. The fighting still goes on smoothly, and I'm guessing that is calculated by CPU more so than GPU. The moment I have those troops on screen is when it starts to crawl to below 20fps. Also, on a hardware monitor, my GPU is hardly stressed when I don't face the troops, and when I do face the troops it revs all the way up to 100% constantly.

Also textures are poorly optimized in Floris. Try running them through a texture optimizer and see if it helps. It helped me a bit. Even with a lot of VRAM, unoptimized textures leads to more stuff for your video card to do before rendering. It may not help you a lot since you got a good card, but yeah it doesn't hurt.

Do you have examples of good texture optimizers? My problem really does feel like an unoptimized textures one. It really is the difference of having ~300 cavalry troops on screen in Native maintaining 50fps, versus, having ~100 cavalry troops on screen in Floris Expanded crawling under 20fps.

I really feel it's because Floris Expanded has tons of varying textures for Troops' equipments and horses.

Problem is I don't know of any texture optimizer that can work with the game?

 

[Michiko]

Sorry for the late reply. I actually use the texture optimizers that work for other games. In particular I use this one, but others should work just fine too. You just need it to fix the things that video card drivers would've had to do during run-time, such as resizing, adding mipmaps, etc., which is what causes FPS drops, longer loading times and instability. Mine used to crash when looking at the weapon store in fact.