Mods, why must you be so Cruel?! (Not Moderators)

[CoriW]

(feel free to imagine me saying this in a very desperate, almost crazy state of mind. )

Hello, so I've recently developed a problem.. And I'm not afraid to admit it.

I am addicted to mods!

So the reason I have come to this conclusion is that I have 31 mods currently installed on my KSP, and even with KSP on my custom "Ultra Low" graphics setting it still runs at very sub-optimal framerates.. Currently the framerate is so bad that I get bored of the game within about 10 minutes of starting it up (In perspective it takes about 15 minutes to load!) because even a 40 part ship lags like hell. But at the same time to remove any of these mods causing the issues would wreck my dreams! I don't know what to do... KSP is only using 1.8GB of RAM so I don't have any crashing issues yet.. But the framerate.. It's.. Why?! WHYYY!!!!

Edited November 20, 2013 by CoriW

[Kilmeister]

Get a better PC... feed the addiction.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Um.. CPU/GPU overload?

[CoriW]

Well... My computer is a 5 year old office computer that I've put a Radeon HD 5570 1GB video card into, so not really that great.

But! I can run like a 150 part ship normally with no lag on like the best graphics settings... Stock. With all these mods I've been getting it's now down to a 40 part ship on lower than low graphics settings, it's the mods I'm telling you.

EDIT: I've literally been planning on getting a new computer for like 2 years... But it doesn't help when your monthly expenses are only $20.00 less than what you actually make each month. *fail*

[vetrox]

But it doesn't help when your monthly expenses are only $20.00 less than what you actually make each month. *fail*

Makes you wish you were 15 again with mum and dad buying you expensive stuff for christmas Thats how i feel anyway

[Majiir]

It sounds like you're swapping to disk a lot. More system RAM would help in that case. If you already have 8GB or more, something else is going on.

[Mokmo]

do your ultra-low settings include half-res textures?

your 1.8GB number is pretty low (i run Kosmos, KW, B9 and Nova on reduced textures on the latter 3), so i'm not sure what's taking so much juice.

Maybe your "per core performance" isn't that great and physics struggle to keep up...

[KvickFlygarn87]

Majir! You should know, KSP can only use 3.8GB RAM!

[Dunbaratu]

It sounds like you're swapping to disk a lot. More system RAM would help in that case. If you already have 8GB or more, something else is going on.

A 32-bit program can't use that much ram anyway. Once you've got 4Gb you've already got more than KSP can address.

Now, if you're running KSP and other stuff in the background too, then it can certainly help to have more ram for the other stuff to live in.

[CoriW]

Well, I only have 3GB of RAM on my machine, and my Ultra Low settings are actually using full-res textures, I'll switch that to half-res and see if it helps, but I have some suspicion not even that will save me.

Oh and by the way here's my list of mods if it helps any.

KerbalAlarmClock
Engineer Redux
Protractor
Actions on the Fly
RCS BuildAid
Navball Docking Alignment Indicator
Editor Extensions
MechJeb
Tergetron
ModuleManager
Enhanced Navball
SelectRoot
PreciseNode
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement
GPWS
Kethane
Ferram Aerospace Research
Procedural Fairings
Procedural Dynamics
Kerbal ISP Difficulty Scaler
Deadly Reentry Continued
ECLSS
KerbalAttachmentSystem
StretchySRB
Engine Ignitor
EVA Parachutes
RemoteTech 2
RealChute Parachute Systems
Radial Stack Separator
New SRB Sounds
RocketPowerIndustries Ullage Pack

EDIT: Oh and I have 2 monitors.. 1920x1080, and 1600x900, only use the 1920x1080 for gaming though.

[Majiir]

Majir! You should know, KSP can only use 3.8GB RAM!

See:

Now, if you're running KSP and other stuff in the background too, then it can certainly help to have more ram for the other stuff to live in.

If you have to page virtual memory to disk, you'll take a large performance hit. If you only have 4GB physical RAM, KSP plus other processes can easily blow through that and the game starts living in your page file.

[CoriW]

See:

If you have to page virtual memory to disk, you'll take a large performance hit. If you only have 4GB physical RAM, KSP plus other processes can easily blow through that and the game starts living in your page file.

So, since I only have 3GB of RAM, and KSP is using 1.8GB of RAM, should I try to end all non-critical processes when I play KSP? Oh boy.. This could get messy. *Ends critical process.. Woops..*

EDIT: Just looked at my RAM usage and I'm not playing KSP at the moment; It's 1.9GB / 3.0GB, that probably explains the majority of my problems.

EDIT: So with everything non-critical closed, it's still using 1.25GB / 3.0GB..

Edited November 20, 2013 by CoriW

[Motokid600]

Get more ram. 8gb is the standard. Just because KSP is using only half your total memory its still an unoptimized alpha and can spike to 3.8.

[CoriW]

Get more ram. 8gb is the standard. Just because KSP is using only half your total memory its still an unoptimized alpha and can spike to 3.8.

Can't afford more RAM currently, anyways I've done some tests and have now come to a solution to the problem. It appears that with my system spec's I should not allow KSP to use more than around 1.7GB Physical RAM or it starts to get bogged down, so to solve my issue without removing any mods I simply lowered some graphics settings that I had neglected to pay attention to previously.

Initially I only did the following

Terrain Detail: From "High" to "Ultra Low"

Which got KSP's RAM usage down to about 1.8GB, however when I did the following as well...

Render Quality Level: From "Fantastic" to "Good"
Texture Quality: From "Full Res" to "Half Res"
Frame Limit: From "120 FPS" to "60 FPS"
Pixel Light Count: From "8" to "4"
Shadow Cascades: From "4" to "2"

It further decreased KSP's RAM usage down to around 1.65GB, which is within the safe range for my system.

(Keeping in mind I'm still running all 31 mods I had originally)

Edited November 20, 2013 by CoriW

[KerbMav]

Tried this already?

[CoriW]

Tried this already?

Yeah and oddly enough it really doesn't seem to help too much, probably because I don't have many mods with lots of parts, I typically try to keep mostly to stock parts when I can.

[frizzank]

I have become so addicted to mods that I started making my own and giving them out. I just hope someone stops me before I do something rash. Like hunker down and finally make that Apollo add-on.