How well is your pc running PA?

How come my system is not getting hot when i put all settings to Max? All settings to max and the game will lag like hell but my system is not being stressed at all. All my computer case fans are off and still everything stays nice and cool while having tremendous lag during the game. In comparison when i play a game like BF3 my system get extremely hot. This makes me wonder if PA makes efficient use of the PC system resources? I wouldn't mind my system getting more stressed so i have better performance.

My System:
i7 2600K
Geforce GTX670 (latest drivers installed)
16 GB ddr3 ram
256 GB SSD
60 mbits internet
Windows 8.1

This is no complaint I'm just curious how other people experience the game on their system
Is there anyone right now that can play all setting (except resolution scaling) to Max and have no lag and everything running smoothly also later in the game?

It's about the same as you described on both my systems. I found out that turning off hdr will eliminate a tonne of lag, but I still get some lag even with medium settings(game is playable with these frame rates and is a lot better than when I played back at the start of alpha) . I do understand that this is still beta so there's a lot of optimisation to go.
My system Specs are.
Laptop. (Asus ROG G74SX)
Intel core i7 2630QM
Nvidia 560m
16gb ram
2x 720gb 7200rpm hdd

Desktop
AMD Phenom II x6 1055t
Nvidia 560ti
12gb ram
2x 720gb hdd

Internet speed is approx. 7.5mb download and 0.7mb upload.

The CPU is barely used compared to the GPU.
I bet your video card gets hot but your CPU stays cool!!
My tablet gets hot, but i have a GPU embedded in my CPU so when one gets hot they both get hot .. lol

Also dont use High or Uber on the resolution slider!!
This setting will render the game at a higher resolution than your current screen resolution (fake Anti-Aliasing)

very low = %50 of screen resolution
low = %75 or your screen resolution
medium = Same as your current resolution (1 to 1 pixel ratio)
high = %110 your screen resolution
very high and uber = %150 and %175 your current screen resolution

so if you play the game @ 1280x720 with the resolution slider on anything higher than medium then game is being rendered at a higher resolution than your screen and uses the amount of GPU power required to render the game at a higher resolution!!!

Like a top:

intel i7 2600k
2x sapphire 5870`s in crossfire
16gigs ocz ram
2x 1tb hd in raid
25mg cable

im shocked I havent had any issues with pa with crossfire.

Also scale it back down to native resolution. Using more GPU resources.

It depends on the balance between the system and CPU/GPU. For example I get between 50-130 FPS on two planets only. GPU usage is about 20-60% with medium settings HDR and 1080p but CPU is also only at 20-50%

If you have a weak GPU set your graphics low - if you have a weak CPU or not much RAM play with smaller and less planets.

Most performance GPU's should be able to max PA out without problems - it's just that it takes time to optimize the game. As for the CPU I would at least recommend an i5 with 3Ghz or Phenom X6 /FX 8XXX. For RAM not less than 8GB but I would recommend 16GB most because many new games will target at least 8GB (consoles have 8GB) so with 16 you are on the save side

Most time it's the engine/server that gives you low performance - except PC is slow (I normally play with 4-11 planets) but servers can't hold that longer than 2-3 hours of gameplay :/
but yeah it's beta and still WIP

It doesn't matter how much you put into the system planet wise the game won't use %100 of a multi-cored cpu, the Renderer only uses a single CPU core, coherent UI uses all the cores but only a tiny percentage as its an api for passing web-script through to the game engine and render thread and its not very CPU intensive, the biggest strain is on RAM, and the GPU.

If the CPU load does rise close to %100 with lots of planets, its usually because the ram has been used and the game starts using the OS paging file for virtual ram, that chews up cpu usage because windows handles this not the game.

i watch the Coherent UI processes in Task-manager while i bug test and revise my "Performance Boost Mod V2" to see how the game impacts on the systems i try it on
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-performance-booster-v2-55493.53233/

Edited--
Also at this point in beta the unit models are all individual units which uses a lot of the gpu, neutrino has stated in another thread i can post a link to if you would like where he points this out.
Soon this will be handled by instancing which will reduce ram usage and gpu usage a lot.

so my point there is the average desktop shouldn't get hot unless the videocard heats up lots,
the Cpu usually never heats up in this situation. in theory the GPU is bottlenecking performance so the system wont use that much Cpu to generate tons of heat.

--edited--
i should say GPU and RAM bottleneck performance before the cpu ever reaches a point where it gets hot to be more clear.

Well as i stated before my GPU doesn't get hot at all when playing PA even with my case fans off. If I play other games (like shooters) my GPU gets very hot and I need to put my case fans on again

In your windows "Power Options" have you got your computer's power scheme set to "Balanced" ?

im not sure why your GPU doesn't get hot, on my MAC MINI the nVida320m increases temp by about 15 deg while playing PA.
and my Acer Iconia Tab w700 goes from 56deg to about 72deg (Celsius)

Maybe windows is throttling your PC to stop overheating? If the power scheme is set to balanced this will happen as a cooler computer is more power efficient.

(Off-Topic)
Also can you guys assist me if possible,
I'm working hard assisting many people with performance and crash issues, and all the feedback and information's about different hardware and settings combo's to get best game performance will help me HEAPS.
It appears some users are having performance issues with specific models of ATI and nVidia chipsets.
If you could give me FPS feed back playing the game at your native resolution and high settings (not on the resolution slider leave that at medium)
and then can you lower your desktop resolution to 1360x768 (im assuming most of you are using 16:9) monitors and do the same test.
after you have these 2 results can you stay @ 1360x768 and then change one setting at a time in game and try different setting combinations to find one that give best FPS for your system.
It would really help me find good settings combinations for specific video card models.

I will make a thread just for posting the results
In the post please state
Video Card Model
CPU model
RAM

Then Best desktop resolution and in game setting combo that offers stable performance with decent FPS.

Hopefully this thread will assist people with tuning the game settings to find one to suit their system.
it may also assist Uber in writing code that auto-detects the best setting to apply based on detected video card

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/what-are-the-best-settings-for-your-system.53554/

I tried to mess with those setting but it doesn't seem to make any difference. On high performance my system still stays cool at all time during the game and all fans to low and the temps are all quite cool.

I actually stopped playing due to long load times and lag.

I run:
CPU Type: AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1090T Processor
CPU Speed: 3.23 GHz
System Memory: 17.18 GB
Video Card Model: AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series
Video Card Memory: 1.85 GB
Primary Display Resolution: 1920x1080
Secondary Display Resolution: 1920x1080
Download Speed: 15 down/15 up

I can play any game in existence with all graphics set to max with no lag.
PA - Constant framerate issues and takes 5-10 minutes to load a system.

CPU Type: Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
CPU Speed: 3.33 GHz
System Memory: 8 GB
Video Card Model: AMD Radeon HD 5870
Video Card Memory: 1 GB
Primary Display Resolution: 1920x1200

I'm currently playing on medium, but with FXAA on and HDR off, and that seems reasonably smooth. Can't play with HDR, it's murder on the framerate. I also find the extreme contrasts make it hard to identify units.

CPU: intel core i5 760 @3.8ghz
Graphic card: HD7970 ghz ed @ 1050mhz, powertune +20%
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600mhz CL9
Resolution: 2560x1440

Game is unplayable for me no matter what setting. Average fps seems fine but jumps between 100 and 0 like crazy causing extreme lag. PA barely uses my graphic card really wish this game would make full use of my system instead of just wasting all that power.

There must be something else wrong with your system. Sound, maybe? People often overlook sound drivers that may be causing problems in games.

I have a weaker system than you and the game runs flawlessly:
Intel i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz
nVidia GeForce 480
8 GB DDR3
1900x1200 (native)

Maybe it's just your resolution and the video card is having a hard time with that?

Only other thing I have is I'm running games and Windows off of separate Intel 520 SSDs. Maybe you're getting had drive swapping, but with 16 GB of RAM, you'd think that wouldn't be an issue.

-Mac situation report-

MacBook Pro, 15 inch Retina, mid 2013

Intel quad-core i7, 2.4GHz
Intel HD 4000 + nvidea GT 650M 1gb ram
8gb ram (upgradable to 16)
Default game res, that's half the native res (2880x1800)

Settings on medium, FXAA on, HDR on. Not in fullscreen, but a fullscreen window.

Experience: Game runs smooth and fine. The system editor can be very laggy from time to time, but in-game it is running smoothly.

Everything is updated on my system also i dont have any issues with other games so i doubt sound drivers are causing this. Also running from a SSD here.

You are not alone...my friends HD 7970 and my HD 7950 also get barely used in this game, do what you want you WILL NEVER REACH 100% usage, something is bottlenecking this cards heavy.

PS: I can watch on my G19 LCD the whole system usage while playing the game.