Lag In KSP, Can I Fix It?

[CaptainApollo]

Hello everyone! KSP is an amazing an fun games, but it can be pretty frustrating for me when it lags.. It doesn't come in lag spikes, more like general lag and mouse lag. I run at medium graphics and have provided my computer specs, is this good or not for KSP? Is it just my PC? And are there some settings that don't change that much that I can turn off? Thank you. (I also have a lot of background processes while doing KSP, will it help if I shut some down?)

Specs:

Intel Core i7 CPU Q740 1.73 GHz

8 GB RAM

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M

[xyifer12]

Because of the engine it runs on, KSP only uses a single CPU core for physics, meaning that your extra cores are near useless.

With an extremely low speed of 1.7Ghz, I doubt KSP will run without lag for you.

If you want good performance, you have 2 options: Get a good CPU, or wait for KSP to have multicore physics.

[CaptainApollo]

Thank you, Xyifer. I know, my PC is a little older. I suppose I'll just lower the settings a bit, and thanks.

[DanielCoffey]

While the CPU is an i7, it is a mobile CPU (i7 740QM). Its base clock is indeed 1.73GHz but it has turbo to 2.93GHz, heat permitting. That isn't actually too bad, especially since Kerbal is largely single-core. The graphics card is also a mobile GPU but is fair for its generation.

[OddFunction]

Just wanted to pop in to say that my i5 runs KSP excellently. I have a little better video card than you, but I can't imagine an i7 would be your bottleneck.

If you have system using a lot of processes and memory and you were REALLY motivated you could install a steamlined version of Windows or Linux just for gaming. That would undoubtedly improve your FPS, even if by a little.

[Claw]

If you are feeling up to it, go read up on how to use "msconfig"... It will allow you to stop many of those background processes that auto-start when you boot windows. Leave any of the Microsoft processes enabled, but many of the other things can be turned off. Just make sure you read up on how to use it and how to enable/disable things before changing things at random. It's not particularly dangerous, but can take a bit of fiddling with to clean up some of that stuff that accumulates over time. After you do all that, reboot your computer and much of that background stuff will (hopefully) be gone.

When I did that, my old Vista machine was able to handle KSP...and that computer is 7 or 8 years old.

The next version of KSP will be on Unity 5, which will (hopefully) properly support multiple cores.

Cheers,

~Claw

[CaptainApollo]

Thanks everyone, I will read it and perhaps use it, I will see. The next version can't be coming in too long, so I believe I will wait. Thanks!