Poor performance in Beyond All Reason with Intel Arc B580

[CoretexEnjoyer]

As the title states, the RTS game Beyond All Reason runs very poorly on Intel's Arc B580.

I tested with an AMD Radeon 5700XT and a Nvidia GeForcec 970, both cards ran the game at over 140 fps at almost all times with no problems.

The Arc B580 runs the game at around 10 - 60 fps at best, making it unplayable especially when there are hundreds of units on screen. With vsync enabled in any way, the FPS is effectively halved at all times. Changing the graphics from lowest to highest makes no difference in performance.

After checking the BAR community, it seems as though the game cannot initiate OpenGL 4.6 and instead falls back to OpenGL 3.0 as it states in this log captured from when the game launches:

[t=00:00:03.296481] Initialized OpenGL Context: 3.0 (Core)

[RandyT_Intel]

Hi @CoretexEnjoyer,

Thank you for posting here in our community. To effectively diagnose and address the issue you're experiencing, I kindly ask you to provide detailed responses to the following questions. This information will help us isolate the problem and determine the most appropriate course of action.  

• Please provide the SSU log report and share it here so I can review your system's configuration. 
• Could you let me know the origin of the game? Where did it come from, and where did you download it? 
• Have you previously performed a clean installation of the graphics driver, before using either an older or the latest version? 
• Kindly share some screenshots and recordings of your game settings so we can replicate and check the issue on our end using the same settings you use during gameplay. 
• Additionally, you may follow this guide on how to report performance issues in the game. 

I look forward to your response and am committed to resolving your issue promptly. 

Warm regards,  

Randy T.  

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[CoretexEnjoyer]

Thank you Randy for getting in touch so quickly. I have followed your instructions and provided the necessary data.

• I have run and provided a SSU log report for review.
• The game is called "Beyond All Reason", a free to play RTS. The game can be downloaded at https://www.beyondallreason.info/ 
  You do not need to create an account to play the game offline with bots. However, it is easier to spectate online games to quickly get a grasp on the performance issues.
  
  
• I performed a clean installation and updated with both older and the newest drivers, there was no change in performance.
  
  
• I have included 6 screenshots and 3 CapFrameX recordings in a .zip format following Intel's guidelines from the link you provided.

Here are some screenshots of the game (with the player's names censored). FPS is visible in the bottom right corner on top of the information window. The numbers below (mostly 99) are other player's framerate at their current view. The screenshots are from both the lowest and highest settings possible, which hardly make a difference in the performance. The framerate drop is most noticeable while zooming out to a medium distance and on bigger maps and matches, especially when water is present.

The settings to the game are located on the top right corner. This can only be accessed while in-game, in a match. You can press "PAUSE/BREAK" on your keyboard while in a match to pause the game at any time.

I highly doubt such a capable card like the B580 should struggle with running this game, as my friend's 10 year old graphics card is capable of running the game on high settings at 140 FPS at almost all times and camera angles.

Good framerate @ Ultra settingssBad framerate @ Lowest settingsModerate FPS @ Lowest settingsGraphics with "Ultra" presetBad framerate with skewed camera angle @ Ultra settingsBad framerate at moderate zoom @ Ultra settings

I hope this information helps.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hi @CoretexEnjoyer,

Thank you for sharing this information. I will begin investigating the issue and attempt to replicate it on our end. I'll post an update here or notify you directly once there are any developments. If I need further details, I'll reach out to you here. I appreciate your patience as I work on this matter. 

Randy T.  

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[RandyT_Intel]

Hi @CoretexEnjoyer,

I wanted to update you on the recent replication tests we conducted using our Intel® Arc™ B580 Graphics with driver versions 32.0.101.6793 (latest) and 32.0.101.6790, based on the game settings you provided.

Our tests showed improved performance, and the game was playable, thanks to the Re-size BAR being enabled. This feature can significantly enhance your computer's performance.

Could you please check if the Re-size BAR is enabled in your BIOS settings? This could be a key factor in optimizing your gaming experience.

For your convenience, we have included some helpful articles on enabling Re-size BAR in MSI systems: 

• Unlock system performance to extreme – Resizable Bar
• What Is Resizable BAR and How Do I Enable It?
• Improve Performance with Resizable BAR. Now available for MSI GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards
• Intel® Arc™ Graphics – Desktop Quick Start Guide

During our tests, we achieved an average FPS ranging from 94 to 261 FPS with the aforementioned drivers, indicating a substantial improvement.

Randy T.  

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[CoretexEnjoyer]

Hello Randy

Thank you for taking the time to test the game, I really appreciate your team's time in looking into this issue.

I do have Re-Bar enabled, as without it other games I play would suffer greatly as well. After checking your provided links, I did modify some settings in Windows and in BIOS (such as the L1 ASPM etc.), but unfortunately they have had no effect on the performance in Beyond All Reason.

The 94 - 261 FPS you mentioned is the performance the game has - at the start. Later on in a match once there are many more units and structures in play and/or on the screen (in particular while zooming out the camera at a medium distance), the performance tanks down to the 15 - 40 FPS range with GPU utilization at a constant 99 - 100%.

This especially applies to larger maps, such as "Supreme Isthmus v 2.1", which is the map I took the screenshots on as a spectator.

I'll also make a ticket on the developer's official Discord server and send a link to this ticket there. Hopefully it will get their attention and perhaps they can contribute to either providing a solution or fixing the game's performance on the Intel GPU architecture.

Thank you again for your time.

[RandyT_Intel]

Hi @CoretexEnjoyer,

Thank you for the detailed update. I will discuss and coordinate internally for further investigation and will report back to you once I have completed my analysis. In the meantime, please try installing the latest graphics driver version 32.0.101.6795 and use DDU for a clean installation. Once done, test the performance and let me know if there are any changes. I appreciate your proactive approach in reaching out to the developers as well. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

Randy T.  

Intel Customer Support Technician  

[Firescout]

Is there any update on this? the game still has a very low FPS

[CoretexEnjoyer]

Hey Firescout

Ever since making this thread, I've messaged the BAR Discord and updated every single time there is a driver update for Intel, as well as occasionally checked out if BAR has any updates.

In the last few months, there have been  many driver updates, but they do not fix the performance issues. BAR had 1 update and it did not fix the poor performance on Intel cards. At the same time however, BAR hasn't gotten many updates in the past few months either and the patch it did got was pretty small.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest going to the official BAR Discord and either making a new report about this or to chime in to an existing one.  Feel free to link this report there as well. Make your voice heard so we can finally play this game properly!

-CoretexEnjoyer