CPU or GPU Intensive??

[BenVonTron]

I was wondering if anyone knows if ED is more reliant on the CPU or GPU for decent frame rates.

My current setup is an AMD FX4300 @4Ghz with 8Gig DDR3 supported by an ATI HD7870XT 2Gb GDDR5 (Tahiti LE chip) with a Creative PCI-e X-Fi card for lovely audio.

It runs smooth at ~60fps when out in space but the frame rates tend to drop off to around the low 40's mark as I approach and enter stations etc. My display is running at 1920*1080 with the detail settings at medium as anything higher and you really notice the drop off.

Thanks in advance for your help CMDR's!

 

[DidierDrbois]

I have little science to back it up, but ED's one CPU-hungry fellow.

There have been numerous reports of OC on CPU curing all frame rate problems.

 

[Blood Lust]

I was wondering if anyone knows if ED is more reliant on the CPU or GPU for decent frame rates.

My current setup is an AMD FX4300 @4Ghz with 8Gig DDR3 supported by an ATI HD7870XT 2Gb GDDR5 (Tahiti LE chip) with a Creative PCI-e X-Fi card for lovely audio.

It runs smooth at ~60fps when out in space but the frame rates tend to drop off to around the low 40's mark as I approach and enter stations etc. My display is running at 1920*1080 with the detail settings at medium as anything higher and you really notice the drop off.

Thanks in advance for your help CMDR's!

I have i5-4690, 8GB DDR3 with a GeForce 460 2GB and I get just over 60 FPS in 1320 x 1024. So it isn't GPU intensive. It might be for the CPU but I cannot confirm that as mine is good.

 

[Kiblams]

The game is GPU Intensive, and that is even more apparent when in and around the big stations.
.
To see for yourself you just need to open Catalyst Command Centre to look at GPU loads and Task manager to see your CPU loads. In a station my GPU is maxed out and my CPU is hovering around 30-35% (AMD R7 260X and i5 2400)
.
Your CPU is only slightly slower than an Intel i3 so I wouldn't expect it to be causing you any slowdown

 

[Deleted member 38366]

-- Deleted --

 

[Kepnik]

From my point of view it is just not working properly in some situations
and does not need very much power from cpu or gpu at all.

Friend of mine is playing with a 5 year old setup ( gtx 500 series ) and has nearly no problems.
I am using a 4790k at 4,4ghz and a gtx970 at 1920x1080 and sometimes I also have
fps drops, also the station inside is loading sometimes only a few meters from the slot.

This hasnt been with the original gamma release so I think it is a problem they got with the patches
and is not due to missing power of gpu or cpu. Just an oppinion, no research done ;-)

 

[Ceekay]

My 6 year old budget gaming PC, it's overdue for some upgrades like an SSD and a modern GPU but it's fine playing the current build.

AMD Phenom 955 @'3.2 not overclocked typically runs about 45 - 50% capacity during gameplay, 8 Gb ram around 2 gb used
Geforce GTS 450 1gb runs the game at 1920x1080 smoothly 60 FPS deep space, 30 ish in stations and 35 in RES

 

[Space Trucker]

From my point of view it is just not working properly in some situations
and does not need very much power from cpu or gpu at all.

Friend of mine is playing with a 5 year old setup ( gtx 500 series ) and has nearly no problems.
I am using a 4790k at 4,4ghz and a gtx970 at 1920x1080 and sometimes I also have
fps drops, also the station inside is loading sometimes only a few meters from the slot.

This hasnt been with the original gamma release so I think it is a problem they got with the patches
and is not due to missing power of gpu or cpu. Just an oppinion, no research done ;-)

Have you actually sat and played ED on your friends machine? I ask because one persons "stutter" is another person's "normal gameplay."

If he really is getting 100% smooth gameplay then great. But I've run across a few instances of players saying the game is smooth as butter for them when in reality it isn't. They've just been playing games for so many years that would stutter/judder that they are used to its normal. Might seem hard to believe but it happens.

 

[Sepharus]

My cpu is rubbish and my gpu is amazing (I know that's strange but it's a long story involving a fire...) and the game runs beautifully. Other games I have that I know are cpu dependent run terrible. Not conclusive proof but seems to be gpu heavy to me.

 

[Kiblams]

Have you actually sat and played ED on your friends machine? I ask because one persons "stutter" is another person's "normal gameplay."

If he really is getting 100% smooth gameplay then great. But I've run across a few instances of players saying the game is smooth as butter for them when in reality it isn't. They've just been playing games for so many years that would stutter/judder that they are used to its normal. Might seem hard to believe but it happens.

A good example of this is that my eyes can't see more than 30fps, whereas the majority of the gaming would can't stand playing at anything less than 45fps

 

[marsha11]

A good example of this is that my eyes can't see more than 30fps, whereas the majority of the gaming would can't stand playing at anything less than 45fps

I wish my eyes wouldnt see past 30 fps ..... cost me a fortune once i played at 120hz ☺

 

[starsphinx]

I could not see stutter till a helpful (not) teen pointed it out buy once shown it does bug - I am looking at graphics upgrade first but will show this thread to my wizard (my other half does hardware stuff) and see what he makes of it, although have not been on for a couple of days as other stuff to do (and it is driving me bonkers - I want to be playing elite)

 

[Raylion]

My cpu is rubbish and my gpu is amazing (I know that's strange but it's a long story involving a fire...) and the game runs beautifully. Other games I have that I know are cpu dependent run terrible. Not conclusive proof but seems to be gpu heavy to me.

I'm much the same. .. Have an i7 920 that had an older gpu and it wasn't great. I dropped in a r9 280x and it now runs fantastic, for me it seems more gpu heavy as well.

 

[LawHunter]

GPU.

Having turbo boost on or off on the CPU does little for the framerate but overclocking the GPU does wounders.

 

[Zplintz]

Running on a lowly i5 with only 8gb ram, I'd say gpu is more important (as it appears to be for most games I've played).

 

[Riktar]

At the start of playing Elite I was running a (hacked 775 socket) X5450 (quadcore) Xeon with a R9 270(non X) and had CPU utilization topping out at 80% while the GPU load would hit 100% in heavy graphic scenes. Frame rates would hit 60 fps in space and drop to 45ish in heavy scenes.

Moved to a X58 X5650 (hexcore) and the same vid card and the GPU load was the same. The CPU load never exceeded 40%. Both CPU's were OC'ed to 3.6Ghz. So it's nice to know that Elite CAN take advantage of the extra 2 cores. Fps did not change much.

I recently upgraded the graphics to a R9 290 (non X) card and the CPU (X5650) load is the same. While the GPU load still runs up to 100% I have noticed that my FPS is pretty much pegged at 60 fps. I have frame sync/limits enabled since my monitor is 60Hz and don't like screeen tearing so I cant say what the ultimate frame rates are. And this is with all settings set to "high".

 

[passey]

I7 4790k and gtx 980 playing at 4k high settings and getting 90fps in space 50 docked not going intensive at all.

 

[theEmohawk]

I could have a pretty good scenario that shows that performance is GPU limited.

I have an old rig. CPU is Core2Duo E6600 (which was a good mid-range CPU when it was new). My GPU was an 8800GTS (which was a good mid to high end GPU when it was new). With the old GPU I was running on mainly low graphics settings and getting 25-30fps max, dropping to 10-15fps in RES. It was playable, but I wanted to turn up the graphics.

So, exactly the same rig with the 8800GTS replaced with GTX960 (incidentally I think it was almost the same price as I paid for the 8800GTS on the day those cards were released). I have graphics settings on high/ultra and have the fps pinned at 60fps while out and about exploring. Before I left I wasn't seeing significant drops in stations or RES.

However, I'm thinking that there is another impact on performance that most people are overlooking. When people talk about performance it's all about getting max FPS, and yes that is maximised by a fast GPU. The thing I'm seeing now is that I'll have small freezes at loading points - coming out of hyperspace, switching to system map, etc. When I'm jumping I have the bandwidth monitor open and see the spike in network traffic before I drop at the destination, but the delay in dropping out can vary noticeably. I don't have any science to back me up, but anecdotally I'd say that the delay is longer for more complex systems.
This implies that when you remove the GPU bottleneck and the CPU becomes the bottleneck you see the impact in different ways. This makes complete sense. My rig is now completely unbalanced in favour of the GPU, whereas in a balanced rig you expect the GPU to be the limiting factor.

Now if only a CPU upgrade didn't involve a new motherboard and RAM as well as the CPU (there's no way I'm investing in a quad-core LGA775 processor I'll just put that money towards the big upgrade).

 

[Ardavix]

I have i5-4690, 8GB DDR3 with a GeForce 460 2GB and I get just over 60 FPS in 1320 x 1024. So it isn't GPU intensive. It might be for the CPU but I cannot confirm that as mine is good.

I have a GTX 660 but I'm using an old quad-core from 2007. I play on low graphics and I only get (at best) 40-60fps [on low]. Accordingly, it definitely seems to be cpu intensive!

 

[unite]

I play on both my main rig and laptop. Main rig was built as an HTPC so its connected to the TV in the living room and Dad and his Elite are bottom of the pecking order unless everyone else is in bed.

The main PC is a i5 3570k 8gb ram with a 2gb geforce 680GTX. The OS and Elite are installed on a SSD which I think makes all the difference. I can run the game on high settings fine at 1080p with oversampling set to 1 but I prefer to run it at 720p with the oversampling set to 2. Just looks better to me. At this I'm getting a smooth 80-100fps in space and anything from 40-60fps in heavy battle or at stations.

The laptop however is a different story. Bought as I budget cheap 'she wanted a laptop' its got an AMD A4 dual core A4 with 4gb of super slow ram. With uber low quality the game actually runs fine at 1240x720. In space I'm getting 60-70fps but in battle or at stations try 20fps. I must admit I was surprised by this figure as the game is actually fairly smooth even at 20fps. I suspose if its a constent figure it will look smooth. There is noticable jutter though as you enter systems or drop out of super cruise but I put this down to lack of ram and slow hdd.

There seems to be a massive frame drop in stations and I believe from what I've read before its due to light sources. Perhaps FD could rework this slightly to make it more efficient.