How to squeeze more performance out of KSP?

[xandalis]

Alright, so I haven't seen anything on this (I'm sure I'm not the first to ask though)... My current rig is running on a Phenom x6 1045T 2.7Ghz, has 8 gigs of ddr3 10666 RAM, and Radeon HD 6750. OS is Win7 Ultimate 64. Any suggestions on how to get KSP to use these resources more effectively, or am I going to be stuck with stuttery performance?

Edited June 9, 2013 by xandalis
Got some answeres

[UmbralRaptor]

What mods do you have installed? Some have issues with 0.20.x, and can greatly reduce performance.

Graphics-wise, turning down terrain detail can have a large effect. Though it may be worth trying all of them.

[Lolbster]

First thing I thought "Man, I have almost the same rig as this guy. Awesome." I'm a tier up from you on CPU and GPU, and I often have some slow down here and there as well.

Terrain detail was the first thing to go for me. Huge lag thing there. Though in all honesty, you might just not be building your rockets sturdy enough. The more there is to move, the laggier it gets. Consider that before you go about nerfing your experience.

[Guest]

I went through this last week with aviation lights. I tried every trick I could think of to get more performance out of this machine :

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6YckDD54-HWUUZhVEpENFZuYjA/edit

This reply from Deadweasel may help you :

Yeah, seems like the card in that machine really isn't happy to be playing that game at all. IIRC, you only had 64MB of physical RAM on that card, with more being offered via memory sharing. That doesn't say good things about the card's probable capability for 3D applications.

Sorry, I wish I had some miracle cure to offer, but it seems like you're running right at the very edge of that system's performance envelope.

There is, however, some tweaking you can try! Go check out Razer Game Booster (yes, *that* Razer). You can set it up so that when you launch KSP through it, it kills unnecessary processes and effects to free up as much performance as possible.

Here's what I usually set when gaming:

• Turn off transparency and window animation effects
  
• Turn off drive indexing
  
• Turn off all system tray applications, except for basic services like sound control panel, antivirus and mouse drivers
  
• Disable just about every other non-critical app and service that Game Booster recommends
  

The nice thing about GB is that if you set all this up to trigger when you launch the game from it, when you exit the game again, it re-loads/enables everything you had it set to kill.

Maybe that will help you scratch a few more frames out of that old nag of a machine of yours.

[xandalis]

@UmbralRaptor: All mods I run are (supposedly) 20.2 compatible and/or only for 20.2, as far as I know. current list: kethane, KAS, B9, KW, RemoteTech, Spherical Tanks, Crew Manifest, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Lack Luster Labs, Hooligan Labs (minus SQUID), Romfarer's Lazors (plus weaponry&robotic arms, the weaponry for de-Kesslerizing my LKO zone), I've got Hakari's spacejunks (love the deadweights for testing), and I recently dumped the dev build of MapSat because I was starting to have many problems from that. I may be missing a few items on this list, though very few of my deigns include parts from all mods at once. Mostly I build stock and use mods to fill the gaps in parts/functionality. I expect ships that are mod-heavy to be a bit harder on my system even on a good day.

@Lolbster: Yeah, I've dropped terrain detail, unless I'm going for pretty screenshots.

@Otis: Thanks, I'll check that out, see if it helps.

It's kind of frustrating though. I know my rig isn't bleeding edge, but it's also no slacker, usually technically exceeds most "recommended specs" on games by a long shot, or at least meets them. Though in fairness, some of my problems may not be computer-related at all, but power-grid related. The local grid around here is a bit dated, and I doubt I'm getting anywhere near a constant 110-115 VAC at the wall. Might have to look into getting an APU that also includes a filter.

Also, I should note that my rig isn't off-the-shelf. Built it from parts, desktop, so at least I don't have to worry about that annoying "My video card says it has 4Gb of memory... oh wait, 3.5 of that is virtual/actually co-opting system RAM..." Though, then again, I've noticed that very few 32 bit apps/games can actually make full use of the hardware.

Anyway, thanks for the info guys, I'll switch this over to Answered, and check out the Game Booster. I'll post back with the "results" of that after some food and DW.

[Awaras]

Have you tried lowering the ocean surface detail as described here?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/32366-Lowest-settings-cfg-in-0-20

This helps if you get relatively decent performance when out in space, but really low fps when launching from Kerbin.

[UmbralRaptor]

64MB of physical RAM on that card

In a modern computer? o_O

The Radeon X300 in my ancient (2005) P4 has 128 MB, and the FireGL v7200 (CAD version of a Radeon X1800) on my slightly less old (2006?) KSP box has 256 MB.

[xandalis]

So, messing around with the RGB now, and wow. Major jump compared to before. I'm actually getting a fairly descent FPS now (comparatively), about 4-5 on one of my ~700ish part SHLLVs as a test launch. Before I was getting maybe 2-3 fps. Not a huge boost in numbers, but we ARE talking about something that's happening x-times per second. Much like that huge difference between one NERVA and two on a ship's acceleration. So, sweet, worth it for me. Can't wait to see how much smoother my sub-500 part builds run after this.