[Performance Issue][Alpha22] Game runs super laggy and I have enough power to run the game three times over.

[Silent Faith]

Hello, I am hoping someone from TFP reads this.

I just viewed your Alpha22 video, or better yet 1.0 video, and with Alpha 22, I have an i7-14700K and an RTX 3070 that I plan on upgrading to an RTX 5080 when it comes out. I hope upon release, there will be major performance patches to clear up a lot of the lagginess in the citys and just driving around. I am also on DDR5 and I have 32GB of RAM. I should not be having this problem. I wanna also play the game on launch, I hope these patches will be put in place that makes the game run smoother. I should also mention that I running the game on an NVMe 3.0 drive, so it's not a loading issue. When I was running it on an i7-10700KF and my RTX 3070, I had less performance issues, but since I upgraded, it became unplayable due to how horribly it was lagging. I have 0 clue as to why it was lagging, but it definitely was. I also hope that the network speed of the game becomes much quicker too. I'm hoping that I can genuinely play 1.0 and that a crap ton of performance issues and bugs are patched. I think the game has potential, and I also hope that eventually there becomes a story.

 

[Riamus]

Hello, I am hoping someone from TFP reads this.

I just viewed your Alpha22 video, or better yet 1.0 video, and with Alpha 22, I have an i7-14700K and an RTX 3070 that I plan on upgrading to an RTX 5080 when it comes out. I hope upon release, there will be major performance patches to clear up a lot of the lagginess in the citys and just driving around. I am also on DDR5 and I have 32GB of RAM. I should not be having this problem. I wanna also play the game on launch, I hope these patches will be put in place that makes the game run smoother. I should also mention that I running the game on an NVMe 3.0 drive, so it's not a loading issue. When I was running it on an i7-10700KF and my RTX 3070, I had less performance issues, but since I upgraded, it became unplayable due to how horribly it was lagging. I have 0 clue as to why it was lagging, but it definitely was. I also hope that the network speed of the game becomes much quicker too. I'm hoping that I can genuinely play 1.0 and that a crap ton of performance issues and bugs are patched. I think the game has potential, and I also hope that eventually there becomes a story.

Not being someone who uses Intel and not entirely up to speed on some of the details, I'll point out what has been mentioned in the past that might help explain what is probably your issue with that CPU.  The CPU uses a number of "efficient" cores.  These cores aren't great.  If any part of the game ends up running on those cores, you're going to run into lower performance issues.  A CPU without those cores will often run better even if it's not as good.

Note that upgrading your video card for this game is unlikely to provide you much of any benefit over your current card for this particular game.

 

[Silent Faith]

Not being someone who uses Intel and not entirely up to speed on some of the details, I'll point out what has been mentioned in the past that might help explain what is probably your issue with that CPU.  The CPU uses a number of "efficient" cores.  These cores aren't great.  If any part of the game ends up running on those cores, you're going to run into lower performance issues.  A CPU without those cores will often run better even if it's not as good.

Note that upgrading your video card for this game is unlikely to provide you much of any benefit over your current card for this particular game.

After checking around, EAC will not allow you to mess with the affinity. So I had to use the non-EAC version and set CPU affinity that way. I would like to see this potentially fixed. I get it's a lot of work, but some players might not be tech savvy as some of us computer enthusiasts. Again, this would be more of a compatibility patch/performance patch. I hope this is patched during 1.0 because well, not many people wanna troubleshoot a game if it just doesn't work. I know if I bought the game for $60-$70 dollars and it's lagging and not working correct right out of the bat when I can run it like 3 times over or more, I'd rather get a refund than troubleshoot something that I know isn't a problem with my PC but a problem with the game itself. I can tolerate an alpha needing this stuff, but not a full release. This generation of processors has been out for 3 generations. It's new, but not brand spankin' new. 

 

[SylenThunder]

A couple of things to note.

1. The game is CPU bound. You won't see a huge difference in performance between a 3070 and a 5080. Sure, it might get you 20% better FPS in Ark or Conan, but it isn't going to do anything for you in a Voxel game.

2. Your i7-14700k has 20 cores, but only eight of them are useful. Any application that ends up getting stuck on one of the twelve E-Cores is going to have @%$#ty performance. Since most programs don't code awareness for the type of core being used, and Windows has not had a great track record of managing them properly, it is extremely likely for a program that demands a lot of CPU power to get stuck on a CPU that cannot perform because 2/3rds of your cores are basically useless for any real work.

Which is basically why you had better performance on your i7-10700KF. Sure it only has 8 cores, but all eight cores are performance cores. Your 14700k is basically the same but with extra cores that are a loss.  

I was fighting a similar battle with a 12th-gen Intel chipset. Sometimes it could barely even run Excel unless I disabled the E-cores.

My advice is to either disable the useless cores on your CPU, or to utilize software like Process Lasso to force programs like 7 Days to be applied to the targeted performance cores.

Also note, that there is a HUGE problem with 13th and 14th-gen Intel chipsets that Intel has finally acknowledged that could also be causing you trouble. https://www.techspot.com/news/102555-intel-finally-investigating-reports-high-end-13th-14th.html

3. I see a lot also where people do these huge upgrades and assume that because they have this new high-powered system, that they can run a bunch of software in the background without worry. When you are dealing with software that requires a large bit of performance from one primary core, and also is heavily utilizing multithreading, you will start to hit bottlenecks where multiple programs are battling for use of the same core. Don't forget to remove the useless bloatware, and trim down applications you don't need to have running. Like all of the sotware giants launchers, and be sure to exclude the client from security software as well.

4. Also note that in the games current state, not all GPU features are handed off to the GPU. They are also not all fully optimized like a finished AAA title would have after it has released. Be aware that premium options and higher resolutions will have a toll that is not solely on your GPU.

5. As for the network speed, it is generally just fine though the game does not perform well on older Wifi bands with the traditional round-robin configuration and low available bandwidth. However I will note that one thing we run into a lot is problems with "network optimization" software that is provided by your mainboard manufacturer. Other similar programs for boosting RAM or drive access will cause issues as well. Killer Networking or software like Asus's RAMCache tool must be removed. They are just bloatware for people who have no clue about how computers really work, and tend to cause problems because they are designed for standards more than a decade old.

I will note this. I am on an AMD 3900X with 32GB DDR4 at 3200Mhz. My GPU is a 6800XT, and most of my system is overclocked at least a little bit. I play at 1440p with these graphic options, and have no issues with performance. Mind you I also have the game client installed on a pair of NVMe Gen 4 drives in RAID, and set the save folder to a separate SSD. 

 

[Silent Faith]

A couple of things to note.

1. The game is CPU bound. You won't see a huge difference in performance between a 3070 and a 5080. Sure, it might get you 20% better FPS in Ark or Conan, but it isn't going to do anything for you in a Voxel game.

2. Your i7-14700k has 20 cores, but only eight of them are useful. Any application that ends up getting stuck on one of the twelve E-Cores is going to have @%$#ty performance. Since most programs don't code awareness for the type of core being used, and Windows has not had a great track record of managing them properly, it is extremely likely for a program that demands a lot of CPU power to get stuck on a CPU that cannot perform because 2/3rds of your cores are basically useless for any real work.

Which is basically why you had better performance on your i7-10700KF. Sure it only has 8 cores, but all eight cores are performance cores. Your 14700k is basically the same but with extra cores that are a loss.  

I was fighting a similar battle with a 12th-gen Intel chipset. Sometimes it could barely even run Excel unless I disabled the E-cores.

My advice is to either disable the useless cores on your CPU, or to utilize software like Process Lasso to force programs like 7 Days to be applied to the targeted performance cores.

Also note, that there is a HUGE problem with 13th and 14th-gen Intel chipsets that Intel has finally acknowledged that could also be causing you trouble. https://www.techspot.com/news/102555-intel-finally-investigating-reports-high-end-13th-14th.html

3. I see a lot also where people do these huge upgrades and assume that because they have this new high-powered system, that they can run a bunch of software in the background without worry. When you are dealing with software that requires a large bit of performance from one primary core, and also is heavily utilizing multithreading, you will start to hit bottlenecks where multiple programs are battling for use of the same core. Don't forget to remove the useless bloatware, and trim down applications you don't need to have running. Like all of the sotware giants launchers, and be sure to exclude the client from security software as well.

4. Also note that in the games current state, not all GPU features are handed off to the GPU. They are also not all fully optimized like a finished AAA title would have after it has released. Be aware that premium options and higher resolutions will have a toll that is not solely on your GPU.

5. As for the network speed, it is generally just fine though the game does not perform well on older Wifi bands with the traditional round-robin configuration and low available bandwidth. However I will note that one thing we run into a lot is problems with "network optimization" software that is provided by your mainboard manufacturer. Other similar programs for boosting RAM or drive access will cause issues as well. Killer Networking or software like Asus's RAMCache tool must be removed. They are just bloatware for people who have no clue about how computers really work, and tend to cause problems because they are designed for standards more than a decade old.

I will note this. I am on an AMD 3900X with 32GB DDR4 at 3200Mhz. My GPU is a 6800XT, and most of my system is overclocked at least a little bit. I play at 1440p with these graphic options, and have no issues with performance. Mind you I also have the game client installed on a pair of NVMe Gen 4 drives in RAID, and set the save folder to a separate SSD. 

I'm fully aware of the problems, but just from what I heard from JayzTwoCents, he said that it was mostly the i9s.

1. I understand the game is CPU bound.

2. I quit using EAC as that does not allow me to set core affinity, and by setting core affinity to specific cores, and disabling the poorly implemented V-Sync, and setting my minimum FPS to 50, I have completely eliminated the lag.

3. Modern CPUs are way more efficient and you can run A LOT of software on your system before it starts to really bog down, you'll most likely be limited to your RAM before your CPU is fully utilized.

4. I understand that, but for Alpha 22 and going on full release, I would assume TFP will be making the necessary changes and updates to properly flush out these issues to make the game smoother and play nicer.

5. Never heard of those programs and most of them programs are more malicious than helpful. It's easier to restart your network if wifi being slow and waiting a few seconds so connections get dropped completely by other devices trying to connect to your network. I had slow internet and I actually had to wait 15+ seconds.

All in all, I'm assuming TFP will be trying their best to make their game as smooth as possible and run better and better with each update as it's finally out of alpha.