Low FPS issue?

[Sam]

So my system is:

ryzen 5 3600x
rtx 2070s
32gig ram
NVME SSD

even if i turn ALL settings on the lowest possible i am only getting 40-50 FPS when walking arround stations / in the dockning hangar

drivers are up2date

when i look under performance for my hardware in task manager when running the game i can see my GPU is only used under 10% and CPU is arround 20-30%.
How do i make the game use all of my machines power?

any tips on on how to improve performance?

(i want to get a minimum of 60FPS+ no matter what is shown on screen)

[Blueberry Muffins!]

newer cpu, faster ram. Anybody got reports on how this game runs with a 5800X3D? Of course they do.

3600X is a six-core 12-threader, so X4's driving 3-4 threads at 100%. This is almost certainly not the correct breakdown but the tasks it's always got on hand include graphics, logistics, pathfinding/collision, combat, AI. The X4 world is huuuuuuge, and all of it's always active whether you're looking at it or not.

[Sam]

MY CPU sits at ~20% tho?

[Wildman John]

Run the game in borderless window, you'll get a big boost that way.
Also, it helps to not have satellites everywhere. A trade subscription from each faction rep will give you auto updating station stock reports for your traders so the satellites only serve to update you on what each individual unit is doing which isn't usually necessary, and will slow down the game once the amount of units gets larger.
The reason your CPU is at 20% is because this game can't use all the cores, I think it uses 2 at most(?) and not even very efficiently I've read, so many of them doing nothing. Many games have this issue.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

3 threads at 100% is 25% of a 6-core 12-threader. Hunt up Amdahl's Law[en.wikipedia.org], multithreading only pays when there's no crosstalk, when you can cascade all the communication in predictable directions at predictable times and making those predictions doesn't cost more than the multithreading saves. There's limits to how much a six-lane highway can speed up your journey.

[Zalzany]

Issue is you got a work CPU for gaming, as Barnaby pointed out, many games don't use that many cores, because they are built for gaming pcs. You got CPU for pcs expected to multitask, or server host. I use to have really great I7 back in the day with all cores it was more then you need today, but my god most the stuff I played I found out wouldn't use more the 3 cores cutting its power by almost half.

Its why this build I got a gaming CPU instead, although i9 looked great, just more money for more headaches lol

[felmari]

probably a dual core would be great for gaming. multi core is great at multi tasking but sometimes you need a beast for dedicated tasks. you could even have a lesser second core for the other tasks in the background logicals to a degree but beter to have separates that dedicate. probably would need some api's to utilise correctly.

[Sam]

Originally posted by Barnaby Jones:

Run the game in borderless window, you'll get a big boost that way.
Also, it helps to not have satellites everywhere. A trade subscription from each faction rep will give you auto updating station stock reports for your traders so the satellites only serve to update you on what each individual unit is doing which isn't usually necessary, and will slow down the game once the amount of units gets larger.
The reason your CPU is at 20% is because this game can't use all the cores, I think it uses 2 at most(?) and not even very efficiently I've read, so many of them doing nothing.

Thanks but im allready running borderless window.
And i was talking an absolute fresh start save, with absolutely nothing going on the map, just walking arround in the first starter station.
Still, even with absolutely nothing going on i was not getting 60FPS stable, on the lowest possible graphics settings.

Originally posted by Zalzany:

Issue is you got a work CPU for gaming, as Barnaby pointed out, many games don't use that many cores, because they are built for gaming pcs. You got CPU for pcs expected to multitask, or server host.

I can run every single game on the entire market in 3440x1440p on high to ultra settings with 60+ FPS, in most games i push up to 100-144FPS in uwqhd, my entire steam libary runs absolute flawlessly.

The ryzen 5 3600x is a rocksolid trustworthy CPU, which is great for gaming in literally every other game i ever played... and i played them all.


The single only game which runs like dogshait is X4.

So dont tell me it is my hardware, no: its the poor game engine and bad optimization.

Sorry but if in 2022, on way above average hardware, your game can not run stable 60FPS you did something seriously wrong in developement.

This is unacceptable, i'll play something else instead, ciao.

[Set-115689]

For station fps change in Documents\Egosoft\X4\53790910\config.xml and setting "<trafficdensity>0.01</trafficdensity>" from 0.50 and "<chardensity>0.20</chardensity>" from 0.50.

Might not get 60 fps later in the game. Game runs/looks fine at 20 fps.

[=STP= Isegrim]

Try high settings... dont ask why just test it.

[Wolfsblut]

If you are early Game you will have highter FPS Rates, wait Till you own a while Empire of a few xxxx/xxxx Shops/Stations... The FPS will get lower and lower..and If war is Off Screen Sometimes having 20s ist good for Bug ai war's somewhere between races and theyre fronts.. also.. you can also try a Tip from nother User i have one tried. When FPS gettings suddenly Low you can try deactivating/deactivating The DLCs. Did Help me a few times

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by Antimate:

So my system is:

ryzen 5 3600x
rtx 2070s
32gig ram
NVME SSD

even if i turn ALL settings on the lowest possible i am only getting 40-50 FPS when walking arround stations / in the dockning hangar

drivers are up2date

when i look under performance for my hardware in task manager when running the game i can see my GPU is only used under 10% and CPU is arround 20-30%.
How do i make the game use all of my machines power?

any tips on on how to improve performance?

(i want to get a minimum of 60FPS+ no matter what is shown on screen)

I'm in a similar situation.

https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=448712

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by Set-115689:

Might not get 60 fps later in the game. Game runs/looks fine at 20 fps.

I disagree. Fine is relative. I believe you feel it's ok because you're invested in your save and it was a slow degrade of the fps over time.

Running around on a spacestation at 20fps is not fine. Flying around at 20fps is still not fine.

Walking on a station, flying a ship, watching other ships move, watching battles occur.
These are all things that are part of the core gameplay. As your fps goes down, so does what you do in game. mid-late game, you don't watch battles because that's how the game works. You do that because it's fun. If dogfighting in that same battle is more fun, you'll do that as well. But if dogfighting is not working at low framerates, you turn on assists like auto-aim. Until some point when you let the AI play the game.

If the game is designed for us to get the AI playing the game, then low framerate is fine, otherwise, it's an issue. It's also holding back the game and the genre. Nobody has pulled off a quality single player game like this other than Elite Dangerous. Starfield may, but Starfield will for sure drive more players to X4. That is however, unless Starfield is better than X4. I doubt it. But I can see how people liking the idea behind Starfield, but hating the game will look for a better game and come across X4.

Trade, Build, Fight, Think, Explore, Strategy

Check out Bernd's series on youtube (there's links in the game) that cover the basics. There's so much you can do in X4 and a low framerate limits or negatively impacts every one. This has always been an issue in X-games. I believe this has todo with the strategy they use to make games. I can't answer the why, it's a gut feeling.

EDIT:
My feeling also tells me, if development stopped right now, then CPU's in 10 years still wouldn't be able to run this game. Compare that to X3 and every X game prior to X4, all of those games ran better after CPU's caught up to how they're making the games.

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by Antimate:

MY CPU sits at ~20% tho?

It doesn't if you look into it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/ghpaw3/another_x4_performance_post_halp/iiakx94/?context=3

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by Blueberry Muffins!:

newer cpu, faster ram. Anybody got reports on how this game runs with a 5800X3D? Of course they do.

3600X is a six-core 12-threader, so X4's driving 3-4 threads at 100%. This is almost certainly not the correct breakdown but the tasks it's always got on hand include graphics, logistics, pathfinding/collision, combat, AI. The X4 world is huuuuuuge, and all of it's always active whether you're looking at it or not.

also thread at the forums here https://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=448712

shared a video of gameplay and mods even discussed the CPU

EDIT: but your logic might not be how the game works. that thread above might help, it helped me.

[Slick8791]

All I can add is I've been recording my FPS as a benchmark in an Excel sheet to see if certain NVIDIA drivers improved overall performance enough to upgrade the driver. Started doing this with driver 466.11 all the way up to 516.59.

With the release of ToA DLC/Update 5 - all hardware, software and driver settings staying the same - my FPS while flying around in the Flight School intro dropped over 25 FPS. I was easily averaging 65~66 FPS in the cockpit but now I'm hovering around 39~40 FPS. That is a heck of a performance hit in one update...