Speeding up KSP?

[severedsolo]

On 22/03/2018 at 1:07 PM, LoSBoL said:

Most if not all laptops running Windows run in 'energy saving' or 'balanced' battery modes as standard energy setting (even when connected to a power source), which massively puts a strain on Kerbal Space Programs ability to do calculations.  It makes good practice to set the energy settings to 'high performance'. 

God I wish this myth would die.

It's true that when running on batteries most laptops will default to energy saving mode which can throttle your CPU. However, the only difference between "balanced" (which they should be defaulting to on AC power) and "High Performance" is that when on High Performance it will stop your chip from throttling itself when it isn't doing anything, and doesn't turn your HDDs off when they are idle. If your chip needs the power, it will still use it on Balanced. It just won't keep itself there if it doesn't need to.

Running in high performance will just shorten the life of your computer, because it won't enter low power mode, even if it's not doing anything.

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, severedsolo said:

God I wish this myth would die.

It's true that when running on batteries most laptops will default to energy saving mode which can throttle your CPU. However, the only difference between "balanced" (which they should be defaulting to on AC power) and "High Performance" is that when on High Performance it will stop your chip from throttling itself when it isn't doing anything, and doesn't turn your HDDs off when they are idle. If your chip needs the power, it will still use it on Balanced. It just won't keep itself there if it doesn't need to.

Running in high performance will just shorten the life of your computer, because it won't enter low power mode, even if it's not doing anything.

Because Its not a myth, there are many applications in which the CPU wont throttle up quick enough, KSP is one of those.

[MechBFP]

On 2018-03-25 at 9:08 AM, severedsolo said:

Running in high performance will just shorten the life of your computer, because it won't enter low power mode, even if it's not doing anything.

Hahaha, no.

[Archgeek]

On 3/23/2018 at 7:32 AM, LoSBoL said:

They don't come any faster than that. It's pretty telling that we've basically hit the physical limitation of progression concerning KSP's performance.
The last couple of years there is little to no gain in single thread performance due to hitting the ceiling of what is physically possible. The focus by Intel and AMD to gain performance is shifted to expanding the number of cores per processor.
Many games profit from multicore usage, KSP however is a completely different beast and although  progressing in multicore usage has been made, we will always be limited by single thread performance for the physics calculations.
We need a miracle in technical discoveries to advance single thread performance before we can fly 700+ part vehicles with descent framerates. 

As I recall, there was indeed something approaching that a few years back.  Some researchers had found that gold atom based "quantum dots" could be electrically induced to change state in a manner that seemingly leaked no energy.  No energy loss means no heat dissipation.  Needless to say they'd be expensive, but imagine replacing transistors with qdots in the highest-frequency places of chip, like the clock input and the main ALU pipe.  That'd yield a nice chunky reduction in heat loss, which would in turn let us proportionally raise the frequency ceiling again.  That in turn would raise single-core performance for KSP.

I wonder what came of that research, or if it's even possible to make qdots anywhere near stable at CPU temps.

[LoSBoL]

On ‎3‎-‎4‎-‎2018 at 6:16 PM, Archgeek said:

As I recall, there was indeed something approaching that a few years back.  Some researchers had found that gold atom based "quantum dots" could be electrically induced to change state in a manner that seemingly leaked no energy.  No energy loss means no heat dissipation.  Needless to say they'd be expensive, but imagine replacing transistors with qdots in the highest-frequency places of chip, like the clock input and the main ALU pipe.  That'd yield a nice chunky reduction in heat loss, which would in turn let us proportionally raise the frequency ceiling again.  That in turn would raise single-core performance for KSP.

I wonder what came of that research, or if it's even possible to make qdots anywhere near stable at CPU temps.

That sounds interesting, never heard of quantum dots other then Samsung with their screens, and I thought that was just a catchy marketing term. 
But with a little googling there are quite a few articles on the subject. From the quick reading it could take a while still before us normal human beings will see that technology in our home computers.

[invision]

On 3/25/2018 at 11:08 AM, severedsolo said:

God I wish this myth would die.

It's true that when running on batteries most laptops will default to energy saving mode which can throttle your CPU. However, the only difference between "balanced" (which they should be defaulting to on AC power) and "High Performance" is that when on High Performance it will stop your chip from throttling itself when it isn't doing anything, and doesn't turn your HDDs off when they are idle. If your chip needs the power, it will still use it on Balanced. It just won't keep itself there if it doesn't need to.

Running in high performance will just shorten the life of your computer, because it won't enter low power mode, even if it's not doing anything.

high performance mode doesnt shorten the life of your pc, its needed in a lot of circumstances to tell your pc to give the app as much power as it can. like gaming or video editing needs all the power it can handle.

also if your CPU supports "boost" mode it will underclock when not in use even when its under high performance mode. my Ryzen 5 is overclocked to 3.9 ghz and will sit idle at 1.6ghz until you boot something then it will kick right in at 3.9ghz and never fluctuate.

same with my videocard. i tick high performance mode so it will go straight to 1.9ghz on the cores turbo rather than fluctuate causing stutter because the game wants full power but its being limited to 1.3ghz or less in balance mode 

 

 

Edited April 5, 2018 by invision