How to allocate more RAM to KSP?

[HunHarcos]

Hello guys, im using windows 10 64bit pro, I h ave 2x4GB of dual channel Kingston 1666Mhz RAM.

My PC Specs: CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition 3.4 Ghz

                        GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 256bit by PowerColor

                        RAM: 2x 4GB Dual-Channel Kingston 1666Mhz RAM sticks.(DDR3)

                        Hard Drive: SATA 2 only,

                        Motherboard: Gigabyte 78LMT-S2 supporting up to 16GB of DDR3 ram.

 

My game is pretty stable, i use like close to circa 40 mods. The game never crashed at all, tho I noticed that I get very low fps and a bit of lag when I have 2 separate ships, a battleship consisting of 330 parts, with a tiny bomber.. bla bla bla... at the same time around 12 km proximity. 

 

What can I do in order to increase smoothness, performance?

[Numerlor]

KSP Likes RAM I think it is simply not enough ram in system. You can also look at ram usage in task manager

Edited April 30, 2017 by Numerlor

[HunHarcos]

Will 16GB of RAM help alot? I also plan to make videos with KSP.

[DrLicor]

From what I understand, KSP moves the data to your RAM, so it can load up everything fast and easy. Therefor, it mostly uses RAM and CPU, GPU only get's important when you've heavy visual mods. But even then, KSP isn't a GPU killer. 
I see you've 8gb's of RAM, which could be enough, but upgrading those to 1x 8gb and 1x 4gb or even 2x 8gb will give you a better performance, or even get a better CPU. But I think you're not looking for an option that costs you money, right?
KSP, or I should say Unity, finds it difficult to handle everything when it comes to a lot of parts. This's because it wants to calculate the forces, as in drag etc., for every single part. 
A very simple solution for this, is to weld parts together by using this mod.:

You can also run the game in OpenGL mode or force it to use DX11, to reduce the ram ksp uses. But I slightly guess you've already done 1 of those 2 options.

 

You can run KSP a lot smoother if you take care of the tiny things, reducing the partcount is a critical one.

Hope this helped.  
~DrLicor

[HunHarcos]

12 minutes ago, DrLicor said:

From what I understand, KSP moves the data to your RAM, so it can load up everything fast and easy. Therefor, it mostly uses RAM and CPU, GPU only get's important when you've heavy visual mods. But even then, KSP isn't a GPU killer. 
I see you've 8gb's of RAM, which could be enough, but upgrading those to 1x 8gb and 1x 4gb or even 2x 8gb will give you a better performance, or even get a better CPU. But I think you're not looking for an option that costs you money, right?
KSP, or I should say Unity, finds it difficult to handle everything when it comes to a lot of parts. This's because it wants to calculate the forces, as in drag etc., for every single part. 
A very simple solution for this, is to weld parts together by using this mod.:

You can also run the game in OpenGL mode or force it to use DX11, to reduce the ram ksp uses. But I slightly guess you've already done 1 of those 2 options.

 

You can run KSP a lot smoother if you take care of the tiny things, reducing the partcount is a critical one.

Hope this helped.  
~DrLicor

My game is pretty stable actually, and I only get the lags when more heavy vehicles appear at the same time. Like i said with 300 parts or more.

I didnt try neither the mod you linked me, neither the DX11 openGL version,

Will the OpenGL stuff work better?

[DrLicor]

@HunHarcos, 
Ohh, I strongly recommend to use DX11 or openGL when modding KSP. It will save you a lot of RAM. 
DX11 s a bit stronger, but can give you some graphical glitches. Nothing special, nothing heavy. 
Opengl mode also reduces your RAM, has less glitches but also reduces less. 

ATM, I use DX11, because my game got a bitt glitchy during many modding, and won't show the flags unless I load the game in DX11 mode.

And indeed, the lag and FPS drop is because your CPU needs to work his *ss off to get all those calculation there on time. 
For me, reducing the partcount is the most important thing. You can easily get 50% of the orginal count or even less by using the welding mod.
Only read the manual of the mod. It has it's limits.  

[HunHarcos]

1 minute ago, DrLicor said:

@HunHarcos, 
Ohh, I strongly recommend to use DX11 or openGL when modding KSP. It will save you a lot of RAM. 
DX11 s a bit stronger, but can give you some graphical glitches. Nothing special, nothing heavy. 
Opengl mode also reduces your RAM, has less glitches but also reduces less. 

ATM, I use DX11, because my game got a bitt glitchy during many modding, and won't show the flags unless I load the game in DX11 mode.

And indeed, the lag and FPS drop is because your CPU needs to work his *ss off to get all those calculation there on time. 
For me, reducing the partcount is the most important thing. You can easily get 50% of the orginal count or even less by using the welding mod.
Only read the manual of the mod. It has it's limits.  

So unity is just like Java, having your CPU handle all the ***t.

So if I have a good GPU, wich I do, I shall make it be DX11.

On the otherhand as I said previously, I have no glitches, no crashes.

[DrLicor]

@HunHarcos, yep exactly, a strong CPU and RAM pull KSP.  
Unity is quite a cheap engine, and it get's difficult for the poor guy to handle to much. 
Just image KSP being run by Cryengine.  

It's great your game runs smooth without glitches, but what I meant to say, is that OpenGL or DX11 can cause some. But that's diffirent on every build. For now it has much more advantages than disadvantages.
 

[HunHarcos]

Just now, DrLicor said:

@HunHarcos, yep exactly, a strong CPU and RAM pull KSP.  
Unity is quite a cheap engine, and it get's difficult for the poor guy to handle to much. 
Just image KSP being run by Cryengine.  

It's great your game runs smooth without glitches, but what I meant to say, is that OpenGL or DX11 can cause some. But that's diffirent on every build. For now it has much more advantages than disadvantages.
 

Wiill try it in a second. Lets hope my game wont get glitches, or crashes. I will also install the mod u linked to me.

[DrLicor]

Great, lett me now if it works for you or if you have problems with it.  

[StahnAileron]

If you're suffering lag with only multiple and/or complex ships, that's more CPU-centric than RAM. (More RAM mostly means more mods and more time KSP can run before hitting the RAM limit since it still seems to have memory leaks.) Physics in KSP is still hard with a lot of number crunching. It can't be multithreaded easily either. (If I recall, it's at most 1 vessel = 1 thread. A single complex vessel can't take advantage of multiple threads/cores.)

DX11/OpenGL forcibly uses a GPU's RAM space for texture storage (rather than residing only in system RAM and being transferred as needed. Also, they use better compression/storage algorithms, I believe.) Using DX11 on my install allowed me to recover about my GPU's worth of system RAM.

I wound up getting more RAM (16GB >>> 32GB, ~200USD) and I'm hopefully getting a "new" CPU by the end of this week. (eBay'd a used i7-4790k, ~270USD.) I play Factorio as well, so it'll help there as well. (Though Factorio is a completely different experience from KSP: they don't give up on optimizing code and it's written in C++ for performance reasons. I heard they initially tried Java, but quickly learned their lesson.) Factorio 0.15.x just came out last week, so I'm into it more than KSP lately (despite my investments this past month into my system...)

Anyway, as noted, keeping part counts low keeps frame rates high. Working on my ~250-part space station crashed my game multiple times. (Both in the editor and after I assembled most of it.)

Oh, if you haven't checked, look at the Max Physics Delta option and move it lower (to the left). It let's the system skip more calcs for frames. It's basically a minimum frame-rate setting of sorts for the CPU. I'm not sure how it affects accuracy in the game, like for orbits and maneuvers. At least you'll be able to do them and not watch a slideshow, though.

[HunHarcos]

On 5/1/2017 at 6:00 AM, StahnAileron said:

If you're suffering lag with only multiple and/or complex ships, that's more CPU-centric than RAM. (More RAM mostly means more mods and more time KSP can run before hitting the RAM limit since it still seems to have memory leaks.) Physics in KSP is still hard with a lot of number crunching. It can't be multithreaded easily either. (If I recall, it's at most 1 vessel = 1 thread. A single complex vessel can't take advantage of multiple threads/cores.)

DX11/OpenGL forcibly uses a GPU's RAM space for texture storage (rather than residing only in system RAM and being transferred as needed. Also, they use better compression/storage algorithms, I believe.) Using DX11 on my install allowed me to recover about my GPU's worth of system RAM.

I wound up getting more RAM (16GB >>> 32GB, ~200USD) and I'm hopefully getting a "new" CPU by the end of this week. (eBay'd a used i7-4790k, ~270USD.) I play Factorio as well, so it'll help there as well. (Though Factorio is a completely different experience from KSP: they don't give up on optimizing code and it's written in C++ for performance reasons. I heard they initially tried Java, but quickly learned their lesson.) Factorio 0.15.x just came out last week, so I'm into it more than KSP lately (despite my investments this past month into my system...)

Anyway, as noted, keeping part counts low keeps frame rates high. Working on my ~250-part space station crashed my game multiple times. (Both in the editor and after I assembled most of it.)

Oh, if you haven't checked, look at the Max Physics Delta option and move it lower (to the left). It let's the system skip more calcs for frames. It's basically a minimum frame-rate setting of sorts for the CPU. I'm not sure how it affects accuracy in the game, like for orbits and maneuvers. At least you'll be able to do them and not watch a slideshow, though.

Whats interesting is that, even tho yes my CPU is fairly old, being a phenom from 2009, tho, the game never crashes. Still have to make it run under DX11.

[StahnAileron]

8 hours ago, HunHarcos said:

Whats interesting is that, even tho yes my CPU is fairly old, being a phenom from 2009, tho, the game never crashes. Still have to make it run under DX11.

The CPU itself won't cause KSP to crash (unless there's a CPU-specific bug; I'm not aware of any concerning KSP and AMD chips.) It's usually plug-in conflicts or memory issues. The only hardware-related crashes I know for KSP are due to KSP having memory-leaks/poor memory management, resulting in out-of-memory crashes. However, that's really all on KSP. (It's partially on the user with how many mods one uses and how you play the game... KSP shouldn't have been based on something like Unity, but that's water under the bridge at this point...)

If I recall, I think scene changes and/or reverting still has memory leaks. (It has gotten better over time; I just don't recall if it's been completely eliminated.) I tend to test designs often, so this was a major cause of OoM crashes for me. I have had crashes when in the editor after extensive editing as well. Not quite sure if this is a memory- or game-related. (I have plenty of editor-mods to ease assembling vessels.) I wouldn't be surprised if the Undo function has a memory-leak/quirk.

You'd really have to get some odd interactions in KSP going with stock KSP and mods for it to crash due to processing errors. (Or just a buggy plugin...) I've had those, but mod devs tend to be quick on game-breaking bugs in their mods. I've had several versions of particular mods doing dumb things in the background the mod dev forgot to remove for release. (I think one had massive log-spamming used during dev and testing but was left in by accident for release.)

[HunHarcos]

UPDATE: The game went well, until I installed proceduralwings B9 for the game, 1.2, the mod itself was made for 1.3, I experienced a crash whilst loading in the game files.

I went on the dearing endeavour to run the game in openGL, so I did that , supposedly, but it didnt do any better.

Im stuck with trying to enter the game lol, I deleted the ProceduralWings mod, and still ....... 

[Arugela]

Would increasing swap help?

[Anth]

The memory goes up over time especially when going in and out of the SPH/VAB on a semi regular basis. Its a known issue apparantely.

My Ram is at 3.5gigs for KSP alone if I was designing rockets and testing them for 1 to 2 hours

Windows 10 for me is using 3.8 gigs without running KSP but with a few things running like firefox, discord, steam

So thats 7 gigs of ram being used within 2 hours. Add mods for more ram, add other apps to windows 10 and its easy to use 8gigs. Get more is my recommendation. I have 24 gigs

 

[HunHarcos]

Wont spend money on my pc, lol, im saving up for my first car.