X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Ask here if you experience technical problems with X4: Foundations.

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X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Mon, 16. Dec 19, 10:57

This topic provides suggestions and possible solutions to various performance and stability problems that some players may encounter while playing X4. Advice is also provided for players looking to maximize their system performance or confirm that their system is performing as expected.

Expected Performance

X4 is best described as a 2018 open world space sandbox developed by a reasonably small development team. Due to the nature of such a game it is impossible to expect high refresh rates and good frame time consistency in all situations when playing. However, with appropriate hardware one should still manage decent framerates in most situations.

The following can be considered appropriate hardware for X4, as well as the effects the player can observe if their hardware is not appropriate.
  • CPU: At least a 4 core processor running at 4GHz or more from at earliest 2013. X4 is extremely CPU intensive to run and especially benefits from high single thread performance (>4.0 GHz modern processors) and high cache amounts (AMD X3D CPUs) rather than large core counts. X4 will run on practically any x86-64 processor, even ones over 10 years old, but slower processors may result in very low frame rates in a lot of gameplay situations and could be considered unplayable to some players. Each additional DLC enabled will slightly increase the CPU requirements to obtain the same level of performance.
  • Graphics card: 3 GB free dedicated graphic memory discrete GPU with Vulkan support. X4 is not very GPU intensive in most gameplay situations, especially with complex shader effects disabled and running on modern GPUs that run Vulkan very efficiently. It does require at least 3 GB of free dedicated graphic memory to function properly. If a GPU with less than 3 GB of free memory is used, there can be noticeable visual artefacts during gameplay which may considerably impact playability and very demanding scenes might be prone to crashing. Running X4 at high video settings at high resolutions such as 1440p and above may require more than 4 GB of video memory in highly demanding scenes. X4 is not intended to be played on integrated GPUs and may not even start on older ones, and even on newer processors performance might not be ideal due to the memory being shared with the CPU.
  • Available memory (RAM): At least 8 GB of free memory (not used by other applications). The amount of memory used by X4 is related to the complexity of the universe the player has made. The base game will usually use less than 8 GB of memory however very complex gameplay scenes, enabling many DLCs or running demanding mods may require more memory. If X4 runs out of available free memory then performance will be significantly impacted due to page faults. X4 does strongly benefit from faster and lower latency memory with slow memory being prone to bottlenecking modern high performance CPUs.
  • Installed on: SATA 3.0 (AHCI) or PCIe Gen3 (NVMe) or better Solid State Drive. X4 performs best when installed on a SSDs and will have longer load times and noticeable asset stalls affecting frame rate consistency if running off a mechanical hard drive. X4 does not benefit significantly from faster SSDs, with observed performance varying very little between a reputable SATA 3.0 SSD an a much faster PCIe Gen4 SSD.

    Common Technical Issues

    The following is a list of technical problems that some players may encounter while playing X4.
    • After playing for some time, graphic artefacts start appearing in the form of corrupted or missing textures or corrupted or missing geometry.
      This is usually the result of not having at least 3 GB of free dedicated graphic memory for X4 to use. Background applications such as browsers might use graphic memory reducing the amount available for X4 to use. If playing at a resolution higher than 1080p then X4 may require more free graphic memory. If using an older GPU with only 2 GB of dedicated memory, consider upgrading to a more modern or second hand one with 4 GB or more of dedicated graphic memory.
    • While loading a fresh start in X4 the computer spontaneously turns off or resets. The OS reports the cause as an unexpected power interrupt.
      X4 initializing fresh game starts is very CPU intensive, loading more than 8 threads at 100% utilization. This can expose unstable overclocks or thermal issues with either the PSU or motherboard VRM. This issue most commonly occurs with second generation AMD Zen+ Ryzen processors that have been installed on very low-end motherboards or been overclocked aggressively by an automated tool. One can try reverting the processor to stock in the UEFI/BIOS. Another approach which might work is to restrict the cores X4 can load to just 2-3 during the initialization process since power consumption is proportional to the number of cores loaded. Generally, the symptoms of spontaneous restarting, similar to power cycling, is a fault mode of AMD AM4 processors usually caused by an unstable configuration such as CPU or memory overclock.
    • While panning the in-game map X4 randomly crashes.
      This is usually caused by insufficient video memory. The in-game map with a lot of overlays enabled and visible can be very demanding on GPU resources. If you encounter this issue considering turning off overlays that are not currently required, especially player/allied orders and deployables which are prone to generating a lot of visual clutter in well-developed playthroughs.
    General Performance Help

    X4 depends heavily on CPU performance, much more so than most games. Usually a high-performance processor paired with a reasonable GPU will result in a high and consistent framerate in most scenes. If one has such hardware but still gets low framerate then the following advice be able to improve performance. Note that some suggestions require some technical knowhow.

    General Suggestions:
    • Some sectors and zones in X4 are more demanding than others due to a combination of the visual effects used and the random nature of universe. Try flying to another sector and seeing if performance is any different.
    • On Windows 7 or platforms without fullscreen optimisation try running X4 in fullscreen mode for the best performance. On such platforms exclusive fullscreen mode avoids coupling presentation to the window composer which can add additional latency or limit frame rates in an undesirable way. Platforms with fullscreen optimisation, such as Windows 10/11, do not suffer this problem and so borderless windowed can be used.
    • Some people have reported performance issues when multiple audio outputs are available, especially HDMI audio from the motherboard or discrete GPU. Disable all unused audio outputs at an OS level. A player usually uses just 1 audio output device to play X4 while motherboards often come with 3 or more.
    • Try turning off overlays such as steam, discord, etc. These can negatively affect performance or cause other technical issues.
    • If a beta version of X4 is currently available, consider giving it a try. The developers try to optimize where possible and so any performance problems may already be fixed in the upcoming release. Remember to backup your saves before doing so!
    • Check the graphic driver is up to date. Try clean installing the latest graphic driver. Use Display Driver Uninstaller to completely remove the existing display driver. If the latest graphic driver still performs poorly, try reinstalling with an older version if possible. Some graphic driver releases have unintended performance regressions which may take a few weeks to be fixed.
    • The OS should be set to use a balanced power plan. Balanced power plans should offer you performance as good as maximum performance power plans while also saving some energy. Energy saving power plans may severely limit CPU performance by decreasing clock speed responsiveness or even disabling any sort of turbo/boost technology the processor uses. If using a portable device, X4 should only be played when plugged in for an optimal user experience.
    • Confirm that your CPU performance is close to what one would expect. Run benchmarks like Cinebench and compare the resulting score with what others get running the same or similar CPU SKU at stock. A correctly functioning system should be within a few percent of such result. A properly overclocked system should score a little higher. If the score is considerably lower then there is some hardware, BIOS/UEFI or settings problem.
    • If your system is overclocked, try reverting it to stock and comparing performance. Unstable overclocks might result in a stable system with poor performance.
    • Check CPU and GPU thermals in case significant throttling is occurring. CPUs usually throttle at around 95°C and GPUs usually around 85°C, actual temperatures may vary depending on generation and manufacturer. When throttling occurs, effective frequency is reduced resulting in reduced performance. If throttling, revert any overclocks and test again. Some modern CPUs might benefit from being undervolted slightly in these cases as that may improve power efficiency, but care must be taken as this can introduce had to detect instability. If still throttling the system will need better cooling. Some high power processors such as the Core i9 13900KS might always be prone to thermal throttling during normal operation, in such case measure performance rather than temperature.
    • Memory should be set to run with XMP/DCOP profiles appropriate for your CPU and motherboard combination. Memory will run at slow compatible speeds by default which may significantly impact performance. Faster memory timings can significantly improve the performance of X4, more so than higher memory transfer rate. If running memory outside the CPU/motherboard supported specifications, additional tests may be needed to assure complete stability.
    • Check that your system memory configuration is optimal. Each memory channel should have the same amount of memory inserted in it. Ideally matching DIMMs should be used between channels for best memory performance. Any memory amount not operating in the optimal channel configuration will incur a significant performance penalty when utilized. Most consumer processors are dual channel. HEDT and server processors might have between 4 to 12 channels. Check that the BIOS/UEFI correctly detects all inserted memory DIMMs.
    • Enough power connectors must be installed for both CPU and GPU, including any additional motherboard PCIe power connectors if a lot of PCIe expansion cards are used. The power limit of a component may be determined by the number of connectors plugged in, as is the case for modern GPUs. GPUs do not require all connectors be plugged in to function but might perform worse in such configuration due to lower power limits. A CPU usually needs a single 8 pin connector while GPUs use anywhere from 1 x PCIe 6 pin to 3 x PCIe 8 pin or 1 x PCIe 12 pin connectors depending on the SKU and variant.
    • For optimal SSD performance the SSD must have at least 20% of its capacity free. This can be allocated to partitions but must not be currently used by the partition to hold data. If the drive has too little free space it may suffer from reduced performance. This should only affect write performance but if the drive is busy writing data, like an OS drive can be, it may affect read performance as well.
    • Keep the page file enabled. Windows refers to this incorrectly as "virtual memory" in some of the settings. Contrary to misinformation spread by some, this will not significantly degrade SSD life in a system with enough memory as it will practically never be used. It almost always is required for correct and reliable system operation.
    AMD CPU suggestions:
    • Update your motherboard BIOS/UEFI. AMD may have rolled out a new AGESA version included in the update. This may significantly improve performance. Be warned that updating BIOS/UEFI may revert all settings in it to default, requiring that they be reapplied. Before updating make sure that the BIOS/UEFI version still supports your current CPU as older motherboards might have BIOS versions enabling support for newer processor variants, for example some AM4 boards add gain support for Zen3 processors but lose support for old processor variants such as Zen1.
    • If using Windows 10 and Zen2 then make sure your OS is up-to-date. Sometime during the life of Windows 10 there were improvements made to the scheduler for Zen2 processors.
    • If using Zen4 dual chiplet 3DX processors such as R9 7950X3D or R9 7900X3D then make sure both Windows 11 and the chipset drivers are up-to-date and Xbox game bar is enabled. Part of the core scheduling depends on Xbox game bar detecting a game running to correctly schedule the game on the high cache CCD.
    • Update AMD chipset drivers. Together with the latest BIOS/ UEFI and OS kernels, these can result in significant performance improvements.
      If using an AMD Zen2 or newer processors, the AMD balanced power plan should be chosen. This is required for optimal boost behaviour. AMD Zen and Zen+ should use the standard balanced power plan. Any sort of energy saving power plan may disable boost behaviour, significantly reducing CPU performance.
    • Zen2 and newer processors use a GPU like aggressive boosting algorithm to deliver optimal performance. As such they will suffer from decreasing performance as temperature increases well below the thermal limit. This effect increases in strength as the thermal limit is approached. Improving cooling such that a processor operating at 90°C is operating at 70°C can yield over a 100 MHz improvement in clock speed. This can be a problem with stock coolers in a poor airflow case.
    • AMD Zen and Zen+ processors are picky with the DDR4 memory frequencies they support. Try operating the memory close to the recommended stock frequency, if supported, and compare performance. AMD Zen2 and Zen3 tolerates a larger range of frequencies but has an optimal frequency range past which minor performance regression can occur. Zen 4 processors might require a BIOS/UEFI update to use faster DDR5 kits. All Ryzen processors should use memory with at least the frequency of their specified system memory for optimum performance.
    Intel CPU suggestions:
    • Verify that your CPU is turboing to the expected frequencies for the workload. The expected frequency depends on the number of cores currently busy as well as the type of workload the core executes and even if the cores are the best cores of the processor. Highest boost frequency is obtained when just 1-2 preferred cores are loaded with non-AVX workloads. Lowest frequency is when all cores are running AVX/AVX512 workloads, if supported. Search online for tables relevant to the specific processor, such as on sites like WikiChip.
    • Intel turbo boost is defined to have a finite duration. After this duration expires the processor will revert to the significantly slower base frequencies which define the processor TDP. For optimum performance one wants to disable the duration limit to allow the processor to boost indefinitely. Many motherboard vendors do this by default as it is the recommended value by Intel, but some older or OEM systems require the limit to be explicitly disabled in the BIOS/UEFI. Some OEM systems might not allow this limit to be disabled or it might have no affect due to thermal throttling. This can make the processor use significantly more power than the specified TDP for older processors while newer processors will use up to the specified Maximum Turbo Power in this mode.
    • Modern operating system kernels come with security mitigations to combat many of the security flaws in Intel processors. These mitigations have a CPU performance cost on older processors which can result in slightly reduced frame rates. It is possible to regain some of this performance on operating systems like Linux by disabling the use of the mitigations. This does have security implications as such systems are then left open to attack using the exploit. Anyone thinking of doing this for extra performance should read up about the risks involved and balance them against any performance gained.
    • Modern hybrid Intel processors with E and P cores such as Intel 12th generation or newer might not perform optimally on Windows 10. It is recommended to update to Windows 11 or newer for optimal performance.
    Example Systems and Performance

    Below is an example of a system used to play X4 when it first released in December 2018. The play experience was not very good with low framerates, bad frame pacing and long load times. Scenes with very low frame rates are when not paused and viewing the map late game, near large stations, near large asteroid fields and during large battles. Framerate could hit single digits which many players would consider unplayable. This is due to the weak CPU. The long loading times and bad frame pacing were due to the use of a mechanical drive to store X4. Loading times were so bad that teleporting into a busy area used to have models popping into view for most of a minute, all the time with a very low frame rate. Visual settings used were pretty much all maxed except anti-aliasing, screen space effects and draw distance. X4 ran stably on this system, just the player experience was not good.
    • CPU: Intel Core-I7 920 @ stock from 2009.
    • GPU: Nvidia GTX 760 4 GB @ stock, 1080p.
    • Memory: 18 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz.
    • Storage: Hitachi HDT721010SLA360S @ old 10-year-old 1TB mechanical drive.
    The storage used was replaced by a modern SATA SSD. This SSD was used to house both OS and X4. Loading times and frame pacing were dramatically improved. Even teleporting to the same busy areas only had minor pop in which lasted only a few seconds and did not noticeably affect frame pacing. Average frame rate was still poor as before due to the same CPU bottlenecking performance.
    • CPU: Intel Core-I7 920 @ stock from 2009.
    • GPU: Nvidia GTX 760 4 GB @ stock, 1080p.
    • Memory: 18 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz.
    • Storage: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB @ SATA 2.0.
    Due to hardware failure the motherboard, CPU and RAM was replaced by modern components while GPU and storage were kept the same. Although a Ryzen 9 3900X was used, a cheaper Ryzen 5 3600 would perform similar. In the same scenes that had single digit framerate with the old system, framerate does not drop below 30 FPS. X4 plays very well on this system.
    • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X from 2019.
    • GPU: Nvidia GTX 760 4 GB @ stock, 1080p.
    • Memory: 16 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz XMP.
    • Storage: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB @ SATA 3.0.
    Moving X4 to a faster PCIe 3 NVMe drive did not yield a visible performance improvement over using the SATA SSD. Upgrading the GPU is unlikely to yield a significant improvement to framerate in most scenes, although it would allow the player to play at higher resolution and enable higher visual settings such as ambient occlusion, screen space reflections, anti-aliasing and draw distance.
Last edited by Imperial Good on Sat, 26. Aug 23, 10:13, edited 6 times in total.
Reason: Updating some of the advice to be more relevant.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by CBJ » Mon, 16. Dec 19, 12:03

Thanks Imperial Good. This is really useful information, so let's keep it at the top of the forum where people can see it. :)

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Ranix » Fri, 3. Apr 20, 21:16

FYI if you have a Core i7 920 you should upgrade your CPU to a Xeon X5650, X5660, X5670, X5675, or X5690 from Ebay. Datacenters are turning down Westmere and these processors are insanely good especially when overclocked. 6 cores and screaming fast. These CPUs are also extremely inexpensive ($100 for the x5690 and much less than that for the others). It's a huge CPU boost. Especially if you already have triple-channel RAM on your motherboard. These machines rival new high-end PCs. They have some limitations that the average user will realistically not run into. Your existing motherboard and RAM will work. If overclocking you will want an aftermarket CPU cooler.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Alan Phipps » Fri, 3. Apr 20, 21:48

@ Ranix: Thanks but this Sticky thread is mainly about tweaking drivers and settings on players' existing hardware. Hardware upgrade suggestions belong in Off Topic.
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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Sat, 18. Apr 20, 09:17

I am aware this is slightly off topic but I thought I should clarify a statement that was made above to avoid people getting mislead.
Ranix wrote:
Fri, 3. Apr 20, 21:16
These machines rival new high-end PCs.
A machine running a X5690 will not rival a new low-end gaming desktop, it will perform significantly worse. Although the clock speed can look similar or even better than something like a Ryzen 5 3600, it is very much slower due to the dated architecture which averages lower instructions per clock and lacks support for AVX and other modern extensions. Even the tri-channel memory does not really help given that it is DDR3 speed and so in general is slower than the dual channel DDR4 configurations modern consumer CPUs use. I/O in general is slower and more limited with them due to older PCIe support, chipsets and motherboards which can bottleneck GPUs and SSD performance.

When comparing the Xenon X5690 with the Core i7 920 it will run X4 significantly better. When comparing the X5690 with a modern low-end CPU like the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel equivalent it will still run X4 significantly worse. The difference would be especially noticeable in very busy and built up areas where single thread CPU performance becomes a major bottleneck. Even save times would be significantly longer.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Ranix » Mon, 27. Apr 20, 21:33

Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 18. Apr 20, 09:17
A machine running a X5690 will not rival a new low-end gaming desktop, it will perform significantly worse. Although the clock speed can look similar or even better than something like a Ryzen 5 3600, it is very much slower due to the dated architecture which averages lower instructions per clock and lacks support for AVX and other modern extensions.
In reality a Ryzen 5 3600 will be about 19% faster than an X5690 overclocked to 4.3ghz. Not insignificant but is it worth buying a new computer for? I say probably not.
Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 18. Apr 20, 09:17
Even the tri-channel memory does not really help given that it is DDR3 speed and so in general is slower than the dual channel DDR4 configurations modern consumer CPUs use.
That's not necessarily correct. DDR4 has significantly looser timings than DDR3. DDR4 has better read performance than DDR3 but actually has worse write speed and latency. For real. Check out some benchmarks.
Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 18. Apr 20, 09:17
I/O in general is slower and more limited with them due to older PCIe support, chipsets and motherboards which can bottleneck GPUs and SSD performance.
This is only really a substantial factor if you're comparing nvme drives to non-nvme drives. PCIe has been substantially faster than disk I/O for much longer than a decade.
Imperial Good wrote:
Sat, 18. Apr 20, 09:17
When comparing the Xenon X5690 with the Core i7 920 it will run X4 significantly better. When comparing the X5690 with a modern low-end CPU like the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or Intel equivalent it will still run X4 significantly worse. The difference would be especially noticeable in very busy and built up areas where single thread CPU performance becomes a major bottleneck. Even save times would be significantly longer.
It really depends on how much performance you want/need. It's a $70 drop-in upgrade that's only 19% slower than a Ryzen 5 3600 if you have an x58 motherboard. It might not be the best computer money can buy but it's not low end, and it costs basically nothing.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Old Drullo321 » Sun, 10. May 20, 01:03

I wish that X4 had some kind of integrated benchmark. Or at least there could be a default benchmark save (early, mid, late) for everyone available for comparing. Or even better, some new official benchmarks with the improvements from V3.x onwards with some example configurations from mid to highend systems. That way you could guess what you could expect of your system in X4.

Or at least an overview from top to bottom, which ingame settings influence the FPS the most/the least CPU and GPU wise, so you can optimize your FPS/Look.

I upgraded from an overclocked Intel i7 4790k 4c/8t, DDR3, 16GB to a modern Ryzen 3700X@Stock, 3600mhz DDR4, 32GB. Everything else stayed nearly the same, some normal NVMe SSD with Dram Cache, Nvidia 1080 Ti GPU, CPU/GPU watercooled. System runs smoothly, benchmarks, software and games deliver the expected results. I'm playing @ 2k WQHD resolution with Gsync. It is mostly a big improvement in minimal framerate and frametimes and a vastly reduced power consumption. However I did expect better X4 ingame FPS. Thanks to Gsync it isn't that of a problem that I'm running 40-90 frames depending on the situation (didn't test fighting yet).

However as stated above, for X4 only, it feels difficult to compare my FPS to an ideal FPS i could achieve with my system. So I don't know if there is or isn't room for improvement while everything else works as expected.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by weerlicht » Mon, 25. May 20, 14:48

Choice of antialiasing is also a big factor. I Moved to MSAA 2 for a big FPS improvement over SSAA 2.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Tue, 26. May 20, 02:59

Imperial Good wrote:
Mon, 16. Dec 19, 10:57
Intel CPU suggestions:
  • Modern operating system kernels come with security mitigations to combat many of the security flaws in Intel processors. These mitigations have a CPU performance cost which can result in slightly reduced frame rates. It is possible to regain some of this performance on operating systems like Linux by disabling the use of the mitigations. This does have security implications as such systems are then left open to attack using the exploit. Anyone thinking of doing this for extra performance should read up about the risks involved and balance them against any performance gained.
@Imperial Good

There is a tool which can be used to temporarily turn off / on these mitigations while playing X4 on windows (I think it can also be used on Linux / MacOS via WINE, not sure if the toggle buttons would work on those OS's though):

InSpectre by Steve Gibson

Download link is in the File Stats box underneath the screenshot on GRC.com.

When you launch it, right click its icon and choose "Run as Administrator", otherwise you will not effectively be able to toggle the mitigations off / on.
Use the scroll bar to read everything about your system mitigations that have been discovered by InSpectre.
When you toggle them off, you have to restart your machine before the change is effective.
After playing X4, and you toggle the mitigations on again, another restart will be required.

Steve Gibson wrote this in assembler initially as a tool just to help people check if they did indeed need updates to firmware or microcode patches.
"This InSpectre utility was designed to clarify every system's current situation so that appropriate measures can be taken to update the system's hardware and software for maximum security and performance."

Personally I received yet another BIOS firmware update for my Dell laptop (see signature) as recently as 1 week ago (19th May 2020), which did include newer mitigations.

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Ideally when using this it would be best to also isolate your machine from the internet .. Toggle WIFI off / disconnect LAN cable .. But then Ventures would not be possible in X4, however anyone not disconnecting from the Internet be advised you are then making your machine vulnerable as Imperial Good has already mentioned in the OP. So if security is top of your list of concerns you have a choice of increasing performance with no Ventures or having Ventures but no help with performance ... But then, less things the game has to do if Ventures are off, probably means an added bonus of a tiny bit more performance gained. Plus just having your machine disconnected from the internet (a.k.a air gapped) will also be beneficial for performance.

Might be worth linking this post in the OP?.
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CPU - 10th Gen' Core I7 10870H 2.2-5.0ghz, GPU - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060, VRAM 6gb GDDR5,
RAM - 32gb (2x16gb, Dual Channel mode set in BIOS) DDR4 2933mhz Kingston Fury Impact,
SSD - Kioxia M.2 NVME 512gb (System), + Samsung M.2 NVME 970 Evo Plus 1tb (Games)

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Tue, 26. May 20, 05:03

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Tue, 26. May 20, 02:59
Might be worth linking this post in the OP?.
Out of interest, did you notice performance gains when playing X4 when turning off the mitigations? If the gains are only a percent or so it generally would not be worth while for people to turn them off.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Tue, 26. May 20, 10:28

I dont think I would be able to tell. The game generally performs well for me so I have not done any empirical analysis.
Weaker CPUs would benefit the most from this, so I thought it would be useful to mention.
Laptop Dell G15 5510 : Win 11 x64
CPU - 10th Gen' Core I7 10870H 2.2-5.0ghz, GPU - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060, VRAM 6gb GDDR5,
RAM - 32gb (2x16gb, Dual Channel mode set in BIOS) DDR4 2933mhz Kingston Fury Impact,
SSD - Kioxia M.2 NVME 512gb (System), + Samsung M.2 NVME 970 Evo Plus 1tb (Games)

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by steve_v » Sun, 31. May 20, 15:42

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Tue, 26. May 20, 02:59
I think it can also be used on Linux / MacOS via WINE, not sure if the toggle buttons would work on those OS's though):
I don't have a Mac, but I can tell you that the tool is both useless and completely irrelevant on GNU/Linux, WINE notwithstanding.
To check what your system is affected by you look in the files located at /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/. To toggle mitigations you pass the appropriate command-line parameters at boot-time or recompile your kernel.

The performance penalty of these mitigations is non-trivial, though I have not benched X4 specifically. If someone can be bothered, boot with 'pti=off spectre_v2=off l1tf=off nospec_store_bypass_disable no_stf_barrier' and see what happens.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Tue, 9. Jun 20, 02:52

I found something else recently which is a bit of a surprising CPU hog

Open Task Manager on Windows, and look for something called "Intel(R) System Usage Report", its a service that gets installed with some Intel driver packages.

It can take up to 20% of your CPU even when a game is running.

I did a search for it and found it can be installed by any of the following:

Intel® Driver Update Utility - I think this is now old, and probably superseded by ..
Intel® Driver & Support Assistant.
Intel® Computing Improvement Program.

If you have any of those 3 installed, they may have come as part of another Intel driver package, but the notification of these being installed was probably obfuscated in advanced install options or just installed by the machine vendor.

They all install "Intel(R) System Usage Report service" (and a few others not necessary for your machine), which gives Intel reports on system use to better "improve their future products".

They are not needed because anything the first two would update will be updated by Windows anyway if they are not installed, and the third is all about data gathering.
https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/ ... a-cip.html

If you find your machine revving up the fans a bit more than you would expect, alt tab out, launch Task Manager and if you have the "Intel(R) System Usage Report" service running see how much percentage of your CPU this service is grabbing to gather data about your machines use .. Its a bit of an eye opener.

Go looking for any of the above three in your Installations, uninstall them, and you will see "Intel(R) System Usage Report" service becomes removed aswell from Task Manager (unless something newer comes along at a later date after this post was written, I think those are the only ones currently which install that service) ..

.. and frees up the 20% use of your CPU it was hogging.

Just beware what you are uninstalling though, for Intel machines there are some drivers which are necessary for good running of your machine, so don't go uninstalling anything else without good research first.
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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Thu, 11. Jun 20, 01:04

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Tue, 9. Jun 20, 02:52
Open Task Manager on Windows, and look for something called "Intel(R) System Usage Report", its a service that gets installed with some Intel driver packages.

It can take up to 20% of your CPU even when a game is running.
This sounds like a data gathering process. Does it really use 20% CPU all the time? I could imagine it spiking up to 20% when it plans to transmit data but that should be infrequent.

Either that or report it as a bug to Intel. Chances are the last thing they want is their CPUs performing worse due to bloatware they wrote. 20% is enough to push performance into AMD's favour.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Thu, 11. Jun 20, 02:15

Imperial Good wrote:
Thu, 11. Jun 20, 01:04
alt3rn1ty wrote:
Tue, 9. Jun 20, 02:52
Open Task Manager on Windows, and look for something called "Intel(R) System Usage Report", its a service that gets installed with some Intel driver packages.

It can take up to 20% of your CPU even when a game is running.
This sounds like a data gathering process.
Well, yes, thats what I described it as in my post you partially quoted, having researched its purpose.
Does it really use 20% CPU all the time? I could imagine it spiking up to 20% when it plans to transmit data but that should be infrequent.
Yes, I had a version of it installed by "Intel® Computing Improvement Program", which I believe was installed as part of a Dell Intel driver update so was not obvious.
In normal windows use I had not noticed it, but when combined with X4 running you start to think something is possibly wrong with your latest version of the game .. So I checked out Task Manager first and found the service taking up 20% CPU. I tried quite a few times on three consecutive days to see if it had gone down any, but it remained at 20%.
Then I went searching and found quite a few other people with other games had noticed this service also taking up 20% of their CPU.
Either that or report it as a bug to Intel. Chances are the last thing they want is their CPUs performing worse due to bloatware they wrote. 20% is enough to push performance into AMD's favour.
It has already been reported by someone else a couple of times on Intel's own forums, within the last couple of years. Personally I am disinclined to help them with this.
Its installation is what I would call obfuscated, and its only purpose is data gathering - That all smacks of underhand methods they dont really want the user to notice .. So I would rather it gets noticed for its bad effect and dies a death of a million grumpy users making it infamous. But thats just me :)

If it had been a bit more obvious and let me know it would also be installed, I might be a bit more forgiving, but its a sneaky installation imho with a very negative impact.
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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Sat, 4. Jul 20, 00:58

Something new to Win 10 2004 - Requires latest Graphics drivers installed (NVidia or AMD)

Quote from here https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comment ... iscussion/
Driver performance testing

There is a lot to chew up here. The driver itself, when compared to the previous one on the same Windows platform (apples-to-apples so to speak), is not bad at all. Except for a slight loss on Wildlands lower Frame Times, the rest of the metrics are either stable or a bit better than with 446.14. No issues here. But still doesn't catch up with 442.59.

The big feature of this new driver is, of course, the support for WDDM 2.7 and the new Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS for short). This feature allows your graphics card to manage its own video memory (VRAM) instead of the operating system. This should improve latency and response times, but also frees up some CPU computing power, in exchange of a bit higher GPU usage. As such, results of this new feature are very CPU/GPU dependant, along with the tested game itself. On CPU limited configurations, and/or CPU hungry games like Wildlands or FC5 (usually DX11 games) the new feature may squeeze some extra performance from your computer. On Dx12/Vulkan games (which are usually much less CPU limited), the new feature seems not that useful.

Arkham Knigth is the black sheep here. Previous reports of HAGS disliking a lot PhysX games seem true, and nVidia driver team has not been able to fix that incompatibility. This game lose a huge chunk of performance with 451.48, and what is worse, it is choppy as hell with heavy stutters.



My recommendation:

If you haven't upgraded your Windows 10 yet to v2004, there are no performance reasons to upgrade. Unless you need some specific bug fixed, 442.59 is still performing a bit better.

If you already have the new Windows 10 v2004 May Update installed, then you should probably upgrade to the new driver (and remember to manually enable HAGS, as it's disabled by default). On DX11 games or if your PC have some CPU bottleneck issues this will probably increase the performance of your games, both in raw framerate and with less stuttering. On the other hand, DX12/Vulkan games won't probably see much improvement though (if any).

Just be aware that HAGS is a new feature, and as such is expected to still have some bugs. If you use this feature, remember to disable as much Gameworks/PhysX options as possible on any game that use them, like Arkham Knight.
------------------------------------------

X4 being a CPU centric game, and using Vulkan, should benefit.

To set HAGS in Win 10 2004 see screenshot .. https://i.imgur.com/0OzT1q7.png

The latest NVidia driver at time of writing v451.48 includes now the updated Vulkan 1.2

YMMV

Also note in the screenshot, if you browse and add game executables to the Graphics Performance list, you can then click them and set High Performance.
I believe this is supposed to be hooked into Windows Focus assist too, which will make windows cool its activities when playing a game.
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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alpha_one_x86 » Tue, 7. Jul 20, 00:27

Changing savegame forma from XML to binary, it's 30x faster, I presume it have lot of bad code like this.
The poor performance on HDD is due to bad data locality far I can see, then resources format improvement will help this.

PS: I have buy GoG version, thanks to publish it on GoG
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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Thu, 30. Jul 20, 19:07

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Sat, 4. Jul 20, 00:58
Requires latest Graphics drivers installed (NVidia or AMD)
It also requires a compatible GPU to take advantage of. From Nvidia only GeForce 10, 16 and RTX 20 cards support this as far as I am aware. I think only the last 2 generations of AMD cards support this as well.
alt3rn1ty wrote:
Sat, 4. Jul 20, 00:58
Also note in the screenshot, if you browse and add game executables to the Graphics Performance list, you can then click them and set High Performance.
I believe this is supposed to be hooked into Windows Focus assist too, which will make windows cool its activities when playing a game.
I think what it does is change the GPU time splicing priority of the application. High performance applications will take preference over lower performance ones and hence get allocated more GPU time. That is what GPU scheduling is all about.

After looking at it more closely, it just seems to resolve which GPU the application will run on in systems with an integrated GPU intended for use when running on battery and a discrete GPU for performance. For example it can force an application to run on the discrete GPU even when on battery. This likely does not affect X4 due to how the Vulkan API works.
alpha_one_x86 wrote:
Tue, 7. Jul 20, 00:27
Changing savegame forma from XML to binary, it's 30x faster, I presume it have lot of bad code like this.
X4 does not support binary saves. Binary saves would not be much faster since the bottleneck is not XML generation but rather data gathering. The same applies when loading where it is not XML parsing but rather how fast the data graph can be rebuilt. Even compression should not make much of a difference if it is executed in parallel.
alpha_one_x86 wrote:
Tue, 7. Jul 20, 00:27
The poor performance on HDD is due to bad data locality far I can see, then resources format improvement will help this.
This is pointless given that practically every modern gamer should be running their games off a SSD. No amount of archive format improvements and defragmentation can make up for the fact that a HDD is inherently very slow both in terms of seek time and read speed compared to a reasonably modern SSD.

A single 512 GB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD like those from Samsung can average over 2.3 GB/sec of ready to use game data accessed randomly while not even reporting activity above 75% or response times higher than 1ms. This is real-life measured speed with my own code when decompressing all the data files from Warcraft III: Reforged. The main problem is that currently few games are designed to actually use such fast read speeds since it is technically challenging to process or even need so much data.

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by alt3rn1ty » Fri, 31. Jul 20, 09:06

Imperial Good wrote:
Thu, 30. Jul 20, 19:07
alt3rn1ty wrote:
Sat, 4. Jul 20, 00:58
Also note in the screenshot, if you browse and add game executables to the Graphics Performance list, you can then click them and set High Performance.
I believe this is supposed to be hooked into Windows Focus assist too, which will make windows cool its activities when playing a game.
I think what it does is change the GPU time splicing priority of the application. High performance applications will take preference over lower performance ones and hence get allocated more GPU time. That is what GPU scheduling is all about.
No, adding game executables to the Graphics Performance List was a thing on Win 10 long before GPU Scheduling was added to that part of windows 10 settings.
Aswell as ensuring on laptops that a game exe will use the High Performance GPU (so long as you set it after adding the game to the list) instead of the Intel Integrated GPU, Its tied in with windows focus assist .. I cant put my mouse on a microsoft post I read quite a while ago but its to help windows determine if a game is running (in whatever window / screen mode): By adding the exe of the game to that list you can be sure windows focus assist will cut down on background services interrupting your games performance - Without doing this in some cases focus assist may not recognise a game is running.
Some people turn off Focus assist in win 10, but for gamers its a good thing to have enabled.
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CPU - 10th Gen' Core I7 10870H 2.2-5.0ghz, GPU - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060, VRAM 6gb GDDR5,
RAM - 32gb (2x16gb, Dual Channel mode set in BIOS) DDR4 2933mhz Kingston Fury Impact,
SSD - Kioxia M.2 NVME 512gb (System), + Samsung M.2 NVME 970 Evo Plus 1tb (Games)

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Re: X4 Performance Troubleshooting Suggestions

Post by Imperial Good » Fri, 31. Jul 20, 17:22

alt3rn1ty wrote:
Fri, 31. Jul 20, 09:06
No, adding game executables to the Graphics Performance List was a thing on Win 10 long before GPU Scheduling was added to that part of windows 10 settings.
Sorry I mistook the feature. All the feature does is select which GPU the application will run on. This is intended for laptops and systems running with both discrete and integrated graphic accelerators. It is intended to allow some applications to run on the discrete GPU for better performance while a laptop is running from battery so usually preferring to use the integrated GPU.

Due to Vulkan API requiring that a GPU be explicitly selected, I do not imagine it affecting X4.
alt3rn1ty wrote:
Fri, 31. Jul 20, 09:06
Its tied in with windows focus assist .. I cant put my mouse on a microsoft post I read quite a while ago but its to help windows determine if a game is running (in whatever window / screen mode): By adding the exe of the game to that list you can be sure windows focus assist will cut down on background services interrupting your games performance - Without doing this in some cases focus assist may not recognise a game is running.
Some people turn off Focus assist in win 10, but for gamers its a good thing to have enabled.
From what I can tell, focus assist does not affect computer performance at all. It just stops notifications from interrupting the user. Hence the name "focus assist" since it helps the user focus more. Windows should still process all notifications, just that they will not be shown to the user.

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