Disaapointed in FPS after upgrading video card

[johnvosh]

I know this has been discussed before, but thought I would post a couple of screen shots.

System I am playing is:
Core i5 4670K @ 4.2 GHz since day 1 with Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler
MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
Corsair HX650 PSU
WD green 1TB HDD
Patriot Viper 3 Series 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-17000
SSD is an Intel 240GB 520 series
Win 7 Pro

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC 6GB <- I actually bought this card to play this game as I was running a MSI Radeon 7970 OC 3GB card.

I have included a couple of screenshots.... I haven't played a simulation game like this one that is so poorly optimized. I am running on ultra settings as I should be able to with no difficulty. My GPU isn't even hitting 100% usage and I am only getting 19-23 FPS..... And to do I test I just loaded into the game and set the graphics settings down to "medium" and I was still only getting the same FPS. This makes no sense, because by lowering the graphics settings, my FPS should raise.

I recently started playing this game after owning it since December 2017. I am so glad I got it when it was on sale for C$15 because if this is the type of game play I was getting after paying C$60 (C = Canadian) I would ask for my money back.

The other thing I have noticed it the game really likes to hang on the first black screen and there is no loading bar or anything. At first I though the game had froze, but then it finally loaded. The loading times on this game are way too long. It will sit on the blue loading screen for well over a minute.

If not for the horrendous FPS and horrible path system, it is a pretty decent game. You think that after being out for over 2 years now they would have release performance patches to increase people's FPS and better optimize the game. And you can't tell me they can't do that, because there are a couple games my brother plays and the performance has gotten much better since first release as they release patches that help to optimize the game.

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

It's been an issue since day one. I've had this game since it was in Alpha, April 2016. It's a great game, aside on needing a really good PC to run it. Tried it on my HP white laptop and ended up with a 1-2fps slideshow which prompted me to invest in my first custom desktop PC. Specs in my sig.

The main culprit is DIRECTX11 which only properly utilizes ONE MAXIMUM CPU core, efficiently. The other cores get used, just not as efficiently as Directx12. However not many people use Windows 10 and Xbox One, which is why Frontier hasn't made it with Directx12.

Try limiting yourself to a smaller park, that way you can maintain 30-45fps which is more bearable. I get the same fps on my large sandbox park map (22 rides, low-moderate scenery) 19-25fps . And use MSI Afterburner. I have an i7-6700k and GTX 1070 and SSD storage. The only convenient thing about HDD is the price, and that's it.

My next custom desktop PC will have like an i9 9900k and a GTX 1080 Ti or GTX 2080. But that won't happen until 2020 at the earliest. My Xbox One X console can play Forza Horizon 4 @ 4k 60fps.

PC being a simulation game is heavily more CPU demanding more than GPU, though you still need a good GPU. May help to overclock the heck out of your CPU as safely and fast as you can. The i9 9900k has 8 cores 16 threads with a top speed of 5Ghz and that's not overclocked, and it can be overclocked a little more too. But it's an expensive CPU.

Frontier HAS...... made performance improvements since when the game was in Alpha and for a while after the completed game came. But there's only so much you can work on using Directx11.

 

[inspectorgadget1]

I haven't played a simulation game like this one that is so poorly optimized.

Which other simulation games are you comparing this to?

 

[mahava]

I can see one problem already: Windows 7 Pro, Windows 7 is legacy and modern hardware (ie your new 2060 gpu) will not perform to its fullest under it, start with upgrading to windows 10

Then regarding your other specs, PC is very CPU taxing, i have a i9 9900K and that one will also work hard in big parks, my 2080 GPU isnt used as much

 

[lilibat]

PC needs a beefy single core processor. That's the biggest problem.

 

[TRJTA]

The argument everyone keeps saying that's not many people use Windows 10 is not valid anymore. Since about a month or so, there are more people who use Windows 10 than Windows 7. So there's that. Frontier officislly has no excuse not to update Planet Coaster to dx12 other then just not wanting to.

 

[Ramm]

This is the biggest issue that keeps me from truely enjoying this game and building my dream theme park.

The game is good for designing a single, highly themed ride or coaster, but don't expect you can build a realistic theme park with decent performance no matter how beefy your PC is.

 

[Ramm]

The argument everyone keeps saying that's not many people use Windows 10 is not valid anymore. Since about a month or so, there are more people who use Windows 10 than Windows 7. So there's that. Frontier officislly has no excuse not to update Planet Coaster to dx12 other then just not wanting to.

They should've done this from the start. Just let is use all the cores of your strong PC's. Many use windows 10 anyway. And open the game for modding. Then we can finally enjoy the game to its full potential. Untill then, i'm sorry to say that it stays a restricted mess.

 

[Variable Gaming]

Try using Display Driver Uninstaller. Whenever I ran into hardware usage/FPS issues in Planet Coaster or any other program I would run it and all my issues would be resolved.
-Download current Graphics Drivers
-Reboot into safe mode (optional but recommended)
-Run the tool
-Restart
-Install Graphics Drivers

Download: https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html

You can also try setting your preferred power usage to "prefer maximum performance" in Nvidia Control panel for planet coaster specifically. Not "Geforce Experience" but Nvidia control panel. You can access it by right clicking on your desktop and selecting it in the drop down menu.

I would also recommend unparking your cpu cores

http://www.coderbag.com/programming-c/disable-cpu-core-parking-utility

I would also recommend upgrading to Windows 10

 

[ojonas]

The argument everyone keeps saying that's not many people use Windows 10 is not valid anymore. Since about a month or so, there are more people who use Windows 10 than Windows 7. So there's that. Frontier officislly has no excuse not to update Planet Coaster to dx12 other then just not wanting to.

Not sure this makes any difference at all. The design decision for THIS game was probably made 5+ years ago or so. At that time Windows 10 or DX12 was not released (came out 2015) and there were no guarantee for anything. The business decision back then was obvious and in my opinion the only one Frontier could have made. It is easy to sit here today and say differently, we have access to how things actually turned out. What if Windows 10 turned out to be another Vista? I also don't think at the time that it was well known that DX12 would be Windows 10 only. No other DX version had have a locked in Windows version only. What else should they have done? Gambled on the future, risking to lose it all, no Planet Coaster at all for us? Today, knowing the outcome, it is not a simple task to"just add DX12 support". If designed something else, you probably will have to do major rewrites, something that is not financially viable for a business that want to stay in business. Better to start from "scratch" with a new game instead (Planet Coaster 2?). For all we know, they may alreayd be halfway through such a development, we just won't know about it until it is ready to be shown.

Besides, even if Windows 10 now barely have a larger install base, it still locks out just under half of your customer base. That is of course assuming that the install base of Frontier's customers are divided up in the same way with Windows version. We don't know this, but Frontier does. It could be more Windows 10 users, or less. Who knows?

As a general comments on this, not tied to the quote above; I think it is somewhat hilarious though that some people here seems to think that Frontier is blind to the performance issues their customers are having and not doing anything. Do you really think that they enjoy seeing posts with complaints regarding this over and over? Of course they know, they have even acknowledged it several times. Most likely they have a plan on how to address it, may it be within this game or a new installment/successor. Only time will tell. What we do know is that they won't announce anything until they are 100% ready to do so. That could be tomorrow or in 2 years, or never depending on what management, owners and stakeholders decide upon.

 

[ojonas]

They should've done this from the start. Just let is use all the cores of your strong PC's. Many use windows 10 anyway. And open the game for modding. Then we can finally enjoy the game to its full potential. Untill then, i'm sorry to say that it stays a restricted mess.

Yes, based of what we know today. But when the development of this game started, there were no Windows 10 or DX12. It was not announced until 2014 and first version released in June 2015. Development of this game was already well underway at that point and probably past a point where you could easily "start over" with a new engine. At that time there were also no guarantees that Windows 10 would be ass big of a success that it turned out to be.

 

[ojonas]

I know this has been discussed before, but thought I would post a couple of screen shots.

System I am playing is:
Core i5 4670K @ 4.2 GHz since day 1 with Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler
MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
Corsair HX650 PSU
WD green 1TB HDD
Patriot Viper 3 Series 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-17000
SSD is an Intel 240GB 520 series
Win 7 Pro

Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC 6GB <- I actually bought this card to play this game as I was running a MSI Radeon 7970 OC 3GB card.

I have included a couple of screenshots.... I haven't played a simulation game like this one that is so poorly optimized. I am running on ultra settings as I should be able to with no difficulty. My GPU isn't even hitting 100% usage and I am only getting 19-23 FPS..... And to do I test I just loaded into the game and set the graphics settings down to "medium" and I was still only getting the same FPS. This makes no sense, because by lowering the graphics settings, my FPS should raise.

I recently started playing this game after owning it since December 2017. I am so glad I got it when it was on sale for C$15 because if this is the type of game play I was getting after paying C$60 (C = Canadian) I would ask for my money back.

The other thing I have noticed it the game really likes to hang on the first black screen and there is no loading bar or anything. At first I though the game had froze, but then it finally loaded. The loading times on this game are way too long. It will sit on the blue loading screen for well over a minute.

If not for the horrendous FPS and horrible path system, it is a pretty decent game. You think that after being out for over 2 years now they would have release performance patches to increase people's FPS and better optimize the game. And you can't tell me they can't do that, because there are a couple games my brother plays and the performance has gotten much better since first release as they release patches that help to optimize the game.

Since you are running Windows 7 you limit yourself to DX11 and earlier versions. No way you would be able to take advantage of DX12 even if the game supported it. The game is fairly well optimized for DX11. Of course more can always be done, but you won't see much dramatic changes until you go to DX12 (not a simple or cheap task) and your current system would not be able to utilize it anyway.

Graphics has never been the bottleneck here so upgrading your video card (or lowering resolution/quality) would not make a huge difference in your FPS. Your CPU is the limitation.

I haven't played a simulation game like this one that is so poorly optimized.

As asked earlier, which simulation games are you comparing this with?

 

[TRJTA]

People can protect Frontier all they want, but Frontier failed miserably in actually properly improving this game substantially in more than 2 years time. They mostly slapped new cosmetic stuff into the game like rides and scenery. Which is always the easiest to do. I'm so disappointed in what this game has become and I had so much faith in Frontier when the game was first announced. I don't see the game fixed anymore. Perhaps a new installment will be an actual better full fledged balanced management game instead of a pretty but disfunctional performance troubled sandbox game.

If only they put more effort into the performance and gameplay issues...

 

[Ramm]

Yes, based of what we know today. But when the development of this game started, there were no Windows 10 or DX12. It was not announced until 2014 and first version released in June 2015. Development of this game was already well underway at that point and probably past a point where you could easily "start over" with a new engine. At that time there were also no guarantees that Windows 10 would be ass big of a success that it turned out to be.

It shouldn't be impossible. They did it for GTA5 too. First they made a version for the game for xbox360/ps3 and later for xbox1/ps4/pc which was a much improved version.

People can protect Frontier all they want, but Frontier failed miserably in actually properly improving this game substantially in more than 2 years time. They mostly slapped new cosmetic stuff into the game like rides and scenery. Which is always the easiest to do. I'm so disappointed in what this game has become and I had so much faith in Frontier when the game was first announced. I don't see the game fixed anymore. Perhaps a new installment will be an actual better full fledged balanced management game instead of a pretty but disfunctional performance troubled sandbox game.

If only they put more effort into the performance and gameplay issues...

I have to agree. I was always very positive about anything related to Planet Coaster. I bought the Early Bird as soon as I was able to and talked about this game everywhere, watched every livestream, etc. Unfortunately I feel like they never did anything to fix game-breaking issue's such as performance. The game took some wrong turns, when all i've wanted was RCT3 with improved graphics and free-form building and full-on mod support from the start. Since Frontier made RCT3, I expected they could deliver.

 

[LN]

It shouldn't be impossible. They did it for GTA5 too. First they made a version for the game for xbox360/ps3 and later for xbox1/ps4/pc which was a much improved version.

Bare in mind Rockstar probably has the necessary funds and resources to do so. I think if Frontier would do that, the game would probably come to a stand still for a long time as there might not be people left to actually update the game with new things, thus halting the income.

And I felt GTA was more a matter of moving to HD-textures than actually redeveloping the game.

Rocksrtar makes great games, but they also try to suck you out of your money to get the best in game (shark cards).

 

[johnvosh]

PC needs a beefy single core processor. That's the biggest problem.

I do have a very good single core CPU. All my cores are locked to 4.2GHz, and this CPU was out when they would of been designing the game and when the game released the CPU I am using was still just as good as what was being release by Intel. When this game came out and was being developed, quad core CPU's were common and what was being released, so there is no reason why this game shouldn't be able to utilize 2-4 cores easily.

This is the biggest issue that keeps me from truely enjoying this game and building my dream theme park.

The game is good for designing a single, highly themed ride or coaster, but don't expect you can build a realistic theme park with decent performance no matter how beefy your PC is.

Yes, exactly. When I play something like this, I want to build a nice theme park with loads of rides and such. It is like they learned nothing from RCT3 which they developed which also had bad frame rates.

Try using Display Driver Uninstaller.

You can also try setting your preferred power usage to "prefer maximum performance" in Nvidia Control panel for planet coaster specifically. Not "Geforce Experience" but Nvidia control panel. You can access it by right clicking on your desktop and selecting it in the drop down menu.

I would also recommend unparking your cpu cores

I would also recommend upgrading to Windows 10

Yes I did use that program to uninstall my drivers, I always do.

Don't really need to do that as my GPU is already running strongly. When the game is running, it runs at max GPU boost speed. I have monitoring software that I use to watch what it is doing.

When I play the game all CPU cores are loaded roughly equally so they aren't parked.

I will upgrade to Win 10 when H**L freezes over. I hate that OS with a passion. I have to use it at work and do not like it. I will run Windows 7 until at least next year when security updates stop. Windows 7 is a far superior OS and I have been using it since it came out. At work with windows updates, they have had nothing but problems, a couple systems they lost data, and a couple others they had to do complete reinstalls. Never had those problems with Windows 7.

Since you are running Windows 7 you limit yourself to DX11 and earlier versions. No way you would be able to take advantage of DX12 even if the game supported it. The game is fairly well optimized for DX11. Of course more can always be done, but you won't see much dramatic changes until you go to DX12 (not a simple or cheap task) and your current system would not be able to utilize it anyway.

Graphics has never been the bottleneck here so upgrading your video card (or lowering resolution/quality) would not make a huge difference in your FPS. Your CPU is the limitation.

Yes I may be limiting myself to DX11, but that is fine because all the games I play only run DX11 and a lot of new games coming out still only use DX11 because lots of people are still running Windows 7. I have read some things on DX12 and it really isn't that great. sometimes games actually run worse in DX12 mode then they do in DX11 mode.

When this game came out my CPU was still a very decent CPU and most sites didn't recommend upgrading to the newest i5 as the performance was basically the same. My CPU has all 4 cores clocked to 4.2GHz.



A game that I can compare this to to Two Point Hospital. That game has a lot going on in it and I can easily get 60FPS at all times, SimCity 4, Cities:Skylines is another one I compare it to and I easily get over 30FPS in my biggest city at max detail. as well as OpenRCT2.

 

[Variable Gaming]

When the game is running, it runs at max GPU boost speed. I have monitoring software that I use to watch what it is doing.

There's a difference between the speed the gpu is running at and it's usage. According to the monitoring software in your screenshots, your gpu usage is at 33%. The usage didnt even change even though you moved the camera. My usage fluctuates a lot when moving very little in Planet Coaster. I think the issue is on your end.

 

[inspectorgadget1]

A game that I can compare this to to Two Point Hospital. That game has a lot going on in it and I can easily get 60FPS at all times, SimCity 4, Cities

kylines is another one I compare it to and I easily get over 30FPS in my biggest city at max detail. as well as OpenRCT2.

[big grin]

 

[aDOLPHINjoy18]

It seems that if you want better performance, it's best to go with like the best CPU on the market currently, The Intel Core i9 9900k, which has a speed of 5Ghz (not overclocked) and can be overclocked for more. It's faster and has more cores and threads than an i7-4700k, 6700k and 8700k. If you want to go crazy you can get 32GB DDR4 RAM and 2x GTX 1080 Ti or 2x GTX 2080 Ti. Overkill and expensive. But you'd get a bit more fps since the 9900k has a higher single core clock speed. If someone gets this, than the have the right to complain if they can't get above 30fps on big detailed parks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfmM71NOTo

 

[Ramm]

It seems that if you want better performance, it's best to go with like the best CPU on the market currently, The Intel Core i9 9900k, which has a speed of 5Ghz (not overclocked) and can be overclocked for more. It's faster and has more cores and threads than an i7-4700k, 6700k and 8700k. If you want to go crazy you can get 32GB DDR4 RAM and 2x GTX 1080 Ti or 2x GTX 2080 Ti. Overkill and expensive. But you'd get a bit more fps since the 9900k has a higher single core clock speed. If someone gets this, than the have the right to complain if they can't get above 30fps on big detailed parks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfmM71NOTo

The thing is alot of us including me upgraded a few years ago to already a strong CPU mainly for this game. I bought a 6700k for about 400 euros 2 years ago and remember being disappointed when the fps didn't improve at al in big parks. I'm not gonna upgrade again to a 9900k which costs about 550 euros for something that probably won't make much of a difference either.

We are ignoring the problem. The problem is no DX12 support. You can upgrade all you want, run software all you want, install drivers all you want but if you don't grab the problem by the source it won't ever improve.