Performance Megathread

[kane70]

I suspect and from perusing this thread that the problem isn't the graphics.

It's (at least in my case) clearly CPU limited. Powerful cores heavily preferred. I first kept the old graphics card and the new CPU and got significantly more speed, but the plus is more or less the additional speed of the modern cores in relation to the old architecture. The additional number of cores are sleeping.
Changing the graphics card afterwards had no effect at all.

 

[Jamey]

My question: if I were to play in a medium galaxy would I have a chance of actually finishing a game in its current state?

I have very similar hardware to yours and play on medium galaxies. I am not satisfied with the performance because 50 to 100 years into the game it starts slowing to a crawl.

 

[Shrike]

Well it hasn't been a very good day for paradox games for me as I've just found out that there will not be anymore battletech (my favourite game) and it looks like there is no hope to ever finish a game of stellaris again. Thanks Paradox.

 

[Pellaken]

I'm running an E8500 processor. For a while I had a i5 3450 until that died.

I've managed to get a i5 6600K

My question to regular players is what performance improvement should I notice over these two processors.

 

[Riftwalker]

Most of the above comments assume that the new calculations will be done in a hardcoded fashion in the engine. If that were true we would have been capable of playing with
100.000 of pops ages ago but without modding.

What happens is that most of those things are calculated through triggers and throught the modifiers system outlined in the last performance dev diary ages ago. And you bet the engine programmers work only on future engine upgrades or universal changes that apply to all titles, and not exlusively or dedicated on the stellaris DLC.

So no, it won't be O(n) since triggers and events will make it cycle through stuff, as stuff changes in the data graph and go through additional overhead that we don't know since we don't know the details of the engine..

A colony datastructure is not just a C struct in memory - it's a beast. You can't code stellaris/clausewitz with only a CS101 data structures course knowledge.

-edited to correct horrible spelling- I type too fast and don't read the result...

sure but the whole reason the game takes forever to load when you start it up is because it takes the scripts and compiles them(it's not super efficient, but i assume they're at least assembly tweaked)

basically the game isn't parsing text live, it's already been turned into engine specific function calls with specific parameters. this means they can't be super lean functions.

ALSO, clausewitz is mostly a gui and compiler engine, the whole stuff like stellaris as a whole, and it's mechanics are not part of the greater clausewitz engine. there's essentially 3 levels clausewitz, stellaris, and then scripts. this was mentioned by Wiz a LONG LONG time ago, so i don't remember where the actual comment was made, but the engine(non-script part of the game) for stellaris and imperator rome have significant differences. in essence, the stellaris programmers, are working on engine changes like any normal software company.

 

[GnoSIS]

Good day. You seem to know what you are talking about, certainly more than me. Is the idea of an overhaul of the engine impossible for the most popular space strategy game actually impossible?

If I am not incorrect Sins of a solar empire managed to buff up their ancient engine 5 or 6 years after release.

It's not impossible, but the directors must approve the large cost/investment to perform it.

I suggest you play with Stellaris Immortal mod. It has removed the pop blob entirely and makes the game largely playable endgame. Other than that, I suggest:

1. Play machine/gestalt: They don't have trade calculations overhead.
2. Take care and don't have have open jobs in yourplanets - always have some minimum unemployed everywhere to close all gaps.
3. Be genocidal and fast at it.
4. Don't mix species on planets and don't play xeno compatibility.

 

[alexti]

sure but the whole reason the game takes forever to load when you start it up is because it takes the scripts and compiles them(it's not super efficient, but i assume they're at least assembly tweaked)

That's an interesting statement that raises several questions:
- on my rather old computer it takes 6 seconds to start up. Is it what you call 'forever' or it takes much longer for you?
- do you pass some arguments to stellaris or change something in the settings to make it compile the scripts? - I see zero evidence of it doing that (and 6 seconds is really not enough to compile all their scripts) and there are all signs that it is interpreting the scripts during the run time, so I am fairly certain it isn't compiling them on my computer
- do you experience any mid/late game slow down that many report?

 

[kane70]

1. Play machine/gestalt: They don't have trade calculations overhead.
2. Take care and don't have have open jobs in yourplanets - always have some minimum unemployed everywhere to close all gaps.
3. Be genocidal and fast at it.
4. Don't mix species on planets and don't play xeno compatibility.

If you play gestalt, the overall game might be faster. But there is a price: in lategame I have looong pauses whenever a new year begins.
About the overall approach: at least to me one of the coolest features of stellaris is to play it however I want. If a workaround limits this down so drastically, the main magic factor is already gone

 

[exi123]

I have a very similar situation than you - and I switched to medium galaxies. Result:
Even on this level the game slows significantly down in lategame: I stopped my last two games during this phase. It's not as ugly as in big galaxies (way better), but after a while...

Unfortunately you can't kill this beast with hardware. I tried: changed my CPU from i7 4990k to Ryzen 3800x (and upgraded the rest properly), and the issue is still there, even on medium.

And this is the biggest marketing lie about the game. The minimal and recommended system specifications given on Steam and other platforms is false and a complete fraud. It is not possible to play Stellaris properly on given specs. Even modern and fast cpus of newer generations with up to twice the power per thread slow down in the lategame to an unplayabele state.

Ok, i can always roll-back to older versions to get my experience back like it was before, but what about the content i bought in later dlcs? Modern gamestudios are always one tiny inch away from getting sued i guess... (by german law, where i live, i would be able to refund the whole game, but it isnt really enforced. I really think they should start it, this is so anti-consumer behaviour which would lead to devastating losses and lawsuits with real products...)

 

[t_b]

And this is the biggest marketing lie about the game. The minimal and recommended system specifications given on Steam and other platforms is false and a complete fraud. It is not possible to play Stellaris properly on given specs. Even modern and fast cpus of newer generations with up to twice the power per thread slow down in the lategame to an unplayabele state.

Ok, i can always roll-back to older versions to get my experience back like it was before, but what about the content i bought in later dlcs? Modern gamestudios are always one tiny inch away from getting sued i guess... (by german law, where i live, i would be able to refund the whole game, but it isnt really enforced. I really think they should start it, this is so anti-consumer behaviour which would lead to devastating losses and lawsuits with real products...)

I think the real problem is that no-one has a quantum computer yet. Thats probably about the computational power required to run the entire game.

 

[Shrike]

If you play gestalt, the overall game might be faster. But there is a price: in lategame I have looong pauses whenever a new year begins.
About the overall approach: at least to me one of the coolest features of stellaris is to play it however I want. If a workaround limits this down so drastically, the main magic factor is already gone

Sure. Appreciate the advice but it's ridiculous that we have to do work around like this. Thanks

 

[Riftwalker]

That's an interesting statement that raises several questions:
- on my rather old computer it takes 6 seconds to start up. Is it what you call 'forever' or it takes much longer for you?
- do you pass some arguments to stellaris or change something in the settings to make it compile the scripts? - I see zero evidence of it doing that (and 6 seconds is really not enough to compile all their scripts) and there are all signs that it is interpreting the scripts during the run time, so I am fairly certain it isn't compiling them on my computer
- do you experience any mid/late game slow down that many report?

hmm, it takes 2-3 minutes for me. it used to take like 10 minutes for HoI3 they've certainly improved the system, but i can't say i've ever had it take 6 seconds.
no, i don't. this is just how it works.
yes, i tend to multitask in the late game

edit: from the time I press play from the launcher to the time i get to the main menu, it took me exactly 2 minutes and 8 seconds. if yours starts in 6 seconds that's amazing, it's usually longer when i use mods, because there's more to compile. this is on a HDD, but otherwise has a very strong Hardware, so i hardly think this is an unusual occurance.

for comparison, it takes me 2 seconds to load up to the main menu for another game i have installed on my HDD.

 

[FinellyTrained]

Have you guys tried measuring in real time seconds, how a long an in-game month takes?

 

[Riince2]

Anyone got hard numbers on how much ddr4 helps compared to ddr3 when processor performance is nearly identical? i.e performance delta between an i5-4670k and an i5-6600k or a i7-4790k and an i7-6700k

nearly identical processors in ipc, if there is a significant difference between them it would be due to memory speed.

I'm currently on a 4790k that's why I'd like to know if it's worth upgrading or not. Actual cpu performance itself isn't higher enough to justify it.

 

[GnoSIS]

If you play gestalt, the overall game might be faster. But there is a price: in lategame I have looong pauses whenever a new year begins.
About the overall approach: at least to me one of the coolest features of stellaris is to play it however I want. If a workaround limits this down so drastically, the main magic factor is already gone

This is the reason why this issue shouldn't be contained in a single thread. I completely agree with you and I would like to play on large with federations and cosmopolitan open migration worlds, but the game can't support that so we need to make a stand as consumers and customers who paid a lot for this game.

The features of the uipcoming DLC are completely against the performance capabilities of the version we have. If they have made miraculous progress on performance I would have expected them to be posting about them, but there's nothing.

 

[GnoSIS]

But seeing from the dev diary Q&A, next week will be the big one!

 

[GuildenSpur]

Yes indeed. If they can devote a DD to it, one could hope there are at least several improvements.
Yes, I am trying to convince myself of this.
New mantra: PERFORMANCE WILL BE GOOD, ... (repeat at least 3x every time you curse now at the performance)

 

[Blayze]

But seeing from the dev diary Q&A, next week will be the big one!

Don't get too excited until you actually see the improvements in-game.

 

[Dëzaël]

Anyone got hard numbers on how much ddr4 helps compared to ddr3 when processor performance is nearly identical? i.e performance delta between an i5-4670k and an i5-6600k or a i7-4790k and an i7-6700k

nearly identical processors in ipc, if there is a significant difference between them it would be due to memory speed.

I'm currently on a 4790k that's why I'd like to know if it's worth upgrading or not. Actual cpu performance itself isn't higher enough to justify it.

I didn't test with my previous DDR3 PC, but I did tests with overclocking my current DDR4. From 2400MHz to 3200MHz, the improvement is perceptible, but it didn't make a significant enough difference to get an unenjoyable game to enjoyable.

In my general experience, upping RAM frequencies can make a barely stuttering game lag free, but it has to already be on the edge of pristinely smooth for that to happen. I'm often modding my games to the maximum my PC can handle, and there have been cases like that. That is a rare exception though. Generally it is all in or all out, and RAM speed doesn't do jack, except maybe to say this is a tad less bad.

So for Stellaris specifically and given the various tests we all did here, I would bet switching to DDR4 even with a way better CPU would be far from enough to get satisfying results. Not as good as hard numbers but the best I can provide.

 

[Derp]

Have you guys tried measuring in real time seconds, how a long an in-game month takes?

2410, 200 stars, months take 22 seconds including the end-of-month delay