Hardware & Technical FX-6300 + R9 290 = FPS at 1080p

[procopy]

Ok, it's been an year now and I really can't figure this crap out, so as a last resort I'm asking for help. I've read long ago that there are severe performance issues with this combo, but I could not find a solution and if this is known for that long, there should be a bloody one. I get the fact the FX will bottleneck the R9, but I really don't expect it to fall down to under 10 FPS when I approach/enter station or even try to render planetary surface where things go completely bonkers for few seconds. I've tried it all - different drivers, overclocking, lowering ED settings - it won't make a difference. At least not one that's noticeable for long. To be clear here, my problem is most apparent when I approach/enter a station and approach a planet. Sure, I found supersampling affects it most, but I won't play with a setting below 1.0 and this is a huge compromise on my end. Currently my settings are a complete mishmash and I don't really believe this is the way I should be playing with my setup, especially considering it does not help a bit.

So, please lads, elaborate some ideas. Thanks.

 

[Shadowdancer]

You should be able to set terrain work somewhere towards the midpoint of the slider to improve things on planets, but keep texture/material quality settings at medium and supersampling at 1. Shadow quality can be a bit of a hit, but I preferred having that at high. Go from there and turn settings up where you really absolutely need the extra bit of quality.

I've been getting very acceptable performance that way with an FX-6300 and an R9 280X, mid-40s to 60 most of the time (and really everywhere it mattered). The CPU will start to become a bottleneck when a good amount of other players are around though.

(edit) And make sure your drivers are up to date, the R9 series are still supported by the latest versions (the 16.12 stuff with relive).

 

[Muadiib Santiago]

Hi,
You need to look at your settings and see if there is a way to reduce the overhead on your CPU, I say this as i have an R9 270x and play with max settings with an I7 6700k. Your R9 290 should have no problem delivering the best visuals and it is your CPU that is the bottle neck for your system. As you yourself already know. I would start outside of E first make sure your not running anything outside of what is essential for game enjoyment. Go as far as stopping Steam, Radeon settings and anything else that is QoL and not necessary. You know mouse drivers that control LED's/DPI, Software Fan controllers etc. Remove everything you possibly can. See if that improves your performance, if not, it's going to take time to balance by going and shoving everything globally as medium, then tweaking until you get your personal level of quality. Generally using Pre-sets with most developers there is not a big difference between High/Very-High/Ultra the big step is from medium to high.
Sorry I cant give you a real answer, like do this/that...

 

[Morbad]

What are the rest of your system specs?

You should be able to max out texture and materials quality on a 290 without issue. You can also likely run maximum terrain work with no loss of performance, possibly even a performance increase. Also, SMAA should generally look better and run faster on AMD hardware at this point.

The only graphics settings that are going to be significantly CPU dependent are Shadows and FX. Run these at medium if you can.

If you are willing to adjust some settings in the configuration files directly, I can provide more suggestions once I have your complete system config.