EDO Update9: how is your performance?

[Taimaru]

You would have to remove the 60 FPS limit to see where you stand with update 9 - if you have 60 FPS on planets I would say you'll have at least double that in space.

I know, thanks. I usually have that locked in games to stop screen tearing (although I don't notice that in Elite: Dangerous).

I've turned off the limit and updated my original post with my FPS results.

 

[lysan]

I got all my FPS back in 4K, so for the moment life is good!

 

[CMDR Jowley]

Hardware
RX 480 (oh baby)
16GB
AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.60 GHz

Settings & Results
2560 x 1080
High, no upsample
Settlements
32 average, often dipping on disembarkment to 2fps for around 5 seconds. The larger the settlement, the worse it is. Overall though, for the age of the card, I'm impressed.

 

[Bigmaec]

My performance didn't get better sadly.

2060
32 gb ram
i5-9500
Windows 10

Playing on 1920x1080 medium settings and settlements drop down to 19 fps, constant between 40 and 50.
But very "janky",

 

[Morbad]

EDIT: just tried again without Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling and there was no noticeable difference: 144 FPS in space, around 45 on planets and in settlements, so update 9 for me is a nice +40%.

I was about to say unless HWGS is an order of magnitude more helpful for ED than any other game, it's not a significant contributor to the performance uplift. I've also been running it on my NVIDIA parts for a very long time, still got the bump with U9.

My performance didn't get better sadly.

2060
32 gb ram
i5-9500
Windows 10

Playing on 1920x1080 medium settings and settlements drop down to 19 fps, constant between 40 and 50.
But very "janky",

What happens if you set "NumWorkerThreads="4"" in AppConfig.xml and manually disable "threaded optimization" for the Odyssey executable in the NVIDIA control panel game profile?

 

[CaptainPugwash]

I was about to say unless HWGS is an order of magnitude more helpful for ED than any other game, it's not a significant contributor to the performance uplift. I've also been running it on my NVIDIA parts for a very long time, still got the bump with U9.



What happens if you set "NumWorkerThreads="4"" in AppConfig.xml and manually disable "threaded optimization" for the Odyssey executable in the NVIDIA control panel game profile?

The idea would be to leave at least 2 main threads free?

 

[Morbad]

The idea would be to leave at least 2 main threads free?

The game's worker threads don't cover the video driver threads, or, if I recall correctly, the main game thread either. You can run a lot more than one thread per logical core, but if you have too many high-demand threads, spawning more just adds more overhead and causes scheduling/affinity issues. You also want the main game loop and the video driver to pretty much have logical (and ideally, physical) cores to themselves.

Might not do anything, but with an i5, it's worth checking.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

The game's worker threads don't cover the video driver threads, or, if I recall correctly, the main game thread either. You can run a lot more than one thread per logical core, but if you have too many high-demand threads, spawning more just adds more overhead and causes scheduling/affinity issues. You also want the main game loop and the video driver to pretty much have logical (and ideally, physical) cores to themselves.

Might not do anything, but with an i5, it's worth checking.

I’m curious to see the result, as I had a big performance bump with update 9, using a 4 core CPU, but apparently not with a 6 core CPU without hyper threads.

 

[Morbad]

I’m curious to see the result, as I had a big performance bump with update 9, using a 4 core CPU, but apparently not with a 6 core CPU without hyper threads.

It's hard to tell what this game is doing or what will influence performance.

Update 9 was a big help, but I'm still encountering periods of a locked 91fps (on my fastest CPU, worse on my others) upon entering settlements and concourses at least 2/3rds of the time...that spontaneously resolves itself after anywhere from seconds to never.

 

[Bigmaec]

I was about to say unless HWGS is an order of magnitude more helpful for ED than any other game, it's not a significant contributor to the performance uplift. I've also been running it on my NVIDIA parts for a very long time, still got the bump with U9.



What happens if you set "NumWorkerThreads="4"" in AppConfig.xml and manually disable "threaded optimization" for the Odyssey executable in the NVIDIA control panel game profile?

I have no idea what you're talking about but I tried this out.

Looking at the task manager, I'm pretty much CPU limited...

That's from walking in the concourse

edit: no real idea if you settings help. It's so variable between 19 and 90 fps, I just can't compare.

 

[Morbad]

I have no idea what you're talking about but I tried this out.

Looking at the task manager, I'm pretty much CPU limited...

View attachment 280259

That's from walking in the concourse

edit: no real idea if you settings help. It's so variable between 19 and 90 fps, I just can't compare.

Definitely looks like they were able to better thread something with U9. Unfortunately, that doesn't help if you don't have the logical cores to make use of it. That's the scenario the adjustments I posted are most likely to help, but as you say, it's so variable it may be hard to tell.

How fast is that part clocked?

Also, showing per-core utilization will reveal a bit more about what's going on when total utilization dips, even if task manager's polling rate is pretty low:

Edit: try reducing number of worker threads to "3" or even "2", just to see if that brings CPU utilization down. Probably won't help performance, might even hurt, but it will at least reveal if the setting is doing what it should and if so, if the worker threads are a significant component of the load you're experiencing.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I appreciate that, but the engine has been updated. I think the new lighting system is head and shoulders better than the system in Horizons, which is a 6 year old engine. There are also more detailed models and larger textures.


I don't know if you remember, but the Horizons update also significantly upped the system requirements. I updated from my ageing GTX 670 2GB, and even then a triple head setup for Horizons brought my brand spaking new GTX 970 to its knees. We have more detailed models, higher resolution textures, significantly improved lighting (it really is much better!) and lots of new animations.

You're right - I was confusing my games. Battlefield 2042's minimum is a 1050 Ti. The recommended card for Odyssey is a GTX 1060 6GB.

However, I would point out that minimum and recommended specifications are often interpreted as "will run at 720p/30fps low" for minumum and "will run at 1080p/60fps high" for recommended. I can't speak to the minimum requirements, because I don't have a machine approaching them, but performance is now nearing that for the recommended; I get close to 60 fps in most situations now with my laptop, whose CPU and GPU are weaker than the desktop variants.

You are, of course, correct about the requirements, although IIRC the actual wording was that FD were aiming for similar requirements to Horizons, and the pre-release specifications reflected this until shortly before alpha went live. That's not a defense - I think what angered the community the most was the lack of transparency about the update; I didn't play the game for four months. The lack of transparency certainly annoyed the hell out of me. But things are what they are. The game should not have been released in the state it was, but it was. I do wonder what issues there were during development (apart from the obvious one) that led to the update releasing like that.

With that said, given that a GTX 780/R9 280x are the minimums, a 2GB 960m would always struggle.

I tried playing Fortnite on my wife's old GTX 650m laptop once. It wasn't pretty, but it ran.

Well I guess the point I was trying to make is that for someone who can't upgrade their hardware for whatever reason EDO is pretty much a no go even if you were able to run EDH on reasonably high settings before. Engine upgrades are all fine and well but if it means people can no longer play the game in an enjoyable fashion that's no good to them, and Frontier should've made sure it was optimised enough before releasing it into the wild.

Thankfully (and I'm curious how long this will remain) we can still revert back to the old engine with EDH, and unlike you I think that still looks better on balance compared to EDO, despite its age. Sure, certain details look better in EDO but because you have to reduce settings to get barely adequate performance that's kinda moot on lower hardware, and even on my desktop the smoothness and clean image of EDH is still sorely missing in EDO.

Anyways, the 960m experiment was just that, and while I expected poor performance I didn't expect 12fps given it -also- looks ugly due to low settings and resolution.

I can play EDO at okay (but still not great) performance on my desktop, however the performance cost is in no way warranted by what's showing on screen. I have dozens other games that run better while looking prettier also. EDO is a huge outlier in my library and games a decade old can be visually more impressive.

Having said that, performance on the desktop is now at a level where it's no longer taking centre stage and distracts from things - but it also means that the focus is now shifting to EDO's other shortcomings such as lighting (still buggy and inconsistent) and gameplay. But it's definitely not fixed and I wonder how many more patches are needed until we can consider it to be.

 

[CaptainPugwash]

Well I guess the point I was trying to make is that for someone who can't upgrade their hardware for whatever reason EDO is pretty much a no go even if you were able to run EDH on reasonably high settings before. Engine upgrades are all fine and well but if it means people can no longer play the game in an enjoyable fashion that's no good to them, and Frontier should've made sure it was optimised enough before releasing it into the wild.

Thankfully (and I'm curious how long this will remain) we can still revert back to the old engine with EDH, and unlike you I think that still looks better on balance compared to EDO, despite its age. Sure, certain details look better in EDO but because you have to reduce settings to get barely adequate performance that's kinda moot on lower hardware, and even on my desktop the smoothness and clean image of EDH is still sorely missing in EDO.

Anyways, the 960m experiment was just that, and while I expected poor performance I didn't expect 12fps given it -also- looks ugly due to low settings and resolution.

I can play EDO at okay (but still not great) performance on my desktop, however the performance cost is in no way warranted by what's showing on screen. I have dozens other games that run better while looking prettier also. EDO is a huge outlier in my library and games a decade old can be visually more impressive.

Having said that, performance on the desktop is now at a level where it's no longer taking centre stage and distracts from things - but it also means that the focus is now shifting to EDO's other shortcomings such as lighting (still buggy and inconsistent) and gameplay. But it's definitely not fixed and I wonder how many more patches are needed until we can consider it to be.

My 8 year old i7 powered system has had such a boost with update 9 that I can get the same frame rates in space as I had with horizons, so some of it must come down to individual sistem configurations. The main thing for me that is missing is a good anti-aliasing system, which Frontier did mention a while back. If they get that working properly I would say that we might even have odyssey on the old consoles, albeit with some of the prettier effects turned off.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

My 8 year old i7 powered system has had such a boost with update 9 that I can get the same frame rates in space as I had with horizons, so some of it must come down to individual sistem configurations. The main thing for me that is missing is a good anti-aliasing system, which Frontier did mention a while back. If they get that working properly I would say that we might even have odyssey on the old consoles, albeit with some of the prettier effects turned off.

Yeah it seems quite random still judging from reports here and the configs involved.

I'm just glad I no longer have to rely on that laptop of mine (well, I do for the next two weeks so no Odyssey for me - but I'll live), but the performance differential is still quite stark even on my desktop. I sorely miss that buttery smooth 120fps everywhere from Horizons - the inconsistency in EDO made me give up on using TrackIR which relies on steady performance otherwise it makes the jank even worse. Doubt I'll ever get it in Odyssey at this stage without spending silly money on hardware upgrades and even that isn't a guarantee.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Doubt I'll ever get it in Odyssey at this stage without spending silly money on hardware upgrades and even that isn't a guarantee.

I have just upgraded to a 6900 and will vouch for the comment that even on 'good' hardware EDO is still inconsistent.
The card arrived last Wednesday, so I only had a couple of hours in U8, not really enough time to see if there were improvements across the board, but even with this hardware 60 FPS isn't guaranteed in all circumstances.

 

[Momatty]

It's been pretty good so far and my gpu doesn't sound like its making a margarita.

 

[MacIntoc]

it seem to be set up specific

Plus all the players who do not differentiate their feeling of fluidity from the objective performance of the game (the most importante confounding factor imo).

 

[Angelpichu]

I get some freezing for a few moments intermittently when dropping into an on foot CZ or when loading from the menu into my ship while docked at an odyssey settlement.

 

[Woakes]

EDO Update9: how is your performance?

Well we are all getting older, I had to alter my heart medication after last time as both me and my wife thought I was having a heart attack so hopefully, my performance should be improved....oh...are we talking about the game?

Just about the same as before...ahem....​

 

[WR3ND]

Results
The same 30~35 FPS in the main menu hanger compared to 230~260 FPS in Horizons for me.

Hardware
GPUs = 2 Nvidia EVGA Titan Black cards in SLI, PCIe Gen 3 force enabled, 16x native lanes for each card
RAM = 64GB Quad Channel DDR3 1600MHz, 8 8GB DIMMs
CPU = i7-3930K, 6 cores/12 threads at 4.2GHz

Settings
Resolution = 1920 by 1080
Settings = Ultra but with Depth of Field and Blur disabled and Bloom turned down to Medium.