Poor performance on Arc B580 in Starsector on Windows 11

[Frezeh]

Performance drops significantly in menus, systems with meager amount of fleets and during even modest combat. In combat the FPS drops under 30 and the game slows down significantly. I suspect the poor performance is  W11 OpenGL driver issue , as the game works flawlessly for me on Linux (Bazzite) even when modded, while on Windows it runs poorly all the time.

The problems are fairly easy to reproduce. Performance in combat can be tested with the missions, selecting the bottom most mission named random battle will give a battle with an amount of ships very commonly encountered in campaign, and when the ships start to shoot guns and missiles the FPS will drop easily to 30 or below. Starting a new game (skipping tutorial) will also instantly showcase the poor performance found in systems, and interacting with a planet nearby will show how FPS can vary wildly between different menus.

I ruled out basic driver issues with DDU and few different driver versions.

32.0.101.6913

32.0.101.6874

32.0.101.6732

I have SSU file attached, but basic PC Specs are:

Windows 11 Pro Version 10.0.26100 Build 26100

Arc B580 GPU

Ryzen 5700X3D Processor

DDR4 32GB 3200MHz RAM

Asus Crosshair 6 Hero X370 motherboard

Corsair RMx 850W PSU 

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Frezeh,

Thank you for posting in Intel community Forum.

For me to better understand and diagnose the issue further, let me ask you to provide detailed responses to the following questions. This information will help me isolate the problem and determine the most appropriate course of action moving forward.

1. Was it working before or are you having this issue since initial installation of the game?
2. What was the last change made in the system before the issue started?
3. What is your game launcher?
4. Kindly send the screenshots of the game settings for me to try this in the lab.
5. Please help generate minimum of 5 minutes gameplay using CapFrameX and send the JSON file for me to observe and also try it in the lab. Please refer on the link below on how to use CapFrameX. Just scroll down under Performance Issue:

Need help? Reporting a bug or issue with Arc GPU? - PLEASE READ THIS FIRST! - Intel Community

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Frezeh]

Here is link to the Capframe json, as this website won't let me upload json files.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mLpRWk2HJ5lVCsZa1GXgL5PwXEtFVHF/view?usp=sharing

As for the other questions.

Yes, it has worked perfectly fine with all other hardware setups I've had. Unmodded the game is very lightweight, and I got better performance on my 5 year old laptop with integrated graphics than what I am getting now with this GPU on Windows. The problem began when I switched my GPU from my old dying GTX 1080 Ti to Arc B580. The game is not on any launcher/platform and there are no real graphics settings, but i've still attached what settings there are. On Linux I spent most of yesterday playing the game with many mods and I was 99% of the time locked at 60fps, which leads me to believe the issue is with the OpenGL drivers.

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Frezeh,

Thank you for the update.

Before I proceed and simulate this in our lab, let me clarify some information based on your reply.

When you mentioned that there is no game launcher, can you tell me where did you download the game?

So that I can also get the same version that you have.

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Frezeh]

The latest version of the game can be found from https://fractalsoftworks.com/

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Frezeh,

Thank you for the information provided.  

I will do further research on this matter and post the response on this thread once it is available.

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Frezeh,

I hope this message finds you well.

I just want to update you that based on my investigation indicates this issue may be related to CPU performance, as the game is CPU-intensive and the problem occurs even with third-party graphics cards.

Kindly refer to the following links below that provides workarounds suggested by other users. You can try them and if it is still the same, please update me and kindly enumerate all the steps that you tried and failed:

• https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=23564.msg476907#msg476907
• https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=31506.0
• https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=32335.msg487489#msg487489
• https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=32335.0
• https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=18995.0

Additionally, to further troubleshoot and isolate the problem, let me also recommend that you may reach out to the game developer, as the game is still in its alpha version. Kindly update me on this one as well.

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Frezeh]

Hey,

I took a look at the links you provided to find solutions, however, one of them was running like 180 mods, which is an insane amount and no wonder he was having issues, and others were running hardware from mid-late 2010s, and were still getting better performance.

I do not believe the issue to be CPU related, as my old Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti could keep at 144fps of my monitor without breaking a sweat and the new Arc B580 drops down to 20 - 30 fps easily during light combat.  Also like I've previously pointed out, is that the issue seems to disappear when in Linux, with FPS around 120-140 in the same combat scenario, pointing out to the issue being with Windows 11 driver. I took a look at some performance metrics during gameplay while tweaking around with processor affinities, and noticed that the assigned CPU core got to 100% while the gpu was barely reaching 40% usage, and assigning more cores did not help. 

I created a thread on the Starsector support forum, in case you wan't to monitor for the dev's responses. 

https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=33755.0

Edit: Looks like the dev already responded saying it's propably a driver issue.

[Mike_Intel]

Hello Frezeh,

Thank you for the update and reporting this issue to us.

I will further check this issue and document your recent update. I will post a reply here if I have an update of my own.

If you have questions, please let us know. Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel Customer Support Technician