I concur .. I have one myself. However, Win11 is not supported on it (
) so will be moving to Linux, finally.
Odyssey - CPU limited or GPU limited?
- Thread starter Draven Darken
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) so will be moving to Linux, finally.
You will get the best answer when Horizon and Odyssey merge.
My rig : i7-4790; ASUS Z87 MB; ASUS GTX 1660 Super; 16GB DDR3; 1920x1080. Not high spec!
I was having graphics problems with EDO until I updated to the newest drivers and used the GeForce Experience recommended settings for EDO. Now, FPS Monitor tells me that I'm running at 120fps average; GPU maxes at 98% usage during planetary landings and when on foot; and CPU spikes all over the place but is rarely in the red. Max CPU usage seems to occur when FSSing a planet with over 5 or so Bio signals, suggesting too much calculation too soon in the mapping process.
Although this is a 7-year-old rig, it performs very well in EDH and sufficiently well in EDO.
I was having graphics problems with EDO until I updated to the newest drivers and used the GeForce Experience recommended settings for EDO. Now, FPS Monitor tells me that I'm running at 120fps average; GPU maxes at 98% usage during planetary landings and when on foot; and CPU spikes all over the place but is rarely in the red. Max CPU usage seems to occur when FSSing a planet with over 5 or so Bio signals, suggesting too much calculation too soon in the mapping process.
Although this is a 7-year-old rig, it performs very well in EDH and sufficiently well in EDO.
CPU limited.
I'm playing on a laptop, i7-8750H CPU, GTX 1060 for the GPU.
For most games I throttle the CPU down to 70% max and can run fine. For EDO, I've switched to 100% "Hairdryer mode".
I can actually play at 70%, but the FPS dips down too much for my liking.
To quote DB "Separately, we have heard reports of very high spec machines failing to perform as expected. We believe this is a different issue, possibly CPU-related, and are looking into that too, as we speak" from here
It might be a slightly different situation as I play in VR exclusively, but I experienced both CPU and GPU limits when I tried Odyssey on the different patches (2080 Super, Ryzen 7 3700X and 32 GB@3600MHz). I usually don't run monitoring tools in VR as they can cause problems and stuttering, but I have enabled the status display in the corner of my headset's display. When playing Odyssey stuff in the ship in VR I usually see the status LED for CPU limiting before the one for GPU limiting, for example when approching a planet and flying towards a settlement. On foot with the virtual flatscreen I see limiting on all fronts in settlements and station concourses, but the CPU frametiming is generally worse than the GPU side.
The few times I tried Odyssey in 2D I got stable 60 fps everywhere with neither CPU nor GPU limiting, but that's in 1080p and not on ultra - I didn't change the graphics settings from what I use in VR.
One thing to note: The average CPU load only tells part of the story and is actually useless as an indicator for CPU limiting. My average CPU load is usually below 30% in Odyssey, but my monitoring tools clearly show individual logical cores to be at 100% at times, and the CPU frametimes are terrible. It is very possible to be CPU limited even though the average load is low. I've experienced this in Horizons too, when I visited an imperial shipyard for the first time and had 30 or 40 NPC ships at once around me: Both the average GPU and CPU load were well below 50%, but the framerate tanked because of individual CPU cores being unable to cope.
The few times I tried Odyssey in 2D I got stable 60 fps everywhere with neither CPU nor GPU limiting, but that's in 1080p and not on ultra - I didn't change the graphics settings from what I use in VR.
One thing to note: The average CPU load only tells part of the story and is actually useless as an indicator for CPU limiting. My average CPU load is usually below 30% in Odyssey, but my monitoring tools clearly show individual logical cores to be at 100% at times, and the CPU frametimes are terrible. It is very possible to be CPU limited even though the average load is low. I've experienced this in Horizons too, when I visited an imperial shipyard for the first time and had 30 or 40 NPC ships at once around me: Both the average GPU and CPU load were well below 50%, but the framerate tanked because of individual CPU cores being unable to cope.
My laptop load looks sort of like this while i play EDO (i7-9750h, 16gb ram, GTX1660ti-6GB)
GPU utilization 70-100%
CPU utilization 30-60%
So one will say that the game is GPU limited.
However, if i disable the turboboost on my CPU so it is capped to 2.6GHz, it generates less heat and my GPU can consistently at lower Temps and higher frequencies.
Yet, while i do get to play on a cooler laptop, i also lose frames per second like 10-15% less FPS.
So is it GPU limited or CPU limited? In my case it does not seem to be GPU limited, even tho the GPU stays close to 99%.
It just seem to be badly optimized
Given the engine's current state I cannot see how anyone could reliably answer the question. It's currently demanding of both, whereas edh is more demanding of the gpu.
The new tech definitely demands gpu but there are reports that settlements are CPU based.
My experience with CZs is that frame rates are low until the battle ends, suggesting the AI is stressing the CPU.
The new tech definitely demands gpu but there are reports that settlements are CPU based.
My experience with CZs is that frame rates are low until the battle ends, suggesting the AI is stressing the CPU.
The only way to find out is to try. There seems to be no real logic to how the game plays at the moment.
So I've done a bit of hardware profiling.
There is something called "GPU-Z", and something else called "CPU-Z", mentioned by a youtuber called "Jay2cents".
In my case, I'm actually GPU limited now.
Having tweaked everything, the GPU is running at 100%, I'm getting 30-60fps on foot. (Have limited FPS to 60).
This is with a 1060 GTX
I also
Tried to run 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 with the current version of EDO, LOD set to Ultra. My GPU ran at 99-100% and my CPU ran 7-14%, typically around 5-10%. All tests using a 4K pancake monitor.
Results (2.5K / 4K)
Concourse (Jameson Mem) on foot through shop window: 51 fps / 24 fps
Hangar on foot: 115 fps / 67 fps
Jameson landing pad and mail slot: 80-110 fps / 50-70 fps
Atmospheric planet: 90-130 fps / 51-90 fps (higher fps once altitude above 1 km).
Maler Works landing pad: 75 fps / 43 fps
Maler Works concourse on foot through shop window: 38 fps (11% CPU) / 13 fps (5% CPU, 95% GPU)
I don't think your 6700K will have any problem feeding your GPU in the current state of EDO, but it might change IF they manage to optimize it further.
For further comparison: I bought the game (and the GPU) to play in VR (Reverb G2 ~4K), but currently I cannot get decent performance in VR unless I lower the resolution to a point where it gets difficult to read text. In Horizons I can run Ultra LOD, full 4K resolution in VR, and still get 90+ fps.
I also have a RTX 3070 but I run a more beefy CPU, a Ryzen 3950x, so here are some numbers I did for you to compare:
Tried to run 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 with the current version of EDO, LOD set to Ultra. My GPU ran at 99-100% and my CPU ran 7-14%, typically around 5-10%. All tests using a 4K pancake monitor.
Results (2.5K / 4K)
Concourse (Jameson Mem) on foot through shop window: 51 fps / 24 fps
Hangar on foot: 115 fps / 67 fps
Jameson landing pad and mail slot: 80-110 fps / 50-70 fps
Atmospheric planet: 90-130 fps / 51-90 fps (higher fps once altitude above 1 km).
Maler Works landing pad: 75 fps / 43 fps
Maler Works concourse on foot through shop window: 38 fps (11% CPU) / 13 fps (5% CPU, 95% GPU)
I don't think your 6700K will have any problem feeding your GPU in the current state of EDO, but it might change IF they manage to optimize it further.
For further comparison: I bought the game (and the GPU) to play in VR (Reverb G2 ~4K), but currently I cannot get decent performance in VR unless I lower the resolution to a point where it gets difficult to read text. In Horizons I can run Ultra LOD, full 4K resolution in VR, and still get 90+ fps.
its all about your gpu,and it doesnt matter if its 3070 or 3090 or a 2060. There are areas in the game with huge frame drops,that reduce gpu usage to 0%. For me it was "magic rock formations" wich I encountered driviing my srv. Sometimes they are rendered near a settlement,this is why you get huge frame drops. And there is nothing you can do,we have to hope this gets fixed/optimized
If none of your cores/threads are at 100% usage means you are not bottlenecked by your cpu.The gpu usage is 100% even on a 3090
If none of your cores/threads are at 100% usage means you are not bottlenecked by your cpu.The gpu usage is 100% even on a 3090
Agreed. Something strange is going on, and it seems to be in the code. In the case I described above, with 13 fps, neither the CPU or even the GPU seemed to be working optimally. I've been working with PCs since the PC XT, and I've lost track of how they work today, but I remember back when an interrupt could cause the PC to freeze for quite a while. Nowadays with multithreading and multicores I experience something similar once in a while, mostly when the code is single threaded. That is purely a heuristic top down approach of trying to understand, so I might very well be completely wrong.
I'm on a 3900X + 2080 Super, and have roughly the same experience. CPU cores sitting around 40% utilisation, GPU pegged at 100% (on foot).
If you analyze datas, limitations clearly are on the GPU side. I have a recent and an older PC and when comparing the two, the GPU is the one who's far above its treshold on the older one, while the CPU still has some juice in it.
It's inconsistent. I have an i7-4790k, low latency RAM, and upgraded from a 1080Ti to a 6900XT. It is rare for the game to be GPU limited, but it does reach high utilization sometimes. Usually when it takes a dive it's spending its time in a couple of threads. I never saw the problems with low frame rates from looking through glass panes, but I see major drops in locations where you could go on foot (yes, even when there's nothing around). For others, performance may be down near 1/3rd of Horizons levels all over. I will say that when NPCs are around, memory latency plays a much larger role than it ever should have. It suggests too much code like e.g. NPC AI and animation is taking place inside the rendering loop. Everything naturally goes less predictable when you mix in network (multiplayer).
For me, the most consistent thing is that going into supercruise tends to return frame rates to somewhat normal level (not quite consistent, but hitting the frame rate limit) and release some 5GiB VRAM, but that doesn't fix texture issues which appear to be a result of overeager LoD swapping and flawed memory management. Restarts fix those temporarily.
There's no silver bullet here. The game appears to expect a CPU capable of infinite single thread speed, which physically doesn't exist; ones with more cache do exist, so a Ryzen might suffer a little less. Main memory latency hasn't really improved for many years (and is severely obscured in common parlance).
For me, the most consistent thing is that going into supercruise tends to return frame rates to somewhat normal level (not quite consistent, but hitting the frame rate limit) and release some 5GiB VRAM, but that doesn't fix texture issues which appear to be a result of overeager LoD swapping and flawed memory management. Restarts fix those temporarily.
There's no silver bullet here. The game appears to expect a CPU capable of infinite single thread speed, which physically doesn't exist; ones with more cache do exist, so a Ryzen might suffer a little less. Main memory latency hasn't really improved for many years (and is severely obscured in common parlance).
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Thanks everyone. I think I’ve got my answer now: that I’m unlikely to be held back by my CPU, but rather by whatever GPU usage issues FD has in their code, and that no hardware changes are likely to help with that … it’s up to FD to untangle this. But from the one test above (by @WeComeInPeace) it seems that at 1440p I might be able to wring out barely sufficient performance for video capture. So I am right on the edge of not knowing whether or when to buy into EDO. I’ve got a couple of months yet where I can wait to see if anything positive comes from Braben’s latest statement of their direction on EDO, so I will be waiting and watching what transpires between now and September before I decide.
A couple of people have posted an important consideration, which you seem to have overlooked: The CPU loading is transient and will saturate single threads for up to a couple of tenths of a second when there are NPCs around. Empty settlements give very fluid performance, depending on their size, whereas the presence of a standard number of NPCs (7-8) will reduce framerates in nearly all contexts. A large number of NPCs, such as you see in conflict zones, causes framerate drops into the low 20s, and there seem to be loading issues with "searcha nd destroy" behaviour as well. In some settlements, there are "zones of doom" which will bring framerates down into single digits. If there are a lot of NPCs around in that situation, God alone knows what will happen. I don't think it will be pretty though.
The way Odyssey loads the CPU hides the problem - the default polling rate for most monitoring programs is 1000ms.
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Thank you … yes, I hadn’t given that enough consideration. If it is a single thread performance issue, then my initial inclination is that an upgrade from the i7-6700k, even if that were possible for me (which it isn’t right now), might not make that much difference until FD improves their code. I say that because of the earlier mention of an “infinite CPU” requirement, and also because it seems to me the biggest gains of newer CPU architectures over my current CPU have been in the area of multithreading performance, rather than single core performance. But you can certainly tell me if you think I’m drawing an incorrect conclusion about that.
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Yes