FPS Drops Near Stations Persist Until Main Menu Reload (Odyssey, Linux)

[1xok]

Hi folks,

I'm experiencing an occasional but persistent FPS drop when approaching settlements or stations – including my own Fleet Carrier. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, my FPS drops by about 30% and stays low as long as I'm near the location. Jumping away and returning doesn’t fix it; the reduced performance usually persists until I return to the main menu and reload the game. Then everything is back to normal and I get my usual 60 FPS.

This has been happening for a long time, and it’s not tied to any specific update as far as I can tell.

System specs:

• i7 6700K
• Radeon RX 6600 XT (8GB VRAM)
• 16 GB RAM
• SSD
• Playing at 1080p, high settings, FSR off
• Odyssey version
• Running on Linux (Proton) – game generally runs very well otherwise

Has anyone experienced something similar? Any known workaround or fix?

I'd be especially interested to know:
Does anyone experience the same FPS drop behavior under Windows?
That would help narrow down whether this is Linux/Proton-specific or a more general issue with Odyssey.

Some additional observations:
VRAM usage is constantly at maximum while playing Odyssey, though that might include cached data. VRAM clock speed stays at peak frequency, but that’s common across most games. Interestingly, neither the CPU nor the GPU appear to be fully utilized during these drops – the graphics pipeline hovers around 70%, and CPU load remains moderate. Still, the performance drop near stations persists until I reload the game from the main menu.

If anyone has experience with this kind of issue under Linux or knows of tuning tips for AMD cards in this context, I'd really appreciate your input.

Thanks in advance!
o7

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

I never had this issue.
Have you tried, as a test, to lower the resolution so that you do NOT use the max VRAM, and see if the issue still occurs?
You may have run out of VRAM, which became clogged, and the game was unable to clear it or was having difficulty doing so.

 

[1xok]

Thanks for the suggestion!

You're probably right that VRAM overload is a factor. I’ll try lowering the resolution or texture settings to see if that helps prevent the issue from occurring. It’s strange though, because VRAM is full basically all the time in Odyssey, even when performance is stable.

By the way, just out of curiosity – are you playing on Windows or Linux?
Would be interesting to know, since I’m running Linux via Proton and wondering if that might be part of the issue.

 

[rootsrat]

Hi folks,

I'm experiencing an occasional but persistent FPS drop when approaching settlements or stations – including my own Fleet Carrier. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, my FPS drops by about 30% and stays low as long as I'm near the location. Jumping away and returning doesn’t fix it; the reduced performance usually persists until I return to the main menu and reload the game. Then everything is back to normal and I get my usual 60 FPS.

This has been happening for a long time, and it’s not tied to any specific update as far as I can tell.

System specs:

• i7 6700K
• Radeon RX 6600 XT (8GB VRAM)
• 16 GB RAM
• SSD
• Playing at 1080p, high settings, FSR off
• Odyssey version
• Running on Linux (Proton) – game generally runs very well otherwise

Has anyone experienced something similar? Any known workaround or fix?

I'd be especially interested to know:
Does anyone experience the same FPS drop behavior under Windows?
That would help narrow down whether this is Linux/Proton-specific or a more general issue with Odyssey.

Some additional observations:
VRAM usage is constantly at maximum while playing Odyssey, though that might include cached data. VRAM clock speed stays at peak frequency, but that’s common across most games. Interestingly, neither the CPU nor the GPU appear to be fully utilized during these drops – the graphics pipeline hovers around 70%, and CPU load remains moderate. Still, the performance drop near stations persists until I reload the game from the main menu.

If anyone has experience with this kind of issue under Linux or knows of tuning tips for AMD cards in this context, I'd really appreciate your input.

Thanks in advance!
o7

I've had similar issues long time ago, when I was on GTX 1080 gpu. VRAM could indeed be the culprit here.

 

[alexzk]

Hi folks,

I'm experiencing an occasional but persistent FPS drop when approaching settlements or stations – including my own Fleet Carrier. It doesn't happen every time, but when it does, my FPS drops by about 30% and stays low as long as I'm near the location. Jumping away and returning doesn’t fix it; the reduced performance usually persists until I return to the main menu and reload the game. Then everything is back to normal and I get my usual 60 FPS.

This has been happening for a long time, and it’s not tied to any specific update as far as I can tell.

System specs:

• i7 6700K
• Radeon RX 6600 XT (8GB VRAM)
• 16 GB RAM
• SSD
• Playing at 1080p, high settings, FSR off
• Odyssey version
• Running on Linux (Proton) – game generally runs very well otherwise

Has anyone experienced something similar? Any known workaround or fix?

I'd be especially interested to know:
Does anyone experience the same FPS drop behavior under Windows?
That would help narrow down whether this is Linux/Proton-specific or a more general issue with Odyssey.

Some additional observations:
VRAM usage is constantly at maximum while playing Odyssey, though that might include cached data. VRAM clock speed stays at peak frequency, but that’s common across most games. Interestingly, neither the CPU nor the GPU appear to be fully utilized during these drops – the graphics pipeline hovers around 70%, and CPU load remains moderate. Still, the performance drop near stations persists until I reload the game from the main menu.

If anyone has experience with this kind of issue under Linux or knows of tuning tips for AMD cards in this context, I'd really appreciate your input.

Thanks in advance!
o7

Yes, I had that for years...this eventually saved me, last 2 months i'm happy 60 fps:
In dxvk.conf add

dxgi.maxDeviceMemory = 3900
dxgi.maxSharedMemory = 3900

Which is size of VRAM in MB less than real (I have 4 Gb total).
Those setting actually helped me, than you can play with other. I have more:

dxvk.numCompilerThreads = 12
# Removes earlie what should not be drawn!!! Can't find in latest example, probably option was removed.
#dxvk.useEarlyDiscard = True

# Enables mailbox if disabled vsync in game
dxvk.tearFree = True
d3d11.relaxedBarriers = True

#d3d11.samplerAnisotropy = 8
d3d11.samplerLodBias = -0.5

#Remove flickering of close 3D objects (lose some FPS)
d3d11.invariantPosition = True


d3d11.cachedDynamicResources = "a"

I think Elite somehow drain RAM which makes it lag, that setting hard restrict it to VRAM.

Also I use this proton https://github.com/rankynbass/proton-xiv with kernel 6.14 and NT_SYNC.
Stock from Steam loads textures a bit different, this one does in parallel.

 

[pvaljann]

^^ This, mainly the memory tweaks.
Also consider the fact all Protons are not created equal, and using the FSR scaling method in E : D does have a more positive impact at 4k. I've had fuzzier fonts and cursor de-docking from the game since moving to Proton 10, and although the performance is roughly equal in E : D between 9 and 10, some other games have more significant framerate improvements in 10 (6.15 kernel with NT_SYNC.) Of all the tweaks, making sure DXVK (which also changes with Proton) settings were appropriate gave a very significant boost.

 

[1xok]

I've now set up a limit to VRAM usage in dxvk.conf.

I'll be testing whether this helps with the persistent FPS drops near stations. Since the issue doesn't happen every time, it might take a while to know for sure.

That said, I’m seeing very similar FPS drops consistently when walking around settlements on foot – depending on viewing angle, FPS dip below 60 even though GPU load stays below 70%.

 

[geoffrey.hdt]

Thanks for the suggestion!

You're probably right that VRAM overload is a factor. I’ll try lowering the resolution or texture settings to see if that helps prevent the issue from occurring. It’s strange though, because VRAM is full basically all the time in Odyssey, even when performance is stable.

By the way, just out of curiosity – are you playing on Windows or Linux?
Would be interesting to know, since I’m running Linux via Proton and wondering if that might be part of the issue.

I had this issue playing Cyberpunk 2077, with 4k texture packs.
My old 12 GB GPU was running smooth until it wasn't, and restarting the game did the trick. Upgraded to another GPU with 16 GB and it was better but issue persisted. Then upgraded to my current rtx4090, and the issue was finally gone for good.

Playing on Windows, even with DLDSR I never go to max 24GB VRAM utilization. At least when running a single instance of the game.

 

[alexzk]

Then upgraded to my current rtx4090, and the issue was finally gone for good.

yes, it hides the problem, and does not solve it.
You just need like 100 hrs to play without restart to see it.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Just been experiencing the same problem. Thought i had my textures too high, so dropped them, all good, until i'd been playing some time, then the lag started. So lowered it again, and it was better, but again, lag started after some time.

Looks like once it grabs some vram it doesn't want to let it go, and the lag starts.

I'll give the solution provided a go.

Where is dxvk.conf located or where does it need to be located. Note, non-Steam version of ED running through Wine/Proton.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

The only time I'm getting framerate drops is when the chat panel bugs out. When that happens it also shows test in the upper left corner of the panel. Focusing the panel and switching a tab always solves that.

 

[Shurimal]

It’s strange though, because VRAM is full basically all the time in Odyssey, even when performance is stable.

Most monitoring tools show allocated VRAM, not actually used VRAM. A game will typically allocate as much VRAM to itself as possible, even if it doesn't use that much normally. But when it runs over the budget, performance problems begin even though your monitoring tool may not report anything out of usual.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Hmm... put dxvk.conf in the ED folder and it doesn't seem to be applying. Told it to use a max of 5Gb and its still using the full 6.

Should it go somewhere in the wine prefix?

 

[alexzk]

Hmm... put dxvk.conf in the ED folder and it doesn't seem to be applying. Told it to use a max of 5Gb and its still using the full 6.

Should it go somewhere in the wine prefix?

In the same folder where EXE itself (not a laucnher exe) is located.
Or you can set external variable in Steam

DXVK_CONFIG_FILE=/absolute/path/to/EliteDanger/dxvk.conf <gamemoderun> <prime-run> %command%

You can do special effects using vkBasalt too, like way better anti-aliasing (it is like ReShade but for Linux):

ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 VKBASALT_CONFIG_FILE=/path/to/Games/EliteDanger/vkBasalt/vkBasalt100.conf %command%

I have in-game AA turned OFF, and I use by basalt one. Could be related to the lags too.