Part count or specific parts that make PC slow

[phemark]

Hi,

I noticed (well, this is to be expected) that a rocket with ~50 parts are easily rendered and with high FPS. However, when I fly rocket with ~150 parts, it slows down my pc quite a bit (mobile 1st gen i7 + 5870m + 8gb ram).

I wanted to ask, if all the parts have the same influence on the game engine. Is one tank causing the same loss of performance as one solar panel? Or maybe struts cause a lot of trouble?

Basically, please share anything regarding increasing performance in the ascend stage? And which parts to use the least, if they are known for big performance loss.

Thanks

[Benoit Hage]

Hello Phemark.

I have a six years old laptop so i think i can help.

First of all, decrease the texture size and the rendering quality in the config menu of KSP. Also, avoid using any anti-aliasing multiplication. If you still want to increase performance, you can also set de max physics Delta-Time per Frame a bit slower. (i'm around 0.10 per second if i'm correct)

Then, you can use the Kerbal Joint Reinforcement plugin. It helped my poopy laptop a lot to less compute about the joints that link parts together. I can easily go above 150 parts per rockets without too much performances loss. An other useful plugin, but it is still on 'work in progress' is Ubiozur Welding part. It merges differents parts as one. Very useful for building stations/bases that use a lot of structural parts.

Also, avoid using plugins that do the same thing: for instance Mechjeb, Flight engineer and VOID. Somehow it also helped my game a lot.

Lastly, but i'm not sure about this one, I think that muting the music helped me getting rid of those 5/10 sec long lags and those .exe crashing due to a lack of memory.

As for the part beeing more demanding on performance, I would say that they are all the same... maybe not engines... But that's just an opinion and not a verified fact.

I hope it helps.

Happy launching!

[Nuke]

any time when you have multiple docking ports holding something together.

[phemark]

Thanks for tips Benoit.

any time when you have multiple docking ports holding something together.

This might be it. I had my station as main payload, but on top of it I had a Minmus lander attached by docking port and two struts. So for better performance, it would have beet better to attach this lander by normal separator?

[Tinyboss]

Thanks for tips Benoit.

This might be it. I had my station as main payload, but on top of it I had a Minmus lander attached by docking port and two struts. So for better performance, it would have beet better to attach this lander by normal separator?

Three struts might be a good idea, too (assuming the two struts are in a line with the docking port--if not, then ignore this). You need three for rigidity in all directions.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Since nobody has said anything, I'm going to drop this piece of info here:

You have 8GB, but unless you use Linux (which I assume you don't) you can only use around 3.8GB of RAM for KSP. This is because the Windows and Mac versions of the game are 32 bit due to stability issues in 64 bit, while the Linux version is 64 bit.

And to add to the conversation, I'm guessing your graphics card is the issue. What was the laptop designed to do?

[rkman]

You need three for rigidity in all directions.

That would be true i real life, in ksp a strut connecting two parts just tells those parts to move less wrt one another, regardless of the exact attachment location of the strut.

[phemark]

Since nobody has said anything, I'm going to drop this piece of info here:

You have 8GB, but unless you use Linux (which I assume you don't) you can only use around 3.8GB of RAM for KSP. This is because the Windows and Mac versions of the game are 32 bit due to stability issues in 64 bit, while the Linux version is 64 bit.

And to add to the conversation, I'm guessing your graphics card is the issue. What was the laptop designed to do?

Well, my laptop is gaming Asus G73 (intel i7 q720 and radeon 5870m). I personally think that CPU is the limiting factor and not the GPU, therefore I think that all the calculations decrease my fps. (If I press F2, I get some increase in fps).

So what are the most CPU intensive tasks? (Probably everything is very CPU dependent, but maybe there are several, that tops this?)

I'll try not to use docked parts while ascending, and connect parts using separators, as someone suggested.

[X-SR71]

And would also like to know how to improve performance as the part count goes up. My GPU is fine, but my limitation is my CPU, and it doesn't like my 670+ parts rocket which I spent a day designing..

[Rus-Evo]

Does anyone know the answer to his question whereby some parts create more issue than others?

Another fix could be low graphics for launch and transit, and then turn the graphics back up for your smaller ship arriving and then lander landing.

[TheExplosionist]

Turbojets are probably the worst FPS part.