Mission Timer is ALWAYS Yellow

[DSM92]

I know there are other thread regarding this but none of them were conclusive or offered any insight into the problem(That I have found).

Some people complain about there mission timers flickering yellow every so often, But I would be happy if it stayed green for more then 3 seconds- My mission time is never green. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, Pre-launch at the pad, flying through atmosphere, in orbit around kerbin or it's Moons, Landed on it's moons, Interplanetery Space... you get the Idea. I can understand alot of yellow at launch and atmospheric flight, but not in space. Even then I can understand some yellow in space near a large station. But With a Munar lander on decent or a small probe around Kerbol, that's just ridiculous. I realize I'm being a little verbose, but I wanted you to understand the nature of the issue. P.s. yellow timer usually ranges from 1.5x normal to nearly 3x normal.

So in a last ditch effort to figure out why the game is running so slowly, I came here

SO let me give you the run down...

I'm Using 0.23

I have almost all my game graphics settings turned almost all the way down, including persistent debris(50 but I never allow that many to accumulate). The only one I don't have turned down is (The setting that I can't remember the name of) because I was clipping through the surface on lower settings.

My Addons Include:

BoulderCo (Texture Compressor Agressive)

MechJeb (I can understand some yellow issues with this one)

Crew Manifest

Keramzit Procedural Fairings

LTech (Adds some more science parts, like pictures and radiowave studies)

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Here are My computers Spec's

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

Processor: AMD A4-3300M APU with Radeon HD Graphics, 1900mhz, 2 cores, 2 logical Processors

RAM: 4gb

Total Physical Memory: 3.5gb

Available Phys-Mem: 1.8 (I have several tabs open at the moment)

Total Virtual Memory: 6.9gb

Available Virt-Mem: 3.5gb

If there's anything else I'm missing let me know. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!

Edited February 6, 2014 by DSM92

[DSM92]

One more thing, More of a question rather.

Can I increase game speed by disconnecting from the internet and shutting down some of the major services designed for internet usage like antivirues and HP Connection Manager?

[KerbMav]

I read somewhere about dedicating one processor core to KSP exclusively - other then that: sure, less software running in the background has always freed up resources for other programs.

During launch and in low orbit over Kerbin I too "get the yellow" - especially during launch of big rockets until a few stages are gone and with the ocean visible ...

[Dave Kerbin]

While the GPU and RAM is just fine, your CPU is barely making the minimum requirements for KSP, and KSP is much more CPU dependent then GPU dependent. The yellow MET means that that there is not enough CPU power to complete the physics calculations on time, slowing down the game.

The A4-3300M is designed to compete with Intel's Atom line (which are now rebranded as Pentiums) and as such is very far back in terms of CPU performance despite being a new processor. It's designed for low cost and low power usage, with a decent integrated GPU to help with things like 1080p video playback. For reference on CPU performance, the dual core A4-3300M is roughly the same as my old AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4200+ which I bought in 2006 and replaced 2 years ago after the power supply blew up. Of course there is a big price difference (the 4200+ was top of the line for AMD when it was new) and the A4 uses just a third of the wattage to deliver the same performance plus a GPU.

A super budget laptop just isn't going to play KSP as well as even a mid range system. You can do a few things to improve performance. Turning off the anti-virus can help if it is something like Norton or McAfee, though others like Microsoft Security Essentials are normally only using CPU when it is actually needed. Turning off the internet is probably not going to help unless there is some other piece of software we don't know about. In the Kerbal settings you can adjust the maximum physics frame delta to 0.1 to improve performance. This will make the physics a little less stable if you are creating massive 400-500 part launchers, but with your CPU you can't really do those well anyway.

[Raptor831]

One thing to make note of is that KSP's bottleneck is always the CPU. All of the physics are done on the CPU, and it doesn't support multi-cores well (or at all) right now. Blame Unity on that. Anything you can do to free up CPU cycles will help, though how much depends on your specific setup.

[DSM92]

I only suggested closing because I do not want my internet connected at all if I shut down my anti-virus, which did help. I can achieve a steady green timer in certain low-load situations, which is a huge improvement relatively. and the Yellow time seems to be reduced steady at 1.5x, rather then jumping higher. I also tried pushing my Physics frame delta up.

According to Dave, my biggest problem is my CPU. Are CPU's something easily installed/replaced? I'm not entirely tech savvy but I do know how to take this computer apart and put it back together- I've done it a few times to clean out dust and she still works! xD

Edit: I'm down to 2.18gRam while running in high load situations, is that Decent?

Edited February 5, 2014 by DSM92
P.s.c ommentary

[Dave Kerbin]

Ram won't be a problem and doesn't sound like it is.

Replacing a CPU is possible in almost all desktops and in some laptops, and though it is possible by someone with no experience I wouldn't recommend it, especially on a laptop where it requires taking apart a fair bit of the machine and must be reassembled to within very small tolerarances.

However in your case I don't think there is any point in trying. Inside your laptop I think you probably have a motherboard with an FS1 socket which the CPU is plugged into. Only AMD's low powered CPUs fit into this socket and the A4-3300M is one of the fastest in this category. You could possibly gain about 5% more performance but at a huge amount of difficultly and the faster CPU has a TDP of 45 watts compared to 35 for the A4-3300M. In a laptop this difference could either overload or melt something if it wasn't designed to also handle the higher output part.

If you knew the name and model number of your computer it might be possible to give you a more exact answer.

[DSM92]

I have an Hp Pavillion g2 Notebook PC. Is there a good place to look for what I can fit, like a website?

[Mobjack]

If it is always in the yellow then the problem is with your GPU. The CPU bottleneck occurs when building big ships, but if even a a 20 part ship lags, then it is your graphics.

Literally set the settings to the lowest detail possible. I play with the terrain settings set to low, and while there is some clipping, it doesn't affect my gameplay. It is worth it to turn it down because it is the biggest killer of frame rates for me.

Edited February 6, 2014 by Mobjack

[DSM92]

I was reluctant to reduce terrain down because I have heard stories about Kerbals blowing up after touching a ship while clipping through the surface. The Funny thing is, I decided to Ramp up all setting and see what it was like. Space center view was choppy as hell, atmosphereic flight was nearly 4x normal, but peculiarly, While in orbit and facing away from kerbin, I had the best performance I've ever seen.

Anyways, Now your telling my cpu AND gpu are crap? I won't say it's the worst thousand buck's ive ever spent but, it is slightly Frown-inducing

[Specialist290]

One other setting you might want to play around with is the Max Physics Delta-Time per Frame slider under the General settings. If my understanding of what that slider does is correct, then it determines how frequently / intensively the physics engine runs its calculations. Moving it further to the left (and thus decreasing the number of calculations per frame) might give you better overall performance (at the expense of slightly less accurate physics).

EDIT: Noticed you already tried that. Forgive me for failing a spot check

[vexx32]

Some users have said that having the Delta Time slider at around 0.05 works best, but I'm fairly sure it depends on the system.

I think I saw someone suggest that you could edit the settings.cfg to get rid of the ocean lag -- that's a viable option, and you kind of have two choices. If you don't want graphical artifacts, just lower that MinDistance setting, but only on the Ocean blocks in the settings.cfg. It'll improve laggy situations without making the ocean look too off. However, there will be situations where your craft appears to be either floating above or below the water's visible surface. If you can tolerate graphical artifacts (I think they're often very odd in Kerbin orbit), then you can lower the Min/MaxSubdivision variables as well for extra performance boost.

Some other things that will help is reducing the Texture Resolution setting, bringing down the Render Quality slider (though if it's any lower than... the fourth setting from the left, I think, shadows will stop working properly), turning off all Anti-aliasing in KSP (often you can force AA with your graphics card's built in software, which usually works better than KSP's AA anyway), and if you're really desperate, you can give KSP.exe a higher priority... but whatever you do, don't ever set it to Realtime; High is as high as you should go. For a program like KSP, attempting to run it in realtime could easily halt your OS's processes and break something really badly. (You'll need to go via Task Manager to do this. If it works, you'll have to look around for a way to keep it permanently set for KSP, otherwise you'll need to set the priority every time you run KSP.

[Pecan]

If you've still got a copy around 0.22 performs much better on low-end machines than 0.23. Until today, when I just decided I had to bite the bullet, I've been doing everything in 0.22 for that reason. It's essential to take vexx's advice about the ocean bug lag to get any acceptable performance out of 0.23 though.

[As I've said before, my graphics card doesn't even meet the minimum system requirements, so I can't complain - old nVidia 8300].

[Vanamonde]

Just so we're covering all possibilities, how many parts does your ship have?

[Mobjack]

I was reluctant to reduce terrain down because I have heard stories about Kerbals blowing up after touching a ship while clipping through the surface. The Funny thing is, I decided to Ramp up all setting and see what it was like. Space center view was choppy as hell, atmosphereic flight was nearly 4x normal, but peculiarly, While in orbit and facing away from kerbin, I had the best performance I've ever seen.

Anyways, Now your telling my cpu AND gpu are crap? I won't say it's the worst thousand buck's ive ever spent but, it is slightly Frown-inducing

I only had real issues about clipping through the surface landing on Eve, but that planet has the highest gravity. I landed on every other planet with no problem. Sometimes my Kerbal will sink down to his waist on Kerbin's grasslands, but he still survives. If you are concerned, quicksave before landing.

The one graphic setting you might want to set higher is the render quality to good. Lower rendering settings don't display your shadow at a distance which makes it hard to gauge your distance landing.

Most laptops are crap for running games. They are designed more for portability than gaming, but you usually can make the games playable if you set the setting down. I play KSP on a Mac Mini with integrated graphics and still have fun.

I don't know how bad your CPU is but it shouldn't be an issue with small ships. The way physics scales, every time you double your ship parts, you need 4x the processing power which creates a big bottleneck for the huge complex ships, but it also means that any old thing can render something small.

[DSM92]

Just so we're covering all possibilities, how many parts does your ship have?

My biggest Ship is 130 parts.

I'll give the ocean bit a try, thank for all the suggestions guys!

[KerbMav]

Would the aggressive version of this mod also enhance performance in the game?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs!

Sometimes my Kerbal will sink down to his waist on Kerbin's grasslands,

Would actually be a cute feature in the grasslands ...

[ComradeAlex]

Hi, I've been having this problem but only come across it when I built my first Mun base. 1 hitchhiker hab (about 12 parts), 1 kethane drill (9 parts), 1 rover and a flag and when I EVA out of the hab yellow MET/Warp bar and it becomes impossible to conduct an EVA?! I WANNA MINE KETHANE! AND LAY MILES OF PIPE!

I don't know how to attach a report? I'm new to forums despite being on the internet since 1996... So here is the my basic system spec.

------------------

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 5/16/2014, 22:20:10

Machine name: Unit 02

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.140303-2144)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: System manufacturer

System Model: System Product Name

BIOS: BIOS Date: 09/21/11 09:57:17 Ver: 06.02

Processor: AMD FX-4100 Quad-Core Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.6GHz

Memory: 8192MB RAM

Available OS Memory: 8174MB RAM

Page File: 3075MB used, 13271MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 11

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

User DPI Setting: Using System DPI

System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)

DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled

DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 64bit Unicode

[phoenix_ca]

Would the aggressive version of this mod also enhance performance in the game?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs!

Absolutely not. That will not help with a CPU bottleneck at all.

Also regarding replacing your CPU: There is a damn good reason low power CPUs have different sockets than their high-wattage desktop brethren, and it's to prevent just that. Even if you could shove a higher wattage CPU into your laptop, you'd do irreparable damage. For one, the motherboard wasn't designed to deliver the power required, so it might not even start. If it did start, it would damage itself within seconds and you'd have a ruined CPU because of heat dissipation problems. I'm not kidding when I say that an improperly cooled CPU can kill itself in seconds.

Replacing your CPU isn't an option. Unfortunately in this case if you want to see any really big gains at this time in performance with KSP, you'll need to get (or build) a desktop. It sucks but thems the breaks. Settings tweaking will only get you so far.

Though on the plus side, you can build a respectable mini-ITX gaming PC for about $1,000. Less even, depending on parts. (But NEVER EVER EVER skimp on the PSU. EVER.)

Most of this is still a moot point though until Unity 5 is released and KSP is updated to it, and physics multithreading is a thing. Until then, the best way to eke out more performance for KSP on any system is to build a custom liquid cooling loop and overclocking the CPU as much as possible. Hell, I'm running on an i7 (okay, it's from 2011 but that doesn't matter much in this particular case), and it's no slouch, but the fact that Unity 4 can only use a single core for physics in KSP makes it behave like a piece of crap. Given that you only have a two-core processor, I wouldn't expect any significant gains if/when KSP gets updated, unfortunately. Some, but not much.

And Comrade, your problem is completely different. Start a new thread.

Edited May 17, 2014 by phoenix_ca