Questions For PC Gamers

[Hedyn Brand]

My main gaming system is an old i7 4790K + AMD R290 4GB VRAM combo. I play without a hitch on 8GB RAM at 1080p, and barely hear the CPU-fan speeding up after playing for a bit (but I have to listen closely). The GPU is water-cooled, so nothing to listen for.

Elite is running on a hard drive because I need the SSD space for my multiplayer shooters, and it's never been slow enough to load that I've considered moving it over. It starts (from clicking launcher to seeing ship controls) faster than Steam even shows its window, which is why I run the non-Steam version.

I haven't seen any of my games get anywhere near 4GB regular RAM used. Even MMOs don't get near a 2GB peak, since most of the resources used are probably textures. Elite is so lonely at times that there aren't many textures, so it's all shader effects. Low VRAM usage, moderate GPU processing.

 

[rrobes]

I run a 1070 at normal settings and ED at ultra w/ a CPU that's a year old (isn't an OC one).

I use a fan heavy case w/ CPU air cooler (a nice quiet one). All the fans run on slow and are inaudible. The GPU fans never spin up.

My system is OK but not cutting edge and does fine. You don't need the latest to play, but do spend as much as you can on a high end GPU, Nvidia for me.

 

[GG7]

Funny...

I have seen comments from some streamers that they do not suffer from this issue. Yet when I watch their videos I SEE IT PLAIN AS DAY right there on their apparently stutter free system! lol!

Maybe they are blind to the issue or they simply don't know what the term "stutter" means?

You can also clearly see the issue on ANY of Frontier's live streams when Ed Lewis is on their company PC used for streaming their game-play videos.

 

[Marklar_]

IIRC, stuttering FPS around stations seems normal no matter what hardware you have.

I don't get that anymore unless I turn the shadows up from low, with a 1070 GTX, i7 5820, and 32GB of DDR4 on a CV1. I'm not sure exactly what the bottleneck is with the station stutter, but I suspect that RAM is a factor.

 

[Pyrobee]

Run on a GTX790 on an i5. Mainly runs smooth in high but do have to drop it for engineer bases, but that is only times I get any major stutter.

 

[Jaffz]

Run on a GTX790 on an i5. Mainly runs smooth in high but do have to drop it for engineer bases, but that is only times I get any major stutter.

R9 270x and core i5, 8GB mem here, I'm exactly the same. Also get the station stutter thing

 

[GG7]

I don't get that anymore unless I turn the shadows up from low, with a 1070 GTX, i7 5820, and 32GB of DDR4 on a CV1. I'm not sure exactly what the bottleneck is with the station stutter, but I suspect that RAM is a factor.

Nope. RAM isn't a player here.

I've got 32GB of system ram and 11GB of VRAM. The game never uses more than about 4500mb/4.5GB of VRAM at 1080p.

If you no longer get the problem with shadows set to low, that tends to point towards engine optimization issues, since your 1070 should easily be able to run that setting higher than that.

Some of the higher settings for the game could be bugged. I'm just not willing to run the game at low res settings on my expensive high end PC hardware.

These days, I just engage the docking computer as soon as I can, and go out and have a smoke or something. When I come back in the ship is on the pad, and the game has stabilized.

I should also mention that when I leave that same Starport, I can fly around it all day long, spinning my ship and doing all kinds of graphic intensive maneuvers and not a hiccup or stutter to be seen EVER!

Instancing bottleneck/Cobra Engine Optimization issue FTW!

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I run my unutterably horrible graphics card at the lowest settings.

 

[Marklar_]

Nope. I've got 32GB of system ram and 11GB of VRAM. The game never uses more than about 4500mb of VRAM at 1080p.

It's more about the speed of the memory than the quantity.

 

[kinglemo2000]

As you know...I have reported on this several times./

You are right that hardware seems to have little to do with this particular problem. It is vastly improved in terms of duration and degree when using a high performance GPU/CPU combo, but the issue is still there. Just less severe and for less time.

When I drop into a Starport from SC, my FPS drops from the usual locked 60fps to about 58fps for less than 2 seconds, but the stuttering lasts for well over 10 seconds, even though my FPS and Frame times are back up at their usual 60fps/16ms. (GTX 1080ti OCed to 2070Mhz Boost / i7 6700k OCed to 4.6 Ghz @ 1080p / 60hz)

GPU load is no where near max either. My 1080ti is usually at either the base clock of 1599Mhz or around 1700ish Mhz during these events which translates into a GPU load percentage of less than 35%.

I also run ED off my boot drive which is a Samsung 950 PRO M.2 Nvme. One of the fastest SSDs on the planet.

This is why I have always suggested that this is some kind of instancing hiccup combined with optimization issues with the Cobra Engine.

No one has been able to prove otherwise at this point.

P.S. Since the 2.3.11 update, I have had a lot less of this issue when dropping out of Glide Mode at planetary bases. These areas were usually just as choppy as Starports, but not so much after this last update. It would appear that they are working on fixing this a bit.

My guess is that the Starport issue is more difficult since that has been in the game forever.

It is a strange issue and it does effect high spec systems more so, myself I don't get the station stuttering issue but I have a gsync monitor (computer spec in sig) when I drop out of SC at a station, my FPS drops from 142(I set this as my max frame rate ) to about 120 and stays at that dropping to 90 once inside the station that is at 1440p with nivdia super sampling set to 1.5 not the the games SS.

The issue I get in the game that bugs me is at res sites same graphic settings when I enter the FPS sits between 90 and 110 no problem but after about 2 hours of pew pew it starts dropping to 60 -70 FPS and the gpu useage drops as well and then I get the odd stutter, it doesn't matter if this ice, rock or metal asteroid rings.

The odd thing is this is the only game this happens in GTA 5, witcher 3 and Fallout 4 (accept when I use mods or consoles commands to built super settlements beyond the game engine limits)have no issues in longer play sessions.

 

[Marklar_]

after about 2 hours of pew pew it starts dropping to 60 -70 FPS and the gpu useage drops as well and then I get the odd stutter

I get the same thing, after playing for a while the performance starts dropping.

 

[kinglemo2000]

I don't get that anymore unless I turn the shadows up from low, with a 1070 GTX, i7 5820, and 32GB of DDR4 on a CV1. I'm not sure exactly what the bottleneck is with the station stutter, but I suspect that RAM is a factor.

I run the shadows on high without stuttering on a 1070 at the station I don't use ultra as it can hit the FPS by 10+in certain places and i prefer high FPS , cards sits at 90% when leaving SC at a station with vram useage at about 40% max this is at 1440p SS at 1.5

 

[Marklar_]

I run the shadows on high without stuttering on a 1070 at the station I don't use ultra as it can hit the FPS by 10+in certain places and i prefer high FPS , cards sits at 90% when leaving SC at a station with vram useage at about 40% max this is at 1440p SS at 1.5

I'm on VR though, so it's not really apples-to-apples.

 

[Kingston@#]

a AMD phenom 3core cpu running at 3.1ghz can handle the game pretty well with my 660s. running EDH my 3c cpu usage of 86% though it couldn't handle VA as well. I had to keep changing VA priority to real time to fix a lag of 10 secs,
a 4 core handles it well as well as other apps, when multi-tasking. EDH cpu usage is at 30% temp rarely hits 45c unless I have OC cpu to 4.3 temp hits 56c.

I no longer have vsinc on as it hits my fps.

 

[kinglemo2000]

I get the same thing, after playing for a while the performance starts dropping.

The only thing I have found on the issue dates back to 2015 where some amd card users experienced a similar thing some talked about a memory leak issue with the game engine ? But my monitoring software doesn't seem to show this, I have my PC power settings and gpu set to performance mode a overclock on my gpu to 2100mhz.

the cpu is not bottlenecking as the most any core gets up to is about 70% and my gpu and cpu temp are 64C and 69C with a room temp of 26C (hot summers day) system is air cooled only

 

[the100thmonkey]

It's more about the speed of the memory than the quantity.

Not really. RAM speed these days is an insignificant performance factor outside of synthetic benchmarks. Even single sticks of DDR3-1600 are more than sufficient.

 

[Red Martian]

I have an i3-4170 3.7Ghz dual core processor, 16GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, with 2 GB of VRAM, and Elite runs smooth as silk on 1080p settings.

 

[Marklar_]

Not really. RAM speed these days is an insignificant performance factor outside of synthetic benchmarks. Even single sticks of DDR3-1600 are more than sufficient.

Are you sure? I noticed a difference going from DDR3 to DDR4 on the same system.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Are you sure? I noticed a difference going from DDR3 to DDR4 on the same system.

Pretty much.

The benchmarks are out there. It's only in synthetic benchmarks and other very demanding natural scenarios that it makes a noticeable difference to performance.

Did you notice, or did you "notice?"

 

[Marklar_]

Did you notice, or did you "notice?"

I noticed, via frame rate count, though it wasn't a lot. All benchmarks are artificial, you have to take them with a grain of salt. There are a lot of factors involved that you won't see in benchmarking standardized rigs.