Performance questions

from Sins Forums

Been playing Sins for a few months now and I wanted to see if the community can help me on this one.  I've been having some annoying performance issues going on with large games and fleets.  Here are my system specs.

e8400 3.0ghz dualcore OC'd to 3.6ghz

asus p5n-d MB (750i) with 4 gig mushkin ddr2 memory.

dual 9800 GTX+ 's in SLI (not enabled on Sins.  Single CPU only)

During certain fleet confrontations the framerate bogs down to 10 frames a second and lower on certain occasions when certain abilities are cast.  Typically most large battles will slow a bit down to 45 fps but occasionally for no reason it will really bog down to these single digit frame rates. When this happens I check my CPU usage and it is never goes above 60 percent in most cases even during these big bog downs and I can't understand where the holdup is.  I've even tried running two 9800 gtx+'s in SLI mode and that didn't help.  I have all antivirus disabled and this only happens in large fleet battles where there are multiple types of abilities being used.  Early large battles where abilities are not all that common cause no problem but battles of the same size later in the game when the enemy fleet is more varied I run into issues.   I've played this game enough to know what it typical frames for a game on my system but it definately seems to be affected by the abliities.    I typically play medium sized scenarios and I never play online.  This happens in 1.05 and both versions of 1.09 both with and without basic graphical mods.  I typically run the game with max graphical settings at 1680*1050.    I have one particular save file that I use as a graphic test that is on the twin empire map where i take my advent fleet up against a large vasari fleet mainly composed of carriers and it bogs down to 10 fps as soon as some of the enemy ships begin casting.  I don't play vasari much but I think it's their cielo type unit.  As soon as they begin casting everything drops.  I've replayed this same save file over and over while at 1024*768 with all graphic options set to their lowest and it still does the same thing.  I've tried it with SLI and without and no matter what I still get 10fps.  Again my cpu usage is not even close to 100 percent and Sins sure doesn't tax my video cards given the fact that it's temp doesn't even raise when I play this game.  While my system isn't a supercomputer, I would expect a bit better performance with my rig.

What is the cause of this problem and what steps can I do to correct it?  I've even tried playing games with "small fleet sizes" and even then the average sized fleets of 100 ships cause slowdowns when battles commense with heavy spellcasting going on.  It's not CPU or video card related as these never get placed under a full load when this happens.  What else can I do??

17,528 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I came across this thread in the technical forum and it describes my issues exactly.  https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/321741

  When i get the graphic slowdown, if i hit menu the fps smooths out to max but when i go back into the game it runs at high fps for a second and then drops back to bogging down.  I also notice that my CPU usage is also 50 percent.  Is ironclad aware of this problem and are there any plans on addressing it.  Dual core systems are very prevalent and it seems that all the other posters are having the same problem even with top end ddr3 memory and video cards. 

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

 

Sins is not multi-core after the initial texture caching has taken place.  After that it's happily single-core.

Since the game engine is so scalable (ie. can be made to run even on the lowest of systems) it also stands to reason that one might be able to push the engine to the point of lagging even on high-end systems.

Don't have such huge fleet battles, and/or don't zoom in on those "large" fleet battles....

A game such as SINS is all "numbers".  Of course your system can handle more numbers than say one of my notebooks.  Don't push those "numbers" too high and you won't experience slowdown. ;)

 Oh, and it is my understanding that the devs are aware of certain abilities dramaticly affecting slowdown when used in/on large concentrations of ships.

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Ive been playing games with smaller fleet sizes but occasionally even with the small fleet option set, there still will be occasions with large battles but it's more manageable with smaller fleet sizes but this issue still pops up occasionally.    Are there any other options to help maximize performance?

 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

 

that's just it......since we know video isn't being taxed (at least not video setups like yours....I'm jealous..hehe) it has to be the "calculations-per-second" scenario.  In other words, unless more of these calculations can somehow be performed simultaneously we just have to make the engine "do less".

:\  

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I recently just tried disabling dual core support and it taxed core 0 at 100 percent and core 1 at zero percent but the problem persisted.  It's odd in the fact that while it bogs down to 10 fps, if I hit f10 for the menu and then I spin the camera around at the same time, even with tons of ships the fps jumps right back up to a high amount while in the menu but if i hit f10 again to go back into the action it bogs again.  It must be all the calculations as it can't be video obviously.  What i wouldn't give to see a solid 150 vs 150 ship fleet in all it's fun glory.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I have the same problem on my system.  Mine is Win Vista 64 on Phenom 9850 Quad running at 2.5 GHz with 8 gigs 1066 ram and two 9800 GTX with SLI (also set to single GPU for sins.) running at 1680 X 1050.  Mobo is Asus M3HT Delux with Mempipe. (Not actually using mempipe ATM)

Oddly my gamming laptop (Model: Gateway P-173XL FX) wasn't having any issues with multi play so I copied the save game over and the performance boost was very noticable.  My laptop shouldn't be able to outperform my desktop, it has Centrino T8300 (I think) at 2.4 GHz dual core with 8800m GTS, 4 gigs of 800 ram on Win Vista 64 running at 1920 X 1200.  The only thing it has that is better is that it has Raid 0 on two 7200 RPM HDD's.  But I can't see that being the advantage as my HDD usage during the game can't be that great.

The clue that this might be graphical is that when I zoom out far enough the frame rate recovers instantly.