Considering hardware purchase to improve performance

[Koben]

@Morbad would disagree with your statement - the one i put emphasis on (bold/yellow)



Oh, Morbad already pointed out that a cpu upgrade prove to be a significant upgrade

You are definitely holding back that RTX3090 with that CPU - at least in Odyssey

1. I'm playing at 4K not 1440 as Morbad, so it is less CPU constricted... also, how much is "significant upgrade"?;
2. I have to find a very specific hight/point to be able to replicate the low FPS whilst hovering at an empty settlement because it seems to be triggering some constant rendering and redraw refreshing, hence the low FPS with CPU temperature spikes (this is why it seems AVX is at play here)... also, I'm reporting the worst cases I've found... normally my on-foot CZ is at 65FPS... but it sometimes briefly drops to a minimum around 40s in some cases, specially in the dark.

3. Now the main point... after Frontier actually fix this mess, the OP might not even need to upgrade his hardware... and if he does think he still needs it, RTX4000 series would be already released, new AMD/Intel CPUs... it would be more than worth to wait another 6-12 months for it.

Bonus point: As performance differs from place to place and a lot of conditions are at play, I was inviting @Rat Catcher to join me on foot somewhere so we can try to figure out how much difference his AMD CPU makes on eating macarronic code... for science!

 

[Koben]

...
I'm completely CPU limited at 1440p Ultra with a reasonably well tuned 5800X and overclocked RX 6800 XT. ...

I'll repeat myself on this matter... it seems that the Cobra engine is not making using of all your available threads at once... this might be the reason you have one of the best CPUs at the moment and still noticing CPU restrain.

Therefore, upgrading your CPU will bring you a limited benefit over a 6700K which is somewhat "old" but has 8 threads (matching what Odyssey will use at once anyhow) and still a very much capable CPU as the OP himself is experiencing with other games.

 

[Morbad]

I'll repeat myself on this matter... it seems that the Cobra engine is not making using of all your available threads at once... this might be the reason you have one of the best CPUs at the moment and still noticing CPU restrain.

Therefore, upgrading your CPU will bring you a limited benefit over a 6700K which is somewhat "old" but has 8 threads (matching what Odyssey will use at once anyhow) and still a very much capable CPU as the OP himself is experiencing with other games.

I'm aware of the general CPU usage patterns of Odyssey; it's something I spent a fair amount of effort analyzing. The current incarnation of the game prefers to have at least six physical cores, but doesn't benefit much at all from more than eight.

A 4c/8t part will likely see meaningful improvement from going to an 6c/12t or 8c/8t part of similar architecture and clock speed.

Once you have six physical cores, the big gains come from making those cores faster. This is why I saw a significant increase in performance when going from my 3900X to 5800X. The latter is Zen 3, which has a roughly 20% IPC advantage in gaming and clocks roughly 10% higher under gaming loads. I saw about a 25% boost in settlement and CZ frame rate from just that CPU swap (both CPUs tuned to the best of my ability).

A sufficiently highly clocked Rocket Lake part should match or best my Vermeer part, and an unlocked Alder Lake (even a 12700K) should blow it out of the water.

You have a Skylake-X and Skylake is starting to show it's age in this game. At 4.5GHz it's a slower gaming part than my 3900X was, and anywhere you see less than maxed out GPU utilization, a newer CPU would help. In fully CPU limited scenarios, I'd expect something like an overclocked 12700K to give you a ~40% boost to frame rate.

That said, at 4k, I would expect you to be predominantly GPU limited, but perhaps not always. I would look for dips in GPU utilization and note where they occur.

 

[Zak Gordon]

Less res? That is something worth trying if the only other option is to think about spenging +£1000 on a top range GPU. Lower your resolution (and don't grumble just because you have a 4K screen etc, be practical).

 

[Morbad]

@LumpTheNoLeggedDog and anyone else who thinks 60+ fps at settlements is somehow impossible:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DTpkcv5ltM


That 1440p Ultra preset, plus no FSR, maxed out terrain work slider, and slightly increased foot FoV (60 to match my ship FoV, rather than the ~54 default). Could have used my custom shadow tables and ultra+ with no change to frame rates as I was never GPU limited at any point in that video...pure CPU limitation with my 5800X bouncing between 4.7 and 4.8GHz.

2. I have to find a very specific hight/point to be able to replicate the low FPS whilst hovering at an empty settlement because it seems to be triggering some constant rendering and redraw refreshing, hence the low FPS with CPU temperature spikes (this is why it seems AVX is at play here)...

Can you give a specific settlement type and altitude for this?

after Frontier actually fix this mess, the OP might not even need to upgrade his hardware... and if he does think he still needs it, RTX4000 series would be already released, new AMD/Intel CPUs... it would be more than worth to wait another 6-12 months for it.

There is no excuse for the game's performance issues and no one with a system that meets recommend specs should have to upgrade anything to get universally smooth performance. However, the reality is that we don't know if the issues the game has will ever be fixed.

I wouldn't personally upgrade for just this game, but I have a pile of crappy UE4 games that are going to be CPU limited until the 2030s at this rate, and a bunch of less crappily produced games that are going to be GPU limited forever. So, I'm upgrading every year anyway and these upgrades will still improve performance in this game.

 

[Koben]

I'm aware of the general CPU usage patterns of Odyssey; it's something I spent a fair amount of effort analyzing. The current incarnation of the game prefers to have at least six physical cores, but doesn't benefit much at all from more than eight.

...

No question my 7820X is starting to age and it shows... but, I can run Cyberpunk 2077 all on Psycho settings (above ultra) and I see my CPU asking for help. Even Fortnite now with Unreal Engine 5 my CPU is actually working very hard! Both in Cyberpunk 2077 and Fortnite, my CPU is constantly above 70% load... and this is very different from the max 25% load I experience in Elite Odyssey.

So, yeah... I agree my CPU is not the best in class by any means... but the main culprit here is the subpar Cobra engine and game coding... we cannot blame PC hardware until Frontier fix their game.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I was inviting @Rat Catcher to join me on foot somewhere so we can try to figure out how much difference his AMD CPU makes on eating macarronic code... for science!

I'll be in the bubble for a week from Monday of next week, perhaps we can get to meet up.

 

[Morbad]

No question my 7820X is starting to age and it shows... but, I can run Cyberpunk 2077 all on Psycho settings (above ultra) and I see my CPU asking for help. Even Fortnite now with Unreal Engine 5 my CPU is actually working very hard! Both in Cyberpunk 2077 and Fortnite, my CPU is constantly above 70% load... and this is very different from the max 25% load I experience in Elite Odyssey.

Yes, these games are all much better threaded than Elite: Dangerous Odyssey, most AAA titles and modern engines are.

So, yeah... I agree my CPU is not the best in class by any means... but the main culprit here is the subpar Cobra engine and game coding... we cannot blame PC hardware until the fix their game.

Assigning blame isn't really my goal and isn't particularly useful. I'm highly critical of the state of the game's performance, but I cannot rewrite the game.

If the question is whether faster hardware can improve Odyssey performance, the answer is objectively and unequivocally yes. Put the right hardware where the game is bottlenecked and the frame rate and smoothness will improve.

Subjectively, I don't think this is cost effective and I certainly don't think it should be required to get the performance that results, but that doesn't change the fact that the performance problems do have an identifiable hardware mitigation.

 

[avow555]

Throwing new hardware at the problem will not resolve the really bad code introduced by Od.

Gross incompetence on fdevs part.

 

[Morbad]

Throwing new hardware at the problem will not resolve the really bad code introduced by Od.

No one has said it will, just that it will run that bad code faster.

 

[Northpin]

So, yeah... I agree my CPU is not the best in class by any means... but the main culprit here is the subpar Cobra engine and game coding... we cannot blame PC hardware until Frontier fix their game.

But that's not the point.

The point is hardware purchase to improve performance.
Not waiting on FDev to improve the engine

 

[Koben]

No one has said it will, just that it will run that bad code faster.

But that's not the point.

The point is hardware purchase to improve performance.
Not waiting on FDev to improve the engine

The point is that the OP said from start he was not that keen to upgrade his PC now... and waiting 6-12 months might allow Frontier to fix this mess to the point his current hardware performance would suffice his needs... and even if the OP then thinks he is actually due a PC upgrade, he'd have newer CPUs/GPUs from AMD/Intel/nVidia to choose from.

Hopefully by then we'd all have a better understanding on what level of performance we get out of said hardware... because as for now, performance vs hardware is all over the place.

 

[JetsonRING]

I've currently got an skylake i7-6700 from memory and a geforce 1080. It handles pretty much anything I throw at it apart from odyssey onfoot, although its now fine in fleet carriers... I've tried all sorts but framerates in stations drop dramatically down into the 20s at times on the concourse when first arriving and is in the 30s in on foot combat zones. Now even dropping the resolution down from 2k down to 1080 makes no difference to the framerate its pretty much of a muchness. I'm wondering if the problem is primarily down to CPU. I don't have 1k to drop on a new gfx card even if I could get hold of one but was considering a ryzen 5 with a new mobo which would set me back in the region of 300? Its not ideal but I can even reuse my current 2400 DDR4 RAM. Anyone else tried a CPU change and had any luck?

As noted, knocking down the graphics even one level (shadows/reflections quality) can have a significant effect on frame rates. You did not mention how much RAM you have. I found increasing RAM from 16 to 32 GB helped a lot, and a SSD greatly improved loading times. I currently run in Ultra, on an Intel 8-core i7 CPU and nVidia 1080 GPU w/32 GB RAM with what I perceive as no issues but my 1920x1080 monitor is locked to a max of 60 fps.

 

[Morbad]

Hopefully by then we'd all have a better understanding on what level of performance we get out of said hardware... because as for now, performance vs hardware is all over the place.

The CPU vs. fill rate vs. shader trifecta took a while (and a lot of bouncing back and forth between my 6800 XT and RTX 3080) to get a handle on, and does evolve with performance updates, but isn't a complete mystery any more, even if the low-level workings are still a bit of a black box.

At this point, I have a pretty good idea of what performance I'll get out of what hardware, and when I see a performance problem, I can usually figure out what will improve it.

As noted, knocking down the graphics even one level (shadows/reflections quality) can have a significant effect on frame rates.

If reducing resolution didn't do anything, it's unlikely the other graphics settings (textures, shadows, and reflections are mostly fillrate limited, while the other effects tend to be shader limited, but resolution has a huge impact on them all) would either. That behavior is highly indicative of a CPU limitation.

 

[Erei]

As an XB player, i can confirm that 30fps and Smooth can exist in the same phrase without any negative words inserted in between
As long there are no dropped frames and the 30fps is maintained all along, gaming at 30fps can be pleasing enough

I am speaking PC. On PC 30fps is never smooth.
Console I don't know, I don't own one, but since they play differently altogether, I assume it's different. And I don't know what's considered smooth on console.

Since Odyssey is not coming on console, the FPS discussion should imply PC^^

 

[Koben]

Yes, these games are all much better threaded than Elite: Dangerous Odyssey, most AAA titles and modern engines are.
...
If reducing resolution didn't do anything, it's unlikely the other graphics settings (textures, shadows, and reflections are mostly fillrate limited, while the other effects tend to be shader limited, but resolution has a huge impact on them all) would either. That behavior is highly indicative of a CPU limitation.

Should Frontier improve CPU thread optimization, as you said yourself above, then his 6700K might no longer be that much of a bottleneck anymore...

 

[Morbad]

Should Frontier improve CPU thread optimization, as you said yourself above, then his 6700K might no longer be that much of a bottleneck anymore...

Frontier has already improved how well threaded Odyssey is at least once, but there has to be a limit to that, and even if there wasn't, a 6700K doesn't have any more logical cores to spare. Currently a 6700K (or pretty much any other 4c/8t part) will get pretty heavily saturated at times, and will still be limited by the performance of the main game and render threads that are heavily serial.

I'm sure it's possible to optimize things further, probably a lot further, but I'm not at all confident that Frontier has the inclination to do so. If this was easy I don't think they would have suspended console development...and I do think the console performance problems come down to CPU more than graphics. Graphics are comparably easy to trim down.

 

[idahosurge]

I am speaking PC. On PC 30fps is never smooth.
Console I don't know, I don't own one, but since they play differently altogether, I assume it's different. And I don't know what's considered smooth on console.

Since Odyssey is not coming on console, the FPS discussion should imply PC^^

30 FPS is smooth on my PC and all my settings are on Ultra.

 

[Erei]

30 FPS is smooth on my PC and all my settings are on Ultra.

Well, it's not for the majority of players, and as a "benchmark" for the industry in general, on PC.

 

[LumpTheNoLeggedDog]

wow...this turned in to a battle between being realistic vs. white knights
My point to OP is that his pc specs are good and upgrading wont help much if any with Odyssey since Odyssey have performance issues.