This weekend I was able to artificially introduce stutter into my game. I usually have no issues save for the first part of witch space where I'm reduced down to 3-9 FPS for a brief time. Otherwise I get 60 FPS more or less continually. I run a gaming rig I built myself with 32GB RAM and a PCIe SSD so I rarely have performance issues.
I was converting a video when I opened a second copy of the same conversion software by accident. I was playing E: D at the time and the play had multiple short term screen locks. This gave me an insight into possible causes.
I began looking at the issue and decided to write this thread as a guide to reducing stutter when playing. There is no doubt I'm going to annoy a few people, but that's unavoidable.
This will only cover Windows PC's as I have no access to a Mac for experimentation purposes.
First the minimum specs for playing E: D are:
- Direct X 11
- Quad Core CPU (4 x 2Ghz is a reasonable minimum)
- 2 GB System Ram (more is always better)
- DX 10 hardware GPU, 1GB video RAM(my reasonably low end machine has a GTX 285 with 2GB)
Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10601
This is bare minimum and as Windows requires 1GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU just to run itself, I would suggest doubling the RAM at a minimum and quadrupling it to 8 GB to be safe. Some of my IT collegues argue that 4GB RAM is barely enough to run Windows.
Intel CPU
The minimum processor I would recommend is a decent i5. The i3 is underpowered and not suitable for E: D. The i series of processors have the following stats:
i3: 2 cores 4 threads
i5: 4 cores 4 threads
i7: 4 cores 8 threads
You can see by the minimum requirements needed for E: D above the i3 is not sufficient by minimum standards as it is only dual core. The i3 is for light weight computing, web browsing, power saving etc. and not high end gaming. E: D is a high end game.
AMD CPU
Any four or eight core AM3+ FX processor should be sufficient to run E: D.
RAM
Just because you have 8GB of RAM does not mean you will not have issues. RAM needs to be matched to your motherboard (mobo) to play E: D smoothly. Check the stats on your mobo and run the best ram you can afford.
If running E: D while capturing video then 16 GB RAM is recommended.
A few things to remember. The average tab in a web browser uses 25MB and sometimes up to 45-50MB of space in RAM. Twenty open tabs consumes 1GB of RAM in use. I've seen some people with 60 tabs open in Firefox and Chrome. Modern websites (Like Facebook, Twitter, etc) will constantly update and this consumes memory and CPU. If you have stuttering close your browsers and try running just the game.
Motherboard
A top end i7 CPU in a crap motherboard will have shoddy performance. Nuff said.
Tweaks
From experience of thirty years in IT most people do not know how to set up their PC's for maximum performance. Windows sets certain defaults that are inefficient and take up CPU / RAM unnecessarily. When you run out of RAM the PC uses space on the heard drive. In cases like this, access time goes from pico-seconds to milli-seconds and things slow WAY down.
To avoid slowdowns running with lots of RAM is the easy suggestion, but there are a few things you can do to maximize your PC.
WARNING: If you are not comfortable making these changes, DON'T. You do this at your own risk and I cannot guarantee anything.
First, turn off all the fancy Windows Aero desktop and graphics. In Control Panel - System, click Advanced system settings, then on the Advanced tab hit Settings, abd then select "Adjust for best performance". This turns off all animations and will let your PC run 5-7% faster.
Now we can turn off programs that start when you boot your PC.
Click Start and type in MSCONFIG to open these windows. Deselect programs you do not need at boot. This will not uninstall the programs, it will stop them from booting up automatically saving yourself CPU and RAM use. You may also fine malicious programs like toolbars and viruses installed here. Once things have been deselected you can reboot your PC.
Then do the same on the Services tab (Select "Hide Microsoft services" before turning services off.
This will maximize any CPU power to the game. As always scan for malware, malwarebytes is free to use for personal use.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/
There are other tweaks you can do to improve Windows performance.
https://tweakhound.com/tweaking-windows-7/
Good luck CMDR.
I was converting a video when I opened a second copy of the same conversion software by accident. I was playing E: D at the time and the play had multiple short term screen locks. This gave me an insight into possible causes.
I began looking at the issue and decided to write this thread as a guide to reducing stutter when playing. There is no doubt I'm going to annoy a few people, but that's unavoidable.
This will only cover Windows PC's as I have no access to a Mac for experimentation purposes.
First the minimum specs for playing E: D are:
- Direct X 11
- Quad Core CPU (4 x 2Ghz is a reasonable minimum)
- 2 GB System Ram (more is always better)
- DX 10 hardware GPU, 1GB video RAM(my reasonably low end machine has a GTX 285 with 2GB)
Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10601
This is bare minimum and as Windows requires 1GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU just to run itself, I would suggest doubling the RAM at a minimum and quadrupling it to 8 GB to be safe. Some of my IT collegues argue that 4GB RAM is barely enough to run Windows.
Intel CPU
The minimum processor I would recommend is a decent i5. The i3 is underpowered and not suitable for E: D. The i series of processors have the following stats:
i3: 2 cores 4 threads
i5: 4 cores 4 threads
i7: 4 cores 8 threads
You can see by the minimum requirements needed for E: D above the i3 is not sufficient by minimum standards as it is only dual core. The i3 is for light weight computing, web browsing, power saving etc. and not high end gaming. E: D is a high end game.
AMD CPU
Any four or eight core AM3+ FX processor should be sufficient to run E: D.
RAM
Just because you have 8GB of RAM does not mean you will not have issues. RAM needs to be matched to your motherboard (mobo) to play E: D smoothly. Check the stats on your mobo and run the best ram you can afford.
If running E: D while capturing video then 16 GB RAM is recommended.
A few things to remember. The average tab in a web browser uses 25MB and sometimes up to 45-50MB of space in RAM. Twenty open tabs consumes 1GB of RAM in use. I've seen some people with 60 tabs open in Firefox and Chrome. Modern websites (Like Facebook, Twitter, etc) will constantly update and this consumes memory and CPU. If you have stuttering close your browsers and try running just the game.
Motherboard
A top end i7 CPU in a crap motherboard will have shoddy performance. Nuff said.
Tweaks
From experience of thirty years in IT most people do not know how to set up their PC's for maximum performance. Windows sets certain defaults that are inefficient and take up CPU / RAM unnecessarily. When you run out of RAM the PC uses space on the heard drive. In cases like this, access time goes from pico-seconds to milli-seconds and things slow WAY down.
To avoid slowdowns running with lots of RAM is the easy suggestion, but there are a few things you can do to maximize your PC.
WARNING: If you are not comfortable making these changes, DON'T. You do this at your own risk and I cannot guarantee anything.
First, turn off all the fancy Windows Aero desktop and graphics. In Control Panel - System, click Advanced system settings, then on the Advanced tab hit Settings, abd then select "Adjust for best performance". This turns off all animations and will let your PC run 5-7% faster.
Now we can turn off programs that start when you boot your PC.
Click Start and type in MSCONFIG to open these windows. Deselect programs you do not need at boot. This will not uninstall the programs, it will stop them from booting up automatically saving yourself CPU and RAM use. You may also fine malicious programs like toolbars and viruses installed here. Once things have been deselected you can reboot your PC.
Then do the same on the Services tab (Select "Hide Microsoft services" before turning services off.
This will maximize any CPU power to the game. As always scan for malware, malwarebytes is free to use for personal use.
https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/
There are other tweaks you can do to improve Windows performance.
https://tweakhound.com/tweaking-windows-7/
Good luck CMDR.
Last edited:
