How to increase fps on ksp

[Jacopo]

Hello everybody, I have always used ksp on my principle pc. I have always played with no problems even with rss and ro installed. Now I have a problem with my pc and I have to play on my laptop that is a hp stream 14.. I obviously play without any mods and with all the graphics settings down to the minum or so. And I can play simple mission without any problem but with low fps.. do anyone now some tips to increase fps? I find  two mods that help with fps but they are both broken.. ( active texture management and dynamic texture loader) so do anyone now other mods that could help? Or even some settings I maybe miss? Thank you

[IncongruousGoat]

You might want to look for programs running in the background that eat a lot of memory and close those. You might also want to increase KSP's priority in Task Manager. It'll cause other stuff to run badly while KSP is running, but I don't think that that's much of a concern, considering.

[Ultimate Steve]

If you haven't already, mess with the (All of a sudden I forget what it's called so I'm going to guess) Max Physics Delta slider. One way will make the game calculate a lot of physics and will be really smooth but real time will pass slower, and one way will make the game run choppier but "faster." I forget which way is which. Set debris slider to zero or delete all debris. Try and optimize part count, and etc. etc.

I've had to run KSP on a laptop (actually I still do, but it is a way better laptop), a Dell Inspiron from like 10 years ago.

So, yeah. I feel your pain. The above computer had an absolutely terrible graphics card - when I re-entered it just said "No, I'm not rendering that!" and turned the entire craft hot pink.

[Jacopo]

Thank you guys, I'll try all this stuff and I will let you now if I have some result in game 

[Starman4308]

First, I am very, very unsurprised to see that dinky little laptop running KSP poorly. The HP website boasts "industry leading processor so you never need to worry if it's powerful enough"; that is a colossal joke.

Second, there are three main elements KSP hits: CPU, GPU, and memory, of which the first is limiting for high-end computers.

For memory: you need enough of it to load KSP, any mods involved (particularly parts mods with memory-hungry textures and models), hold any background processes, without putting anything important into swap memory (basically using the hard drive/SSD as extra memory as a last-ditch effort). 4 GB can be kind of tight, 8 GB is usually enough unless you're one of those "Mod It Till It Crashes" types, and 16 GB would be overkill. The speed usually doesn't matter too much; generally, standard DDR3-1600 or DDR4-2133 is more than sufficient for the task.

For the GPU: This is usually the limiting factor for AAA games, since those games tend to be computationally simple, but packed with very demanding graphics elements. The general advice is to set graphics settings down until either your FPS plateaus (GPU is crunching frames faster than the CPU can push them to the GPU), your FPS exceeds the refresh rate of your monitor (usually 60 FPS), or you're just generally happy with it.

For KSP, fortunately, graphics are rarely limiting, particularly when notched down to minimum. Even with the relatively wimpy integrated GPU on that laptop, I doubt it's the issue.

When it comes to the CPU, this is usually (unless there are memory problems) the limiting factor for KSP, which is a very physics-heavy simulation game that puts huge loads on the CPU. You've got to calculate forces on every part by every other part, manage on-rails vessels, manage CommNet, aerodynamics, heating, solar panels, and many other things which hit the CPU for each and every simulation timestep. The quick-and-dirty way is to increase the maximum time per frame, which lengthens the KSP simulation timestep at the cost of making the simulation slightly less accurate.

For this, all I can suggest is to keep your craft small, avoid any CPU-hungry background processes, keep your laptop cool (prop it up so the bottom fans are unobstructed, etc), avoid some of the more CPU-hungry mods (my best guess is that FAR will be the worst offender), and, well...

It's a 1.6 GHz dual-core Celeron. Were you really expecting much out of that thing?

[Jacopo]

@Starman4308

hp stream has a quad core 1ghz not a dual core 1.6 ghz. Ksp runs perfectly on my main pc were I have a i5 3570 a gtx 670 and 16 gb  of ram (that yes are overkilled for ksp but the game was not the main reason I build it). I perfectly knew that moving to the hp stream I would have had a dramatic drop of performance, I was only asking how to make it the best playable even on a low-performance laptop :-)

[Starman4308]

18 minutes ago, Jacopo said:

@Starman4308

hp stream has a quad core 1ghz not a dual core 1.6 ghz. Ksp runs perfectly on my main pc were I have a i5 3570 a gtx 670 and 16 gb  of ram (that yes are overkilled for ksp but the game was not the main reason I build it). I perfectly knew that moving to the hp stream I would have had a dramatic drop of performance, I was only asking how to make it the best playable even on a low-performance laptop :-)

The specs I'm seeing for HP Stream 14 are dual-core 1.6 GHz... which may probably be better than a quad-core 1 GHz; at least originally KSP was a single-thread monster, and I'm unsure how well they've distributed the workload to other threads.

As to the home desktop: yep, sounds reasonable. For the HP Stream, I've suggested all I can; increase delta-T, reduce graphics settings, close background processes... and in the end, just accept that it's a very weak machine.

Best of luck to you; fortunately KSP is at least playable on weak machines for times such as "can't haul desktop on the flight to visit family over winter break".

[Epox75]

If you have already set all the graphic options to low, the only thing to try to boost are the physics. This means that the only way to achieve more fps is to overclock your CPU if it's unlocked. If you aim to save memory I suggest you to try Autopruner, you can delete and undelete parts like fuel tanks, fairings, wings very easily and use procedural parts instead. This mod truly saves a lot of RAM.

 

Edited January 17, 2017 by Epox75

[doggonemess]

On 1/15/2017 at 10:52 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

I've had to run KSP on a laptop (actually I still do, but it is a way better laptop), a Dell Inspiron from like 10 years ago.

So, yeah. I feel your pain. The above computer had an absolutely terrible graphics card - when I re-entered it just said "No, I'm not rendering that!" and turned the entire craft hot pink.

I had the EXACT same laptop - Inspiron 1501. I loved it, it was actually pretty good when it was new, but you're right, it showed its age when it came to running 3D games.

The laptop on the laptop screen looks a lot like the HP laptop that I replaced it with. That's ironic.

[BlackEyedPhantom]

Hi guys im playing KSP on a laptop and the performance is around 10-12FPS with. Im playing it with RealPlume Sci-Fi VE and Stock Parts Revamp (I guess thats how its called it just makes parts look better). And when I screen record with Windows 10 Xbox GAME DVR the FPS drops 8-10. So how can I increase my FPS with those mods? I have an ASUS x540sa with 4GB DDR3 RAM,Intel Pentium n3700 1.6GHz up to 2.4GHz with boost and Integrated Intel HD graphics. If you can tell me lighter clowd mods with Duna dust storms and Eeloo gaisers ill be so happy. Also I dont want to delete RealPlume cuz it looks good and doesnt drop FPS.

[Curveball Anders]

11 hours ago, Jack the Green Ghost said:

Intel Pentium n3700 1.6GHz up to 2.4GHz with boost and Integrated Intel HD graphics.

I'd call that borderline of running KSP alone, recording would be to ask too much.

Note that the 2.4GHz max boost is only valid when running with 3 cores locked out:

Frequency	1600 MHz
Turbo Frequency	Yes
Turbo Frequency	2400 MHz (1 core)

 

[Harry Rhodan]

12 hours ago, Jack the Green Ghost said:

So how can I increase my FPS with those mods?

Honestly? By removing them. You have to decide if you want a halfway acceptable framerate or bling.