kithylin

If you're having problems waiting on KSP to load modules.. you need to seriously look in to computer upgrades. Mainly storage I/O upgrades. You can pick up a 32GB 6 Gbps SSD on ebay for $24 used, just get one and install KSP there if you have to. I have my whole system on the gaming computer on a newish 1TB samsung pro SSD, starting KSP with a few modules and the load time is about 15 seconds from clicking start KSP to being at the main menu.

I've been playing KSP for many, many years now on some pretty powerful multi-core computers. Always, and I mean always no matter what, KSP would have 1 single core/thread at 100% and the rest at 1% - 10%. It's never been multi-threaded. Sorry to burst your bubble but it hasn't. At least now it throws up 4-8 cores at 60% and uses multiple cores well. The biggest improvement I can find is the builder area/machine can now sustain 50-60 FPS trying to build and work on 800-880 part ships now (used to be 5-10 FPS) and cpu usage flies up a lot during this. However, sadly.. we get out to go flying and it still runs single-digit FPS with complex ships. So multi-threaded or not, sadly.. we still can not fly big complex ships without a huge performance penalty. It's still pretty sad that KSP severely limits us. I know "omg that's a huge ship" But.. what if we want to fly huge complex ships? Why penalize us for that? I've always hated this about KSP. I have a 4.8 ghz 6-core hyper-threaded intel system and a pair of some of the fastest DirectX-9 video cards ever made (GTX-470, +46% core overclock), and should be able to fly even 2000+ part ships if I wanted to, but the game prevents us from doing so. I know I've read the forums and I'm not alone in this either, other people try flying 500-600 part ships and find that KSP can't do it. And my other computer, a dual-processor workstation with two intel 6-cores in it @ 3.6 ghz and an Nvidia Quadro K5000 card (animation rendering and 3D rendering platform). The editor runs nicer on that machine than my big gaming i7 actually (seems it excels at more physical cores.. and ignores virtual ones) That aside.. I never learned docking or got in to space stations because I know I'd be upset.. if I got in to building stations and bringing more and more and more stuff up to add to it (think of the ISS.. they've been adding more to it every year almost), at some point it would get so complex I wouldn't even be able to select and work on the station. So.. I don't even bother. At least there's more biomes and something to do with the "simple" ships now. I do some day wish SQUAD would fix these glaring performance problems that have been plauging the game for years one of these updates though. It's a lot better, the editor is -VASTLY- improved both in performance and everything else now. We can edit and work on big ships finally without slowing down. Just we need flight performance upgraded too next, maybe v1.00 will address that after they finish fixing everything else.

I think people are missing the biggest and best part of this update.. KSP IS NOW MULTI-THREADED FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER....!!!!!! Sadly.. I just tried it, and using more than 1 cpu core doesn't do a thing for improving launch and in-flight performance for complex (800+) part ships, still really poor FPS there.

I was under the impression that even if unity is advanced to support multi-threading, KSP never will because they would essentially have to go back and re-write the entire game from scratch to support multi-cores and that would essentially throw away 4-5 years of work on the game's code. I don't know if it's true.. but after googling on KSP and multi-core CPU's that's the general consensus from what I've found in results, and we never have had an official response from the devs anywhere that I can see. They might have in this thread.. but I dunno if I want to go through the entire thing. I might later today. So essentially, KSP is likely doomed to be single-core for it's entire lifespan. Unless I'm wrong? If I'm right, then building a system for KSP needs no more than 1-2 cores/threads for maximum KSP performance, and any haswell chip that can accomplish that would work. And old video cards are quite cheap, We can pick up a GTX-550 for $45 - $50 today, for example.

So after all of your testing. Say for example.. if one wanted to build a computer dedicated entirely to KSP performance with no other regards.. which cpu would you say is the absolute fastest? Is it mainly the Intel Haswell series? I was thinking cheap but powerful KSP performance might be grabbing that unlocked-multiplier Intel Haswell Dual Core Pentium, and just overclocking the bajeebus out of it on water cooling. So.. is it all Intel Haswell core chips are the fastest, or are the i5's actually faster than say the i7's or i3's for example? Is the video card even that big of a deal for KSP performance? I mean, at which point does a video card reach "maximum KSP performance" and then adding a newer card does not increase KSP performance any further? A single GTX-260 maybe? I know KSP can use multiple video cards.