Unable to run KSP newer than 1.7.x

[ChewieKashyyyk]

Hi,

I'm running unmodded KSP 1.7 on a Mid-2011 iMac running Manjaro Linux (note: NOT MacOS or windows).

It has an i5-2400S and an Radeon 6750M graphics card. I have 12GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

I'm not sure if it's the new terrain that was introduced in 1.8 or what, but all of the newer versions run painfully slow, such that the mission clock is almost never green, unless I pan the camera to not show the terrain (pointing straight up).

1.7 isn't so bad, and I can live with being stuck on that version indefinitely, but I just wanted to post this to see if anyone else has a similar experience.

Edited December 2, 2020 by ChewieKashyyyk
added more technical details

[Curveball Anders]

Are you sure that it's actually using the 6750 and not the (almost) GPU on the processor dice?

I had exactly that behavior on a mini desktop with a similar CPU, but it went away when I managed find a low profile PCIe GPU card.

And actually the same problem with a laptop with switchable graphics earlier.

 

[ChewieKashyyyk]

2 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

Are you sure that it's actually using the 6750 and not the (almost) GPU on the processor dice?

I'm pretty sure:

$ glxinfo |grep OpenGL.renderer
OpenGL renderer string: AMD TURKS (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.9.11-3-MANJARO, LLVM 11.0.0)

I also watched the GPU with radeontop, and it showed idle before ksp started, and it lit up like crazy as soon as I started ksp. I also know it's only showing the AMD GPU because it's only meant for radeons, and it shows `radeontop , running on TURKS bus 01, 120 samples/sec` at the very top.

[Curveball Anders]

Then I have no advice other then drop ever graphic setting down to lowest possible and tweak them up if it works.

 

[ChewieKashyyyk]

5 hours ago, Curveball Anders said:

Then I have no advice other then drop ever graphic setting down to lowest possible and tweak them up if it works.

Yeah, I've dropped everything down to their bare minimum and even tried reading through the .cfg file. I was just wondering if anyone has experience with this, or if they publish recommended specs for more recent versions of the game.

Thank you