New player - excellent computer has changing performance

jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
I think I need some guidance here. I've spent the last couple hours combing the internet about what's happening and I've found nothing helpful or useful-to-date. I have an Intel 4760 which runs at 4.4 GHz and bumps up to 4.8 GHz under high load. I also have 16 meg of high speed RAM, and 2 Nvidia FTW 970's in SLI mode.

This is one of the poorest performing games I have. I'm running "recommended" setting with "medium" water which still causes a lot of lag spikes, jinks, stalls frame crashes. I tried running highest setting with best water to see how it did and it was so jinky it got hard to even catch the slowest fish. The lowest setting looks horrrible and is not an option for such a beautiful game.

The problem here is there are almost no graphics options for us to select to fine tune the performance ourselves. I'm wondering, does the game perform this way for everyone, or are there some major tweaks I can do in some ini files? I'm not afraid to do sone tinkering.

Thanks!
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Comments

  • DrownedOutDrownedOut Habitat Join Date: 2016-05-26 Member: 217559Members
    Oh yeah, the game is far from optimized. One way you can see that is how bases remain visible from halfway across the map if not more.

    Currently, the game's in the process of removing terraforming, which when done should improve game performance.
  • MichloMichlo Originally Wallasey, UK now Los Angeles, US. Join Date: 2016-09-10 Member: 222215Members
    Did you try using Nvidia's GeForce Experience to optimise your settings?

    Good luck.
  • awesomeguy101awesomeguy101 Join Date: 2016-06-21 Member: 218886Members
    GeForce dose not optimize Subanutica. I own it and I have tried but it dose not appear.
  • AdmiralPainAdmiralPain Germany Join Date: 2016-04-02 Member: 215206Members
    edited September 2016
    jpinard wrote: »

    The problem here is there are almost no graphics options for us to select to fine tune the performance ourselves. I'm wondering, does the game perform this way for everyone, or are there some major tweaks I can do in some ini files? I'm not afraid to do sone tinkering.

    Thanks!

    You have some additional Graphic Options on the Console Menu, i think you have to be Ingame for that, and it doesn´t work in the Main Menu.
    Press F3 and it opens. By Pressing then F8 you can move your Mouse Cursor.

    You can try to set the Texture Quality to 2 or 3 there (don´t worry when the Game not Response after Switch, a Switch in Texture Quality my take up to some Minutes on some Computers, depending on overal System.
    (even Texture Quality 3 has almost maximum Anti Alaising and such stuff by default enabled, that you can´t disable at the moment) .
    Thats why high Resolution with high Texture Quality get hit very much in performance too, and the next point is the not final optimised Game, but it is looking great at least. :D

    There are some other Options more: Try to lower the Draw Distance für LOD or Shader Quality.
    Even Shadow Quality can switched down there ;)

    To get out of the Menu, simple push F8 and F3 again. ;)
  • FluffersFluffers United States Join Date: 2015-05-22 Member: 204749Members
    I play subnautica on the highest setting and get 80-100 frames per second, until for whatever reason I go to the lava zones, which it then drops to 40-60. Not sure why the simpler areas with less stuff in them are harder to process.
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    Fluffers wrote: »
    I play subnautica on the highest setting and get 80-100 frames per second, until for whatever reason I go to the lava zones, which it then drops to 40-60. Not sure why the simpler areas with less stuff in them are harder to process.

    You don't have any stutter at all? Or some nascent jitteriness when you swim into a new biome? Would you mind posting your system specs?

    @AdmiralPain - do those settings save between game sessions? Or do you have to set the changes every time you boot the game?

    Thanks for the help all.
  • IntrepidHIntrepidH Florida Join Date: 2015-12-09 Member: 209838Members
    edited September 2016
    hmm weird I have a similar rig now but you should definitely be getting a higher framerate than that,
    when subnautica is running try to open your gpu control panel and double check that SN is using the correct gpu if applicable.
    the game is being largely optimized still as mentioned above with the terrain so even so you should notice "pop in" but something else seems odd about that to me, my gtx870m (laptop) was even able to keep a stable 30+-50 fps at all times on recommended, my 1070 + I7 is getting around 90-120fps

    *edit* also worth mentioning have you constructed a base in your current save? seems like bases are to an extent always rendered meaning the more you've built, the lower your fps will be
    I can start a brand new save file and gain a net average of +10-15 fps sometimes
  • crane476crane476 United States, Tx Join Date: 2015-08-07 Member: 206850Members
    This is an early access title that hasn't been optimized yet. It doesn't matter how good of a rig you have, you're still going to see stuttering and really bad pop in.
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    Ok thanks crane. I'm glad to know it's not just me and things will get better.
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    IntrepidH wrote: »
    hmm weird I have a similar rig now but you should definitely be getting a higher framerate than that,
    when subnautica is running try to open your gpu control panel and double check that SN is using the correct gpu if applicable.
    the game is being largely optimized still as mentioned above with the terrain so even so you should notice "pop in" but something else seems odd about that to me, my gtx870m (laptop) was even able to keep a stable 30+-50 fps at all times on recommended, my 1070 + I7 is getting around 90-120fps

    *edit* also worth mentioning have you constructed a base in your current save? seems like bases are to an extent always rendered meaning the more you've built, the lower your fps will be
    I can start a brand new save file and gain a net average of +10-15 fps sometimes

    Intrepid - I haven't gotten far enough in the game to build a base yet. So I guess thighs will get even worse when I do that? :(
  • DagothUrDagothUr Florida Join Date: 2016-07-12 Member: 220125Members
  • LysaLysa UK Join Date: 2016-09-19 Member: 222420Members
    Also new player, using laptop with nvidia 970m. i7 2.70 ghz, 32GB RAM etc. fps between 75 and 140. ISP is virgin with 100 speed download.

    Game running smooth and dandy in both saves (have one survivor mode and one in create to experiment with base, which is rather large!!
  • ObraxisObraxis Subnautica Animator & Generalist, NS2 Person Join Date: 2004-07-24 Member: 30071Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, WC 2013 - Supporter, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts
    edited September 2016
    Subnautica does not support SLI firstly, this is due to the way Unity Engine renders the game. But I suspect this is not actually a problem, Subnautica is designed to run on pretty low-powered systems in terms of graphics.

    Your CPU is more than good enough enough, so it's likely your framerate is limited by the speed of IO on your HardDrive. Is the game installed to a SSD or a traditional HardDrive? Right now, our terrain is not optimized so fast IO storage (such as a SSD) really helps (until we can remove terrain deformation and improve the speed).

    Also make sure your Motherboard & latest Nvidia drivers are installed. I've seen a number of occasions where old motherboard or old Intel Inf drivers have caused performance problems for some people on High-Powered systems.
  • EnglishInfidelEnglishInfidel Canada Join Date: 2016-07-04 Member: 219533Members
    I can run it on a system that's nowhere near that good, and it runs as well as can be expected, so I don't think it's the game's fault this time.
  • Someonestolema02Someonestolema02 BC canada Join Date: 2016-08-03 Member: 220950Members
    edited September 2016
    Michlo wrote: »
    Did you try using Nvidia's GeForce Experience to optimise your settings?



    I'm sorry but this is a ridiculous suggestion. All Geforce Experience does is set in game settings to appropriate levels according to a database of info regarding your hardware and how it should handle said settings. It doesn't actually optimize anything. It's useless to anyone who understands image quality settings and enjoys manually tweaking. Besides, it often fails miserably.

    The OP more than likely needs to adjust settings or needs to reinstall his GPU driver or something ( and I have a hunch it's some sort of PEBKAC as it didn't occur to him that SLI isn't supported and may actually be causing his issue....)but Geforce Experience....ugh.
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    edited September 2016
    Hi everyone. Found out how to turn on frame rates in big picture mode and frame rates are fantastic. The problem ended up being me swimming between biomes a lot and the staggering. Per @Obraxis, switched my install from mechanical hard drive to an SSD and that helped a lot. Now that I know it's just biome switching causing the issue I am OK with performance as I can understand and kinda compensate for the lag spikes. But the hitching is pretty bad at times and seems worse with the latest update but I could be wrong.
  • Cynical_ScrubCynical_Scrub England Join Date: 2016-03-19 Member: 214540Members
    Wait what? I run a GTX 770, I5 4670K and 16GB DDR3 RAM, on max settings I get a constant 60.

    Staggering still happens, but what can you do about that?
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    Wait what? I run a GTX 770, I5 4670K and 16GB DDR3 RAM, on max settings I get a constant 60.

    Staggering still happens, but what can you do about that?

    Now that I've built a medium sized base, things are much worse frame rate wise. When I'm in the vicinity of the base my fram rate is 20 with hitching. Do you experience the same thing?
  • ArikadesuArikadesu Join Date: 2016-10-05 Member: 222866Members
    Obraxis wrote: »
    Subnautica does not support SLI firstly, this is due to the way Unity Engine renders the game. But I suspect this is not actually a problem, Subnautica is designed to run on pretty low-powered systems in terms of graphics.

    Your CPU is more than good enough enough, so it's likely your framerate is limited by the speed of IO on your HardDrive. Is the game installed to a SSD or a traditional HardDrive? Right now, our terrain is not optimized so fast IO storage (such as a SSD) really helps (until we can remove terrain deformation and improve the speed).

    Also make sure your Motherboard & latest Nvidia drivers are installed. I've seen a number of occasions where old motherboard or old Intel Inf drivers have caused performance problems for some people on High-Powered systems.

    I have the same issue. My save file is going on 4 days and I am sitting at 15fps. All my drivers are up to date and I cant think of anything further I can do. I tried placing this game on a ramdisk as well and there was no performance increase beyond initial loading time; FPS stayed abysmal. Any idea when this game is going to be optimized? it's nearly impossible to play at this point.

    i5 6600k
    16GB ram
    Samsung 950 Pro m.2. SSD
    R9 390


  • harrzackharrzack United States Join Date: 2016-09-11 Member: 222250Members
    jpinard wrote: »
    IntrepidH wrote: »
    hmm weird I have a similar rig now but you should definitely be getting a higher framerate than that,
    when subnautica is running try to open your gpu control panel and double check that SN is using the correct gpu if applicable.
    the game is being largely optimized still as mentioned above with the terrain so even so you should notice "pop in" but something else seems odd about that to me, my gtx870m (laptop) was even able to keep a stable 30+-50 fps at all times on recommended, my 1070 + I7 is getting around 90-120fps

    *edit* also worth mentioning have you constructed a base in your current save? seems like bases are to an extent always rendered meaning the more you've built, the lower your fps will be
    I can start a brand new save file and gain a net average of +10-15 fps sometimes

    Intrepid - I haven't gotten far enough in the game to build a base yet. So I guess thighs will get even worse when I do that? :(

    I'm running a modest (newly built) system - Win10, Core i7 Skylake at native 4Ghz, 16G ram and a GTX-960 vid card. Game is also installed on SSD - dunno if that helps... I see the pop-in and distant objects - but can't say I really notice any degraded FPS...
  • harrzackharrzack United States Join Date: 2016-09-11 Member: 222250Members
    Oh yes - and I have a modest base of 5 MPR's, corridors and some base-plate-thingy's...
  • BehemothrexBehemothrex Join Date: 2016-10-11 Member: 223042Members
    edited October 2016
    Very glad I stumbled upon this thread. Just by chance I built my Cyclops then quit and updated my drivers. Log back into the game and the FPS was so low I could barely move. Thought it was the drivers and tried everything under the sun to fix it. Was about to give up and decided to check the forums and found this thread about bases causing lag. Now that I think about it the more I built the more laggy it got and the more pop in I had. Guess adding the Cyclops on top if it was just the last straw.

    As an experiment I started a new game and it was as smooth as glass. So guess we will just have to wait for updates.
  • DaveyNYDaveyNY Schenectady, NY Join Date: 2016-08-30 Member: 221903Members
    edited October 2016
    I'm running a DELL 8700 XPS PC
    Intel Core i5-4460 CPU@ 3.20 GHz (x4) 64-bit;
    Win-10
    16 GB RAM
    Plus a Nvidia GeForce GT-720 video card with 1024 Mb of memory.

    Other than a bit of distance pop-ins, not really having any trouble playing the game.
    My base has got about 28 pieces to it, plus all three submersibles.
    B)
  • jpinardjpinard Join Date: 2016-09-17 Member: 222373Members
    DaveyNY wrote: »
    I'm running a DELL PC
    Intel Core i5-4460 CPU@ 3.20 GHz (x4) 64-bit;
    Win-10
    16 GB RAM
    Plus a Nvidia GeForce GT-720 video card with 1024 Mb of memory.

    Other than a bit of distance pop-ins, not really having any trouble playing the game.
    My base has got about 28 pieces to it, plus all three submersibles.
    B)

    What settings are you using in-game? If you're using max then there is something very wrong with how this performs for some of us as my system specs are much better than yours.
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    edited October 2016
    I"ve got chop when entering wrecks (slideshow - not sure of FPS, I'll have to check). Now, I do have SN installed to a machanical HD, I'll have to switch to my SSD to see if that helps, but I wasn't having this problem before (was on pre-Cyclops-fix stable build, now on experimental build and it's terribad. But maybe that's because the game files on the old HDD are fragmented?)

    Anyways, specs:

    PCPartPicker part list

    CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
    CPU Cooler: Silverstone TD03-E 92.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
    Motherboard: MSI Z170M Mortar Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
    Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
    Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
    Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
    Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB WINDFORCE Video Card -- it's dead, Jim. :( Intel only for now. But the HD 530 on the processor is equivalent to a 9800 GTX or R7 250
    Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
    Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-10-11 09:23 EDT-0400
  • 0x6A72320x6A7232 US Join Date: 2016-10-06 Member: 222906Members
    edited October 2016
    Awwww, yiss! Look at this, guys:


    http://www.ghacks.net/2015/01/02/dimmdrive-steam-optimized-ram-drive-launches/

    So those of us with... I'm guess 8+ GB of RAM (maybe even less, but I'd say not below 4-6GB) should be able to see a huge performance benefit from this, if the cause of the lag is HD I/O.


    Imma try it out now, and see how it goes.


    EDIT: Whatttt it costs money. :( Oops. I thought it was free, sorry. XP


    EDIT2: I have a list of RAM Drives here, some are free, but they aren't optimized for Steam, you'd have to be very careful to create a Steam library there, move the game, play it, move it back, delete the Steam library... sounds like a pain in the neck.

    https://www.raymond.cc/blog/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/


    EDIT3: Use this guide below (includes a tool) in combination with whatever RAM disk is rated best from the raymond link (EDIT: looks like SoftPerfect)

    https://vikingvpn.com/blogs/off-topic/how-to-run-steam-games-on-ram-drive

    And for the love of Pete back up your game every time...

    EDIT4: A way to work around having to do this would be to move the files causing the I/O overhead lag into a backup directory, then copy them to the ram drive, then create a symbolic link to them using mklink (you can use mklink /d for entire directories).

    However, be sure that you keep non-ramdrive versions of:
    SNAppData\SavedGames\slot####\
    gameinfo.json
    global-objects.bin
    scene-objects.bin
    screenshot.jpg (this is the thumbnail you see when loading your game, may not really be necessary, but I don't know)




    Apologies to all I've confused, but hopefully someone can get some benefit from this information.
  • hugothesilverdragonhugothesilverdragon canad Join Date: 2015-11-30 Member: 209620Members
    this game needs to be oped
  • DaveyNYDaveyNY Schenectady, NY Join Date: 2016-08-30 Member: 221903Members
    edited October 2016
    jpinard wrote: »
    DaveyNY wrote: »
    I'm running a DELL PC
    Intel Core i5-4460 CPU@ 3.20 GHz (x4) 64-bit;
    Win-10
    16 GB RAM
    Plus a Nvidia GeForce GT-720 video card with 1024 Mb of memory.

    Other than a bit of distance pop-ins, not really having any trouble playing the game.
    My base has got about 28 pieces to it, plus all three submersibles.
    B)

    What settings are you using in-game? If you're using max then there is something very wrong with how this performs for some of us as my system specs are much better than yours.

    Fullscreen
    Resolution: 1920x1080 (my Toshiba 55" LED TV)
    Quality: Highest
    Water Quality: High
    (not using Vsync)
    Also, don't have a SSDrive.
    B)

    Question... How do I see my FPS while in game?
  • DaveyNYDaveyNY Schenectady, NY Join Date: 2016-08-30 Member: 221903Members
    0x6A7232 wrote: »

    Thanks.

    Huh...
    OK, so it says I'm getting 19 to 24 FPS while playing the game, but I don't notice any choppiness and I'm not having any difficulty doing anything.

    Like I said above, the only thing I see is when moving in the Seamoth at speed, the background tends to pop in but it's not distracting.
    B)
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