Performance optimizations?

[Arugela]

Are there any settings that help with optimization(or auto optimization). My PC is very under spec, but I might have room if some of it can be offloaded back into my CPU if I'm not mistaken. I'm trying to make a miracle happen and get past 1.6 fps. 8) It also might help with various pc parts combos. Or I'm assuming. I'm already at the low settings. (Also linux via proton. Not sure how much extra performance loss.)

I have an 1100t phenom II(might have more room.) 8)

1060 3gb(probably the issue.)

16gb ram DDR3 1600(filled up.)

Or is it already doing this under the hood?

Edited March 5, 2023 by Arugela

[SimonTheSkink]

Can you show what's spiking highest in Task Manager when it begins to chug? I want to see what resource is being maxed out.

[Arugela]

This with one song in the background. I might be wrong about the CPU room... I also put down the res to 956x?. It gave me some more FPS. But not much. 8) I might just be out of computer performance room. Low res may have gotten me double FPS. So, around 3.2 fps. (in the VAB and loading. Up to like 6 max. Edit: Actually up to 12 or higher spikes in VAB. Hard to read it. up to 60fps during loading but as low as 1-2.)

https://imgur.com/a/9Tf0BW9

I might actually have some CPU room. But not enough multicore use: (Actual runway performance)

Edited March 5, 2023 by Arugela

[SimonTheSkink]

Your RAM seems be to bottlenecking to me. If I were you I would make sure any non-essential programs are shut down and go as bare bones as possible. Turn off as much details and textures in your game as well. You're also using an unfamiliar OS so it's possible it has not been fully optimized for it yet, which is saying a lot considering it's current state on Windows. But yeah get some more RAM if you can, you got no buffer room to work with. 

Edited March 5, 2023 by SimonTheSkink

[LoSBoL]

KSP2 in its current state does not utilize either CPU or GPU very well. As for your GPU it is yet to be seen if it would be sufficient as development of KSP2 progresses, but you'd probably be on the low spec if it does.

Your CPU however can be considered ancient, no optimization is going to solve that. It's safe to say at this point in time it will never get KSP2 in a playable state. 

[Arugela]

Does anyone have any insight into the nature of why the game takes so much hardware wise atm. I'm surprised the game doesn't have a low end graphics literally like the  original with higher graphics on the high end. Is there some reason they can't do both? Assuming it's the graphics that are doing it. Is there any chance this game will run more like the original at the low end one day or is there something fundamentally making that impossible in the future?

I was hoping the game would be like the original with more optimization and gpu/cpu usage on top of better graphics for those who wanted it. Particularly with the better potential parts count and other improvements that supposedly couldn't be done to the original game. I thought this was more about getting rid of problems/inefficiencies in the original code, not neccesarily about making the game unplayable for the majority of the player base. I don't get why the stats have to be this high on all ends. They didn't add full aero did they? It looked like they did not do that. Are the parts higher on a granular level to reproduce physics better? Or is the overhead from proton this bad? I was assuming this wasn't that different from windows atm.

It's about 80 bucks to upgrade my ram to 32 gigs and replace the existing 4gb modules. But I'm guessing that won't get rid of the core problem.

 

Edit: Actually, I found 32 gigs for 60 bucks... any chance it could make the game run better? Would it fix the problem with the low FPS by any chance? The cache ram in linux atm is running compressed swap in ram. I'm assuming it's using a bunch of CPU to get more ram. It's something they added to fedora recently. I'm on Fedora 37 linux btw. It's kind of a cool feature if it's really saving my game crashing at the end of it's usable ram. Do they have that in windows now? I haven't used windows in at least a decade.

BTW, apparently blue ram makes it cheaper. 8) My system just happens to be blue and black. So, win, win!

Edited March 5, 2023 by Arugela

[MarcAbaddon]

I am not an expert on shader programming, but I have heard that there is a long, complex shader responsible for planet terrain that is taking up most of the rendering time when close to a planet.

[pandaman]

30 minutes ago, Arugela said:

: Actually, I found 32 gigs for 60 bucks... any chance it could make the game run better? Would it fix the problem with the low FPS by any chance? 

It certainly won't hurt.  I doubt it will 'fix' anything, especially the FPS problem, but it may just help a little overall.

[Arugela]

Does anyone know what the max video card a system like mine can use without a bottlekneck. I was looking into a new video card. Not sure if it's worth it though. Not sure how you figure out what the max video card would be per system.

[MarcAbaddon]

I think your system is old enough that you shouldn't replace individual parts. Looks more like a general replacement is due. 

[Arugela]

That is what I'm assuming. Not sure if the ram is worth it though. 60 dollars for 32 gigs isn't that bad(but maybe not useful). But I'm not sure what it would really bring performance wise in general. The only other game I was playing was x4. And it's maxed from parts count in my PHQ. Not sure if that would even help. I wasn't sure if even a low end newer pc was even worth the upgrade at this point though either. Everything is still so pricey. I'm not sure what isn't a partial side grade out of the lower end parts. I'm not familiar enough with what is causing the performance issues specifically enough. Like what is likely the max my motherboard is using up to understand the way the computer is using resources compared to components.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Arugela

[Jason_25]

I think even if you were to replace your system if you were to continue to run on Proton you would be disappointed in the performance.  You might consider installing  Windows perhaps on another drive and replace the graphics card.  Myself, I despise dual boot so I just run Windows on my gaming computer and keep Linux on computers used for work.

I still have a 1075T system that I just decomissioned.  Funnily enough that processor is kind of slow for KSP 1 but I think you might be ok for KSP 2 because it is all on the graphics card.  Even if you can't stand the performance and need to upgrade the whole system you can just bring the new graphics card along.  But the system is about 15 years old now and the amount of instructions per clock on the Ryzen and Core i7+ processors is much greater.

Your ram is OK because you are just seeing Linux caching a lot of stuff that you have previously opened.  That memory will be freed if necessary.  Also low RAM does NOT result in low FPS.  It results in a very noticeable stuttering.

edit:

I wanted to mention too that you should be able to put whatever new graphics card you want assuming your power supply has 2 or 3 8 pin connectors.  Even if you don't have the connectors you can buy an adapter if you have an old but still powerful power supply.  As far as I know the PCI-E connection will auto negotiate the speed and compatibility.  One thing to look out for on older systems is that the new graphics cards are insanely large.  Make sure your case has enough room or prepare for metal cutting and or just setting the components up without a case.  Don't worry about case cooling.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Jason_25

[GunhamAlso]

You have a 13 year old cpu. 100% that is a bottleneck. You need a new cpu, it won't run on hardware that old. Look at the bare minimum specs posted for the game. You're low end and three generation old graphics card doesn't help either, but you can't expect it to run a physics simulation on that kind of cpu. Not sure why no one has mentioned the cpu.

[RocketRockington]

7 hours ago, Arugela said:

Does anyone have any insight into the nature of why the game takes so much hardware wise atm. I'm surprised the game doesn't have a low end graphics literally like the  original with higher graphics on the high end. Is there some reason they can't do both?

The PR spin will tell you it's due to the 'profound nature of the technical difficulties ' or something like that  - challenges a much smaller team of less experienced devs apparently managed quite well.

Instead it's a vast array of poor planning/scheduling/focus on non-essentials/business screwups.  Noone who knows game development or has followed this project and who isn't mainlining hopium believes things are business as usual for development of KSP2 and that it was only due to how challenging everything is that they failed to produce a game with 1. prequel-equivalent features, 2. new planned features 3.  reasonably bug free/playable and 4. performing reasonably well on any hardware, even high end hardware. 

Even failing on 1 of those 4 points after multiple years long delays that cited trying to hit a high standard as a cause, would be reason for disappointment.  Dropping the ball on all 4 of them indicates multiple major dysfunctions

The people who tell you different have succumbed to the PR, or view themselves as unpaid company shills who want people to think better of the product than it deserves in the belief that eventually it'll become what they're wishing for(using your $50 to help),  regardless of years of prior evidence to the contrary.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by RocketRockington

[mcwaffles2003]

9 hours ago, Arugela said:

Does anyone know what the max video card a system like mine can use without a bottlekneck. I was looking into a new video card. Not sure if it's worth it though. Not sure how you figure out what the max video card would be per system.

Honestly, you're running a 13 year old CPU meaning you're also probably using DDR3 RAM. I think the 8GB of relatively slow  RAM is definitely hurting you but overall I think it's about time to get a new system for gaming in general, or at least I wouldn't sink more $ into this one and instead save up for something else if that's possible. That said a 1080-ti can tie you over for a decent bit and though they used to be flagships, they're now old and relatively cheap and IMO worth considering For the considerable amount of VRAM (11GB), and higher clock speed with the exact same amount of CUDA cores as a 3060.

[Jason_25]

He mentioned he has 16 GB RAM.  That would be 4 sticks of 4 GB RAM fully populated like my old system.  New memory generations increase the bandwidth and lower the power consumption but always increase the latency.  So the way I see it the newer generations are more a manufacturer advantage than consumer advantage.   As I understand it modern graphics cards do not often saturate the PCI-E bus either so the motherboard should be ok there as well.  The bigger problem with the system as I mentioned earlier is low IPC of the Bulldozer(?) and the lack of SSE4 and AVX2 extensions.  Maybe Unity does not use those or maybe it has a fallback mode for the legacy CPU.

[Arugela]

I think I've seen it up to 14gb with a full 8gb in swap. In linux the swap is now compressed in the ram. So, that is running at about 4x the size with the CPU doing the chugging if i'm not mistaken. So, It's technically 22gb's of ram. Not sure how that works out under the hood though. Definitely not buying a new computer unless something changes with the prices. I'm waiting for the high end stuff to come back down and become standard if that ever happens. I guess I will see if i can get a 20 year upgrade path going!! ><

Maybe by that point we will have the same CPU cores and GPU cores and software using it. 8)

At some point won't gaming computers become fast and strong enough the graphics are live computed the same as the rendering computer. I wonder how much father we need to get live compute. I'm guessing never. As the physics aren't purely reproducing a live human body full of actual particles. Unless there is some temporary lull in the worthwhileness of more complete graphics vs complexity and they catch up.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Arugela

[mcwaffles2003]

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

I think I've seen it up to 14gb with a full 8gb in swap.

swap is insanely slow, its the same speed as storage since its... storage. 

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

In linux the swap is now compressed in the ram.

This might be out of my depth... you are using swap (storage space being used as virtual memory) and having it recompressed(meaning to access it it needs to also be decompressed, both meaning extra CPU usage) in RAM?

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

I'm waiting for the high end stuff to come back down and become standard if that ever happens. I guess I will see if i can get a 20 year upgrade path going!! ><

Dont get a high end build then... Look here

https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/

This whole build, for instance, is cheaper than a 4070ti

https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/GCWG3C/modest-intel-gaming-build

Just because the GPU market is messed up doesnt mean the rest of the PC building world is

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/

Aside from GPUs the rest of the PC market currently is lower cost than it was before COVID and the silicon shortage... Go ahead and wait on a GPU, use it and get the rest of your build more up to date in the meanwhile

  

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

Maybe by that point we will have the same CPU cores and GPU cores and software using it. 8)

CPUs and GPUs are built in entirely different ways for entirely different purposes

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

At some point won't gaming computers become fast and strong enough the graphics are live computed the same as the rendering computer. I wonder how much father we need to get live compute. I'm guessing never. As the physics aren't purely reproducing a live human body full of actual particles. Unless there is some temporary lull in the worthwhileness of more complete graphics vs complexity and they catch up.

If youre asking if graphics will ever be undiscernible from real life, I would assume so, but I don't think your current build will get you there unless you are extremely patient

Edited March 6, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Arugela]

The compressed swap was something added to linux. It happens automatically. I used to have no swap then after an update i had swap and now my ram never goes above about 14gb. The rest is the actual swap file. It does really good when the ram is full. I think I was just reading windows 10 had compressed ram also. It's probably similar in concept. But it sounds like it has it for all ram. So, I'm assuming linux was behind on this one. Assuming how that normally goes.

[mcwaffles2003]

3 minutes ago, Arugela said:

The compressed swap was something added to linux. It happens automatically. I used to have no swap then after an update i had swap and now my ram never goes above about 14gb. The rest is the actual swap file. It does really good when the ram is full. I think I was just reading windows 10 had compressed ram also. It's probably similar in concept. But it sounds like it has it for all ram. So, I'm assuming linux was behind on this one. Assuming how that normally goes.

None the less, relying on swap space is a terrible idea for gaming. Close out all your other stuff running so your computer won't utilize it. If that game is, that is certainly a bottleneck

Edited March 6, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Mutex]

6 hours ago, Jason_25 said:

New memory generations increase the bandwidth and lower the power consumption but always increase the latency.  So the way I see it the newer generations are more a manufacturer advantage than consumer advantage.

Just pointing out the latency is measured in cycles, not units of time. So as memory gets faster, the length of a cycle gets shorter, hence the latency becomes a higher number of cycles. Memory isn't getting slower

[severedsolo]

On 3/5/2023 at 4:19 AM, Arugela said:

Also linux via proton. Not sure how much extra performance loss

Significant. On the same hardware (i5-9400, RTX 2060 for reference) I'm getting 30FPS (ish) on Windows, and a grand total of 4 on Proton (GE-50 but Experimental is no different)

[SimonTheSkink]

@ArugelaFor those suggesting that you get a new GPU, don't. Your CPU is def the largest bottleneck here. In fact it's such a large bottleneck that you are losing nearly 20fps and 30% performance with your current GPU. So getting a new GPU won't do anything since your current CPU is kneecapping your video card you already have.

Side note, I design computers as a hobby. If you want a list of parts at the best cost/price ratio please send me a DM.

Edited March 6, 2023 by SimonTheSkink

[mcwaffles2003]

7 hours ago, Mutex said:

Just pointing out the latency is measured in cycles, not units of time. So as memory gets faster, the length of a cycle gets shorter, hence the latency becomes a higher number of cycles. Memory isn't getting slower

Yeah but typically as speed doubles so does CAS latency (there is no CL14 DDR5), making time latencies very similar between generations does it not? Im not heavily educated in this department but isn't bandwidth the real difference generation to generation here?

[Mutex]

1 minute ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Yeah but typically as speed doubles so does CAS latency (there is no CL14 DDR5), making time latencies very similar between generations does it not? Im not heavily educated in this department but isn't bandwidth the real difference generation to generation here?

Yeah I think latency tends to pretty much stay the same, not an expert though.