[2.0.7] Frequent FPS slowdowns during gameplay (Apple Silicon)

[Catari64]

Playing on an M1 Macbook pro, experiencing frequent and random fps slowdowns to 30 fps during gameplay, UPS is unaffected.
Any Solutions?

image of time usage and fps

20241021175305_1.jpg (1.86 MiB) Viewed 3562 times

[Loewchen]

Post log and save see 68653.

[ezekiel]

Playing on an M1 Macbook pro, experiencing frequent and random fps slowdowns to 30 fps during gameplay, UPS is unaffected.

Seeing the exact same issue on my M2 MacBook Air, I'll attach mine here. Two screenshots attached, one showing FPS in the 30s (moving around in remote view, zoomed in) and one in the 40s. Prior to v2 my computer generally sustained 59/60 FPS.

Right now, following the 30 FPS screenshot the game has held very constant between 20-35 FPS without my input or moving around.

I have all my settings very high, but these settings carried over from the prior version of the game and I have not modified them. Lowering the graphics settings all the way allows it to hit 60 FPS but doesn't stop the drops down to 30.

Save file: https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/com-e ... _debug.zip

[tsrikar]

I'm having same issues on my M1 MacBook. The game was running at solid 60 FPS even for a decent sized base. However, now with the new space age update, I can barely get 30 FPS in a new save file (less than 50 entities total). Furthermore, the FPS keeps jumping all over the place, it's sometimes locked at 30, sometimes it jumps to 60 for a few seconds, and falls back down.

Sorry if this is an old thread or if I'm not posting in the right place, I don't know how to create a new post.

[allenellis]

Seeing the same on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. I never had an issue with version 1.x a couple of years ago, but I fired up Space Age today and frequently am dipping to ~30fps, sound will skip out. This is on a brand new world with just a few buildings built. Looks like UPS is dipping to the mid 50's and FPS is dropping down into the ~29-35ish realm every few seconds.

I haven't tried the base game again yet so maybe an OS update happened in the last few years. I've quit all the other running programs and no help. All graphic settings are on max.

Update
I've found a workaround that works for me. Turn off any display scaling you might have on. In my case I was running a 4K monitor at one of those scaled resolutions that Apple warns can affect performance. I guess this is one of those instances.

[wormeyman]

I believe this has something to do with the HiDPI changes, my M1 MacBook Air (MBA) has 8GB of Ram and an M1 processor. It is hooked up to a 4k monitor the game previously looked and ran at 60fps with render at native resolution and only started to dip into the 50's when my base got large. Now on a brand new world it runs at 30-35 FPS when vsync is turned off. I've heard this can happen when apple is trying to render a native 5k image at 4k. All I know is that previously it worked great and now it does not!

[Afrovis]

Also having this issue on my M1, FPS drops to 30, UPS stays at 60. Not fun to play, especially at 4K on my separate screen (drops further).

Never had issues previously, ran huge bases flawlessly.

Hope it's a quick bug fix!

[fpe]

I have similar problems, but on Windows with a 2017 Dell XPS 15 9560 (GTX 1050M) and 4K display.

Worked fine for 1.x Factorio until late mega bases where FPS/UPS would drop below 60, but now with Space Age even in early burner phase it runs at ~20 FPS only (but still 60 UPS, so it should be some GPU bottleneck)

[posila]

Dropping bellow 60 FPS, or stuttering sucks

For macOS players, I recommend to disable "Render in native resolution" in graphics settings, if you run into FPS issues.

Space Age has lot more complicated rendering to compose all the sprites and shader effects in somewhat acceptable way. We are always trying to find good compromises between visual fidelity and performance costs. The change to rendering also impacts (and improves) vanilla game, but in my testing I saw it degrade performance only on older laptops with intergrated GPUs (in vanilla 2.0). Unfortunatelly, I am ill this week, can't risk infecting others by going to the office and don't have 4K display at home to test with, but I'll investigate next week, if there is something I missed what is causing such significant performance drop on 4K resolutions.

[onix331]

For Mac specifically:

I noticed FPS drops and stutters when running out of memory and MacOS starts compressing or swapping.
8GB seems like too little, especially when running browsers or discord in the background so i would check memory pressure in Activity Monitor

[ezekiel]

For macOS players, I recommend to disable "Render in native resolution" in graphics settings, if you run into FPS issues.

I will try this next time I play when the FPS is stuttering, however I would like to note now that I was playing on my 1080p monitor and experienced the same issues. Usually playing on the monitor alleviates issues because the resolution is so much lower than my built in display.

[posila]

I will try this next time I play when the FPS is stuttering, however I would like to note now that I was playing on my 1080p monitor and experienced the same issues. Usually playing on the monitor alleviates issues because the resolution is so much lower than my built in display.

Hmm, if you were already playing on 1080p monitor, the option won't make a difference The screenshots you posted were larger than 1080p, so I assumed you were playing on the built-in Retina display.

[wormeyman]

Dropping bellow 60 FPS, or stuttering sucks

For macOS players, I recommend to disable "Render in native resolution" in graphics settings, if you run into FPS issues.

Space Age has lot more complicated rendering to compose all the sprites and shader effects in somewhat acceptable way. We are always trying to find good compromises between visual fidelity and performance costs. The change to rendering also impacts (and improves) vanilla game, but in my testing I saw it degrade performance only on older laptops with intergrated GPUs (in vanilla 2.0). Unfortunatelly, I am ill this week, can't risk infecting others by going to the office and don't have 4K display at home to test with, but I'll investigate next week, if there is something I missed what is causing such significant performance drop on 4K resolutions.

Thank you for the reply, as others have said my performance has somehow halved in space age. Disabling

Code: Select all

Render in native resolution

fixes the problem but it also makes things look a lot worse. In 1.1.10 I was able to render at 4k no problem on my 8GB M1 Air and did not get FPS drops until the late game. I am running my 4k monitor at 1080p which is not a scaled resolution with a warning.

[vinzenz]

FWIW it's running fine on my 32GB M1 Macbook Pro. So ensuring you have enough of free memory really helps alleviate this issue.

[hgschmie]

I play on a M2 Max Macbook Pro with 96GB of RAM, connected to a 4k screen. OS reports minimal use of CPU and GPU and lots of free RAM but I see the same slowdowns.

This seems to be a MacOS/Factorio 2.0 issue.

One theory is that this is related to internal / external monitor

With my external monitor (3840x2160 panel, running in 2560x1440 resolution as set in the MacOS control panel):

Screenshot 2024-10-22 at 10.33.16.png (30.19 MiB) Viewed 2360 times

With my laptop screen (Macbook Pro Built-in display in native resolution):

Screenshot 2024-10-22 at 10.33.54.png (13.83 MiB) Viewed 2360 times

[ezekiel]

ensuring you have enough of free memory really helps alleviate this issue.

My macOS memory pressure meter (in Activity Monitor) remains green while playing, so that shouldn't be the issue either. I have 16GB total and tried closing all other applications.

[ezekiel]

I assumed you were playing on the built-in Retina display.

That assumption was correct, but I did also try it on a 1080p monitor after posting those screenshots.

[wormeyman]

It feels to me that it is an external monitor issue, on my M1 8GB MBA running on the internal screen is fine at native resolution. On 2.0.8 running on the external monitor at native resolution is no longer getting close to the same performance as 1.1.110

[vinzenz]

It feels to me that it is an external monitor issue, on my M1 8GB MBA running on the internal screen is fine at native resolution. On 2.0.8 running on the external monitor at native resolution is no longer getting close to the same performance as 1.1.110

Oh that is interesting, can you tell me more details about your setup, display type, resolution? Ideally a Factorio log file for each monitor.

[wormeyman]

This is my 4k setup with native screen resolution.