Performance Issues (stuttering)

[johesp]

Hello fellow space explorers!

I've just bought this game and loving every minute! Unfortunately i am having some wierd performance issues. Quite so often the game stutters and jitters. Meaning the whole game stops and starts, only for 0.1 of a second or maybe less. Even the sound goes away. Happens randomly every 5-10 seconds. The game runs on a HP Pavilion dv6 2090eo.

Windows 7 enterprise (clean installed weeks ago)

Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1.60GHz

8,00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz

Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)

1024MB GeForce GT 230M (HP)

119GB M4-CT128M4SSD1 ATA Device (SSD)

I have also tried changing graphical settings, turning down the resolution details, framerate ++. The problem keep occuring.

Any helpfull tips or opinions are greatly appreciated!! Thank you in advance!

[Scotius]

Do you use any mods? I know that ISA Mapsat causes lag when a ship with orbital scanner flies above KSP.

[johesp]

nope! not any mods yet. Think i'll hold off on the mods until i've learned the basics such as docking. Considering mechJeb though...

[johnpoz]

That's a pretty low end video card..

I show it on http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+230M&id=1410

With a score of 341, my HD 6450, http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/video_lookup.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6450&id=267

Scores only 293, and it didn't do all that good either with ksp. Not that you couldn't play it - but MET would always be flashing yellow, red, etc. And I had turned down the settings. So I picked up a 7750 with 2GB for like $99 from newegg.. Not the best video card in the world, but not huge hit on the budget - low power requirements, etc.. I don't have a lot of play time in since the upgrade, but from the few missions I have flown with it MET is always GREEN, and picture does look better. Need some tweaking, just have to find the time.

So if possible you might want to look for card that scores better.. The HD 7750 I picked up scores 1600 on the above bench marking site.. I had seen other threads where they talk about scoring over 2000, but from my looking those types of cards were a bit out of my budget

[HoY]

It's not really your systems fault. The stuttering happens to everyone once you

Start building higher part count ships. A faster computer lets you go bigger without experiencing it but its just a game glitch that everyone will hit at a certain point unity glitch or problem with KSP I do not know

Also a graphics card 2 years old is enough to run the game at max settings. The bottleneck will then be the CPU. (Nvidia 470+, not sure of the equivalent in radeon)

[xclusiv8]

I would say its definitely the system. A mobile version of a cpu with a very low frequency, a mobile version of a low end gpu. Good thing is that you have a SSD. It would be much worse with a regular hard drive.

KSP does a lot of physics based calculations. A high IPC and clock frequency is a must for "smooth" game play with many parts.

[Karriz]

This is a very common problem. Some people have fixed it by updating their sound card drivers.

I also have this issue but I'm used to it. Hopefully it'll go away in future.

Also happens on high-end PCs.

[_Aramchek_]

I would say its definitely the system. A mobile version of a cpu with a very low frequency, a mobile version of a low end gpu. Good thing is that you have a SSD. It would be much worse with a regular hard drive.

KSP does a lot of physics based calculations. A high IPC and clock frequency is a must for "smooth" game play with many parts.

Pretty much this, it's your cpu that's going to be struggling the most, you can try the sound card drivers thing, but you may want to just go and mess with the "max physics delta" setting and learn to live with low fps in the game.

I know this isn't what people want to hear, but, you need a powerful cpu to run this game optimally.

[Stealth2668]

Ya the Unity engine the game uses only uses one core and if you only have 1.6Ghz (essentially a single core in this game) the game will lag. Also, pretty much everyone struggles with big ships. The Unity engine really needs multi core support but I'm guessing it's a big, expensive, time consuming task which is why it hasn't been done yet but IDK much about this sort of thing.

[DerekL1963]

It's a long shot - but do you have an iPhone? I cut down considerably on the stuttering by disabling iTunes, Bonjour, etc...

[Pbhead]

ok. so. here is a question. if i were to build a computer to optimally run KSP, what would it look like? lets pretend money is not an object.

[ZedNova]

ok. so. here is a question. if i were to build a computer to optimally run KSP, what would it look like? lets pretend money is not an object.

It would have a 4 core processor clocked at 20Ghz, and 1 gtx 580, and 8 Gb of ram.

[_Aramchek_]

ok. so. here is a question. if i were to build a computer to optimally run KSP, what would it look like? lets pretend money is not an object.

Best bang for buck cpu is the i3 3220/better would be i5 3570k, any vid card above a gtx 460 will be more than adequate, 8-16 gb's of dd3@whatever speed really makes little difference, and a..well you said money is no object, so Asus Sabertooth z77 motherboard, a good cooler and the guts to clock that cpu as high as it can go without burning up.

[SciMan]

_Aramcheck_, that sounds like a good start, but since they say money is no object, I would opt for a Liquid Nitrogen based cooling system!

Also, since money may not be an object but getting liquid nitrogen delivered can be a pain, I would put the computer case inside a Dewar flask to reduce the amount of heat coming IN to the computer (and therefore evaporating more liquid nitrogen).

Additionally, I think that a good ballpark figure for the liquid nitrogen reserve container (another Dewar flask) would be somewhere around 125-250 liters, that should allow the computer to run at 5-10x its rated clock speed for a week or more before needing to go buy more liquid nitrogen.

[NeoMorph]

Definitely the CPU. I've use a budget graphics card and a gaming graphics card to check performance hits and to be honest there isn't that much difference. The biggest contributor is the CPU and 1.6GHz is a bit slow these days (especially with KSP as it hasn't been optimised yet).

[Gort]

deleted ...

Edited June 9, 2013 by Gort

[Finnerty]

Maybe happening during autosave? See this thread. Its worth a read. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28045-Settings-config-file-AUTOSAVE_SHORT_INTERVAL-5-is-for?p=356600#post356600

[Morzak]

Having the same Issue with the game, just learned to ignore it. i5 3570k, overclocking doesn't make much of a difference for me, maybe I'll play with the sound drivers a bit, because gameplay doesn't suffer that much but the sound cutout isn't pleasant.

@NeoMorph

Most modern games actually are very light on CPU's, an i5 3570k will be bored to death with most modern games, But since KSP does a lot of physics calculation it's one of the few games that actually eat up CPU Performance (it doesn't help that unity isn't built for multi core CPU's).

[johesp]

Thanks for alot of feedback guys! I'm surprised to see that the bootleneck is actually the cpu which is a quadcore. To bad KSP utilises only one :/ could this improve in the future if the devs gets the game to run multithread/multicores? Replacing the cpu / gpu is not an option since this is a laptop. The game stutters regardles of the ships size/part number. I tried loading in a prebuilt fuelstation and boy, it lagged! That was a different kind of lagg which could not be misunderstood, Cpu struggling. I've watched some of scott manleys clips on youtube and i can clearly hear the soundstuttering on his game. Very strange.

[ThePyrateCaptain]

The ones the devs use.

[Tw1]

If money was no object....

Space would need to be no object too....

[AnalogAddict]

I use an i7-950 Bloomfield with 12GiB ram, 2x GTX560Ti, 256GB SSD, 1TB Spindle disk. I have the sound stuttering issue as described above, I think I've got an old Sound Blaster lying around here I've been meaning to try.