A strange thing happened on my way to the GPU...

[Gaultesian]

OK, I have been trying to squeeze out max amount of performance from KSP, as my mod usage keeps growing by the day.

So, I wanted to play around with OpenGL versus force dx11.  I set up two shortcuts: one with opengl (which I have been using regularly over the last few months), and with with the force dx11 command (no single threading).

So the OpenGL was measuring at about 2.145 gigs.  Then I concurrently started up force dx11.  It tanked at about 2.750, but then the strangest thing happened (at least to me).

My openGL game sank down to 1.45 gig memory useage.  As I am playing the game, it is now down to approximately 1.2 gigs.

Am I seeing something wrong?  I am using a GeForce GT 640 card.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2016 by Gaultesian

[Vanamonde]

As this is not about KSP itself, the thread has been moved to the Lounge. 

[Gaultesian]

Um, I thought it was, as I am discussing what happens once I open up KSP after forceing OpenGL and dx11 concurrently (two seperate instances of the game opened - one with OpenGL, one with dx11):  one instance the game clocks at 2750 mb memory use, while the other instance clocks at 1200 mb memory use...the best I have seen in-game (except when using vanilla), but if you think this is not discussing KSP, I understand.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Gaultesian

[Gaultesian]

OK, so I have been playing with this a bit over the last few days.

I now have my primary KSP copy (for mods only) with 84 mods, including such intensive ones as SSTU, RealPlume, EVE, 6.4k, Wild Blue Industries and CXAerospace, to name a few.  I also have most of my graphic options upped a bit from my usual KSP settings, with Terrain Detail at high, terrain scatters at high and texture quality at full res.  I open this one up with the forced OpenGL.  Currently it opens up to approximately 2300 mb.

I have another (older) modded folder that would once open up in OpenGL fine, but I now have it opening up in forced DXd11 it has about 70 or so mods in it.  I open this one up after the forced OpenGL version opens up, and it clocks at about 2800 mb.

So the process:  I open up the opengl version first, and onces it is fully opened, I then open up the dx11 version and await for it to fully open.

Sometimes the change in memory is nearly instantaneous (i.e. once the dx11 version finally loads up, the opengl version will lower down immediately to about 1200 to 1400 mb), or it may take a few minutes, but eventually the opengl version will lower to 1200 to 1400 mb.  I can even close the dx11 version at that time, and the opengl version will persist at approximately 1200 to 1800 mb (depending on how long you have it on, what types of ships you load into the game, and possible memory leakage).

This enables me to utilize some really decent mods, with a higher than expected graphics output, all the while keeping my memory usage well below 2 gb.

Of course, this will thankfully become obsolete once 1.1 arrives, but until then, my kerbal game has gotten a wee bit more better in the interim.

Cheers!

[gh7531]

Soo well I can confirm this. My RAM usage wasn't above 2.5GB on startup with an average around 1.5GB while playing. Normaly it starts at around 3GB and slowly increases until the game dies. With this trick the RAM usage also increases slowly so memory leaks are still present.

BUT after some time with two instances runing the game behaved realy strange. It freezes at scene changes and show just a grey screen but after a few seconds it loads correctly and the enhanced navball mod stops working randomly. Also mechjeb started to realy miscalculate some things but this can be just a random error and not connected to this trick.

After around 2h of playing the game got attacked by the mighty kraken and I had to stop my testing

[Gaultesian]

Thanks for the reply and the testing.

I have no instances of conflict.  I often quit the one instance of the game I do not intend to play (once the ram usage is much lower on the instance of the game I do want to play), and yes ,I do get the gradual memory bleed (takes more hours than I can actually play the game), but no errors.

Thanks for the testing gh7531.