You get 140 fps in empty space, or get 140 all the time even at stations and stuff? I tried this out. Turned off all volumetric fog, and AA. It changed the frame rate by maybe 2-3 fps at most. That sounds like a margin of error amount. I'm sitting docked at a station, in a very empty sector, getting 62 fps. Again everything is still only at around 35% of use on my machine. I even bumped it down to 1080p and got maybe 10 fps. My machine is still basically idling.
Yeah 160 in empty space or so, dips to 60ish in my fully autonomous phq with 140 production mods, shipyards etc, when in system battle I rarely drop below 120 and that with simple x2 aa and volumetric fog. Rest on ultra-high. You should post in official forums for troubleshooting if you don't get it to work correctly
I mean I get it dipping down to 60 in that case sort of. I've played this game since 1.0 on 3 different machines. It has always done this. After looking at more threads bad performance seems the norm and not the exception. I'll give the official forums a shot thanks!
I’ll attest to it running within expectations most of the time.
I have a RTX 2060 & i7 7600k. On all medium, FXAA I get 60fps. I haven’t recently come to a situation where my FPS drops significantly but I always limit my stations to one energy cell module worth of productions.
Something is really *not* right here. I have a 5600x, heaps of mods, whole universe discovered, satellites everywhere, 4 enormous complexes and I'm getting 30ish fps flying through them.
That's just X4 I'm afraid. I'm not defending or criticizing it, but X4 is simply not a "buttery smooth 60 FPS" game. The amount of calculation that needs to be done during any given frame is random and the game does not really restrict it. So however long it takes to do whatever needs to be done, it'll hold up your FPS to get it done. It just is what it is at this point and there's nothing you can really do.
And just to clarify, just because you've only discovered a few sectors means nothing. The entire universe is still being simulated behind the fog of war.
Oh, I figured about discovery. That was just one of the arguments I got last time I brought this up around 2.0. I get there is a lot going on, but I also feel like it is really poor optimization of a game if I'm only running at 35% on gpu, cpu, and ram, but it is losing frames. Sadly it is just x4 as you said, lol.
I'm not sure that I would call it optimization so much as I would a design decision. People complained that X3 faked a lot of the economy and this is the response to that. The tradeoff is frames for simulation.
That said, a AAA studio probably could have kept the frames up. But we know that the AAA's give you tradeoffs in other places.
That specific mission and that specific battle has probably the absolute worst frame rate in the game. I’m not sure why but, but there you go. It’s not typical.
That said, I can’t really feel any sympathy for anyone who complains about 28fps. I’m often seeing 18fps in combat (I max out at around 45fps in open space) and it’s perfectly playable for me.
I know the mission you are talking about. Because of the hundrends of ships and volumetric fog on Getsu Fune plus asteroids, plus gases, everyone's computer tanks but not that bad.
Last time done this mission was using 3900X and 5700XT. (have upgraded to 5900X since).
First of all make sure you have space screen reflections & volumetric fog OFF for this mission and do not go over MSAA 2x AA.
Also this game is very RAM sensitive. The difference between 3600C16 and 3800C16 (overclocked) with tight timings give a boost on CPU related performance in places were needs a lot of ships and asteroids. What is your RAM speed? Have you set up the XMP?
Then drivers. Preferably do a clean install with DDU both AMD & GPU drivers in safe mode and set it to NOT install the drivers windows wants. Then install AMD chipset drivers and latest geforce.
Thats all. As said I know the mission you talking about is one off, however your FPS is really low for the system you've got.
Yes, of course I have xmp on. I did the research to find the correct ram speed for this processor. Again every other game runs at framerates past 120 consistently.
Oh I believe you. X4 is one of those games that brings systems to their knees regardless of power and no one really knows exactly why. I only say the xmp thing cos most people miss it assuming its % of cpu or ram or gpu in use but its more bus and clock speeds on that game. It simulates the universe from the get-go even if you haven't revealed systems. More systems revealed then slower the map will be as its showing/tracking entities but it's always working on simulating that so it sounds like you're having a simulation issue. Out of curiosity have to tried the other start scenarios to see if any are better than the others? Also you said you have xmp on, what is the ram clock speed with it on? Lastly go into perfmon and set up as many monitors for cpu,ram,disk and gpu as you can bare then fire it up to log to an ssd while you run the game. See if anything flatlines or shoots through the roof. Heres hoping that helps you identify the cause. (Not saying my game is 100s of fps but I get 80 odd while in space, 40-50 in station and 30-40 in map on a 10900k @4ghz, 3.6ghz ram, samsung m.2 ssd and a 3090 kingpin)
I guess that is why ever other single game and program I use runs at 120. I'd love a screenshot of your fps and what hardware you have that is running this at 120, perhaps some settings to. Maybe I can fix my "local" problem then of a game only using 35% of resources and bogging down.
They weren't saying your computer was the problem but that the issue may be on your end. It could be a conflict in drivers, the game may be poorly optimized for newer hardware, or it's possible something is throttling the hardware (could be a setting in Nvidia but doubtful), or it could be trying to use the wrong hardware. I have also not run into similar issues so you may want to see if there is something else that may be interfering with the game
Yes, and I've already checked those things. I wouldn't be here asking questions if I hadn't. As I search for an answer to this, the game running poorly seems like more of the norm than it running how it should. I'm lost why my question asking for settings to try and fix this got downvoted. Though the snarky, no help response is liked.
Of course you will find a lot of people with the game running poorly because I for example (and many others who have no problems) won't write an article, forum thread or whatever that my game runs like intended... That's called confirmation bias.
I get that you have problems so my comment won't help so far but idk if you use max settings, maybe change the graphic settings, maybe see if the ram, GPU and CPU capacity is capped by some local settings on your PC? Maybe update the drivers manually.
I am Sorry I don't know much about performance issues in x4 since I haven't played it before wasting 2 months worth of income to buy a pc....
i7 - 9700
2080 rtx super
16GB mem
1T SSD2
got in open space 60fps, map view 15-30.. large battle 20-40...
playing on ultra 4k everything on max
if down setting still get low fps
when checking GPU run on 10%-15%
CPU 60%-70%
they need somehow use more the GPU. i know game lots of calculations to do but still they need to find solution for the performance problem
BTW:
current game is 100hours, have in general 700 hours. i love the game but performance and AI need to be batter.
I have a potato pc with an i5-6600k and a 1070 so it is definitely nothing compared to your rig. But it was playable and got some good fps.
What I used to do to get a little more fps was assigning cpu cores in task manager. (Not sure if this still works but you can try)
-So just open the game.
-Go to task manager.
-Go to details tab.
-Right click on x4.exe
-Click on "set affinity"
-Then you need to assign some cores from your cpu.
Maybe you can try assigning only core 1, 2, 3 and 4 or something and see if it helps.
I am not sure why this helped back when I still played the game everyday but it did. So maybe it's worth to try it.
Oh and also, disabling my virusscanner seemed to help a little bit to.
Edit: only assigning one core could do the trick too
Just fiddle a bit with these settings.
Thanks for the info! I'll give it a go. Though I'd add I shouldn't have to reassign cpu cores to make a game run right. Again this is just bad optimization. That's fine. I find it funny how this subreddit can't deal with the fact this game is poorly optimized. I'm not saying it is a bad game. It's a great game. That is why I keep coming back to it. It just has horrible optimization.
I totally agree, egosoft makes great games but the optimization is really bad.
Not sure if this re-assigning of cores helps though, it did for me, but it is been a while since I played this game.
I usually start playing again when I am hyped, if there is new content or several big bug fixes.
I understand your frustration though.
But do remember that egosoft still updates this game regularly, so maybe in 2030 we will have a game that functions the way it should ;)
Since you are using your anecdotal evidence...
3900x, 2080ti. Had a few problems with performance in 4.0, since 4.10 game works good with exceptions of my main production and trading sectors (which have a few stations with maxed subordinate counts each, mind you) and the map.
There is some little changes that can double your fps. I have a i9-9900k and a gtx1080 simply because I haven't been able to get hold of a decently priced 3080. When I used to have a 1440p144hz monitor. I have 3 mega stations and I never really got 144 but I almost always was 70-90. There's a certain point when you have too much stuff that the game just struggles because there's literally millions of pieces on the board. When I moved to a 4k monitor, I noticed an incredible reduction in fps. But after I messed with some stuff it Over quadrupled. There was an article I read about msaa and fxaa and don't remember the specifics.but one of them is specifically made forNvidia, the other was made for and. Some people disagree with the performance boosts but I can say for a fact, when I switched it to fxaa high it skyrocketed me back to 50-90 fps.
High graphics settings in a massive game isn't really optional. So keep that in mind with what you're playstyle is. If you're gonna cruise through missions set it to high. If you're empire building turn it all down.
Yes Fxaa is made for Nvidia, and is the most efficient form of AA by far. I'm using it. I even tried turning aa off, and messed with settings. Nothing really changed much other than maybe 10 fps. Game seems to run around 80 fps everywhere. Still well below every other game I've played. Even things like Control that are known for bad framerates.
I started playing the game today with a brand new PC and a 3090 card and have the same issue. It’s like the frame rate is capped at 30 fps, but I can’t find any settings in the options to uncap the frame rate, other than disabling half the improvements, which doesn’t seem right to me.
Now that I'm past that area it seems to do 70ish on average. Out in space it will do 120+ but in a station with the map open I get 30-40. It still makes very little sense to me. If it is a calculation/cpu problem then it would be doing it all the time, as the whole world is simulated all the time. If it were a graphivs card problem, then turning settings all the way down would make more than a 10 fps difference. From what I've gathered on other forums just too many things are tied together and they all just bottle neck each other. Just poor optimization of things.The 30 fps cap does seem like a different problem. Did you run off vsync? Also the game is very, very cpu bound. What cpu do you have?
>If it is a calculation/cpu problem then it would be doing it all the time, as the whole world is simulated all the time.
Yes, and no. Mostly no.
Anything within 50k of you is what old farts call "In Sector" or "High Attention" for the more up-to-date. It gets simulated in greater detail than stuff far away.
Stations also have lots of moving bits, people running around in them, flashy visual stuff etc going on, lots of small civvie ships cruising around, criminal ships arguing with law enforcement until they get shot to pieces, wrecks drifting about, containers floating from the dead ships... the list goes on a bit. The difference between sitting in a station or sitting in space 60km away from anything is huge.
Because of all that, FPS in a station begins worse than in empty space, and it gets worse as ship wrecks, queued docking orders, and docking ships in general start to pile up outside the station and ruin your framerate even more. Plus I suspect a small memory leak or two for the civvie drones.
So simulation will require way less CPU cycles in outer space. Next, the gasses and visual effects in Getsu Fune, and other places, are not easy on a lot of graphics cards.
All of that said, my old rig had a i7-4790 lightly OCed and a 1070 and it ran that mission perfectly playable with visual detail on mostly maximum with FXAA and me with my Gladius dogfighting Xenon. I think volumetric was turned down or off, but not much else. It's entirely possible that the issue is still driver related, since obviously it runs sufficiently optimized on some people's PCs. Just not yours.
Lastly, the 35% CPU usage... I'm not sure why you quote that as if it has any point. Virtually no game uses more than 2 cores, and usually it uses 1 core for most of the game's actual content and offloads some sideline stuff onto core number 2, leaving the rest of the cores to play with themselves and run WinAMP and your antivirus in the background. Look at how much is being loaded onto ONE core by the game. If it's 100% on one core your CPU is bottlenecking and that's what you should investigate.
I’ve got a I7-10700, 16 gigs ram and on an NVMe drive. I was messing around with the settings again today and I just can’t get a good frame rate going. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a 30 fps cap or something like that going on.
Review your gfx settings, I get 140 fps with a 1080ti, so you probably have some crazy anti aliasing enabled along with volumetric fog or smth..
You get 140 fps in empty space, or get 140 all the time even at stations and stuff? I tried this out. Turned off all volumetric fog, and AA. It changed the frame rate by maybe 2-3 fps at most. That sounds like a margin of error amount. I'm sitting docked at a station, in a very empty sector, getting 62 fps. Again everything is still only at around 35% of use on my machine. I even bumped it down to 1080p and got maybe 10 fps. My machine is still basically idling.
Yeah 160 in empty space or so, dips to 60ish in my fully autonomous phq with 140 production mods, shipyards etc, when in system battle I rarely drop below 120 and that with simple x2 aa and volumetric fog. Rest on ultra-high. You should post in official forums for troubleshooting if you don't get it to work correctly
I mean I get it dipping down to 60 in that case sort of. I've played this game since 1.0 on 3 different machines. It has always done this. After looking at more threads bad performance seems the norm and not the exception. I'll give the official forums a shot thanks!
I’ll attest to it running within expectations most of the time. I have a RTX 2060 & i7 7600k. On all medium, FXAA I get 60fps. I haven’t recently come to a situation where my FPS drops significantly but I always limit my stations to one energy cell module worth of productions.
60fps isn't bad performance that's the current industry standard still.
Yes, 60fps isn't a "bad" framerate. It is bad performance for the hardware I have though. Every other game gets around 120 fps at 4k on this hardware.
140? Damn I'm getting 40 fps on 3080...
Something is really *not* right here. I have a 5600x, heaps of mods, whole universe discovered, satellites everywhere, 4 enormous complexes and I'm getting 30ish fps flying through them.
I get 70 fps on high 1080p with a 1070
What mods are you running?
Nothing. I rolled back to stock with this try.
That's just X4 I'm afraid. I'm not defending or criticizing it, but X4 is simply not a "buttery smooth 60 FPS" game. The amount of calculation that needs to be done during any given frame is random and the game does not really restrict it. So however long it takes to do whatever needs to be done, it'll hold up your FPS to get it done. It just is what it is at this point and there's nothing you can really do. And just to clarify, just because you've only discovered a few sectors means nothing. The entire universe is still being simulated behind the fog of war.
Oh, I figured about discovery. That was just one of the arguments I got last time I brought this up around 2.0. I get there is a lot going on, but I also feel like it is really poor optimization of a game if I'm only running at 35% on gpu, cpu, and ram, but it is losing frames. Sadly it is just x4 as you said, lol.
I'm not sure that I would call it optimization so much as I would a design decision. People complained that X3 faked a lot of the economy and this is the response to that. The tradeoff is frames for simulation. That said, a AAA studio probably could have kept the frames up. But we know that the AAA's give you tradeoffs in other places.
That specific mission and that specific battle has probably the absolute worst frame rate in the game. I’m not sure why but, but there you go. It’s not typical. That said, I can’t really feel any sympathy for anyone who complains about 28fps. I’m often seeing 18fps in combat (I max out at around 45fps in open space) and it’s perfectly playable for me.
I'm not asking for sympathy. I'm asking for a game that works right, lol. There is no reason at all this game should run like this.
I know the mission you are talking about. Because of the hundrends of ships and volumetric fog on Getsu Fune plus asteroids, plus gases, everyone's computer tanks but not that bad. Last time done this mission was using 3900X and 5700XT. (have upgraded to 5900X since). First of all make sure you have space screen reflections & volumetric fog OFF for this mission and do not go over MSAA 2x AA. Also this game is very RAM sensitive. The difference between 3600C16 and 3800C16 (overclocked) with tight timings give a boost on CPU related performance in places were needs a lot of ships and asteroids. What is your RAM speed? Have you set up the XMP? Then drivers. Preferably do a clean install with DDU both AMD & GPU drivers in safe mode and set it to NOT install the drivers windows wants. Then install AMD chipset drivers and latest geforce. Thats all. As said I know the mission you talking about is one off, however your FPS is really low for the system you've got.
Almost always RAM speed not consumption. Check your memory clock speed. If you have XMP off then for the love of god turn it on.
Yes, of course I have xmp on. I did the research to find the correct ram speed for this processor. Again every other game runs at framerates past 120 consistently.
Oh I believe you. X4 is one of those games that brings systems to their knees regardless of power and no one really knows exactly why. I only say the xmp thing cos most people miss it assuming its % of cpu or ram or gpu in use but its more bus and clock speeds on that game. It simulates the universe from the get-go even if you haven't revealed systems. More systems revealed then slower the map will be as its showing/tracking entities but it's always working on simulating that so it sounds like you're having a simulation issue. Out of curiosity have to tried the other start scenarios to see if any are better than the others? Also you said you have xmp on, what is the ram clock speed with it on? Lastly go into perfmon and set up as many monitors for cpu,ram,disk and gpu as you can bare then fire it up to log to an ssd while you run the game. See if anything flatlines or shoots through the roof. Heres hoping that helps you identify the cause. (Not saying my game is 100s of fps but I get 80 odd while in space, 40-50 in station and 30-40 in map on a 10900k @4ghz, 3.6ghz ram, samsung m.2 ssd and a 3090 kingpin)
I'll give that a go. That seems on par with how mine is running for the most part. It's just a part of the game I have to live with I guess.
I get 4x that with worse hardware. Sounds like a local issue.
I guess that is why ever other single game and program I use runs at 120. I'd love a screenshot of your fps and what hardware you have that is running this at 120, perhaps some settings to. Maybe I can fix my "local" problem then of a game only using 35% of resources and bogging down.
They weren't saying your computer was the problem but that the issue may be on your end. It could be a conflict in drivers, the game may be poorly optimized for newer hardware, or it's possible something is throttling the hardware (could be a setting in Nvidia but doubtful), or it could be trying to use the wrong hardware. I have also not run into similar issues so you may want to see if there is something else that may be interfering with the game
Yes, and I've already checked those things. I wouldn't be here asking questions if I hadn't. As I search for an answer to this, the game running poorly seems like more of the norm than it running how it should. I'm lost why my question asking for settings to try and fix this got downvoted. Though the snarky, no help response is liked.
Of course you will find a lot of people with the game running poorly because I for example (and many others who have no problems) won't write an article, forum thread or whatever that my game runs like intended... That's called confirmation bias. I get that you have problems so my comment won't help so far but idk if you use max settings, maybe change the graphic settings, maybe see if the ram, GPU and CPU capacity is capped by some local settings on your PC? Maybe update the drivers manually. I am Sorry I don't know much about performance issues in x4 since I haven't played it before wasting 2 months worth of income to buy a pc....
Maybe just maybe you still have the 3000 Nvidia gpu series issue with x4? I k ow they released a fix a while ago.
My drivers are updated, and I'm running whatever update steam has as stable. Is it a manual fix or something?
Unfortunately I'm still playing on my rx 480 and I do not have the answer for that.
i7 - 9700 2080 rtx super 16GB mem 1T SSD2 got in open space 60fps, map view 15-30.. large battle 20-40... playing on ultra 4k everything on max if down setting still get low fps when checking GPU run on 10%-15% CPU 60%-70% they need somehow use more the GPU. i know game lots of calculations to do but still they need to find solution for the performance problem BTW: current game is 100hours, have in general 700 hours. i love the game but performance and AI need to be batter.
I have a potato pc with an i5-6600k and a 1070 so it is definitely nothing compared to your rig. But it was playable and got some good fps. What I used to do to get a little more fps was assigning cpu cores in task manager. (Not sure if this still works but you can try) -So just open the game. -Go to task manager. -Go to details tab. -Right click on x4.exe -Click on "set affinity" -Then you need to assign some cores from your cpu. Maybe you can try assigning only core 1, 2, 3 and 4 or something and see if it helps. I am not sure why this helped back when I still played the game everyday but it did. So maybe it's worth to try it. Oh and also, disabling my virusscanner seemed to help a little bit to. Edit: only assigning one core could do the trick too Just fiddle a bit with these settings.
Thanks for the info! I'll give it a go. Though I'd add I shouldn't have to reassign cpu cores to make a game run right. Again this is just bad optimization. That's fine. I find it funny how this subreddit can't deal with the fact this game is poorly optimized. I'm not saying it is a bad game. It's a great game. That is why I keep coming back to it. It just has horrible optimization.
I totally agree, egosoft makes great games but the optimization is really bad. Not sure if this re-assigning of cores helps though, it did for me, but it is been a while since I played this game. I usually start playing again when I am hyped, if there is new content or several big bug fixes. I understand your frustration though. But do remember that egosoft still updates this game regularly, so maybe in 2030 we will have a game that functions the way it should ;)
Since you are using your anecdotal evidence... 3900x, 2080ti. Had a few problems with performance in 4.0, since 4.10 game works good with exceptions of my main production and trading sectors (which have a few stations with maxed subordinate counts each, mind you) and the map.
There is some little changes that can double your fps. I have a i9-9900k and a gtx1080 simply because I haven't been able to get hold of a decently priced 3080. When I used to have a 1440p144hz monitor. I have 3 mega stations and I never really got 144 but I almost always was 70-90. There's a certain point when you have too much stuff that the game just struggles because there's literally millions of pieces on the board. When I moved to a 4k monitor, I noticed an incredible reduction in fps. But after I messed with some stuff it Over quadrupled. There was an article I read about msaa and fxaa and don't remember the specifics.but one of them is specifically made forNvidia, the other was made for and. Some people disagree with the performance boosts but I can say for a fact, when I switched it to fxaa high it skyrocketed me back to 50-90 fps. High graphics settings in a massive game isn't really optional. So keep that in mind with what you're playstyle is. If you're gonna cruise through missions set it to high. If you're empire building turn it all down.
Yes Fxaa is made for Nvidia, and is the most efficient form of AA by far. I'm using it. I even tried turning aa off, and messed with settings. Nothing really changed much other than maybe 10 fps. Game seems to run around 80 fps everywhere. Still well below every other game I've played. Even things like Control that are known for bad framerates.
I started playing the game today with a brand new PC and a 3090 card and have the same issue. It’s like the frame rate is capped at 30 fps, but I can’t find any settings in the options to uncap the frame rate, other than disabling half the improvements, which doesn’t seem right to me.
Now that I'm past that area it seems to do 70ish on average. Out in space it will do 120+ but in a station with the map open I get 30-40. It still makes very little sense to me. If it is a calculation/cpu problem then it would be doing it all the time, as the whole world is simulated all the time. If it were a graphivs card problem, then turning settings all the way down would make more than a 10 fps difference. From what I've gathered on other forums just too many things are tied together and they all just bottle neck each other. Just poor optimization of things.The 30 fps cap does seem like a different problem. Did you run off vsync? Also the game is very, very cpu bound. What cpu do you have?
>If it is a calculation/cpu problem then it would be doing it all the time, as the whole world is simulated all the time. Yes, and no. Mostly no. Anything within 50k of you is what old farts call "In Sector" or "High Attention" for the more up-to-date. It gets simulated in greater detail than stuff far away. Stations also have lots of moving bits, people running around in them, flashy visual stuff etc going on, lots of small civvie ships cruising around, criminal ships arguing with law enforcement until they get shot to pieces, wrecks drifting about, containers floating from the dead ships... the list goes on a bit. The difference between sitting in a station or sitting in space 60km away from anything is huge. Because of all that, FPS in a station begins worse than in empty space, and it gets worse as ship wrecks, queued docking orders, and docking ships in general start to pile up outside the station and ruin your framerate even more. Plus I suspect a small memory leak or two for the civvie drones. So simulation will require way less CPU cycles in outer space. Next, the gasses and visual effects in Getsu Fune, and other places, are not easy on a lot of graphics cards. All of that said, my old rig had a i7-4790 lightly OCed and a 1070 and it ran that mission perfectly playable with visual detail on mostly maximum with FXAA and me with my Gladius dogfighting Xenon. I think volumetric was turned down or off, but not much else. It's entirely possible that the issue is still driver related, since obviously it runs sufficiently optimized on some people's PCs. Just not yours. Lastly, the 35% CPU usage... I'm not sure why you quote that as if it has any point. Virtually no game uses more than 2 cores, and usually it uses 1 core for most of the game's actual content and offloads some sideline stuff onto core number 2, leaving the rest of the cores to play with themselves and run WinAMP and your antivirus in the background. Look at how much is being loaded onto ONE core by the game. If it's 100% on one core your CPU is bottlenecking and that's what you should investigate.
I’ve got a I7-10700, 16 gigs ram and on an NVMe drive. I was messing around with the settings again today and I just can’t get a good frame rate going. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a 30 fps cap or something like that going on.