In case you were concerned about upgrading your system

[Replica]

I just got and installed my GTX 1080 today, and figured I'd launch PC and load my medium sized park just to test and see if there was any significant difference in FPS compared to my old AMD 7970, and... nope, not really.

I still run my old i7-3770K cpu, 3.50GHz (not overclocked), so that's the same, 16GB of RAM, pretty standard.

With the old card I'd get around 11-15 FPS on medium settings (there is virtually no difference performance wise between low and medium btw, a margin of perhaps 1 or 2 FPS).

With the new 1080 I get around 15-25 FPS, also on medium settings (which is an improvement, but is definitely still incredibly choppy and sporadic).

The park itself has about 3000 guests, 3 relatively long inverted coasters nestling through terrain and scenery (of which 1 largely goes through an extensive underground net of tunnels, its really cool), in addition to a handful of flat rides and plenty of foliage and scenery.
It's not super extensive land wise, but it's rather dense.

From what I can tell it is definitely a CPU thing weighing the game down at the moment, with guests (presumably the AI more than the models and animations themselves) and terrain being responsible for the biggest performance hits.

Now all of this was already kind of a given, most of you might already know about the games performance in its current state so this isn't really news, no big surprises there.
Just wanted to let some o you know that it IS mainly a CPU thing, and that you should probably be patient and wait before making plans to upgrade your system if you are going to do it specifically to play Planet Coaster.
Like what I'm saying is that it's entirely possible that your rig isn't as underpowered as your current ingame experiences make it out to be.

So don't worry yo, bide your time and wait for a while, the devs are doing good work and will come around to optimizations later on.

 

[breezerHOG1]

Everybody knows that the current Alpha relies primarily on CPU more than GPU at the moment, but that might change for the full release. Optimizations are still being done on the development side that we are not receiving in the Alpha yet, and theres still a lot of content to be added in [up] so no we shouldnt expect big improvements from newer GPUs just yet

 

[DarkRider2k3]

I'm still probably going to upgrade my GPU first to see what happens. Considering I have an AMD Phenom X4 (3.7Ghz), I have a suspicion my n460 GTX is the culprit

edit:

To note, I am getting around 15ish FPS as well. it's a slight bit choppy when the park starts to fill up, but no lag whatsoever on a blank canvas.

 

[Fishook]

What resolution are you using OP, as it seems rather low even with your processor, but it will get better optimising later one, as they high majority of people play these type of games do not have very high spec pc's.

I plan to test out 4K on my new rig i7 6700K 1080 and 32gb, but I was happy with the performance on my i7 2600K 770 & 16gb. But i just wanted a bit more oomph in all games, while still retaining a decent second pc.

 

[danlightbulb]

I would have expected better performance than you are getting with that cpu and gpu combo tbh, its still a 4 core 8 thread chip and not that much slower than a current gen. Why not try overclocking it a little and see what difference it makes?

 

[grinisagi]

I was wondering if an I7 is going to make a big difference compared to an I5.
From what i read it won't really make a difference ingame, but with recording and editing it might?

atm i have a gtx 970 4gb, 16gb ram and a I5 4460/ 6mb, game runs smooth, but when trying to make pov movie of a coaster i have trouble keeping it smooth.
I'll wait till the release of the official game before upgrading anything, but i think an I7 might be mandatory?

 

[androgynousamoeba]

From what I've seen the game is still going to use as much CPU power as it can even after optimization, so it seems fast-clocked, multi-core CPUs are definitely a must. Hopefully large, detailed parks won't weigh it down so much later on, but the devs have pretty much confirmed that the better the CPU, the better the game will perform.

Graphics cards don't seem to matter as much at this stage, so I'd imagine it'd run okay even with the minimum required GPU. That might change as more features are added to the game though, so we'll see.

I'm one of those who's building a new gaming PC just to play this game, but due to my tight budget I pretty much have to buy my parts in increments. So if you're in a situation like mine, invest in the best CPU you can afford first, since we know for sure that a decent one is necessary. After that, wait and see how the other minimum specs change to make sure you don't spend more than you need to.

 

[danlightbulb]

The GTX1080 is the best GPU money can buy, yet he's getting 15-25 fps? Just doesn't seem right to me, regardless of what CPU he is using. It would make sense if he was running this at 4k (the OP doesn't state what resolution so maybe he is). If its 1080p then that is a pretty poor fps for the quality of that system.

 

[Grumpka]

Similar system, and don't get the gtx1080 low frame rate??? Not sure about frame rate, as I wouldn't even know how to check that, but I can tell you one thing, a GTX1080 w/ i7 6700k 32GB and m.2 SSD, I'm enjoying perfectly smooth animations and amazing effects. I'm still amazed at the level of detail. The aeronauts 2 ride, just noticing the detail of the canvas on the center of the ride(wrinkles, refraction of light showing the actual texture of materials), wear and tear details, all in 4k?

Running this same game on a laptop i6700 w/ a GTX970m and 12gb, only in standard HD, it can be a stretch. I am so impressed with the GTX1080. It just makes everything more enjoyable. I do hope they optimize though. I'd like to play this game with family members and friends. I doubt they are as insane as me though. They won't go out to build up a desktop just to play PC. LOL.

 

[Mr Deuce]

Everybody knows that the current Alpha relies primarily on CPU more than GPU at the moment, but that might change for the full release. Optimizations are still being done on the development side that we are not receiving in the Alpha yet, and theres still a lot of content to be added in [up] so no we shouldnt expect big improvements from newer GPUs just yet

This isn't really true. It does intentionally scale up/down to use as close as possible 100% of CPU, no matter what CPU it may be. But in terms of overall performance, PC is a graphics fest and leans very heavily on the GPU. Obviously things like guest animation and AI require billions of operations, but if you look into the capacity of even a basic current CPU, you'll find it's well beyond sufficient. In fact, based on clock speed that processor is able to make around 10 billion calculations per second. To put that into context, in a park with 10k guests, that allows 1 million calculations per guest per second! Obviously that's massively over simplified (yes the CPU is doing many other things and the flow of instructions is not linear), but hopefully you get the idea.

I'm not saying fast CPU's don't help - CPU can be a bottleneck in many ways, but be under no illusion, when those FPS start dropping it's chiefly a GPU inadequacy. Although as has you said, final optimisation is yet to come and whilst outright performance on a game already so well optimised will be slight, the optimisation for the current generation of GPU's will likely be significant.

However, I strongly suspect the OP's issue is not GPU or CPU related, more likely to be down to driver issues, something hogging resources in the background or as is more often than you would think, some other bottleneck such as a cheap or badly configured mainboard. It could even be a damaged CPU of memory that is wasting a lot of time error checking and correcting instead of running at full speed.

 

[Bergenia Tanoak]

I was wondering if an I7 is going to make a big difference compared to an I5.
From what i read it won't really make a difference ingame, but with recording and editing it might?

atm i have a gtx 970 4gb, 16gb ram and a I5 4460/ 6mb, game runs smooth, but when trying to make pov movie of a coaster i have trouble keeping it smooth.
I'll wait till the release of the official game before upgrading anything, but i think an I7 might be mandatory?

If you are upgrading then sure get a new I7. Looks like the fastest that would work for your LGA 1150 Intel motherboard would be the I7 4790K at 4GHz. Turbo boost to 4.4GHz. That is a nice boost from your 3.2GHz processor. If your motherboard has support for overclocking and you get a aftermarket tower cooler you likely can get the processor to run constantly at 4.4GHZ+


I think the game can just take advantage of the fastest possible components. My feeling is at this point in the development cycle the game doesn't have the knowledge programmed into it to effectively scale the simulation to the computer hardware people have. Edit: I'd prefer if Frontier developed this game with the knowledge that computers will get better in the future, and give the game the ability to increase the detail, simulation, clarity, immersion dynamically with the better hardware.

I just got and installed my GTX 1080 today, and figured I'd launch PC and load my medium sized park just to test and see if there was any significant difference in FPS compared to my old AMD 7970, and... nope, not really.

I still run my old i7-3770K cpu, 3.50GHz (not overclocked), so that's the same, 16GB of RAM, pretty standard.

With the old card I'd get around 11-15 FPS on medium settings (there is virtually no difference performance wise between low and medium btw, a margin of perhaps 1 or 2 FPS).

With the new 1080 I get around 15-25 FPS, also on medium settings (which is an improvement, but is definitely still incredibly choppy and sporadic).

The park itself has about 3000 guests, 3 relatively long inverted coasters nestling through terrain and scenery (of which 1 largely goes through an extensive underground net of tunnels, its really cool), in addition to a handful of flat rides and plenty of foliage and scenery.
It's not super extensive land wise, but it's rather dense.

From what I can tell it is definitely a CPU thing weighing the game down at the moment, with guests (presumably the AI more than the models and animations themselves) and terrain being responsible for the biggest performance hits.

Now all of this was already kind of a given, most of you might already know about the games performance in its current state so this isn't really news, no big surprises there.
Just wanted to let some o you know that it IS mainly a CPU thing, and that you should probably be patient and wait before making plans to upgrade your system if you are going to do it specifically to play Planet Coaster.
Like what I'm saying is that it's entirely possible that your rig isn't as underpowered as your current ingame experiences make it out to be.

So don't worry yo, bide your time and wait for a while, the devs are doing good work and will come around to optimizations later on.

You still got a 37% to 67% boost by the new Nvidia 1080 card. Those aren't small numbers. Certainly a lot of money for the boost though. Let us no what you see when you overclock your CPU (make sure to get a better cooler than stock. I'm thinking you could get 4GHz plus out of that thing.) The overclock should help you FPS in Planet Coaster.

 

[grinisagi]

If you are upgrading then sure get a new I7. Looks like the fastest that would work for your LGA 1150 Intel motherboard would be the I7 4790K at 4GHz. Turbo boost to 4.4GHz. That is a nice boost from your 3.2GHz processor. If your motherboard has support for overclocking and you get a aftermarket tower cooler you likely can get the processor to run

Thanks for that info ;-)

 

[Simfreak]

Thanks for that info ;-)

My I7 6600K cooled with Corsair H115i runs like a dream at 4.6GHz. The temps never go above 72 degrees. The case and cable management have a lot to do with it too and that's why I chose the Corsair Carbide Series Air 540. Cables are kept separate in one side with all the component in the other. I'll post a video of it so you can see it in action, I call it Stormtrooper.


[video=youtube;gHTvV52pQCQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHTvV52pQCQ[/video]