Almost 1 week since the April update launched. Weak graphics performance since the update is from low gpu utilization. Lowering FX settings is just a band-aid to cover the fact that game won't solicit and make full use of available GPU power.
Whatever Frontier broke with regard to exhaust trails causes them to stall rendering; CPU and GPU utilization
fall at the same time as the frame rate does. Disabling these exhaust trails removes them as a rendering bottleneck, allowing frame rate and GPU utilization to return to normal (high and essentially pegged at ~100%, if one's CPU is fast enough).
This is an acknowledged bug that will hopefully be fixed within the next few days.
Why is the game still on this buggy version. Why can't FD revert back to the previous version until they can fix this? Random module priority reset is also game breaking. This new update is awful.
I can't recall Frontier ever rolling back a patch, even ones buggier than this. Get used to it.
Fortunately the 1 priority bug doesn't affect me as all my modules on at priority 1 setting doesn't take me over 100% power.
Thousand CMDRs have likely held the same opinion, right before losing their vessel to the effects of a powerplant malfunction.
I'm talking about the attached. This is from sitting in the hangar looking around with my rift. I run VR ultra settings with SS down to 1.0 and HMD resolution up to 1.5. Why is my Vega 56 randomly dropping to ~800mhz when the framerate drops? Shouldn't it be clocking up if it's struggling to keep the fps up? It's not temp throttling because that happens at 85c.
The framerate drops aren't caused by the GPU having too much to do, they are caused by whatever is being done with exhaust trails preempting other stuff.
The GPU has to sit mostly idle, waiting for whatever the engine is asking it to do with the trails, to be resolved.
No other game or software I have pushes the GPU temp this high.
Elite Dangerous is normally quite demanding and will pull more power at the same clock speeds and voltages than most any actual game I've seen. Only a few benchmarks and stress tests utilize the GPU more thoroughly than ED.
That's why this exhaust trail issue is so glaring.
Rather than software updates for your V-Card perhaps you all need an update:
Plenty of people experiencing these issues have considerably more capable hardware than what's in your laptop.
You can't brute force your way around a problem like this and suggesting that one can, or that it would be worthwhile to spend money on hardware to do so when it's not a hardware issue, has an acceptable workaround, and is likely to be fixed in short order, is just silly.