Minecraft Forums

I play on an ordinary laptop, but the specs aren't bad at all. I'll include them in spoilers:

Anyway, I've always wondered how the FPS can fluctuate so greatly. I usually get from 100-315 on a super flat world, and on a normal single player world maybe 40-100. I joined a server a couple days back where I get crazy framerates (and crazy fluctuation). In more laggy areas it's 30-60 fps, and in normal areas where no one has built anything yet I get anywhere from 60-300 fps (once when going through a nether portal I got 638 fps!). The weird thing is that one second I'm looking at a mountain and getting 84 fps or something and the next second my frames read 144. Why does the fps fluctuate so much? Does the same thing happen to any of you? I would expect your frames to stay pretty solid on most games, not that the fluctuation is a bad thing (at least I don't think so?). As a side not I am on 1.10 Optifine, as well as on Windows 10 (and strangely 1.10 even without Optifine is not lagging a ton like it was when I played it for the first time).

FPS can vary based on shaders, amount of visual geometry to render, size of the window, angle of triangle normals to veiw, ect. Basically something as small as moving half a block to the left can impact your FPS. This is normal for any game.

Quote from gurujive»

1 super easy way of crashing FPS is to summon more entities than memory allocated to handle them.

Say you have the standard size allocated for entities on minecraft, 128M

What is that supposed to mean? Where does the game allocate 128 MB for entities, which should only need a few bytes of memory per entity (the memory used by an instance of a class in Java is basically its fields; even if an entire copy of all the code was kept it is only a few KB for most entities).

In my experience, sudden FPS crashes when rendering a lot of entities or just blocks is due to the GPU running out of dedicated VRAM, which is confirmed with GPUZ, and that can only be helped by upgrading to a GPU with more VRAM (mine has only 256 MB, which is the main thing that limits the render distance I can use).

For example, this is why I don't use Fancy graphics, at the very least for leaves (Optifine lets you selectively set them to Fast but I don't bother, plus I don't like the darkening around the edges of the screen; as it is I set brightness to 100% so the game isn't too dark):

NB: note the memory usage - this is certainly NOT an issue with insufficient RAM!

Running in fullscreen mode also helps me since Windows Aero uses quite a bit of VRAM, which is not used when in fullscreen since the game is the only thing that is rendering (I normally play in fullscreen anyway; FPS is about the same, some computers may even see higher FPS for a similar reason).

Also, chunk updates have a huge impact on FPS and are the main reason why it fluctuates so much even when other factors are constant (e.g. run along and stop; FPS will increase as chunk updates drop to 0). This is also why jungles cause a lot of lag, since leaf decay and vines growing requires a lot of chunk updates. Some of the difference in performance across versions can also be attributed to changes in how chunk updates are handled; in 1.6.4 setting FPS to Max FPS (there are only 3 settings, Power Saver (35 FPS max), Balanced (120 FPS max), and Max FPS) places priority on rendering while Power Saver places priority on chunk updates. I don't think newer versions, with a FPS slider, work like this anymore; much of the lag I see in 1.8+ coincides with chunk updates (which never get that high, suggesting that the game is bottlenecked by them, and they are far more resource-intensive than in older versions since I can get 5-10 times more chunk updates at a higher FPS).

I know that fluctuations on my end have to do with ticks (inworld time indication having to do with loading of random scripts.. like the growth of a mushroom, the spawning of mobs, the appearance of grass over dirt, animal aging, and stuff like this) .. when you enter a new place it can deal with rendering and loading things... or the fact that you might be on WIFI which isnt a stable network it usually fluctuates naturally because of no direct line.. the upload vs. download because you've got others in the same area and you have to load their action input as well..... maybe?

Quote from gurujive»

1 super easy way of crashing FPS is to summon more entities than memory allocated to handle them.

Say you have the standard size allocated for entities on minecraft, 128M

Now summon 50 AreaEffectCloud

Now look at your fps. You should notice it says 0 from the amount of particles.

Now summon 500 Cows.

You should notice it has a very low number.

This happens because ether the particle is harsh or the number of entities surrounding you is too much.

The game loading chunks also reduces FPS, chunks aren't really big.

Back in 1.8 I can vividly recall there being too many items around me, causing me to not be able to move.

I also didn't understand what you were trying to say. Can you try to make it more clear please?