Problems with unreal engine games, Icarus performance issues

[Remlin379]

I noticed that multiple indie projects mostly made in unreal engine 4 (i'm not sure if ue5 and unity too) create a ridiculously loud coil whine. The coil whine doesn't appear when the card has 100% usage in stable diffusion, it doesn't appear at 2000+ fps in osu, it doesn't appear in most games, but for some reason indie ue4 projects manage to make the coil whine a lot louder than my pc fans, and they are pretty loud.

There are also performance issues, though they only appeared in a single ue game so far, namely "Icarus". I can barely get more than 10 fps on highest in 1080p, and while it can reach 60fps on the lowest, it stutters massively both in dx11 and dx12 (less fps in dx12 but also less stutter). I actually failed to start the save once because it ran out of vram, which never happened on 1060 3gb, which also held semi-comfortable 60 fps on medium settings with occasional vram overflow that kind of deleted textures (also happened on arc). It also seems that the arc doesn't quite like the amd fsr setting in this game as it seems connected to the stutter. In perfect scenario (almost nothing open in the backround) there's almost no stutter but the fps are under 20/30 (on medium settings less than on the highest for some reason) and the game takes up 100% of the free RAM and GPU power

PC specs:
Windows 10 Proffesional
Ryzen 5 5600x
32GB DDR4 RAM
 ASRock Arc A770 Phantom Gaming D OC 8GD GDDR6

[Jose_Intel]

Hello @Remlin379

Thank you for posting on the Intel️® communities.   

I am sorry to hear that you have problems with Intel® Arc™ A770 Graphics, and I’ll be more than willing to help you.

Please answer the following:

·      What is the game distribution service?

·      Is Resizable BAR enabled?

·      Does it make a difference if you try an older graphics driver?

Also, in order to have more information about your system, please download, install and run Intel® System Support Utility for Windows. Make sure you check “Everything” before you scan, then save the report and attach it to your response.

Then, please generate and attach the Report for Intel® Intel Graphics Command Center

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Remlin379]

-Icarus is from steam, but the others are from itch and similar, the coil whine issue in UE games is more important than Icarus performance for me
-ReBar is enabled
-I'm not sure about the drivers, the performance is very inconsistent 

[Jose_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

Thank you for the information and the reports.

I noticed that the BIOS is not up to date, please update from here: F17a

Also, please try our latest graphics driver: 31.0.101.4575

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Remlin379]

The latest drivers didn't fix the whine unfortunately and I won't be updating the bios as I did so just recently and the newest version only impacts x3D processors from what I know. 

But this post was more of a "reporting an issue" than "looking for a fix" as the whole situation simply looks like a lack of driver optimization when it comes to unreal engine games, I think UE4 in particular but I didn't have an opportunity to test many (if any) UE5 games. I'm looking forward to the future drivers and thank you for your time. 

[Jose_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

We appreciate the time you took to let us know this. I am glad to inform that your report has been submitted and we will work on it.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Jose_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

We hope you are doing fine.

We would like to have more details of the issue, could you provide us with more information?

-Game settings. (Icarus)

-Are there more games that are giving you the same issue? Please provide a few examples.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Remlin379]

For Icarus, I've tried using both medium and maximum preset with both rtx on and off and the results were practically the same with slightly better fps on higher settings. The last statement might not be valid though because I tested high settings right after rebooting the pc and medium a while later. In both cases there was a coil whine, but not as loud as in some smaller indie titles. I highly suspect that if I had 64GB or even 128GB RAM, Icarus would run just fine on the highest settings with 60 fps, but that's just absurd for not even an AAA title. 

The coil whine is the worst in unnamed projects on forums where people upload early versions of their games. Even if i limit fps to 30, the card is still very loud. Unfortunately I can't give you names or links because I've just stumbled upon them randomly, tested and then moved on. I don't play a lot of games, but the issue of the coil whine seems to return every time I start any game that came from unreal engine. 

Apart from those unnamed projects, the games that I can remember but aren't as loud are Icarus, Ark: survival evolved, Astroneer

If you want to test the issue, any less optimized game coming from unreal engine, or even the unreal engine itself should provide proper data. 

[Jose_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

Thank you for that important information.

We will continue investigating the issue internally, we will keep you updated.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Jose_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

Thank you for your patience and also for your feedback.

Please check this information: Sound (Coil Whine) coming from the Intel® Arc™ Graphics card

Keep in mind that we are going to do our testing, as soon as we have any update, we will post it here.

Best regards,

Jose B.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

We want to let you know we tested this game in our lab and could not observe any major performance issues, hence we suggest reporting the issue to the game developer to see if they can offer to troubleshoot specific to this title.

we also wanted to let you know that there is a newer graphics driver version 31.0.101.4644 that bundles with a new firmware update as well, so we suggest you update to this newer version as recommendations you can use Display Driver Uninstaller for the installation.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Remlin379]

I think that the performance (at least for Icarus) has gotten better with newer drivers as it can go above 70 fps ocasionally now, though it still holds mostly around 44 with sudden 20 fps drops mostly when camera moves too fast. Said drops weren't occuring on gtx 1060 3gb and overall playing on it was a better experience than on arc. Thankfully I'm not playing Icarus anymore so it doesn't bother me that much.

Coil whine though is still unpleasantly loud in a lot of games, I'm not sure if it's just the UE now, recently I tried a new game "Desynced" and just in the menu the coil whine was awfully loud. I have to limit the fps to 30 for it to cease. 

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

Thank you for letting us. I see that you might not continue to play Icarus on your system, however, it would be good that you check with the game developer as they might be able to help with this issue specifically. As for the Coil Whine, we will continue to improve that aspect of our Intel® Arc™ GPUs since this issue has been recognized from our side and it is something we are actively working on in order to improve. Our best advice at the moment is to please continue to update your graphics driver to the latest available version in order to take advantage of the upcoming upgrades.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello Remlin379

We appreciate the feedback that you shared throughout this thread. As informed we continue to improve coil whine issues within our GPU hardware and expect this to improve in the future. Since there are no further questions and the support related to Icarus will continue from the developer side, we will be closing this thread. Please feel free to open a new topic if you need further assistance.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.