Huge frame drop in menus

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I've recently come back to the game pretty much since release and bought all the expansions. In space, I get a nice 60+fps, stations a usable 30fps but when menus open, anywhere, it plummets to under 20fps. This is not exclusive to the map, either. Its all.
I dont remember this being a problem before but my system hasn't changed since then. I've just updated bios as per the performance suggestions thread and that's made no difference. I've played around with different settings and that also makes no difference.

It seems odd to me that opening any menu has that much impact on performance.

No mods, most recent version (fully up to date on steam). About 1 hour into the Terran start with the Rapier so basically untouched game.


I can't add dxdiag or vulkaninfo since there is no attach file button on here and pasting the contents either puts this over the character limit...

[CBJ]

As explained in the first thread at the top of the forum, you can either upload your DXDiag or vulkaninfo to a reputable file-hosting site and provide a link, or you can split their contents across multiple posts.

A savegame, similarly uploaded to a file-hosting site, would probably also help a lot in this case.

How much opening a menu affects performance will very much depend on which menu it is. The map, for example, can be extremely complex and make a big difference, especially if you have a lot of map info options enabled and zoom out a long way.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I made a google drive folder with Vulkan info, Dxdiag and the save file.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Hopefully that works.

Edit and no, as I said its not limited to the map. Those starting sectors are very sparse anyway, and it really is any menu. Even the smallest one for the ship commands like get up/modes/deploy/etc. I hit enter to bring that up and instant 20fps or lower.

[Alan Phipps]

You can certainly update your Nvidia graphics driver and hence also Vulkan - see if that helps at all.

Also I personally would disable the ASUS Xonar sound device and its elderly non-WHQL driver if you don't really use them. ASUS Xonar has seen issues with X games in the past and they are pretty poor at updating their sound driver as OS and devices evolve.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

Updated graphics and disabled xonar, restarted, no change.

[Alan Phipps]

Just an innocent question but have you ever tried to adjust the Vulkan Environment yourself?

A previous thread reporting quite similar symptoms turned out to be the result of the user activating Vulkan validation layers as a trial and the issue was resolved by disabling VK_INSTANCE_LAYERS again. (Please just respond to the question above rather than trying any changes to Vulkan yourself as that could make things even worse.)

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

No I have never touched that stuff

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I've deleted and reinstalled the game, upped my ram speed (to DOCP standard preset), and disabled FSR and anti-aliasing which seems to have got me some more (5 to 10) fps in most scenarios. Menus still drop to 30 or lower and I just had a crash when trying to open the map. I added the DMP file (crash dump?) to the google drive folder, might be unrelated but unsure.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

So my problem persists no matter what mix of settings I try. The moment I open any menus my FPS plummets, which is quite annoying in a game where you spend so much time in them.

I've tried another start, the Avarice start with a freighter to see if it was something going on in that part of the universe but nope, still drops to 20 or lower.

[Imperial Good]

Try updating graphic drivers and running 1 display only in case there is some issue with the multiple displays.

While playing check temperatures of CPU and GPU that they are not throttling. Check that your CPU is hitting roughly the boost performance you would expect.

Although fist generation Ryzen is more than capable of running X4 it will not have the best performance compared with later Ryzen generations or intel processors of the time. This might be more noticeable if you are running all DLCs so the universe simulation is more complex.

My suggestion is to disable map overlay you do not need. Allied and faction order overlays are very demanding and have been known to cause single digit frame rates. If performance is still an issue consider pausing X4 while using the map view, this helps with older or less powerful CPUs so might be relevant in this case.

[tarte]

I have a similar issue.

Can you confirm that the bug also happens when you hover (but not click) the little icon in the top center of the screen in pilot mode? If that's the case then it's not a rendering issue and we're experiencing the same bug.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I didnt notice anything on hover, but I can confirm it happens even on contextual menus, however not on the main menu before loading a save. Buttery 90fps+ there.

Drivers are up to date now. Temps are okay. I've also tried windowed mode, no improvement.

Map filters do nothing, and the framerate drop is the same no matter which menu is open.

[user1679]

I can confirm the following frame drops:

1. With map open - In general my FPS drops to 23 (from around 50) even if I'm the only one in the sector
2. When a ship icon appears in space - If I sit long enough in deep space, a ship will eventually fly by. When they get close enough for their bracket and icon to appear in space, I lose about 10 fps
3. When I click on a ship to bring up its info window

I have a GTX 1050 Ti with the "latest" driver. I have tried many combinations of gfx settings / gpu settings and nothing changes these frame drops. This did not occurr in 4.x version of X4,
this seems like an issue with Vulkan processing overlays. I was able to "fix" it by installing an updated Vulkan but that made my GPU driver unstable so I had to roll that back but the GPU
uses older Vulkan with older drivers so the issue came back.

[CBJ]

Just to be clear about this, some drop in performance with more UI elements on the screen is inevitable, and the same applies to the menus. With the map open, the effect can be quite considerable as the game has a lot more to do. Jumping in with "oh yes, my framerate drops when I open menus" is not providing supporting evidence for the more serious issue being reported by a couple of people here. And if you are reporting any issue, doing so without DXDiag and vulkaninfo files is not helping at all.

[user1679]

Just to be clear about this, some drop in performance with more UI elements on the screen is inevitable, and the same applies to the menus. With the map open, the effect can be quite considerable as the game has a lot more to do. Jumping in with "oh yes, my framerate drops when I open menus" is not providing supporting evidence for the more serious issue being reported by a couple of people here. And if you are reporting any issue, doing so without DXDiag and vulkaninfo files is not helping at all.

Yes, I also think this is more of a problem with legacy Nvidia drivers and their Vulkan implementation. I can play other
games such as Endless Space which has considerably more UI elements than X4 but that doesn't use Vulkan and I don't
experience the same slowdown.

Of course it's not a perfect comparison but it does supply a bit of context for Nvidia users. That, and manually upgrading
the Vulkan drivers improves performance, if you don't accidentally make your system unstable. It took me a long time
to arrive at a stable combination of legacy driver / Vulkan but I don't typically share it because it is a messy process
and I had to reinstall Windows while I was trying to figure it out

[tarte]

Cross-Posting this in this thread as well, because it might help you: I have found a workaround for this bug that works for me. Try opening the UI by clicking on a "navigational console" on the M class or larger ships.

You can access any menu from this console as long as you sit down. This improves performance from 30-35 FPS to 45-50 FPS for me, even if the exact same stuff is rendered. As soon as I stand up (CTRL+D without closing the UI) the FPS worsen significantly.