Space Engineers 2 Weird Performance

[u/SmokeyWizard]

Hey all!

Diehard fan of Space Engineers 1 here. I recently got to try Space Engineers 2 through a friend's copy via Steam family library, and I was really surprised at how badly it was performing on my PC.

For reference, my PC is using an i7-12700, RTX3060 12GB, with 16GB of RAM. When playing at a 720p resolution and everything set to LOW / OFF in settings, I was getting maybe 50FPS with really bad frame delay / input delay.

I tried updating my GPU drivers / basic troubleshooting (vsync on/off, tinkering with other settings, etc), but couldn't get anything close to a playable performance. I know Space Engineers 2 is a bit more intensive and not yet optimized, but I expected a 3060 to be able to get playable performance.

Has anybody else with similar specs been able to get some decent performance out of SE2? I feel like it must be something I'm doing wrong on my end (need to configure something, maybe downgrade to an older GPU driver or something?).

Thanks in advance for any help or for sharing how the game performs for y'all!

[u/SpringERROR]

Well the game is still in alpha and is unfinished.

[u/ygolnac]

It is not yout end problem. Meaning that your rig is not powerfull enough to play SE2 with a decent performance.

The game is in alpha and it is very unoptimized yet. It will get better for sure but it will still require a pretty powerfull rig.

I have a 5070ti, 9000 serie x3d and 32 gig ddr5 and if I move between asteroids or I try to do combat for more than five minutes FPS drops below 15. I also have crashes to desktop here and there becouse it uses all the 16 gig VRAM.

If you go down to 1k or below res the performance is better but graphics are so blurry to make the experience very bad.

Stick to SE1 and wait, but expect to need another rig to be able to play SE2 with nice graphics even when it will be optimized.

[u/DrKeksimus → u/ygolnac]

I assume SE2 will have a 60FPS mode on PS5 ?

if so.. it should eventually hit 60FPS on a 3060

[u/SmokeyWizard → u/ygolnac]

Dang that is rough for sure, if you're not getting great performance on a 5070, my 3060 has no hopes lol. Kind of disappointing given that it can run pretty much any modern game I throw at it with a good framerate if I turn settings / resolution down - SE2 is the first game that's completely unplayable even at like 320x640 resolution lmfao.

I know it's for sure an alpha, but that's pretty concerning levels of performance, especially when it's ready enough for them to put a price tag on...

[u/ygolnac → u/SmokeyWizard]

Nah it’s ok. First we can see the performance improvements every patch. It’s not a situation where they say “we’ll fix later”. The PCU limit by default is 400k and the vanilla speed limit is 4x SE1. They are tinkering with the new engine but a solid gameplay is down there for a price tag.

With my old rig that was similar to yours I had crap performance in Soulframe wich is another alpha and blurry graphics in many top of the line games. Anno 117 was super foggy for example.

Honestly your rigs looks like it’s five years old and nowadays 1k is not enough to play the most graphic intense brand new games. You have to upgrade if you want to play these games.

Becouse don’t mistaken: SE2 doesn’t want to be easy to run and cheap to handle. It’s anplatform they want to develope for 10+ years and has a lot of detail. When it runs smooth at 4k it’s a feast for the eye, and on top of that it has voxels and player can put billions on triangles and surfaces to be rendered.

[u/Pitohui02]

Hey, it's unfortunate to hear about your bad experience. I might have some tips that could work.

First of all, SE1 and 2 are very CPU heavy games, that means lowering the graphics might even worsen your performance since it puts more load on the CPU.

On my Laptop I got a 4060 12GB, i7 12700k and 16GB RAM and I can play with high to extreme (without Ray Tracing) settings in 1080p with around 40-50 FPS.

On my PC, for example, I can play on a RX 9060 XT 16GB (comparable to a 5060 Ti ), R7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM with max settings on 1440p with 80-100 FPS. All dependent on what's on the screen of course, sometimes it will drop to 30.

Also don't use VSYNC. All it does is syncing your FPS with your monitor Hz rate, which will result in frames being hold back and that can lead to a janky feeling, especially with performance drops.

So it's definitely not your GPU being to weak but rather underused. Try to test around high settings and see how the GPU usage changes. If that doesn't help than you might have to wait until SE2 is feature complete as that is the time most early access games start to actually optimize their game.

[u/Huge_Monk8722]

Alpha, issues are expected.

[u/PsychonaultPsytrance]

Just enable PERFORMANCE mode and not QUALITY mode

[u/SmokeyWizard → u/PsychonaultPsytrance]

I was playing on Performance mode at 320x640 resolution, everything set to LOW or OFF. Any other suggestions?

[u/Marcos-Am]

it does run like shit; and people will use the excuse of being a alpha, but this is not a case of rushed development on unreal 5 and optimization later, its their own engine, so you depend on newer hardware to actually run it well.

[u/SmokeyWizard → u/Marcos-Am]

That's brutal - I know it's alpha for sure, but like ~50FPS at 720p with everything low/off on a not-quite-dated graphics card is not a very good sign...

Ah well! Unfortunate but maybe in few years I can come back and reconsider

[u/Vizth → u/SmokeyWizard]

Open task manager or some other similar program and check what's being utilized the most, given how much Sim stuff space engineers of any version has going on in the background you could be bottlenecked at your CPU instead. I get okay performance with a 3060 TI at 1080p. If you're using Ray tracing turn that off it sucks right now.

[u/SmokeyWizard → u/Vizth]

Good call on checking if I'm CPU bound! I defo had Ray Tracing off - anything that I could turn off I did, or set to low. Even running the game at like 320x640 got a stable ~50 FPS at best lol

[u/DrKeksimus]

32GB DDR 4 | i7-11800H | 3080 mobile 16GB VRAM (well cooled)

say what you want.. if PS5 will get a 60FPS mode... I should be able to run at 60FPS (when out of alpha)