Internet bandwidth effects on fps

[Riktar]

My system has plenty of muscle to play this game according to the game requirements. IE:

Mobo: Asus P6X58D-E
CPU: Xeon X5650 running at 3.57Ghz
Graphics: R9 290
Memory: 12GB of DDR3 at 1600mhz
Hard Drive: PNY 480GB SSD

But here's the thing: Whenever I try to play open, I am fine until I get 3 or more live players in my instance. While the exact numbers vary, I ususally see my fps go from 60 (And this is with frame sync enabled and locked to 60) down to 10, heck I have seen it go BELOW that occasionally.

The system spec requirement only states a online connection but does not mention a minimum bandwidth number. I am out in a rural area and because of my distance to the CO my connection is usually in the 1.0 to 1.4Mbps range. I have tried logging on at all hours of the day to see if maybe my bandwidth is getting choked depending on the time of day, IE: more people using the service. Doesn't seem to make much difference.

I considered trying to lower my graphics settings but am guessing that its not the eye-candy as much as it is the system having to get info on "live" Cmdr's vs the NPC's I see.

Anyone else with "Low" speed broadband having this issue?

 

[Bladesteel]

Do try lowering graphics settings, and if the problem remains the same you will know it's not graphics.

 

[huwthomas]

I get about 6-7Mbps and notice slow-downs when I venture out of solo, making it not worth it for me. I'm not sure if it's my connection or my elderly CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz, presumably handling P2P traffic for multiple peers can take quite a bit of CPU.

 

[Riktar]

Thanks for the replies. I will try lowering all graphics settings. Will try Medium and then (if I still have bad fps) crank it all down to the lowest setting.

And I don't think my CPU is having any problems. Whether or not the game was written for it or not, the load is evenly distributed along all (actual since the Xeon is a hexcore) 6 cores. and the CPU hit is never above 25%

I will post back with results.

 

[Fanta]

I am usually at 60 fps in game and in station from time I got new graphic card and new monitor full HD, but was talking about many npc's in Ngaliba on my radar, as well on my view site many lights like small beacons or whatever, flaying in circle all the time. While I was looking that and my scanner was full of ships on it, my fps drooped to 30-40 so number of objects on radar sure do affect fps a lot. I am sure my fps droop caused by scanner and number of ships on it since I turned my view on opposite side of those lights and still had lower fps all the time before I gone out of range from those ships.

 

[Daffan]

i found people who lives overseas and have high ping get way less fps.

like instead of constant 60 at 1440p u get like 45, 30 in increments in supercruise,.

 

[Bam]

1Mbps connection is probably more then enough, thats about 125KB (kilobytes) of information a second which is probably way more than 3 players send to each other p2p, I could be wrong...

You could try installing something like NetSpeedMonitor that just sits on your task bar and shows your live connection up and downstream speeds. You would see if it maxes out your connection when you meet several players in open.

 

[waimser]

It seems if you can maintain 60fps with Vsync on, you might keep nice smooth game play, so its worth at least trying lower settings.

I dont think we know yet if its the network speed causing the frame rate drop or if its because it gives your system extra stuff to handle. You are not the only one having this problem though, many have the same issue. FD know about these problems and as it seems related to the stutter problem, im pretty sure they are working on it. They have said they are hoping to have the stutter somewhat fixed with 1.3, heres hoping that any fix will help with framerate drop as well.

Dont hold your breath for it to be fixed soon though. Some of us have just decided to accept it and stay in solo mode for now, this might be your best option for now Im sorry

If you have a low end system and are willing to lose a bit of the prettyness of the game, it might be worth trying out my settings shown in post 232 of this thread
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=120331&page=16&p=2091229&viewfull=1#post2091229

This MIGHT help you get to the magic number you need for smooth play. I doubt it, but its worth a try. Make sure to make a backup of your file before you start.

 

[bassman]

Thanks for the replies. I will try lowering all graphics settings. Will try Medium and then (if I still have bad fps) crank it all down to the lowest setting.

And I don't think my CPU is having any problems. Whether or not the game was written for it or not, the load is evenly distributed along all (actual since the Xeon is a hexcore) 6 cores. and the CPU hit is never above 25%

I will post back with results.

Such a massive performance hit in open isn't typical IME. A couple of random suggestions: make sure the board chipset/network driver is latest version, try the graphics card in a different slot, consider updating the bios on your board.

 

[Riktar]

Ok, just got done playing with all settings at Medium. While the frame rates hardly (This time I kept one eye on the frame rate indicator) budged I noticed other human players were "skipping" for lack of a better term. Especially when I hit that magical number of 3 of them being present.

UGH.

 

[brumster]

Both myself and a friend in a similar situation to you (plenty high enough PC specs, but rural broadband) get exactly the same as you. FPS drops with more online players. I'm on 5-6Mb down, and only 384kbps up, and online play suffers exactly as you describe. I wouldn't say ALL the time, but generally whenever there's a good 4 or more players.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I have a monster cable ISP next door, so my 24 FPS cannot be blamed on them.

I need $3,000 for a monster gamer rig. That's what the lottery tickets are for.

 

[timbow]

Both myself and a friend in a similar situation to you (plenty high enough PC specs, but rural broadband) get exactly the same as you. FPS drops with more online players. I'm on 5-6Mb down, and only 384kbps up, and online play suffers exactly as you describe. I wouldn't say ALL the time, but generally whenever there's a good 4 or more players.

I believe he's referring to me . I have dropped to 15FPS in supercruise with RWPs. I do have some video recording this, and have taken some GPU and network stats at the same time. I just need to get off my backside and put a case together. In a nutshell the symptoms I see is that the GPU %age utilisation drops along with the framerate as the transmitted data goes up. The current theory is that the networking thread is somehow blocking the rendering thread, or starving it of data. The fact that the GPU utilisation drops is proof that it is not a hardware issue.....(for me at least).

If anyone from FDEV picks this up, I'd be happy to run any test cases you want, and collect the data....

 

[GJ51]

The quality of the internet connection has been one of the most under-discussed issues here in the forum.

I have an old but still reasonably powerful system using an i7-950 CPU, 24 gigs of ram, 1TBSSD, and a GTX 770.

I use that to power 3 1920x1200 24" displays for a 5760X1200 game display.

I never have FPS or stutter issues.

I attribute that to a rock solid, fiber optic, fixed ip address, 65/65MBps connection. No problems even when other systems are hitting the line.

I don't think local hardware is as big a factor as the quality of the internet connection.

Just my impression, YMMV

 

[timbow]

The actual bps throughput from the game is not really massive, but in open with RWPs in the same instance, it is constant. Hardware is most definitely not the problem, there is a software defect somewhere that is starving the GPU of data to process (I think). I also don't think it is the internet connection particularly other than maybe a buffering issue (got to check the state of the UDP/TCP buffers which I haven't done yet), however, I kind of ruled out buffering as the problem maifests itself as a drop in FPS. If it was buffering due to crappy internet then you'd see lots of lag, but not a drop in FPS and correlating drop in GPU usage.

Anyway, a post in the bug forum is long overdue for this.....

 

[CMDR Ellegon]

I guess that the Internet through-put and round-trip delay are really important.

I have the following setup:

Intel core i7-5820k Hex-Core at 3.30 GHz
16 GB of DDR4 2800 RAM
NVidia GTX 980 GPU (one display at 1080p for now)
Windows 7 x64*
High-Speed Gigabit Switch and Router in house
120 MBit/s (Uplink about 10 MBit/s) Cable Internet

Generally, I have no lagging or stuttering at the highest settings (going from 1.0x to 2.0x super-sampling did not affect performance at all). If I do, it is quite random (not related to number of players in instance, asteroid fields, stations etc), very short--lived and occurs during peak internet-usage time. That might indicate bandwidth issues or even more likely, slow package roundtrip.

* Overlooked factor: Windows installation. I do clean installs from Microsoft Reference images, with no unnecessary junk or crud. I also keep my Windows install minimal, as I only use Windows for gaming.

 

[Riktar]

The quality of the internet connection has been one of the most under-discussed issues here in the forum.

I have an old but still reasonably powerful system using an i7-950 CPU, 24 gigs of ram, 1TBSSD, and a GTX 770.

I use that to power 3 1920x1200 24" displays for a 5760X1200 game display.

I never have FPS or stutter issues.

I attribute that to a rock solid, fiber optic, fixed ip address, 65/65MBps connection. No problems even when other systems are hitting the line.

I don't think local hardware is as big a factor as the quality of the internet connection.

Just my impression, YMMV

When I do an in head comparison between my system and yours the only thing I see to your advantage is the 24 GB memory to my 12 GB. In every other regard, if you can drive 3 1920x1080 monitors and I have an issue with just ONE single monitor,,,,,,, well,,,,, yeah,,,,

My internet sucks.

Or something else is amiss.

 

[CMDR Beltane]

I guess that the Internet through-put and round-trip delay are really important.

I have the following setup:

Intel core i7-5820k Hex-Core at 3.30 GHz
16 GB of DDR4 2800 RAM
NVidia GTX 980 GPU (one display at 1080p for now)
Windows 7 x64*
High-Speed Gigabit Switch and Router in house
120 MBit/s (Uplink about 10 MBit/s) Cable Internet

Generally, I have no lagging or stuttering at the highest settings (going from 1.0x to 2.0x super-sampling did not affect performance at all). If I do, it is quite random (not related to number of players in instance, asteroid fields, stations etc), very short--lived and occurs during peak internet-usage time. That might indicate bandwidth issues or even more likely, slow package roundtrip.

* Overlooked factor: Windows installation. I do clean installs from Microsoft Reference images, with no unnecessary junk or crud. I also keep my Windows install minimal, as I only use Windows for gaming.

Rougly the same here, only some hardware lower like GCard and CPU. 50 Mbit/s internet connection, never experienced a problem so far. Even with 8 players arround station which are usually more ressource consuming, at least for the GFX. Only right at the startup i have some short stutters, but afterwards as fluid as i would expect it.

 

[Magic Man]

I'd suggest it may not be down to you but to the other players in that wing/instance that you are playing with. If it's P2P comms between you then issues their end could well effect you.