Bottleneck suggestions (hardware upgrading)

[Neldoroth]

Sup Testies,

I've been experiencing some rather nasty low fps in SC(10-15) and a couple other games, would like to hear your suggestions on what my bottleneck problem could be.

i5 4690K @3,5ghz
Asus Z97-PRO GAMER
4x4GB PC3-14200 HyperX
Geforce GTX 980 Ti 6GB
Samsung EVO 256GB SSD
Corsair GS600 PSU
500mb/500mb Fiber net


Advice appreciated, beers all around!

// Neldo

 

[FeaturedSpace]

So you have 16GB HyperX RAM @Neldoroth ?

I used to have a 1060 and I would get about 15-20 fps on average.. It may be your i5 that's the issue. I have that same model and it can bottleneck your fps easily... But honestly, i can't give you a garunteed answer unless I know what your PSU is, because that can play a major role in the power of your GFX card.

Plus, my network being 100mbps down and 30 ping probably helps my fps quite a bit. If you really are looking to upgrade, I would suggest a new processor. But then again, SC isn't really meant to run well ATM.

Cheers, man! :smile: :beers: :rocket:

 

[Neldoroth]

Sorry! Forgot to include PSU and connection info, edit and updated.

 

[FeaturedSpace]

I'm not seeing any reasons for bottlenecking in here. The only thing I can suggest is patience and wait for the game to come out. Also: If you only have 16gb of RAM you cannot expect to run any other programs while playing SC. Running so much as Google Chrome has dropped framerates before I believe.

 

[Neldoroth]

I usually always have music+chrome running while I game.
Though, several different times, I tried to close every none-essential programs and it didn't give me any fps difference, at all.
Thought about the amount of ram, but I've never experienced using above 12gb'ish.

 

[FeaturedSpace]

I would highly recommend the use of 16+ GB of RAM or else that 980Ti may be kind of useless.

 

[Bambooza]

Geforce GTX 980 Ti 6GB

Still a sweet system but if you want to increase fps then the graphics card would be your best bet. Of course don't expect huge fps improvements in Star Citizen its still all over the place in performance.

 

[FeaturedSpace]

The 980Ti should be getting at least 20fps regardless @Bambooza .. Something is being bottlenecked, but we can't really find it for him :laughing:

I still stand by my point to maybe upgrade processor for hyperthreading. Better networking.

 

[CosmicTrader]

Upgrading the CPU will help.
However, at present SC is very CPU dependent but with 3.2 and 3.3 that will change more to the GPU as it should.
Your GPU is good for now.
In a full instance most people get 15-25 FPS with different systems.
FPS is currently server side problem and CPU heavy.

I biggest suggestion is to run SC in Very High Graphics in Options.
When I had a 650Ti GPU (AMD 6-core CPU) setting SC to Very High gave me a large boost as that was the bottleneck --- CPU not sending data fast enough to the GPU at High or Med.... SC has been optimized to run at Very High (about a year ago).
If you are not running at Very High try that first.
In your user.cfg file you can set it with
sys_spec = 4
(1=Low 2=med 3=High 4=Very High)

 

[FeaturedSpace]

Upgrading the CPU will help.
However, at present SC is very CPU dependent but with 3.2 and 3.3 that will change more to the GPU as it should.
Your GPU is good for now.
In a full instance most people get 15-25 FPS with different systems.
FPS is currently server side problem and CPU heavy.

I biggest suggestion is to run SC in Very High Graphics in Options.
When I had a 650Ti GPU (AMD 6-core CPU) setting SC to Very High gave me a large boost as that was the bottleneck --- CPU not sending data fast enough to the GPU at High or Med.... SC has been optimized to run at Very High (about a year ago).
If you are not running at Very High try that first.
In your user.cfg file you can set it with
sys_spec = 4
(1=Low 2=med 3=High 4=Very High)

Great suggestions Cosmic! I did forget that they optimized the Very High setting and nothing else. :laughing:

What a weird thing to do, anyways... Luckily, they will be fixing up GPU issues soon with 3.3 and 3.4 :smile:

Once again, thanks for your input, which is, as always, welcomed with open beer-full arms.

 

[Deroth]

If you haven't already done so I recommend reviewing this page for system settings changes that you might find beneficial:

http://www.boredgamer.co.uk/2018/04/02/star-citizen-performance-guide-3-1/

This might be beneficial as well for nVidia settings:

https://forums.starcitizenbase.com/topic/9822-nvidia-control-settings/

 

[FeaturedSpace]

@Deroth thanks for posting this. I was looking for that but it appears you got to it first :laughing:

 

[Printimus]

RAM ALL THE THINGS!

 

[FeaturedSpace]

JUST POUR BEER IN THE COMPUTER CASE AND THAT'LL FIX ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS! :laughing:

 

[BUTUZ]

The bottleneck in your system is Star Citizen. :|

 

[Jasum]

There are a bunch of programs that can help identify resource consumption of various components (MSI Afterburner is a popular option for more detailed graphs), but they might require a bit more knowledge to set up. Another more basic option is the built-in Windows Resource Monitor. That can give you some basic idea of what's going on.

For example, my bottleneck is currently CPU which should improve with 3.2 and 3.3. I figured this out by having resource monitor running in a separate window and kept an eye on the CPU tab. This will give you information for how much is being consumed on each Logical processor (which takes hyper-threading into account). Despite the fact that each physical CPU core was only reporting ~60% usage, one logical core was constantly over 90% used. I assume that's where the physics thread was living during that session, and so that's the most likely candidate for what's limiting my performance.

You might find that your GPU is at 100%, or maybe your disk IO is saturated, or maybe your memory is using the page file more than it should. Could be many things.

Tldr: Run Windows Resource monitor while playing SC and take a look at the graphs/percentages to see what's being consumed 100% or close to it. Also pay attention to each logical processor as the average %CPU usage doesn't tell the whole story.

 

[Neldoroth]

I will try ALL your suggestions! (And post results here!) *thanks guys, you're the test.. BEST!*

 

[Beerjerker]

Unplug and plug back in. All the things. And stuff too.
No, seriously, it fixes most things.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

As others have already said it, I can't see anything wrong with you specs, you should be getting 15-25 fps, more on the 20+ side, unless your ping is rather high. Currently, ping/networking directly effects FPS.

If you are on Win10, be sure to turn off the Windows Gaming Overlay and anything you can find that is related to it! This was suggested on the RSI forums and it really helped with some crashing for me.

Kill your real time antivirus, it could be holding back data access speeds and using valuable CPU time for it's own crap.

Chrome is very ram heavy, be sure to kill it before running SC.

For me (4670K, 4x4 gig ram, samsung ssd, gtx1060 6gb, 120mbps net but running through 5ghz AC wifi) framerate in SC PU depends on the server and ping. I've seen 60fps for a few minutes, when the server was fresh and I was the first player to enter, but usually get 24-28fps. I get around 70fps in Arena Commander single player mode though, you should test to see how your PC handles that.

Also, have you checked temperatures?
It could be overheating and throttling back, especially if you get the same kind of slowdowns in other games that should otherwise run well. SpeedFan (simple temp monitoring, fan control, and has built in SMART reader to check your HDD/SSD) and CPUID HWMonitor (detailed hardware monitoring) works pretty well for this, they are free and light enough to run while running SC or other games.

 

[FeaturedSpace]

I still stand by the :beers: suggestion. TEST SQUADRON :: BEST SQAURDON