performance bottleneck - GPU or CPU?

[Seldarine]

Here's my rig, and I still get heavy framedrops, especially in hyperspace, supercruise and around some planets.

Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 8-core (16 threads) 5960X@4.2GHz
GFX: ASUS GTX980-4GD5 - 4 GB GDDR5
RAM: 8x4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX - DDR4 - 2666 MHz
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler
XFX 750W xxx Edition PSU
Fractal Design Define XL R2 black cabinet
3 x Asus VN247H 23.6" monitors
Windows 8.1

I think it's more a problem with the game than it's underpowered hardware.

Edit: In my experience, it's wiser to get a better graphics card than a better CPU. CPU is rarely bottlenecking a game.

Your frame drops are most likely a consequence of your triple monitors.

Get rid of those things and plug in a single, 15 inch cathode ray tube bad-boy that's around 15 years old and you will notice no frame drops ever again.

However the problem could also equally be something to do with that case.

 

[flosculus]

980GTX, although the game ran fine on my previous 670.

 

[adoredtv]

I rock a Q9550 Extreme Edition which is currently not overclocked w/ a GTX 660Ti 2GB. You want more video memory if possible. I was running on my other video card, one of those sick 750Ti's and it ran great but was only the 1GB version so definitely recommend a little more video memory. I run in 1080p.

The 660 Ti is a faster card with or without more VRAM.

Your GPU only has 1GB of VRAM.. This game uses a good chunk more than that.

It may be caching some stuff in VRAM but it doesn't need it to maintain a high frame rate. The game runs 100+fps for me in space, 60+ in stations and 70+ in asteroids (stutters though) and I only have a 1GB card.

greetings,

these are my system specs: intel q9400 quadcore @3ghz, gtx560ti 1024MB VRAM, 4GB RAM

the game runs very good most of the time. i get 80+ fps in 1080p.

there are two occasions where my framerate goes down to 45fps.

1) at bigger stations (which is understandable)

Yes, this will be the limit of your graphics card, based on what I'm getting with mine in stations (a 7850 OC which = ~R9 270) which is ~65 fps.

2) in busy systems - not so understandable, because everything in the system is mostly visible on my radar. only things i see are either dots from planets or the green flare from other ships in supercruise. but still, my framerate goes down. why? bad optimization? aren't there any LOD levels? i mean, when everything is so far away that i only see dots, shouldn't this reduce the amount of stuff that is rendered?

edit: i should also add that my framerate is low even when i look in the direction of empty space which makes things even weirder.

These are the hard ones to figure out. It's possibly CPU. Is it the same in solo play? I don't notice anything like this but I'm rarely in open and I have an i5 3570, so the reason could be either.

well, that's the issues i have with performance. now to my question. i put my ship in front of a station to test various quality settings and see what affects performance most. as it turns out, nothing affects my framerate except when i go higher than 1080p. lowering resolution does nothing, so does disabling shadows (which normally costs most performance). am i right with the assumption that when lowering the resolution won't positively affect the framerate that there is a CPU bottleneck?

i'm currently planning to get some new parts for my pc but i'm unsure if i should invest in a more powerful gpu or a better cpu. some clarification would be much appreciated. i'm also curious if other players have the problem of lower framerates in busy systems.

Try lowering shadows in RES - you should definitely start to see an improvement there. I can see up to 15% improvement just dropping from high to medium.

 

[Arkronis]

so, it's more likely that the game calculates stuff in the system, even though it's not in your field of view. hope this gets optimized.

That I would beleive puts the potential problem on physics caluclations (which I think in general will be on the CPU side still these days (Nvidias, PhysX aside on Nvidia hardware? - But I don't think ED is set to support PhysX)...

 

[Juffa]

Hdd lag actually can cause some bad performance.

I have the Elite installed on 2TB hdd, and was doing some file transfers between that and my another 2TB drive (windows is on 120GB ssd), and there was huge lag spikes in Elite all the time while the file transfers were going on.
This led me to check the disk usages, Elite is constantly reading something in short bursts from the drive it's installed on. And if the increased hdd latency (because of the file transfers) causes such huge lag spikes, I feel that those hdd reads are on demand and the game seems to be waiting for them. This data should really, really already be in the memory.

 

[Cowboy Bats]

I'd say that it's your GPU, OP. Shadow quality is by far the biggest offender here. Go to an asteroid belt, and it becomes clear. My FPS drops down to the high 50's in belts. If I tweak the shadows and occlusion, I'll get a full 20fps more. That's at 2715x1527 DSR.

 

[Fangrim]

Your frame drops are most likely a consequence of your triple monitors.

Get rid of those things and plug in a single, 15 inch cathode ray tube bad-boy that's around 15 years old and you will notice no frame drops ever again.

However the problem could also equally be something to do with that case.

Don't run it on 3 monitors at the moment (only doing trading while watching movies, browsing etc. ;o)

 

[Captain Willard]

WOW these threads always the hardest to pinpoint. Quad core 3.6, 16gb ram. Nvidia evga 760 gtx 4 gb, win 7/64 bit. Runs smooth as silk, 1240x1080, full tilt on the grafix settings but the fps sits rock solid at 60 fps except when first making a jump. Then it momentarily drops to 58 fps then right back to 60 everywhere. No idea why that is. Mine is using 5gb ram running idle in a station.

 

[Shyeer Alvarin]

AMD FX 8350, 8 core 4.0 (not overclocked. R9 290x, 16gb Ram, SSD. Only time I have generate issues is in really ueavily populated systems when playing Online and in Supercruise.

Playing via Ethernet connection (cable internet.) I don't think I've ever seen my generate drop below 60 in 1080p.

 

[zzzornbringer]

These are the hard ones to figure out. It's possibly CPU. Is it the same in solo play? I don't notice anything like this but I'm rarely in open and I have an i5 3570, so the reason could be either.

yes, i tried it in solo and it didn't drop the framerate within the same system that i had the issue before in online. but important to not is that the system (eravate) was extremely busy (both npc's and players) in open play but only one npc in solo mode. also, i did also mention that when this happens, my gpu usage is only around 50% but when i'm in empty space getting 80fps, the usage is at max capacity.

Try lowering shadows in RES - you should definitely start to see an improvement there. I can see up to 15% improvement just dropping from high to medium.

there are very minor improvements. when i crank everything down i barely get 50fps (~5fps more). i'm aiming for at least 60fps which i don't get in stations or busy systems.

 

[DCello]

In my experience, these slowdowns are either bad coding or network issues. =/

 

[Surly_Badger]

In my experience, these slowdowns are either bad coding or network issues. =/

My money is on network issues; I've got a slower bandwidth link (I live in redneckistan in the US, where the only data link I can get is a T-1 line) when I do certain things it appears to download textures and whatnot from the server, which can cause a significant hiccup in my play. I figure it'll cost me a couple of ships over time but if that happens I'll just start threads about how much of a game killer it is, and keep playing.

 

[ollobrains]

Netcode seems to be blamed as the main cause of some recent issues

Ive got a massive connection and loading sysem information just about crashes game 90% of the time for example

 

[Vingtetun]

Wow, something ( I assume you're CPU ) is really holding you back there.

I have a 4770k ( currently @ stock because my H110 is being RMA'd ), 8GB @ 1600Mhz, a single R9 290 and run @ 1440p.

I only ever drop below 60 fps in witchspace, very rarely, and in stations, also rarely. Flying around in space is 80+ fps, with asteroid belts 60 - 75 fps.

I get high figures too, but with the cpu at 4.6ghz and the cards in mildly overclocked state wouldn't expect figures that low on occasions, particularly with low cpu and gpu ysage figures.

 

[virosh]

I am playing on Core2Duo@3GHz, 8GB RAM and ATI R7 260@1980x1080.
The game runs surprisingly well as my CPU and MB are ancient dig ups from another era.

P.S. - I usually don't use the PC for gaming as it mainly runs on Linux, but since Gamma it stays booted to the W7 mostly.