Way to make better use of CPU?

[Benji13]

I recently decided to open up task manager while I was playing and realised that only 12% of my 2.2ghz i5 was being used by KSP and I was getting about 5fps. Task manager said the core was running at 0.77ghz at the time. I mean, I know KSP isn't the best as far as making use of hardware goes but surely there is a way to make it make use of the CPU?

If it's useful, I was flying the Ares 3A over KSC with no other ships nearby. Anti aliasing on 4x, texture and render quality on full as well as aero FX on full. Physics time per frame is set to 0.03.  I also have scattered installed. So it should be using more of the CPU right?

Anyone got any suggestions?

[Snark]

Moving to Technical Support.

Sounds like it's nothing to do with your CPU.  It's your GPU that's buckling under the strain, especially if you've installed a graphics-intensive mod like Scatterer.  In the meanwhile, your CPU is sitting there twiddling its thumbs with nothing to do.

• CPU runs physics.  Typical situation where your CPU will bog you down:  if you have a ship with a huge number of parts, or lots of ships with lots of parts within physics range.
• GPU (i.e. your graphics card) runs graphics.  Typical situation where your GPU will bog you down:  you're running at very high resolution, have fancy graphics features like hi-res graphics features and antialiasing turned on, you've got graphics mods like Scatterer, various FX turned up.

So, if you want faster framerate... uninstall Scatterer.  Or turn off those other fancy graphics options.  Or buy a better graphics card.

(FWIW:  I would love to run Scatterer myself.  It's frickin' gorgeous.  But I just can't:  it brings my framerate to its knees, and I don't play on a potato, either.  So I don't run it, and my framerate does just fine even with various graphics options turned up fairly high and running at 2560x1600 resolution.  YMMV.)

[Benji13]

@Snark Oh, ok then. I always thought that KSP didn't use GPU's. I guess I'll have to uninstall scatterer until I get something with a decent graphics card.

[Snark]

Just now, Benji13 said:

@Snark Oh, ok then. I always thought that KSP didn't use GPU's. I guess I'll have to uninstall scatterer until I get something with a decent graphics card.

Any game that has any graphics is using the graphics card. 

Anyway, rule of thumb is that if "complicated objects make it slow" it's the CPU, whereas if "pretty stuff makes it slow" it's the GPU.  There are a few subtleties involved so in reality it's more complex than that, but that's a pretty good first approximation.