Elte Dangerous Performance Disaster

[Morbad]

There are many areas where performance is lower than might be expected, but the only unresolvable problem I've encountered--on hardware that should otherwise handle things without issue--is the stutter that occurs in ground CZs any time a dropship spawns in.

This is a frame time and GPU utilization plot I took this morning (on 4.0.0.1700) in a large settlement CZ (open it in a new tab and 100% it...it's 16k pixels wide to show more detail):

On this 5800X3D + RTX 4090 setup, I'm pretty much completely CPU/memory limited, even at 2400p with way past ultra graphics settings, but that's not the main problem. See all those spikes past 30ms? Those are noticeable and correlate almost entirely with new dropships spawning into the instance. A faster CPU reduces the magnitude of the spikes (as well as increase average fps), but cannot eliminate them.

At the end of the graph you can see where the opposing side ran out of reinforcements and the dropships stopped spawning. The AI is still active and the game is still CPU limited (GPU utilization still well off maximum, with no frame rate cap) but frame times are much tighter, with no spikes of note.

 

[StefanOS]

Well, as it may not be of a disaster to other players it sure is for me and for a lot more, more than you would think.
The performance in elite dangerous odyssey is nothing short of unbearable, I just can I swear to god I play at 8 to 16 fps just to play with my friends, just to try and participate in new coming events.
I love this game I got it on preorder before it came out, but the performance improved just a little, I have seen a commander in NEWP discord server say that when he's in space he gets 110 to 114 fps, but when he's near a Fleet Carrier or a Station it drops all the way down to 35 or 30 fps.

Now you would say 30fps is good, but that's not the case, just the steep jump from 110 all the way down to 30 is enough to tell you that something is wrong, I was playing Horizons in 50 to 60 fps on high, and I am saying 50 near station or FCs it doesn't matter where I am, now I get 16 to 8 fps on low, I love this game I played games way crazier in graphics in this pc than elite, I've created some projects in blender that truly made this pc suffer.
I love the game and I loved how you guys would prioritize performance over looks, and keeping a great balance between those. what happened to that?

I know that you are working hard to push new content I am sure of that, but please fix the performance issues PLEASE, if only people with RTXs could play what's left to us to participate on?
I am sure a lot of people relate to this.

And I am also working hard to buy a desktop pc too. xD

All the love CMDR OMF.ROYAL

Sorry for your problems, but without stating you CPU/GPU/RAM specs its hard to say what the bottleneck is. EDO is more demanding, especially on the planets and in stations. After several updates EDO fps did get better and more stable (less stuttering) but its not on the level of ED - and its seems not much will change on this matter.
If you really want advice - state your CPU/GPU/RAM specs.

 

[Old Duck]

How does performance scale these days with things like screen resolution, shadow quality, etc? In other words, what specifically is causing performance issues - is it a specific graphics-based issue, or is it something entirely different like AI or terrain modeling?

One thing I noticed back when I tested performance myself is that Odyssey installations killed my framerate, but these installations have way more complex geometry and textures compared to their Horizon counterparts. Is there any setting or XML entry that allows one to dial back the details in Odyssey installations (I'm fine with Horizons-level detail) to improve performance?

EDIT / UPDATE

It dawns on me that I tested Odyssey outposts in Horizons 4.0, which means no NPCs, so the performance hit I experienced could not be AI calculations, as these installations were empty. It has to be some something to do with the graphic presentation of these outposts (I also noticed that framerate returned to normal if I "looked away" from the outposts).

 

[nemolomen]

How does performance scale these days with things like screen resolution, shadow quality, etc? In other words, what specifically is causing performance issues - is it a specific graphics-based issue, or is it something entirely different like AI or terrain modeling?

One thing I noticed back when I tested performance myself is that Odyssey installations killed my framerate, but these installations have way more complex geometry and textures compared to their Horizon counterparts. Is there any setting or XML entry that allows one to dial back the details in Odyssey installations (I'm fine with Horizons-level detail) to improve performance?

EDIT / UPDATE

It dawns on me that I tested Odyssey outposts in Horizons 4.0, which means no NPCs, so the performance hit I experienced could not be AI calculations, as these installations were empty. It has to be some something to do with the graphic presentation of these outposts (I also noticed that framerate returned to normal if I "looked away" from the outposts).

There were some good improvements in U16 that I noticed, but what hardware are you running?

 

[Old Duck]

There were some good improvements in U16 that I noticed, but what hardware are you running?

I don't remember if I did my testing before U16 or after... I might bite the bullet and reinstall Horizons (I deleted it thinking to make room for Starfield, but now I'm rethinking that one) and run some new tests, and I might even play around with the shaders as time allows.

Anyway, to answer your question:
i7-9750H w/ 32 GB RAM
m.2 SSD
GeForce 1660ti @1080p

I could play Horizons well over 100 FPS on this rig, max settings, but I was getting dips down into the 20s on Horizons 4.0. I was also not impressed with changes to lighting and some other issues, but I might be able to "fix" those with some shader edits.

Oh, and I did not do extensive testing my first try like Morbad does. I just saw the insane hit in performance and thought "Screw this" and uninstalled. But with the disappointing release of Starfield (purely subjective personal opinion based on my own criteria), I'm actually contemplating giving 4.0 another try, since it's the only game like it in town right now.

 

[nemolomen]

I don't remember if I did my testing before U16 or after... I might bite the bullet and reinstall Horizons (I deleted it thinking to make room for Starfield, but now I'm rethinking that one) and run some new tests, and I might even play around with the shaders as time allows.

Anyway, to answer your question:
i7-9750H w/ 32 GB RAM
m.2 SSD
GeForce 1660ti @1080p

I could play Horizons well over 100 FPS on this rig, max settings, but I was getting dips down into the 20s on Horizons 4.0. I was also not impressed with changes to lighting and some other issues, but I might be able to "fix" those with some shader edits.

Oh, and I did not do extensive testing my first try like Morbad does. I just saw the insane hit in performance and thought "Screw this" and uninstalled. But with the disappointing release of Starfield (purely subjective personal opinion based on my own criteria), I'm actually contemplating giving 4.0 another try, since it's the only game like it in town right now.

If you've got DDR4 ram with that CPU then a GPU upgrade should be all you need.

If, however, you're running the LPDDR3 then I would suggest a full upgrade (CPU/RAM/GPU).

In September 2022 I upgraded my rig from Ryzen 7 3700X and RTX 2060 to Ryzen 5 5600X (newer gen processor) and RTX 3060 12GB on the same motherboard. The performance boost was worth the money to me, and didn't break the bank. That said, I do have a friend who plays Ody with a 1660ti but not sure what their other hardware is.

You can look at some of my videos linked in my sig below to gauge performance as I usually always have the FPS counter running.

 

[Old Duck]

If you've got DDR4 ram with that CPU then a GPU upgrade should be all you need.

If, however, you're running the LPDDR3 then I would suggest a full upgrade (CPU/RAM/GPU).

In September 2022 I upgraded my rig from Ryzen 7 3700X and RTX 2060 to Ryzen 5 5600X (newer gen processor) and RTX 3060 12GB on the same motherboard. The performance boost was worth the money to me, and didn't break the bank. That said, I do have a friend who plays Ody with a 1660ti but not sure what their other hardware is.

You can look at some of my videos linked in my sig below to gauge performance as I usually always have the FPS counter running.

It's a laptop, so GPU is "here to stay". That said, this laptop plays all my other games just fine, including some demanding games like RDR2 and even MSFS. I'm definitely not buying new hardware just to play Odyssey, LOL, especially when this same laptop ran Horizons in VR just fine.

But I do appreciate you saving me money by warning me not to buy Odyssey! I'll remove it again from my wishlist.

 

[Morbad]

How does performance scale these days with things like screen resolution, shadow quality, etc? In other words, what specifically is causing performance issues - is it a specific graphics-based issue, or is it something entirely different like AI or terrain modeling?

One thing I noticed back when I tested performance myself is that Odyssey installations killed my framerate, but these installations have way more complex geometry and textures compared to their Horizon counterparts. Is there any setting or XML entry that allows one to dial back the details in Odyssey installations (I'm fine with Horizons-level detail) to improve performance?

EDIT / UPDATE

It dawns on me that I tested Odyssey outposts in Horizons 4.0, which means no NPCs, so the performance hit I experienced could not be AI calculations, as these installations were empty. It has to be some something to do with the graphic presentation of these outposts (I also noticed that framerate returned to normal if I "looked away" from the outposts).

Lighting, geometry/meshes, (still) bad culling, and probably quite a few other things.

Turning down effects and/or reducing resolution will help in GPU limited scenes, but some we have no control over some things and 4.0 is never going to run as well as 3.8 and earlier versions, even when subjective quality is the same or inferior.

There were some good improvements in U16 that I noticed, but what hardware are you running?

I haven't noticed any significant improvements since at least U14, possibly earlier. If I look at any of my U14 through U17 charts from the same sort of scenarios on the same system, they are impossible to tell apart. About the only thing that could have changed that would have resulted in no improvement on my end, but meaningful improvement for others would be VRAM utilization as I rarely play the game on cards with less than 16GiB and virtually never on ones with less than 10GiB.

i7-9750H w/ 32 GB RAM
m.2 SSD
GeForce 1660ti @1080p

CPU is fine, and the GPU would be entirely acceptable if Odyssey didn't like to gobble up so much VRAM. 6GiB is still enough that some minor changes should make it plenty usable.

 

[nemolomen]

There were some good improvements in U16 that I noticed, but what hardware are you running?

I haven't noticed any significant improvements since at least U14, possibly earlier. If I look at any of my U14 through U17 charts from the same sort of scenarios on the same system, they are impossible to tell apart. About the only thing that could have changed that would have resulted in no improvement on my end, but meaningful improvement for others would be VRAM utilization as I rarely play the game on cards with less than 16GiB and virtually never on ones with less than 10GiB.

I may be misremembering and it could have been U14 where I noticed that several of the messages that used to spam the screen have been eliminated and which I associated with a perceived increase in performance or at least smoother operation of the graphical display in general...

 

[Old Duck]

CPU is fine, and the GPU would be entirely acceptable if Odyssey didn't like to gobble up so much VRAM. 6GiB is still enough that some minor changes should make it plenty usable.

Well re-downloading Horizons 4.0 won't cost me anything but time, so when I have said time, I'll probably do that and play around with settings just for the "fun" of it.

I remember in the early days of Odyssey a great enigma of some people getting great performance on older hardware while others with the latest and greatest gaming machines suffered from horrible performance, so who knows. Though I did try H4 once before, and the performance in Odyssey settlements was dismal, so my expectations are quite low.

 

[Happy Daze]

Signature shows system info....
In Station, leaving - 55 FPS
Outside Statiion - 65 leaving - Once outside 70-90 FPS looking at the Station (mostly 90 FPS)
Deep Space or Shipping Lanes Supercruise - 115 - 117 FPS
Sagan Class Tourist Ship normal space 100 FPS
I might update with a CZ later...

I created a dual boot using an extra SSD NVME because my normal boot setup is at least 5 years of crap loading. Even cleaning it up you can never get rid of all the garbage left in the Registry. After Odyssey launched I was getting a 1 second (yes a whole second) lockup in or out of the game once the game loaded. Screen, even mouse just stopped for a second. Only after the game loaded. So I created the second boot with ONLY game required apps and software. It's amazing how much support sw you need, including email, text editors, 3rd party apps, blah blah blah. However once running I am getting the best performance in game I have ever had.

I highly suggest it, especially with NVME being so cheap these days...

 

[Old Duck]

especially with NVME being so cheap these days...

Speaking of cheap, next time I uninstall Elite to free up room on my game drive, I think I'll just move it to a cheap USB thumb drive instead of totally deleting it. I still have 16 hours of downloading to go! Rural American Internet at it's finest..

 

[CMDR 1936]

For Odyssey CPU is more important than GPU. Performance issues are usually because of CPU bottleneck.

Is that so? You mean for on-foot stuff?

 

[Rat Catcher]

Is that so? You mean for on-foot stuff?

@Morbad certainly appears to have illustrated that well in multiple posts over the last couple of years.
Although, it may now encompass "live" 4.0 too, no doubt they will appraise us of the situation if requested.

 

[Morbad]

Is that so? You mean for on-foot stuff?

It depends on what CPU and GPU one has, but in configurations that would be well balanced in most other games, CPU (or system memory) performance is commonly the limiting factor in ED 4.0. This is most apparent on foot and around settlements.

 

[Sylow]

I haven't noticed any significant improvements since at least U14, possibly earlier.

While i also can confirm that U14 was what brought the game back to playable state for me, i don't ever rule out yet another big issue in the game engine. There have been too many crazy and obscure issues in the game over the last few years. Just as one example, where volumetric effects did two passes on low, four passes at high and and 10 passes at ultimate quality. And of course 172 passes at medium quality on one rather new series of GPUs, for whatever reason... so, those people could even have improved the games performance at that time by digging out their old GPUs from the storage closet and using those instead.

For many other games, if somebody reports performance problems, i would indeed suspect that the person asking has a hardware problem. In ED on the other hand... FD stated that they won't put much effort into further optimisation. So we should not expect much improvement any more. But specifically for this one game, when somebody reports bad performance, i tend to believe that he ran into just yet another of still many unfixed performance issues, which FD just never bothered to look into. (Unlike a number of other commenters above, definitely not Morbad, who rather just throw insults in here on the one posting problems. Good job, positive toxicity of fanboys at its best. )

 

[Schattenmacher]

No problems here..