A performance question (GPU)

[MR L A]

Hi all,

I’ve been around a long time, played about 3000 hours of KSP on various machines.

Recently got my hands on an RX 6700XT to replace my GTX960. Quite a leap really.

I’m running visual mods like scatterer, tufx and waterfall, and I’m just incredibly surprised by how hard KSP hits the GPU. Is this normal?

im using RSR and up scaling to 1440p, but even then, it seems as though KSP hammers the GPU more than The Witcher 3 at maximum settings or even Doom 2016.

im getting a nice steady frame rate which I’ve capped to about 60 (who needs 144 frames of ksp?). I’m just wondering if modded ksp normally hits GPUs so hard (temp gets extremely high).

CPU is practically bored lol

thanks for any responses!

[Guest]

Spoiler

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Guest
NVM Misread the question

[darthgently]

You might want to verify thermal grease and pads for the GPU.  Many ship with less than adequate

[MR L A]

53 minutes ago, darthgently said:

You might want to verify thermal grease and pads for the GPU.  Many ship with less than adequate

But is this expected? As in, should modded ksp reach higher temps than doom or the Witcher 3?

i will follow your advice though, the temp spikes (and noise) have been a little unexpected… I’ve seen ksp hit maximum junction temperature which was worrying.

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, MR L A said:

But is this expected? As in, should modded ksp reach higher temps than doom or the Witcher 3?

i will follow your advice though, the temp spikes (and noise) have been a little unexpected… I’ve seen ksp hit maximum junction temperature which was worrying.

No.  I would expect it to get hot in Witcher also.  But my machine did Blender anim renders fine but would overheat on launches with EVE until I regreased.  Not sure, something to check.  Not trivial though so if you don't think it a likely solution maybe put at end of list

[miklkit]

4 hours ago, MR L A said:

Hi all,

I’ve been around a long time, played about 3000 hours of KSP on various machines.

Recently got my hands on an RX 6700XT to replace my GTX960. Quite a leap really.

I’m running visual mods like scatterer, tufx and waterfall, and I’m just incredibly surprised by how hard KSP hits the GPU. Is this normal?

im using RSR and up scaling to 1440p, but even then, it seems as though KSP hammers the GPU more than The Witcher 3 at maximum settings or even Doom 2016.

im getting a nice steady frame rate which I’ve capped to about 60 (who needs 144 frames of ksp?). I’m just wondering if modded ksp normally hits GPUs so hard (temp gets extremely high).

CPU is practically bored lol

thanks for any responses!

As someone who is about to pull the trigger on a 6700xt this is very interesting.   Which brand is it? 

I am running an old Sapphire Vega 64 at 1440 and it is currently averaging 34fps with Waterfall, Scatterer, and EVE.  In the control panel I have adjusted the fan speeds so it doesn't overheat.  It normally does not hit 80C. 

[MR L A]

3 hours ago, miklkit said:

As someone who is about to pull the trigger on a 6700xt this is very interesting.   Which brand is it? 

I am running an old Sapphire Vega 64 at 1440 and it is currently averaging 34fps with Waterfall, Scatterer, and EVE.  In the control panel I have adjusted the fan speeds so it doesn't overheat.  It normally does not hit 80C. 

I forgot to mention I’m also running EVE lol. Mine manages a steady, limited 60. Will do more easily but I’m trying to lower temps and noise.

Mines an MSI Mech 2x… cheapest one by a wide margin when I bought it last week. Overall, I’m super happy with the performance - just not with the temps and noise.

I’ll see if I can give some more performance reports tomorrow regarding frame rates at native resolution vs scaled etc

[MR L A]

So I removed all mods, uninstalled and redownloaded the game, and put all graphics settings to maximum with the frame limiter set to the highest 180 fps option - It was pretty much pinned at 180. Flew about a bit at supersonic speeds at ground level and it dipped to 140. Kinda noisy at a little warm with the gpu though.

I'm going to put reasonable limitations on it now and see what happens

[steve_v]

22 hours ago, MR L A said:

I’m running visual mods like scatterer, tufx and waterfall, and I’m just incredibly surprised by how hard KSP hits the GPU. Is this normal?

I don't know about tufx, but IME some of scatterer's fancier optional features can be a proper GPU hog. They do look quite nice though, so experiment a bit and find a compromise you like.
As for comparing to other games... Other games were designed with the graphical shiny in mind from the start, so things are bound to be better optimised.

 

17 hours ago, miklkit said:

As someone who is about to pull the trigger on a 6700xt this is very interesting.   Which brand is it? 

I am running an old Sapphire Vega 64 at 1440 and it is currently averaging 34fps with Waterfall, Scatterer, and EVE.  In the control panel I have adjusted the fan speeds so it doesn't overheat.  It normally does not hit 80C. 

I'm also running a 6700xt (XFX QUIK 319), and TBH no matter what I do to it I can't get it above ~65C, or make it audible over my CPU cooler... That said, an OC'd 10900KF on air usually drowns out the rest of the system anyway.
I'll not make any FPS comparisons here though, they'd be pointless as I'm running the GNU/Linux build and scatterer performs pretty poorly with the OpenGL renderer at the best of times.

[miklkit]

Ah, those 2 fan GPUs are cheaper for a reason.  They fit small cases and people who watercool everything can buy them and then slap their water block on them for a tidier system.   In your case, right click on the desktop and open the Radeon menu.  In "gaming" click on "global graphics" and then turn on "chill".  This should help reduce temps.  Also better case cooling can help keep the PU cooler.

KSP is poorly optimized and runs worse for me than any other game and the culprit seems to be memory management.  This V64 has 8gb of HBCC vram and other games use 2 to 6-7 gb.  DX9 uses 2, DX11 uses 5-6, and the only DX12 game I have uses 6-7gb.  Then there is KSP which uses all 8.  In the control panel there is the option to use system ram and I tried giving it 12gb of ddr3600.  There was an immediate jump up in quality and fps, but over time it went down to worse than before.  It seems KSP was transferring more and more stuff into the slower system ram and using less and less of the faster vram.  Hopefully a new GPU will correct this.