Unfixable performance issues. Tried everything - Who has suggestions? - Might be inadequate cpu limitation

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alt3rn1ty
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Re: Unfixable performance issues. Tried everything - Who has suggestions?

Post by alt3rn1ty » Sun, 10. Mar 19, 16:33

Skoomer wrote:
Sun, 27. Jan 19, 22:06
CBJ wrote:
Sun, 27. Jan 19, 21:23
Just so that you are aware, your CPU is actually somewhat below even the minimum requirement for X4. Since the game is normally CPU-bound, the performance you are seeing is actually better than I would have expected. Note that the CPU utilisation numbers reported by Windows are not a particularly good measure of what is actually limiting performance.
Thanks for the answer! I am aware that my CPU is below the minimum although I was trusting the Winodws measurements and given that it overclocks to 3.20GHz I thought the issue would be somewhere else. But maybe that's just it!
@Skoomer - Your CPU is actually quite decent, it has a Max Turbo Frequency of 3.6ghz - https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 3-ghz.html

Turbo should kick in automatically when its needed - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost

If your Cores are only running at 50% your CPU is definitely not the bottleneck, if they were they would be up at 100% and getting your machine very hot.

Does your machine have any special background service, similar to MSI's Dragon Gaming Centre, which has settings that use words like "Sports Mode". MSI explain it on their website and the description is pretty much the same as the wikipedia link I gave above, ie its really custom settings for power and Turbo Boost behaviour, using the Intel API to kick in Turbo Boost when the system needs it. I have mine set to High Performance (which is a Power plan giving the machine more on demand juice) and the Shift Mode is set at Sports mode for playing games, and otherwise have it in Comfort mode. Although I have had my I7 in Comfort mode playing X4 before and have no issues with the games performance, Turbo Boost kicks in adequately enough, but then I do have a more recent I7.

Anyway just a thought, it may be something which is set by default at Green / ECO mode or whatever your machines vendor has used with its control apps

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reanor
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Re: Unfixable performance issues. Tried everything - Who has suggestions? - Might be inadequate cpu limitation

Post by reanor » Mon, 11. Mar 19, 16:38

Skoomer wrote:
Sat, 26. Jan 19, 04:55
I know this is a rather common issue but I also know that a lot of people were able to solve it. Unfortunately no suggestion so far has helped me. I play with 8-15fps on stations, 20fps on the map and when I'm lucky 30-40fps in space. It's playable but it's a pain.

My system
  • GTX 980ti
  • Intel i7 870 2.93GHz (Quad Core)
  • 16GB RAM (DDR3)
  • Windows 10
  • Resolution 3840x2160
  • Using an Samsung SSD for this game.
  • Playing the Steam version
  • I have 3 Monitors connected but only use my main 4k one for gaming.
....
https://thebottlenecker.com/calculator

Average bottleneck percentage: 48.41%

*This result is based on average CPU and GPU usage from different programs and games. It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications. This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software enviroments. Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker than as helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components.

Your processor is too weak for this GPU.
Core i7-870 (Clock speed at 100%) with GeForce GTX 980 Ti (Clock speed at 100%) x1 will produce 48.41% of bottleneck. Everything over 10% is considered as bottleneck. We recommend you to replace Core i7-870 with Core i7-8750H
“The dark and the light, they exist side by side." ... “It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars."

Anhk-Khaelgorn
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Joined: Fri, 20. Dec 13, 09:57
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Re: Unfixable performance issues. Tried everything - Who has suggestions? - Might be inadequate cpu limitation

Post by Anhk-Khaelgorn » Mon, 11. Mar 19, 21:14

Still, there are some problems with game's optimization.

I have about 70FPS in open space and 1-4FPS on a map (with SETA). And the game consumes about 25% of my CPU. Settings are medium @1920x1080

In comparison: I have around 45-50FPS with the Ultra settings @1920x1080 when I play 'Metro Exodus'. And the CPU utilization is around 70-80%.

Hope, this thing is fixable.
AMD FX 8320e @4000MHz, 32Gb RAM, Gigabyte RX580 8Gb (Drv: 19.2.2), Windows 8.1 x64.

reanor
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Joined: Thu, 23. Oct 03, 01:39
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Re: Unfixable performance issues. Tried everything - Who has suggestions? - Might be inadequate cpu limitation

Post by reanor » Tue, 19. Mar 19, 17:00

You're comparing apples with nuts here... 8) Metro Exodus is a shooter, it doesn't have background calculations that X4 runs non-stop. The way bottleneck happens in your case - data goes from the Hard Drive to RAM, then GPU and CPU. If you have a bottleneck that is created by CPU, the data is not processed efficiently enough, which results in FPS drops on your map in cases where CPU cycles are prioritized. Game sends more data to your CPU than it can chew. You have a smooth fps in Exodus because the amount of data that is sent to CPU and GPU is not as large as what the X4 does on constant basis.

You can't really use SETA to justfiy your frames per second on the map. First of all, when you run SETA you increase the number of calculations done in background. Second - on SETA you have a lot more data being streamed to both CPU and GPU because with the time increase, everything else increases times the speed of SETA. X4 has quite steep requirements in the first place, especially on the processor level. The official recommended CPU for X4 is i7 6700K, your PC unfortunately is only good for minimum requirements, and when you do SETA, you pretty much bring your PC to a crowl. In other words, you can run X4, but don't expect very good performance on high graphics settings and even if you drop them to Low because of the lack in processig power, you may still get low fps often, especially with SETA running anywhere near any kind of 3D objects. If you go to a completely empty space, your game will run much better and of course your SETA will run much better.

Then again, I don't believe even the devs themselves know the real extent of the recommended PC settings for their game. Because of how much stuff going on and the whole AI galaxy is being constantly processed in real time, people with even high end PCs, in some situations, don't have as high FPS as they want. Imagine an MMO server that constantly runs and processes all the NPCs, players, items, objects. The X4 game engine, is pretty much an MMO server, except it's a single player world, where NPCs never sleep, all their ships, stations, moves, trades, fights, etc... being processed in real time by your PCs CPU and GPU. So you need a really juicy PC, almost as powerful as a server, to run it all constantly with very good FPS. And as closer you get to the late game, as worse performance may become, since the number of all the units mentioned above will increase multiple times.
“The dark and the light, they exist side by side." ... “It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars."

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