My FPS is very good until I hit a part count it seems.

[SpaceFoon]

 

Long story short I get 40 - 60 fps in crafts above 150 parts. The stock Acapello craft is 60+ FPS. "Stock" FAR shuttle gets the same with a few more parts. Really happy with that since its better than it was last I played a few years ago on the same machine.  Even with a 200+ part craft made from mainly heavily modded parts I still get about 25 fps which is what I was aiming for. The problem is when I add just a few more parts to my giant craft everything slows ways down to about 7-10 fps. My RAM seems to be bout gone. My CPU and GPU are maxed. Even the GPU ram (6gigs) is gone which really amazes me.

I installed and uninstalled all the graphics mods and they didn't really seem to do much to my FPS. I turned all the textures and setting in KSP to minimum and it didn't do much. The weird part is the clock never even turns red which is new to me. I used to always play with a red clock.

I had about 150 mods installed at one point but am now down to the bare minimum and it didn't really make a big impact on FPS.

I just really want to get 20 fps in a 300 part craft while landed or in space. I want to be able to walk around and maybe even land a plane on it! Was also planning on doing the flying part 100% IVA with headtracking which makes sub 20 fps tough. Funny enough IVA doesn't hurt my FPS even with rpm + DE. Oh, and I want to record it RIP FPS!

If I buy a better CPU will this problem get a lot better? I've been out of the loop for some years.

I suspect a few of the parts I'm using (gondolas) are not optimized as well as possible so how hard would it be to just throw a flat mesh on them or something?

PC specs: 

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i7 6700K 4.0  OC to 4.4GHz

16 gigs DDR4 3000MHz

GTX 1660 basic edition OC by a few hundred MHz

3440x1440 monitor 144 Hertz 

Samsung 980 1T

 

 

Here is with 283 parts. My old design had 308 but had very similar performance.

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Here is with the Gondola taken off. Its about 45 parts.

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Takes a big FPS when going fast in thick atmo but I don't do that with this craft except for fun anyway.

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Here I also took the innards out which was about 75 more parts.

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It was hard to fly with the balance so messed up but fps still wasn't too bad. A little inconsistent. 

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Stock test with same everything for reference. 150 parts on this does a bit better than myship striped to120.

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The pictures I have been showing may leave you wondering where the part count is coming from so here are a few shots of what I got. It's supposed to be a self sustaining habitat so there are a lot of little bits.  All the gondola hangers and airship hangers are full of fuel tanks. Lot of STX and SPX parts inside 2 hangers with scan sat stuff as well as stock robotics. I know its a lot lol its fitted for a full mission to eve with no support or refuel.

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Here is my mod list:

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Here are my settings:

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My mod list as reported by AVC:

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KSP: 1.12.5 (Win64) - Unity: 2019.4.18f1 - OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
ClickThroughBlocker - 2.1.10.21
Harmony - 2.2.1
KSPBurst - 1.5.5.1
Toolbar - 1.8.0.8
ToolbarControl - 0.1.9.9
KSP-Recall - 0.3.0.12
B9 Part Switch - 2.20
Chatterer - 0.9.99.2788
Community Category Kit - 0.1.0.112
Community Resource Pack - 112.0.1
CommunityTechTree - 3.4.4
ConformalDecals - 0.2.12.100000
Contract Configurator - 2.2.2
DeployableEngines - 1.3.1
AGExt - 2.4.1.3
EditorExtensionsRedux - 3.4.3.5
Ferram Aerospace Research - 0.16.1.1
Firespitter - 7.17
Hooligan Labs Airships Core - 7.0.1
HullcamVDSContinued - 0.2.2
JanitorsCloset - 0.3.7.9
KAS - 1.12.8285.34332
Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.1.9
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - 3.6.1
Kerbal Inventory System - 1.29.8039.40483
kOS - 1.4
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.4.1.9
KSPCommunityFixes - 1.24.6
MechJebForAll - 1.3.0.7
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.2.10
Module Manager Watch Dog - 1.1.0.3
NavBallDockingAlignmentIndicatorCE - 1.1.1.3
NearFutureAeronautics - 2.1.1
RetractableLiftingSurface - 0.2.1.2
SCANsat - 1.20.4
Shabby - 0.3
ButtonManager - 1.0.1.1
SpaceTuxLibrary - 0.0.8.5
VesselModuleSave - 1.0.1.2
StationPartsExpansionRedux - 2.0.10
SXTContinued - 0.3.29.8
TweakScale - 2.4.6.23
WildBlueTools - 1.88.2
Kerbal Actuators - 1.8.5
WildBlueCore - 1.2.3
Buffalo - 2.12
Airships - 2.19.1

 

[Krazy1]

8 hours ago, SpaceFoon said:

My CPU and GPU are maxed. Even the GPU ram (6gigs) is gone which really amazes me.

So you maxed out the CPU, memory, GPU and VRAM?! That's almost impossible to do simultaneously. How did you determine those?

KSP1 alone cannot max out your quad-core CPU. No way. Your total CPU utilization should be under 40%... 25% for KSP and a little more for whatever else is running. Your 6700K is about as fast single-processing as my R5 3600 and when I get to 200 parts it also starts to slow down and 300 parts is pretty bad. 

Your graphics setting are pretty high. 1440p and 8x AA and max texture and terrain and scatters. If your VRAM is full it will start using main RAM and that is super slow. You must avoid that. Try 1/2 res textures, 4x AA, 25% scatters. Still, you're not using Scatterer or Parallax so 6 GB seems like enough.  

If it's aerodynamics that's slowing it down, try it without FAR

No red clock... what's the limiter set at? I have mine at 0.10 sec so it will start slowing game time to maintain 10 frames per game-second 

Lots of fuel tanks and engines can slow it down. I use Tweakscale to make big engines and tanks and keep the count down.

[SpaceFoon]

20 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

So you maxed out the CPU, memory, GPU and VRAM?! That's almost impossible to do simultaneously. How did you determine those?

Well, when I say maxed for the gpu/cpu I mean at least the single core is maxed since this game doesn't use many cores. MY CPU was at 50% or so which is better than the 16 or whatever when only 1 of 8 "cores" is working. I watch task manager and my VRAM and RAM really are maxed.

20 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Your 6700K is about as fast single-processing as my R5 3600 and when I get to 200 parts it also starts to slow down and 300 parts is pretty bad. 

Yea I think I just need a new CPU. I bought this CPU for Kerbal some years ago but it is time!

20 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Your graphics setting are pretty high. 1440p and 8x AA and max texture and terrain and scatters. If your VRAM is full it will start using main RAM and that is super slow. You must avoid that. Try 1/2 res textures, 4x AA, 25% scatters. Still, you're not using Scatterer or Parallax so 6 GB seems like enough.  

Its crazy, none of those settings seems to do much. Maybe a few frames. I turned all the graphics to minimum and it wasn't much better. Right now I just installed about 20 graphics mods including Scatter and Parallax and even with 1440p I lost a like 2 FPS out of 10--12. 

20 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

If it's aerodynamics that's slowing it down, try it without FAR

No red clock... what's the limiter set at? I have mine at 0.10 sec so it will start slowing game time to maintain 10 frames per game-second 

Lots of fuel tanks and engines can slow it down. I use Tweakscale to make big engines and tanks and keep the count down.

Tried without FAR, Not much different. Aero still slows my PC down but its better than it was a few years last I played ago by a lot. Funny enough I forgot to load Tweakscale once and I think I got more FPS. My craft looked funny though! 

I still don't understand how the limiter works lol. Mine was set to .11. I just set it to .03 and apparently that gives me 50% more FPS at least with this craft. That being said I'm at  265 parts now so maybe that helps too.

Thanks for the help!

 

Edit: Yea going form .03 to .12 give me a solid 7 more FPS on the runway going from 10 to 17. Nice gains!

Edit2: I installed the warp control plugin and slowed the game down to 1/4 speed and saw no increase in FPS! That being said warping 4 speed doesn't decrease my FPS unless I'm near the grounds or breaking up in atmo or something.

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by SpaceFoon
new info

[Krazy1]

On 2/28/2023 at 3:53 PM, SpaceFoon said:

Its crazy, none of those settings seems to do much. Maybe a few frames. I turned all the graphics to minimum and it wasn't much better. Right now I just installed about 20 graphics mods including Scatter and Parallax and even with 1440p I lost a like 2 FPS out of 10--12. 

Yeah... KSP is totally CPU constrained. I just got a 4K monitor and ran it with a 1060 3 GB before I got a new GFX card. It really didn't slow the framerate noticeably. The VRAM and 3d load were 100%. 

On 2/28/2023 at 3:53 PM, SpaceFoon said:

forgot to load Tweakscale once and I think I got more FPS. My craft looked funny though! 

I assumed it would just crash the game or ship would explode if you did that. 

On 2/28/2023 at 3:53 PM, SpaceFoon said:

I still don't understand how the limiter works lol. Mine was set to .11. I just set it to .03 and apparently that gives me 50% more FPS at least with this craft. That being said I'm at  265 parts now so maybe that helps too.

Yeah... It don't think it can actually improve your frame rate. All it does is slow the game time down... it runs in slow motion when you get a red clock. If you get 5 FPS and the limiter is set to 0.1, then it runs the game at 1/2 speed... 1 sec in game is 2 sec IRL. 0.1 limiter is 1/0.1 = 10 FPS. But that means 10 frames per game second and you actually still only get 5 FPS IRL. It just makes it more playable.

[SpaceFoon]

4 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Yeah... KSP is totally CPU constrained. I just got a 4K monitor and ran it with a 1060 3 GB before I got a new GFX card. It really didn't slow the framerate noticeably. The VRAM and 3d load were 100%. 

I swear I was using more VRAM before visual mods lol.  Either way my GPU is working like a dog in this game but doesn't seem to ever effect FPS much.

4 hours ago, Krazy1 said:

Yeah... It don't think it can actually improve your frame rate. All it does is slow the game time down... it runs in slow motion when you get a red clock. If you get 5 FPS and the limiter is set to 0.1, then it runs the game at 1/2 speed... 1 sec in game is 2 sec IRL. 0.1 limiter is 1/0.1 = 10 FPS. But that means 10 frames per game second and you actually still only get 5 FPS IRL. It just makes it more playable.

Tested and I did get more FPS by changing it to the lowest number.  Like you said, it's just running time slower. It will tend to explode changing warp speed! Better Warp solved that though.

One major difference from the last time I played a few year ago is aero. Going fast in atmo used it just kill my FPS, now its only a little worse that space.

I wonder what FPS I would get if I get a new chip? Board, chip and ram for $500 gonna get me a real improvement? I literally spec'd my current PC for this game years ago. Bout to do it again!