Performance Megathread

[Logros]

Created a feature request here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/add-in-built-standard-benchmark-with-metrics.1572219/ @CPR

I tossed in a reply. Would be great to get as much traffic/signatures on that. Hopefully it sticks and doesn't get removed as simply an "I agree" post. I made a real suggestion so that might help lol.

 

[evdjj3j]

The notes for the new version released today 3.7.2 Canis Minor say improves performance on some newer CPUs. Does anyone know what CPUs and how much they improved performance?

 

[johnnymraz]

Dudes talking utra-advanced latest processors and here I am, playing Stellaris for the last three years with a Thinkpad T430.

Anyone else running Stellaris on a low-tier setup or are you all super rich gringos playing on your gringoputers?

I read the forum and marvel at what is happening. The community is actively discussing the advantages of the latest processors for playing conventional strategy. This is not a AAA project, this is not next generation graphics, this is a calculation of parameter calculations. Playing Stellaris requires you to buy yourself a rocket-launching computer like NASA, which is a lot of fun for strategy in a space setting.
But seriously, apparently this game is designed for rich people and the poor do not belong here. I'm just from the poor and I can't afford to buy new hardware for games not for $300, not for $200.
Completely agree with you friend. We have to suffer with freezes throughout the game because optimization in this case lies on our hands (namely, buying new hardware), and we cannot afford it. Just humble yourself and play signs wiping a tear from the warm air from the processor blowing into your eyes

 

[rubert]

I read the forum and marvel at what is happening. The community is actively discussing the advantages of the latest processors for playing conventional strategy. This is not a AAA project, this is not next generation graphics, this is a calculation of parameter calculations. Playing Stellaris requires you to buy yourself a rocket-launching computer like NASA, which is a lot of fun for strategy in a space setting.

So we should stop discussing about changes to Stellaris performance on the new CPUs to please you? Newsflash: discussing about new things is interesting to many, be it performance increases in Stellaris or new hardware. And yes, calculation heavy game loves fast CPUs more than it cares about GPUs, nothing new there. Stellaris works just fine even with slower computers, though obviously slow down with huge galaxies etc. is problematic (it is also problem for "rocket launching computers" like you described.

Completely agree with you friend. We have to suffer with freezes throughout the game because optimization in this case lies on our hands (namely, buying new hardware), and we cannot afford it.

If you are talking some other freezes than those which can happen (especially in larger galaxies) when year/month rolls over or auto-save triggers then there is probably something else wrong. Disabling autosaves or increasing frequency can help, especially if you are still using a HDD for games.

 

[johnnymraz]

Значит, нам следует прекратить обсуждение изменений производительности Stellaris на новых процессорах, чтобы доставить вам удовольствие? Новости: обсуждение новых вещей интересно многим, будь то повышение производительности в Stellaris или новое оборудование.

Not at all. Probably I misunderstood, I apologize. The fact is that the content of the PERFORMANCE topic is slightly different from my expectations. But that's my problem, right? I thought that they would say here how to make their game more pleasant for guys with weak hardware, but the reality turned out to be different. That's all.

И да, вычислительная игра любит быстрые процессоры больше, чем заботится о графических процессорах, в этом нет ничего нового.

Again, either I don't understand you or you don't understand me. I have no complaints about the graphics, especially if the essence of the game does not imply any WOW effects. I'm more concerned about the need for large calculations.

If you are talking some other freezes than those which can happen (especially in larger galaxies) when year/month rolls over or auto-save triggers then there is probably something else wrong. Disabling autosaves or increasing frequency can help, especially if you are still using a HDD for games.

I'm using an SSD, but from what I've read it has more of an impact on boot speed than overall performance.
In my opinion (forgive me if I'm wrong) optimization is about reducing the required resources to obtain similar results. But reading this thread, one gets the feeling that the opposite is true. It's like optimization is increasing resources to get the usual result (smooth play throughout the entire session). For people who can afford it, I have no complaints. We are not all equal and so on. It's just that in such a big topic I was looking for a way out for people like me with limited finances. But this question is not even raised here. No offense my friend.

 

[rubert]

Not at all. Probably I misunderstood, I apologize. The fact is that the content of the PERFORMANCE topic is slightly different from my expectations. But that's my problem, right? I thought that they would say here how to make their game more pleasant for guys with weak hardware, but the reality turned out to be different. That's all.

No idea if something is getting lost in translation if you are using (as it seems like) some sort of autotranslation, but performance, least to me means just that: performance. How well or poorly game works. Different game settings can affect how well (or badly) game runs, that is well understood and I am sure it has been discussed in this thread. Nothing prevents you or others from discussing it more if you any thoughts on it. In short biggest impacts on performance are galaxy size, number of habitable planets, number of pops, number of species (xeno-comatibility).

Again, either I don't understand you or you don't understand me. I have no complaints about the graphics, especially if the essence of the game does not imply any WOW effects. I'm more concerned about the need for large calculations.

That is just the essence of the game. PDX has optimized them over time and probably will continue to do that when possible but combination of the game genre and engine just means that the game requires calculations done on CPU. Obviously the game could be simplified but I don't think most players would be willing for that. Maybe Stellaris 2 has a different take which is easier on the CPU.

I'm using an SSD, but from what I've read it has more of an impact on boot speed than overall performance.
In my opinion (forgive me if I'm wrong) optimization is about reducing the required resources to obtain similar results. But reading this thread, one gets the feeling that the opposite is true. It's like optimization is increasing resources to get the usual result (smooth play throughout the entire session). For people who can afford it, I have no complaints. We are not all equal and so on. It's just that in such a big topic I was looking for a way out for people like me with limited finances. But this question is not even raised here. No offense my friend.

SSD helps any time there is reading or or writing data involved.

edit: Some players have reported that disk operations (eg. loading game especially, but I guess also saving) are faster when using Linux. I haven't personally tested it but it might be something to consider, as Linux can be potentially lighter on other system resources than Windows 10/11.

Players can't really optimize the game (other than through the settings and maybe through somem mods) so obviously player focused thread focuses on things players can improve - better and more suitable hardware for example. Even on a low budget you can try to buy the CPU with best single thread performance, especially if you currently using a CPU like one of AMD's Bulldozer CPUs from from 2011.

 

[johnnymraz]

игроки могут улучшить - например, на лучшем и более подходящем оборудовании

But my hardware meets the recommended system requirements for this game as stated by PDX themselves. This is probably the main reason why this optimization situation upsets me so much.

Короче говоря, наибольшее влияние на производительность оказывают размер галактики, количество обитаемых планет, количество соз, количество видов (ксеносовместимость).

Since the only way out is to play a miniature galaxy with a minimum of AI empires, pops, etc... A grand immersion in a miniature RP world awaits me

Некоторые игроки сообщили, что операции с диском (например, особенно загрузка игры, но, я думаю, и сохранение) выполняются быстрее при использовании Linux. Я лично не тестировал это, но, возможно, стоит подумать, поскольку Linux может быть потенциально легче на других системных ресурсах, чем Windows 10/11.

Thanks for your advice. I haven't heard this yet, but it's worth a try. Although this may not work if the system and the game are on different SSDs, which means the system load should not affect in this case.

P.S. Yes, you are right. English is not my native language and I use google translator. I apologize if this text is hard to read due to probable errors on my part or on the part of the service.

 

[rubert]

But my hardware meets the recommended system requirements for this game as stated by PDX themselves. This is probably the main reason why this optimization situation upsets me so much.

I actually had to check what specs Stellaris recommends nowadays. The recommended specs include i5-3570K and 4 GB of RAM. I actually played until late 2019 with similar CPU (i7-3770K) which had almost same single thread performance and just more cores. The game worked fine though obviously there was slowdown in the late game when there was more pops, fleets etc, even in huge galaxies. Assuming you have least i5-3570K then the game should work fine as especially in the recent patches the performance has improved much.

4 GB of RAM is way too little nowadays.

No matter what CPU you have there will be slowdown as the game progresses.

What specs your computer has?

Since the only way out is to play a miniature galaxy with a minimum of AI empires, pops, etc... A grand immersion in a miniature RP world awaits me

There are other settings between huge and max AI empires and tiny and minmium AI empires. I suggest you take a look at them. I personally like medium or large galaxies with slightly increased (especially for medium) number of habitable planets. Makes the empires more compact and wars bit easier to manage.

 

[johnnymraz]

What specs your computer has?

CPU - i7-7700K
RAM - 48GB (2400mhz) and SSD 2 pieces (one for the system, the other for the game).
This is not enough for the late game, as it turned out.

There are other settings between huge and max AI empires and tiny and minmium AI empires. I suggest you take a look at them. I personally like medium or large galaxies with slightly increased (especially for medium) number of habitable planets. Makes the empires more compact and wars bit easier to manage.

In practice, I have lags on a large galaxy (not a giant) with a reduced number of worlds, but (at the time of lags) about 17 AI empires. BUT! I read that another reason for the lags is the search for a TRADING route or simply the search for a path for fleets, and this is supposedly affected by the number of gates and hyperlanes. In my case, AI empires tried to improve their hyper lanes, and the initial settings gave a large number of gates.

You know, this is probably another reason for the sad mood, to see how your hardware meets the recommended requirements, to see these great opportunities for obtaining a diverse, living galaxy, BUT not being able to enjoy it to the very end. It's like buying your favorite ice cream but accidentally dropping it before you get to the tastiest part

 

[mial42]

CPU - i7-7700K
RAM - 48GB (2400mhz) and SSD 2 pieces (one for the system, the other for the game).
This is not enough for the late game, as it turned out.



In practice, I have lags on a large galaxy (not a giant) with a reduced number of worlds, but (at the time of lags) about 17 AI empires. BUT! I read that another reason for the lags is the search for a TRADING route or simply the search for a path for fleets, and this is supposedly affected by the number of gates and hyperlanes. In my case, AI empires tried to improve their hyper lanes, and the initial settings gave a large number of gates.

You know, this is probably another reason for the sad mood, to see how your hardware meets the recommended requirements, to see these great opportunities for obtaining a diverse, living galaxy, BUT not being able to enjoy it to the very end. It's like buying your favorite ice cream but accidentally dropping it before you get to the tastiest part

There are some fairly easy to mod optimizations you can try like removing hyper relays/habitats, and modding the two factions that use any_owned_pop checks to use any_owned_species instead (progressive and xenoist).

 

[johnnymraz]

There are some fairly easy to mod optimizations you can try like removing hyper relays/habitats, and modding the two factions that use any_owned_pop checks to use any_owned_species instead (progressive and xenoist).

Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely use it. Except for the part on removing hyper relays/habitats (nevertheless, this is already part of the gameplay). It is sad that your suggestion is ignored on the forum by the developers (although it was partially corrected).

 

[evdjj3j]

Back to my original question, does anyone know what CPUs received a performance uplift with the last patch?

 

[stargazersatnight]

Well the title is kinda clickbait, but this solution would absolutely work. In a nutshell:
Problem A: The game treats AI as it does for the player, making the math for each planet, each, pop, tradition, etc... You can imagine that in a large galaxy this is insane, maybe in 10-20 years the CPUs will be able to process that amount of data without lag. I think you can optimize as much as you want, but we will always have late game lag and I believe this is the reason the AI sucks so much in everything, devs can't improve it because it would suck even more resources from the CPU.
Problem B: The AI can't handle jobs distribution and ends up with bad economy.

Solution: People wouldn't like this solution and I'll get a lot of disapproval for this post, but this wont change the reality of things. If you just simulate AIs pops and economy, you fix all the problems. How do you do that? All AIs start like they do now, but instead of getting resources and stuff from pops, they get flat incomes calculated at the start, with some random factors. They would expand and build normally, so the player wouldn't notice any difference. When you click on AIs planets, you see pops and buildings normally, the difference is that the AI would ignore those things when calculating the income, the only things that matter would be:

• Empire's size in terms of pops and planets.
• Initial factors (empire civics, empire behavior, etc...).
• Random factors
• Difficulty

This way AI's economy would not be affected by bad jobs distribution.

However, people would not like this system because it feels like AI is cheating, but in the end you can't have late game performance and 100% simulated economy realism.

I am completely on board with this. I am okay with the ai cheating, I am better than them they need the help. A more balanced game with better performance? Sounds perfect to me.

 

[Anemetius]

Well the title is kinda clickbait, but this solution would absolutely work. In a nutshell:
Problem A: The game treats AI as it does for the player, making the math for each planet, each, pop, tradition, etc... You can imagine that in a large galaxy this is insane, maybe in 10-20 years the CPUs will be able to process that amount of data without lag. I think you can optimize as much as you want, but we will always have late game lag and I believe this is the reason the AI sucks so much in everything, devs can't improve it because it would suck even more resources from the CPU.
Problem B: The AI can't handle jobs distribution and ends up with bad economy.

Solution: People wouldn't like this solution and I'll get a lot of disapproval for this post, but this wont change the reality of things. If you just simulate AIs pops and economy, you fix all the problems. How do you do that? All AIs start like they do now, but instead of getting resources and stuff from pops, they get flat incomes calculated at the start, with some random factors. They would expand and build normally, so the player wouldn't notice any difference. When you click on AIs planets, you see pops and buildings normally, the difference is that the AI would ignore those things when calculating the income, the only things that matter would be:

• Empire's size in terms of pops and planets.
• Initial factors (empire civics, empire behavior, etc...).
• Random factors
• Difficulty

This way AI's economy would not be affected by bad jobs distribution.

However, people would not like this system because it feels like AI is cheating, but in the end you can't have late game performance and 100% simulated economy realism.

modern CPU are more then able to process Stellaris data without lag. Games engine is old and bad optimalized. Paradox is know for their bad and outdated coding.

 

[exi123]

modern CPU are more then able to process Stellaris data without lag. Games engine is old and bad optimalized. Paradox is know for their bad and outdated coding.

Have you ever looked at the cpu specs the game is promoted with? That is literally a joke. I just abondoned my last play with the new DLC due to the insane lag in the lategame (imagine how old the game is). This is my second computer I play the game with and soon the third will arrive.

I started on an i7 4770k with 8gb of ddr3 ram, went to an i7700k with 16gb ram to now an (hopefully) r7 7800x3d with 32gb ddr5 ram. When will this game with big or huge galaxy settings be playable in lategame? And its not that the game is slow, that was the case in earlier versions. The stuttering is just unbearable and I am sure this will still be the case with my new system.

 

[Anemetius]

Have you ever looked at the cpu specs the game is promoted with? That is literally a joke. I just abondoned my last play with the new DLC due to the insane lag in the lategame (imagine how old the game is). This is my second computer I play the game with and soon the third will arrive.

I started on an i7 4770k with 8gb of ddr3 ram, went to an i7700k with 16gb ram to now an (hopefully) r7 7800x3d with 32gb ddr5 ram. When will this game with big or huge galaxy settings be playable in lategame? And its not that the game is slow, that was the case in earlier versions. The stuttering is just unbearable and I am sure this will still be the case with my new system.

there is no PC known to mankind that will allow you to play on huge galaxy past 2400 lag free. Games engine is just old. Just like you cant play lag free many other old games as their architecture is not compatible with modern builds.

Paradox has the same problem with lags and pops in Victoria 3. I just think Paradox's team is not that very good at coding. All their games suffer from lags in late game. They just dont care at this point. People will buy either way.

 

[ThePHD]

Have you ever looked at the cpu specs the game is promoted with? That is literally a joke. I just abondoned my last play with the new DLC due to the insane lag in the lategame (imagine how old the game is). This is my second computer I play the game with and soon the third will arrive.

I started on an i7 4770k with 8gb of ddr3 ram, went to an i7700k with 16gb ram to now an (hopefully) r7 7800x3d with 32gb ddr5 ram. When will this game with big or huge galaxy settings be playable in lategame? And its not that the game is slow, that was the case in earlier versions. The stuttering is just unbearable and I am sure this will still be the case with my new system.

It will happen eventually considering how much better a new CPU runs these games compared to older ones. By the time it does though we'll probably be on Stellaris 2 or 3.

 

[johnnymraz]

I still do not understand the logic of the developers when creating such an illogical system in the game. Especially in strategy.

Why does the population have to be so "unique" and load the processor with calculations. Why count every pop if they can be summarized by "detailed" statistics? It's just annoying that the game FORCES me to produce pops to keep the economy working AND IMMEDIATELY punishes me with lags for this...

How do fleets work? AI spam hundreds of fleets with carvets that cause everything to lag (in mid-game and late-game), so each ship loads the processor with calculations for some unknown reason... It's not logical, what should be calculated there? Fleets senselessly ram, we have no control over them in the course of the battle. What is there to calculate?
Essentially the battle should be divided into 3 phases (thinking for fun). Phase 1 - fleets enter the system and a battle is initiated. Phase 2 - the calculation of the strength of the fleet, aspects of the battle and other features of the battle begins. Phase 3 - we are shown the result of the calculations in the form of a cartoon (as now, only the calculations are made in advance and there are no lags).

 

[ThePHD]

No concrete numbers but a new video describes the 7800X3D as "head and shoulders" better than the 5800X3D in Stellaris. Also says the 7950X3D is actually slightly faster in Stellaris.

 

[evdjj3j]

Hopefully you won't get scolded for mentioning a modern processor.

I found this review, seems the new architecture does more than the large cache.

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 7900X3D Review - OC3D

Stellaris What Paradox call âGrand Strategyâ titles is, to those of us who play them, simply map painting. However, Stellaris is set in space and hasnât got a map as such. The amount of number crunching that goes on behind the scenes is mind-blowing and thus itâs a perfect addition to our suite...

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