To improve game performance...

Slasher1 · Jul 18, 2017

Is it better to lower resolution from Full HD to 1280x760 or lower the graphics from medium to low settings?

I am playing on medium settings on Full HD on a notebook Samsung Odyssey, with a 7th generation Intel Core i7, 8GB RAM and GTX 1050 with 4GB. However, when the park gets more than 1.800 guests, the game starts to become very laggy

Chems · Jul 18, 2017

For medium settings @ 1080 pr the 1050 should be fine. However, obviously the performance depends on the amount of things you have going on in your game. And Planet Coaster gives us the freedom to basically put as many stuff in our parks as we want. Another thing to remember is that mobile CPUs are slower than their desktop counterparts.

So at 1800 guests you start to notice the low frame rate. How does the performance compare in that same park if you removed all guests? Does lowering the graphics settings improve the fps (test for both an empty park and a park with the 1800/whatever your guest limit is). These are all things you have to try out for yourself and see what works.

QuadroMan1 · Jul 18, 2017

If you're on Steam you can follow this guide to enable an FPS counter in game: http://ccm.net/faq/40667-steam-display-the-in-game-fps-counter

After that just try different settings and see what gives you the desired performance.

Slasher1 · Jul 18, 2017

Thx m8, I'm gonna run these tests. I just posted here in case someone already did them before...

How do I remove all the guests from my park, btw?

Chems · Jul 18, 2017

I think closing the park will do the trick!

But you might have to run the game on fast speed for a bit for all the guests to leave the park.

breezerHOG1 · Jul 18, 2017

8GB Ram? at least 12GB is recommended. You should be able to easily double your 8GB Ram to 16GB for pretty cheap, that would probably help [up] also make sure your drivers and windows settings are all up-to-date and using the correct settings

MrBob101 · Jul 19, 2017

breezerHOG said:
8GB Ram? at least 12GB is recommended. You should be able to easily double your 8GB Ram to 16GB for pretty cheap, that would probably help [up] also make sure your drivers and windows settings are all up-to-date and using the correct settings

8 GB has been fine for me. RAM isn't the biggest of issues. It is the fact that the CPU just cant handle so many guests so it starts to lag as the processing cant keep of with the constants commands the code is sending the CPU. That is a big reason for lag in the game is the CPU cant handle the billions of processes happening with all the guests. In fact, you are better off with a cheaper GPU and a stronger CPU then vis, versa as the graphics are typically not the main problem. Everyone's situation is different and it is their choice in what to do. Those are my thoughts and I know not everyone will agree. I hope this helps with your issue! Cheers

breezerHOG1 · Jul 19, 2017

MrBob101 said:
8 GB has been fine for me

have you run tests? did you see a performance increase with 8 over 12? I'd be willing to bet the OP will see improvements if he adds some RAM, I'm not saying it will boost his graphics to photo realistic and give him 120 FPS but it would help

with a game like this, you really want as much power as you can get, even if ram isnt the most important thing it still helps to have extra ram and its not even expensive

aDOLPHINjoy18 · Jul 19, 2017

I take it your i7 is at least a 4 core 8 thread processor? If so that meets the Recommended requirements. I have an i7-6700k and GTX 1070. But your specs you should be able to play in 1080p low or 720p High preset. Just perhaps keep it under 3,000. Make sure your park doesn't have more than 18 rides and that there isn't too much scenery. With my specs I'm able to play in 1080p maxed out settings with 6k guests and 22 rides and still manage 24-40fps. I also have 16GB DDR4 RAM. 8GB RAM is minimum, because Windows tends to use 2GB out of that, even when idle, only leaving like 6GB. Do-not try 4k gaming on your PC though! 4k gaming uses A LOT of RAM. Even when I go 1080p hardcore in my game, MSI Afterburner and Windows 10 task manager say I'm using 5-7GB RAM.

Slasher1 · Jul 24, 2017

So, to improve the game performance, it is best to improve RAM memory rather than installing a SSD, for example?

My CPU is a i7 7700 HQ (2.8 GHz - 3.8 GHz quad-core) + 8GB RAM DDR4 2133 MHz + GTX 1050 4 GB GDDR5.

Chems · Jul 24, 2017

SSD will improve loading times and will in some games get rid of micro stuttering caused by texture streaming from slow HHDs. RAM can get you better performance if your game uses all the RAM that's available in your PC. If this is not the case adding extra RAM will do nothing. I have been playing with 8GB DDR3 RAM and haven't ran into any issues with it yet. (But then again, I try to optimize my buildings as much as possible).

So what you should check is:

Does changing the graphics settings increase/decrease FPS in a park with no guests. (From like Low to High)
Do the same tests with guests in your park.
Does your FPS increase when lowering the resolution.
Check the game's RAM usage when running your park with guests in it.

If the performance doesn't change when changing resolution and or graphics settings the CPU is bottlenecking your system. If your performance does change it could be your GPU so in that case lowering the settings will give u better performance obviously. Since you are on a notebook, if the CPU or GPU is bottlenecking your system there isn't really anything you can do about it because you probably can't upgrade those. Of course, if the game runs out of memory it will slow down so upgrading RAM in that case will help to a certain extent. But with your hardware you will probably run into CPU/GPU bottleneck before running out of memory.

breezerHOG1 · Jul 24, 2017

I would recommend anybody to have more than 8GB ram. you say you might not see a problem but, RAM is useful for many reasons and is rather cheap and easy to install. Planet Coaster says 8GB is the Minimum, 12GB is recommended, but I would say you might as well go for 16GB since they come in sets of 8 anyway.

Also, I think Window 7 uses less RAM then Windows 10.

And like I said before, make sure all your drivers are up to date