How to increase performance on sins of a solar empire?

from Sins Forums

Hello all! I just picked up sins over steam, and believe me when I say this has to be one of the best games I have ever played!!

Only problem is, is that the CPU on my laptop is a bit weak, and I was wondering what specific settings deal with CPU.

Resolution, AA, planet details etc.

Currently my settings are at max and games work smoothly for me until about an hour in, when massive fleets begin colliding and my CPU is hitting it's max.
I would prefer to keep it as nice looking as it, but will turn stuff down if it garners a fair CPU bonus.

If anyone is wondering, I have a GT335M on my laptop, which is fairly powerful, so the GPU should not be the bottleneck.

technical
10,035 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Turning effects and unit details down or off can help. So can trimming your empire tree (so I've heard). Also, although most players play on Faster, slowing speeds down somewhat can also increase performance. Also, if you have other applications running or are playing in Windowed mode, that might cause slight issues.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

So there are no 1 or 2 settings that are major CPU hogs? Alright, guess I'll bust out fraps and experiment with different settings. My GPU is plenty powerful, but my CPU only runs at 1.2 Ghz, though with Max Turbo Frequency 2.26 Ghz. It is a dual core, but Sins mainly uses only 1 core from what I understand.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting M11xStryker, reply 2
So there are no 1 or 2 settings that are major CPU hogs?
End of M11xStryker's quote

To be honest I'm not sure what exactly is the most important, except of course for fleet size (more stuff for the physics engine to process = more CPU load). I'm just describing a few things which can improve playability a bit.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Empire tree and slower ship speeds (the rest of the settings can stay on fastest) are the main things for CPU I think. That it only uses 1 core is going to be a big factor on your system, so if you have a utility like system explorer or something that can give Sins an entire core to itself that may help (ensuring all other programs use the core not in use).

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Try turning off hyper threading if you know how.  Games that are not multi thread will benefit from turning off hyper threading.