Dat Framerate

[bl3ek]

The lowest I go is low 30's but generally I'm pinned at 60fps in space. Large battles might drop me down to late 40's.

I too play at 4K.

I have a heavily overclocked Vega 56 (equiv to Vega 64 stock speed), 16GB and Ryzen 2700X (4.3GHz). Your 1080 should still be a touch quicker.

I do have random dips to 20fps, but these seem very rare and when a high compute (CPU not GPU) operation is running. Perhaps a simulation update.

Generally speaking I'm happy with the performance at 4K.

[pref]

Definitely doesn't perform as I expected. I can get away with MSAA x4 and the lowest I ever get is 40fps in dense areas, with 130fps in more open areas and 90 on stations @1440p with 8700k OC'd to 4.9 and 1080Ti OC'd. That's not really anything to complain about but if AA is bumped to MSAA x8 (where it looks really good) or SSAAx4 the FPS gets chunked really really hard. SSAAx9 was unplayable. Maybe I have a misunderstanding here of what's actually going on but I don't feel like there's anything here that my system can't handle, yet it can't. Monitoring the resource usage tells me that everything isn't even being fully utilized, which is odd.

SSAA is very demanding. I don't think there is any harware atm that could handle anything above SSAAx4 in a decent resolution.

[DnBrn47]

Definitely doesn't perform as I expected. I can get away with MSAA x4 and the lowest I ever get is 40fps in dense areas, with 130fps in more open areas and 90 on stations @1440p with 8700k OC'd to 4.9 and 1080Ti OC'd. That's not really anything to complain about but if AA is bumped to MSAA x8 (where it looks really good) or SSAAx4 the FPS gets chunked really really hard. SSAAx9 was unplayable. Maybe I have a misunderstanding here of what's actually going on but I don't feel like there's anything here that my system can't handle, yet it can't. Monitoring the resource usage tells me that everything isn't even being fully utilized, which is odd.

SSAA is very demanding. I don't think there is any harware atm that could handle anything above SSAAx4 in a decent resolution.

Kind of sucks, aliasing is something that drives me crazy, that and screen tearing.

[StormMagi]

I had it running in Borderless Windowed, so I put it on Fullscreen and changed the resolution to 1920x1080. It's now up to 30-40 in station docks at High, so that should do.

And yes, my drivers are up to date. I'm surprised X4 didn't get a driver update in Geforce.

Why would it? Only major titles get that.

Funny seeing as a game that was Alpha state got a patch for it. That game was called Ark Survival Evolved and that was before the game even came out of alpha state. Not all titles that get driver updates need to be major titles.

Wasn't it someone of a major media darling though? Or maybe it was an oddball. I don't recall anything other than major titles getting driver updates though I can imagine a number of titles would benefit. But I don't know how Nvidia decides what titles merit a game ready driver release.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

Stations bad for me, too. In space I mostly keep above 50fps but on stations it struggles to stay at 30.
I play at 4k with no AA with a Ryzen 5 1600X, 3200MHz 16GB RAM and Asus 1080Ti.

[Scoob]

It's weird, I'd been running SSAAx2 - which looked great - without issue since it was re-introduced. However, my FPS tanked after applying 1.32 today. I tweaked numerous settings, none made a difference, until that is I disabled AA. It appears that my GPU - a GTX 1070 - simply cannot cope with SSAAx2 (or MSAAx4, it was running fine when SSAA was removed for a bit) anymore, as I see 99% load almost constantly with it enabled.

That said, even though disabling AA entirely improves my FPS a lot, the game is still struggling in 1.32, I get that the fix in this update means the universe will be a bit busier for a while as things recover. However, I'd have expected a CPU and perhaps RAM hit while that occurred, not for my GPU to struggle.

Since 1.0 this game has been quite hard on the CPU - harder than many believe, due to how monitoring tools don't report HT utilisation properly - but 1.32 has made it somewhat lighter on the CPU for me, while stressing my GPU. Most odd.

Scoob.

[KextV8]

It's weird, I'd been running SSAAx2 - which looked great - without issue since it was re-introduced. However, my FPS tanked after applying 1.32 today. I tweaked numerous settings, none made a difference, until that is I disabled AA. It appears that my GPU - a GTX 1070 - simply cannot cope with SSAAx2 (or MSAAx4, it was running fine when SSAA was removed for a bit) anymore, as I see 99% load almost constantly with it enabled.

That said, even though disabling AA entirely improves my FPS a lot, the game is still struggling in 1.32, I get that the fix in this update means the universe will be a bit busier for a while as things recover. However, I'd have expected a CPU and perhaps RAM hit while that occurred, not for my GPU to struggle.

Since 1.0 this game has been quite hard on the CPU - harder than many believe, due to how monitoring tools don't report HT utilisation properly - but 1.32 has made it somewhat lighter on the CPU for me, while stressing my GPU. Most odd.

Scoob.

A CPU hit rolls over into a graphical FPS hit. CPU is what feeds the GPU its instructions for what to calculate and draw. If the CPU is busier running the simulation, it has fewer cycles available to feed the GPU so the GPU has nothing to do, resulting in lower FPS. It would be like measuring police/fire response time then taking away half if the 911 dispatchers. You still have plenty of Police and Firemen available, but they haven't been given the calls by dispatch because dispatch is too busy.

Monitoring the resource usage tells me that everything isn't even being fully utilized, which is odd.

Resource monitors don't tell the full story. You may have resources unused, but that's because the way programming works, they can't be used. Things have to be done in a certain order and the next task cant proceed till the one before it is done. That's the basics behind bottle necking. Some part on your PC, isn't able to finish the tasks it's being given fast enough for the rest down the line. If I had 8 calculators, it wouldnt help me any more than having one because I can't use more than one at a time. Same with your computer and having those unused cores. It can only work with so many tasks at one time. If those tasks are NOT related, then that's where hyperthreading/multiple cores comes in and splits the work load. If the tasks are related, then those extra cores can't help. It would be like if I gave the expression 2 + 4 = x, and asked for x, but I gave 2 to one person + to another, and 4 to another. None of them can tell me the answer because they don't have the full problem.

[SpaceCadet11864]

he's probably using that VEGA card since Vulkan was made for vega fanboys.

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

Yeah, 1.32 has really chunked the framerate.

[DnBrn47]

It's weird, I'd been running SSAAx2 - which looked great - without issue since it was re-introduced. However, my FPS tanked after applying 1.32 today. I tweaked numerous settings, none made a difference, until that is I disabled AA. It appears that my GPU - a GTX 1070 - simply cannot cope with SSAAx2 (or MSAAx4, it was running fine when SSAA was removed for a bit) anymore, as I see 99% load almost constantly with it enabled.

That said, even though disabling AA entirely improves my FPS a lot, the game is still struggling in 1.32, I get that the fix in this update means the universe will be a bit busier for a while as things recover. However, I'd have expected a CPU and perhaps RAM hit while that occurred, not for my GPU to struggle.

Since 1.0 this game has been quite hard on the CPU - harder than many believe, due to how monitoring tools don't report HT utilisation properly - but 1.32 has made it somewhat lighter on the CPU for me, while stressing my GPU. Most odd.

Scoob.

A CPU hit rolls over into a graphical FPS hit. CPU is what feeds the GPU its instructions for what to calculate and draw. If the CPU is busier running the simulation, it has fewer cycles available to feed the GPU so the GPU has nothing to do, resulting in lower FPS. It would be like measuring police/fire response time then taking away half if the 911 dispatchers. You still have plenty of Police and Firemen available, but they haven't been given the calls by dispatch because dispatch is too busy.

Monitoring the resource usage tells me that everything isn't even being fully utilized, which is odd.

Resource monitors don't tell the full story. You may have resources unused, but that's because the way programming works, they can't be used. Things have to be done in a certain order and the next task cant proceed till the one before it is done. That's the basics behind bottle necking. Some part on your PC, isn't able to finish the tasks it's being given fast enough for the rest down the line. If I had 8 calculators, it wouldnt help me any more than having one because I can't use more than one at a time. Same with your computer and having those unused cores. It can only work with so many tasks at one time. If those tasks are NOT related, then that's where hyperthreading/multiple cores comes in and splits the work load. If the tasks are related, then those extra cores can't help. It would be like if I gave the expression 2 + 4 = x, and asked for x, but I gave 2 to one person + to another, and 4 to another. None of them can tell me the answer because they don't have the full problem.

I doubt it unless X4 is somehow more advanced than anything else in my games library, some kind of future game that makes what was the latest and greatest earlier this year obsolete.

[Scoob]

A CPU hit rolls over into a graphical FPS hit. CPU is what feeds the GPU its instructions for what to calculate and draw. If the CPU is busier running the simulation, it has fewer cycles available to feed the GPU so the GPU has nothing to do, resulting in lower FPS. It would be like measuring police/fire response time then taking away half if the 911 dispatchers. You still have plenty of Police and Firemen available, but they haven't been given the calls by dispatch because dispatch is too busy.

Not in this case though, I did attempt to explain what I'm seeing in the post you quoted. My GPU is suddenly being quite epically hammered 99% load much of the time, where it was very rare prior to 1.32. Plus my CPU load is actually somewhat lower than before, though I fully expected it to be somewhat more taxed from the increased NPC activity resulting from the fix. If it were my CPU which was pushed harder, which I did expect, it'd struggle to feed my GPU sufficiently for it to be maxed out as it is.

This appears to be some weird graphical change, as I was running SSAAx2 perfectly fine and then I wasn't. Whatever it is, has pushed my GPU load high enough that it cannot cope with AA now. Which is weird. General GPU load is much higher than it was, and of all the settings I changed only turning AA off helped.

I have a GTX 1070 and only run at 1920x1200, so it really shouldn't suddenly become massively more taxed like this. Something has changed.

Scoob.

[DnBrn47]

A CPU hit rolls over into a graphical FPS hit. CPU is what feeds the GPU its instructions for what to calculate and draw. If the CPU is busier running the simulation, it has fewer cycles available to feed the GPU so the GPU has nothing to do, resulting in lower FPS. It would be like measuring police/fire response time then taking away half if the 911 dispatchers. You still have plenty of Police and Firemen available, but they haven't been given the calls by dispatch because dispatch is too busy.

Not in this case though, I did attempt to explain what I'm seeing in the post you quoted. My GPU is suddenly being quite epically hammered 99% load much of the time, where it was very rare prior to 1.32. Plus my CPU load is actually somewhat lower than before, though I fully expected it to be somewhat more taxed from the increased NPC activity resulting from the fix. If it were my CPU which was pushed harder, which I did expect, it'd struggle to feed my GPU sufficiently for it to be maxed out as it is.

This appears to be some weird graphical change, as I was running SSAAx2 perfectly fine and then I wasn't. Whatever it is, has pushed my GPU load high enough that it cannot cope with AA now. Which is weird. General GPU load is much higher than it was, and of all the settings I changed only turning AA off helped.

I have a GTX 1070 and only run at 1920x1200, so it really shouldn't suddenly become massively more taxed like this. Something has changed.

Scoob.

Interesting. You prompted me to check utilization again and sure enough the load is where I expected it to be from the beginning. This has led to no performance difference though, I get the same frames at the same settings as before...

[Scoob]

Interesting. You prompted me to check utilization again and sure enough the load is where I expected it to be from the beginning. This has led to no performance difference though, I get the same frames at the same settings as before...

Thanks for checking... Interesting that you're not seeing the same issue. I admit to being surprised at what was struggling in my system. My CPU has been coping admirably, all things considered, up until this point and my GPU felt like it was having largely an easy ride of it. Sure, I had FPS drops, but they were all due to the GPU not being fed enough as the CPU was being pushed - well, one Core more than any other - but my GPU was great.

I do find it odd though, out of all the games I play currently - and for a while - only X4 is single-thread limited. By that I mean that the performance of a single core is so critical. I was play Empyrion earlier, and early-access survival / builder game and noticed how it loaded all eight of my threads very very evenly during play. I know Skyrim and Fallout 4 are much the same to name two others. I suspect that Vulkan cannot take advantage of multi-threaded optimisations that work really quite well in DX titles. Though X4 is my first Vulkan title, so I've nothing to compare it to.

Scoob.

[Depleted]

I had it running in Borderless Windowed, so I put it on Fullscreen and changed the resolution to 1920x1080. It's now up to 30-40 in station docks at High, so that should do.

And yes, my drivers are up to date. I'm surprised X4 didn't get a driver update in Geforce.

Egosoft aren't paying Nvidia a huge chunk of dosh to "optimise" their drivers for the game, you don't see nvidia driver updates in regards to indie games do you? Only big AAA releases.

[KextV8]

Not in this case though, I did attempt to explain what I'm seeing in the post you quoted. My GPU is suddenly being quite epically hammered 99% load much of the time, where it was very rare prior to 1.32. Plus my CPU load is actually somewhat lower than before, though I fully expected it to be somewhat more taxed from the increased NPC activity resulting from the fix. If it were my CPU which was pushed harder, which I did expect, it'd struggle to feed my GPU sufficiently for it to be maxed out as it is.

This appears to be some weird graphical change, as I was running SSAAx2 perfectly fine and then I wasn't. Whatever it is, has pushed my GPU load high enough that it cannot cope with AA now. Which is weird. General GPU load is much higher than it was, and of all the settings I changed only turning AA off helped.

I have a GTX 1070 and only run at 1920x1200, so it really shouldn't suddenly become massively more taxed like this. Something has changed.

Scoob.

Honestly, I think the GPU load % is just as misleading as the CPU utilization and I think it has something to do with Vulkan. I dont understand vulkan enough to day for sure. What I do understand is that when I change graphical settings and get 0 fps change, it isnt GPU that is bottle necked. Set setting back to normal and overclock spu instead and get an FPS bump, eureka, CPU was bottlenecked. You are even more likely to CPU bottleneck the lower your resolution is btw as your GPU especially current gen higher end ones like 1070/1080 are capable of pushing blistering fps at low resolutions and limited only by the CPU that feeds them. These modern cards were really engineered to deal with increasing amounts of 4k and 1440p gaming going on.

Anyway, as for why your CPU load would look lower, it's because other processes on the CPU are waiting for other processes to finish so they can use that info for their own tasks. Utilization monitors dont show what you'd think they show. It's not like a tach on an engine showing RPM lol.

[Scoob]

Honestly, I think the GPU load % is just as misleading as the CPU utilization and I think it has something to do with Vulkan. I dont understand vulkan enough to day for sure. What I do understand is that when I change graphical settings and get 0 fps change, it isnt GPU that is bottle necked. Set setting back to normal and overclock spu instead and get an FPS bump, eureka, CPU was bottlenecked. You are even more likely to CPU bottleneck the lower your resolution is btw as your GPU especially current gen higher end ones like 1070/1080 are capable of pushing blistering fps at low resolutions and limited only by the CPU that feeds them. These modern cards were really engineered to deal with increasing amounts of 4k and 1440p gaming going on.

Anyway, as for why your CPU load would look lower, it's because other processes on the CPU are waiting for other processes to finish so they can use that info for their own tasks. Utilization monitors dont show what you'd think they show. It's not like a tach on an engine showing RPM lol.

It could well be. I mean, there's 100% load and there's 100% load...both "100%" but one tries to melt your GPU, the other doesn't. Same with CPU, comparing non-AVX and AVX loads, both at "100%" are worlds apart.

I've posted numerous times lately about the short comings of resource monitoring tools, so I'm well aware of the misleading information they can appear to provide.

Interestingly, since the 1.32 update, it's been the first time I've seen my GPU go over 50c and reign in my overclock ever so slightly. I usually runs comfortably under 50c - currently 20c ambient - and hits the full 2ghz of my OC. Since 1.32 it's going very slightly over 50c, but that's the trigger point for NV to start, very slightly, reducing clocks. I'm still in the high 1,900's though, but my point remains that my GPU hasn't been pushed like this before in X4.

Oh, do remember that I'm vSync limited to just 60fps, so my GPU has never had to work very hard - until now - to get that at just 1920x1200. Assuming no genuine CPU bottleneck of course, which was the more common issue prior to 1.32 when I got a frame drop. Notably in very busy stations or on the (somewhat buggy methinks) map screen.

Scoob.

[KextV8]

Oh, do remember that I'm vSync limited to just 60fps, so my GPU has never had to work very hard - until now - to get that at just 1920x1200. Assuming no genuine CPU bottleneck of course, which was the more common issue prior to 1.32 when I got a frame drop. Notably in very busy stations or on the (somewhat buggy methinks) map screen.

Scoob.

I'd say there are likely more bugs than just the map screen. Cause your 1070 should not be working too hard with vsync at your resolution. Afterall, isn't this their first Vulkan game? I think that the optimization and bug splatting will get better with time. EgoSoft has historically been good about making their games better over time.

[ryansims91]

Yeah my rig is a little behind yours and im getting 60 on 1080p without seta turned on.

[Scoob]

I'd say there are likely more bugs than just the map screen. Cause your 1070 should not be working too hard with vsync at your resolution. Afterall, isn't this their first Vulkan game? I think that the optimization and bug splatting will get better with time. EgoSoft has historically been good about making their games better over time.

I agree. Rebirth VR was their first venture into using Vulkan that I'm aware of. I've no idea how that performed as I don't have a VR headset.

From what little I understand of Vulkan, it has the potential to be more efficient and gives the developer more control. However, like DX12, it equally requires more developer effort to get the best out of it. In very very simple terms (not accurate, just an analogy) you might ask Direct X to draw a circle and it'll do it, but you'd have to describe to Vulkan what a circle is - do that well and it'll be a better, faster circle.

I think, again from what little I know about Vulkan, that it has great potential. The engine used by X4 is Egosoft's own of course, so they have full control of where it's heading. It's in their interests of course to make it the best engine for their particular flavour of space game.

I personally don't mind the bumps along the road if it's going to get this game ultimately running beautifully on a variety of hardware. It irks me a little right now of course, as things had been running better for me until 1.32 landed. I'll reiterate once more that I was surprised to see my GPU being pushed so hard, when I fully expected this update to give my CPU a hard time.

The game is running "ok", it's mostly playable, but I'd been a bit spoilt by generally getting 60fps in most situations. The only times I didn't was when it didn't matter quite so much - so, walking around stations, no twitch game-play there, and while using the map. Combat was regularly pretty darn smooth.

Scoob.

[DnBrn47]

Let's see if we can sort this out.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1588661508

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1588661521

8700k 4.9Ghz
1080Ti OC'd 1980Mhz Boost
16GB 3000Mhz RAM
960 Evo M.2
1440p Gsync

GPU at about 80% in this picture at 80-88FPS (previous patch I checked was more like 50%, same settings, same fps).
CPU has 3 cores going from 50-70% usage 4 going from 1-17% others high teens to 30ish% (hard to be accurate since it's constantly in flux and screen shotting the monitor out of focus wouldn't help)

Compared to many I'm actually getting good frames, just not what I was hoping or expecting considering I've seen better in other games of higher utilization/graphical intensity. Perhaps I just don't understand how this all comes together in a game like X, but the bottleneck idea just doesn't seem right.

This is something we went back and forth on during X:R patching too, yet with the same system, as they optimized the game, fps became better on the same machine. Sure, upgrading to new hardware does a great deal too, but I'm not sure why some keep trying to soley blame it on hardware, even with higher end systems out in the wild.