Performance Megathread

[KingAlamar]

EDIT: Deleted summary of the TWITCH stream as it's already been posted to forums. Also Youtube videos of performance posted.

Edit2: The pinned performance topic is saying 15% to 30% improvement on average. This counts year 2200 to "end game" though so the impact of the improvements where the game slows down is better than 15% on most systems. On the TWITCH stream and YouTube though 1K Stars ; 20K+ pops were running 3-5X faster -- not just a 15% improvement but 150% improvement or more.

EDIT3: In the [extremely?] unlikely event that 1K stars + 20K pops can ONLY be played on systems with relatively modern specs I don't mind that much. My 8 year old system needs to be retired eventually anyway. If I can match the displayed performance with a 600$ upgrade that doesn't bug me TOO much.

Now, assuming performance is fixed, the question is how to reward Paradox in a manner that they will understand that it's because of fixing some of the performance issues that have been around for a year.

 

[Riftwalker]

oh wow, it looks like they did everything that i said was pretty hard to do. they actually went and added triggers with everything and just had QC put in bug reports when an event didn't update.

i'm genuinely impressed they put in that kind of work to existing code base.

 

[RedMoth27]

They did it! The game is now playable!

 

[KingAlamar]

Here's a nice graph & post that shows a potential performance impact in early game with the tradeoff showing much better improvement late game:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?posts/26275405/

 

[domdtxdissar]

I think up-to 50% performance increase in lategame as shown above is not enough for this game to be playable lategame for me =/

I have 930 hours playtime and running a pretty high-end pc with 16cores and 32 threads-> my R20 Cinebech scores a 545 singlethread and 9.8k mulithread.
Normally i reach 1k pops around year 2300, and its around this time i have to stop playing because of the lag. (unmodded)

Lets say i can now get 50% more "pop performance", that means i can have around 1.5k pops before the game become unplayable again for me.
That will take me around 30 more years ingame i would guesstimate ? So with this soon to be released patch i can maybe play a few hours more before i have to call it quits again (?)

That's doesn't seem good enough to me.

Will include a screenshot from my latest playthrough with the "stellaris reloaded mod" where i really was pushing it and to almost got to 1.8k pops in year 2287 before i had to quit. (1 ingame year took 4 mins and 4 seconds)

Will also include a screenshot of my task manager after that 1 year ingame

What there is to play for after this stage with this AI is a other question..

 

[MelkorDarkstar]

I think up-to 50% performance increase in lategame as shown above is not enough for this game to be playable lategame for me =/

I have 930 hours playtime and running a pretty high-end pc with 16cores and 32 threads-> my R20 Cinebech scores a 545 singlethread and 9.8k mulithread.
Normally i reach 1k pops around year 2300, and its around this time i have to stop playing because of the lag. (unmodded)

Lets say i can now get 50% more "pop performance", that means i can have around 1.5k pops before the game become unplayable again for me.
That will take me around 30 more years ingame i would guesstimate ? So with this soon to be released patch i can maybe play a few hours more before i have to call it quits again (?)

That's doesn't seem good enough to me.

Will include a screenshot from my latest playthrough with the "stellaris reloaded mod" where i really was pushing it and to almost got to 1.8k pops in year 2287 before i had to quit. (1 ingame year took 4 mins and 4 seconds)View attachment 546911
Will also include a screenshot of my task manager after that 1 year ingame
View attachment 546912

What there is to play for after this stage with this AI is a other question..

Hold up, you stopped after your slowdown hit a year taking 4 minutes?

 

[KingAlamar]

Hold up, you stopped after your slowdown hit a year taking 4 minutes?

Devil's Advocate: [wow I'm doing that a lot now] ... If they were seeing 4 minutes per year early enough .. say 2300 I would hate to see what there 2500 would look like. Plus the 20 second per month threshold is where I start getting annoyed too.

From what I can tell a system that is likely similar to mine [same CPU anyway] is showing a 50% late game boost in 2500. For me that may be just enough to keep me happy for now. If not I can always re-engineer my homebrew mod to reduce POPs, JOBs, Housing, Growth, ... across the board and buy myself a good bit of overhead.

 

[domdtxdissar]

Hold up, you stopped after your slowdown hit a year taking 4 minutes?

Yes ?
I just find it infuriating when the ships are lagging over the hyperlanes and the game is not fluid at all.
Guess i should just tell myself that I've researched warp-drive technology, and the ships just need a few jumps to get across the lanes

 

[KingAlamar]

Yes ?
I just find it infuriating when the ships are lagging over the hyperlanes and the game is not fluid at all.
Guess i should just tell myself that I've researched warp-drive technology, and the ships just need a few jumps to get across the lanes

The first part of the stream today was SUPER choppy. I was getting ready to unleash the flame throwers but fortunately their game sped up so it was under 10 seconds per month at 1K stars & 22K population. That seems reasonable to me?? Could be wrong but willing to discuss it.

NOTE: To understand where I'm coming from I play with only 400 stars ; 0.25 habitables ; No guaranteed habitables ; max AIs, Fallen, Marauders. I also despise the Micro that I feel that I need to do to keep things going so that drives the low planet count decision .... Performance was just an added benefit.

 

[MelkorDarkstar]

Yes ?
I just find it infuriating when the ships are lagging over the hyperlanes and the game is not fluid at all.
Guess i should just tell myself that I've researched warp-drive technology, and the ships just need a few jumps to get across the lanes

I must have a higher tolerance for the lag lol. I usually do not stop until a month starts taking a minute or two. Weird.

 

[KingAlamar]

I must have a higher tolerance for the lag lol. I usually do not stop until a month starts taking a minute or two. Weird.

That's part of the problem. Everyone has such a radically different view of how-slow-too-slow actually is. I like 10 seconds per month ; get annoyed at 20 seconds ; and give up around 30-40 seconds. A minute per month would drive nuts.

When stutter was a bigger problem my playstyle never even noticed it. I just wasn't doing the things to notice the stutter ... at least not so much. Combine that with a 7-8 year old system and I expected things wouldn't always be silky.

 

[MelkorDarkstar]

That's part of the problem. Everyone has such a radically different view of how-slow-too-slow actually is. I like 10 seconds per month ; get annoyed at 20 seconds ; and give up around 30-40 seconds. A minute per month would drive nuts.

When stutter was a bigger problem my playstyle never even noticed it. I just wasn't doing the things to notice the stutter ... at least not so much. Combine that with a 7-8 year old system and I expected things wouldn't always be silky.

Tbf, when it starts getting that slow I usually start doing other things while keeping an eye on it. Stuff like laundry or watching tv with the missus. If it was the only thing I was doing, I guarantee that I would give up around the same time as you and dom. I just really hate not finishing a game.

 

[exi123]

That's part of the problem. Everyone has such a radically different view of how-slow-too-slow actually is. I like 10 seconds per month ; get annoyed at 20 seconds ; and give up around 30-40 seconds. A minute per month would drive nuts.

When stutter was a bigger problem my playstyle never even noticed it. I just wasn't doing the things to notice the stutter ... at least not so much. Combine that with a 7-8 year old system and I expected things wouldn't always be silky.

I always have a benchmark for myself: The game should run at the same pace in normal speed all over the campaign. If a month takes 30 seconds in the early game it should do the same in the lategame. Later on, when you really have to do much i really dont have a problem with playing on normal speed.

 

[GnoSIS]

I think up-to 50% performance increase in lategame as shown above is not enough for this game to be playable lategame for me =/

I have 930 hours playtime and running a pretty high-end pc with 16cores and 32 threads-> my R20 Cinebech scores a 545 singlethread and 9.8k mulithread.
Normally i reach 1k pops around year 2300, and its around this time i have to stop playing because of the lag. (unmodded)

Lets say i can now get 50% more "pop performance", that means i can have around 1.5k pops before the game become unplayable again for me.
That will take me around 30 more years ingame i would guesstimate ? So with this soon to be released patch i can maybe play a few hours more before i have to call it quits again (?)

That's doesn't seem good enough to me.

Will include a screenshot from my latest playthrough with the "stellaris reloaded mod" where i really was pushing it and to almost got to 1.8k pops in year 2287 before i had to quit. (1 ingame year took 4 mins and 4 seconds)View attachment 546911
Will also include a screenshot of my task manager after that 1 year ingame
View attachment 546912

What there is to play for after this stage with this AI is a other question..

No,

When we quote performance, there are many types of performance metrics. The 15-50% is average gain, regardless of the circumstances. Specific performance, when the game is under stress from many pops, has been increased by 300%+. Without knowing the details of each save it's impossible to know, so you will have to wait and see with the new patch.

My bet is that you will see huge gains - if the slowdown in your save was because of pops. Those systems had architectual improvements which changed how they manage the workload, and reduced computation.

What we need to realise is that this will make the game playable for far more, if you keep on expanding and playing into the 2800's and get x3-x4 more pops (not that difficult) then the game will slow down again. However that point is way beyond the projected playtime of the product & campaign, and I feel ok with it.

The speed that it was evaluating for that 20k pop galaxy is satisfactory, but you must have a modern processor. This makes mods like Stellaris immortal still relevant - You will be able to play a single campaign with that mod as much as you want! I can't wait to do just that.

If you couple that with the new CPUs coming out when 16 cores 32 threads will become normal for consumers you will be in an even better place.

For what the game is, and how it's written. it's impossible to make it work for any number of pops. I understand that and at least speaking for myself, I never asked for such a thing. But I can easily imagine them going with another pop model for stelaris 2 - I would.

 

[Shrike]

Well that looks promising. They certainly have been listening and the tech minded guys on this thread crunching numbers on the effect of pops were proved absolutely right.

Anyway what they have said has shown that they have worked hard on it so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll actually be able do finish a game when the patch drops.

My only question is whether the recommended specs will be updated to an i7 7900x @ 3.3ghz!? As it certainly runs smoothly on the dev's computer with one. Which I suspect would be a record for a video game

 

[GnoSIS]

Well that looks promising. They certainly have been listening and the tech minded guys on this thread crunching numbers on the effect of pops were proved absolutely right.

Anyway what they have said has shown that they have worked hard on it so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll actually be able do finish a game when the patch drops.

My only question is whether the recommended specs will be updated to an i7 7900x @ 3.3ghz!? As it certainly runs smoothly on the dev's computer with one. Which I suspect would be a record for a video game

Only if we get the patch we'll truly know. What was shown could be buggy and not final.

I'd say no to changing the recomended specs because you can always play on medium with less colonizable planets. So it's the same as every other game, better rig better and larger "playfield".

 

[alexti]

Here's a nice graph & post that shows a potential performance impact in early game with the tradeoff showing much better improvement late game:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?posts/26275405/

I am not sure that the performance impact is due to their performance-related changes. My interpretation is that the slow down is due to changes and additions to the game mechanics being more significant than the performance gains. The graph looks concerning though. While in some extreme situations they seem to make it run 2-3 times faster, for the majority of the "normal game" timeframe performance is worse I hope the new features they have added worth it.

What we need to realise is that this will make the game playable for far more, if you keep on expanding and playing into the 2800's and get x3-x4 more pops (not that difficult) then the game will slow down again. However that point is way beyond the projected playtime of the product & campaign, and I feel ok with it.

That remains to be seen. Assuming that most people don't play past victory (and defeating crisis) they may see little gain during the timeframe they play. Of course, it's hard to guess without knowing how the gameplay was affected. For all we know they might have made normal campaigns extend to 2400 or 2500.

 

[LWE]

That's part of the problem. Everyone has such a radically different view of how-slow-too-slow actually is. I like 10 seconds per month ; get annoyed at 20 seconds ; and give up around 30-40 seconds. A minute per month would drive nuts.

When stutter was a bigger problem my playstyle never even noticed it. I just wasn't doing the things to notice the stutter ... at least not so much. Combine that with a 7-8 year old system and I expected things wouldn't always be silky.

And people play in drastically different galaxies. When your (somewhat larger-than-average galaxy empire) population in 2300 is 300 pops, it's one thing. When it's 1800, it's quite another.

 

[GnoSIS]

I am not sure that the performance impact is due to their performance-related changes. My interpretation is that the slow down is due to changes and additions to the game mechanics being more significant than the performance gains. The graph looks concerning though. While in some extreme situations they seem to make it run 2-3 times faster, for the majority of the "normal game" timeframe performance is worse I hope the new features they have added worth it.


That remains to be seen. Assuming that most people don't play past victory (and defeating crisis) they may see little gain during the timeframe they play. Of course, it's hard to guess without knowing how the gameplay was affected. For all we know they might have made normal campaigns extend to 2400 or 2500.

It looks like it will be a considerable breathing space at least. Right now people with average rigs go slow mo hundreds of years before the crisis hits. And at least it will expand gameplay posibilities beyond playing genocidal.

 

[Dëzaël]

The first part of the stream today was SUPER choppy. I was getting ready to unleash the flame throwers but fortunately their game sped up so it was under 10 seconds per month at 1K stars & 22K population. That seems reasonable to me?? Could be wrong but willing to discuss it.

They're getting in 2580 on 1K stars with 3.3GHz the same kind of speed I'm getting in 2330~ish on 800 stars with 4.1GHz. With obviously way more pops than I do. That's pretty reasonable in my book. If that gain is consistent through all game when the patch hits, I will consider the perf problem mostly tackled, at least for me. It could be smoother, but it's way less of a concern. I'm quite happy with what I saw as with 4.1GHz I may see even better results. I don't know to what extend, but I abandoned 1000 stars galaxies due to perf, with this patch I might make playing 1000 stars my norm again.

Tbf, when it starts getting that slow I usually start doing other things while keeping an eye on it. Stuff like laundry or watching tv with the missus. If it was the only thing I was doing, I guarantee that I would give up around the same time as you and dom. I just really hate not finishing a game.

Yeah, that's probably why your actual tolerance is higher. I don't do other things while I play, and I have the same 20s threshold. From there, I have my other games calling me. They whisper : "Play me instead!". I suspect that multitasking habit some people have is the main source of discrepancies between the tolerance to slowdown they report.