Performance / Specs Collection & Comparisons

[Kiwi Shark]

Performance has been a big topic for KSA since the start and I appreciate that that's something we can analyze quantitatively. So while the game's performance is sure to change (surely in the "improve" direction) as development continues I still thought it would be fun to start collecting some community PC specs and performance data now. First of all as a time capsule to compare to down the road and second of all for people to check out and contribute to once the public release is available. There's been a lot of questions about specs vs performance in the Discord at least and having a sort of repository to sift through might be useful.

To make this a bit cohesive I'll pitch the following recommended format for submissions, example below:
Specs & Settings
(Your PC hardware and KSA configuration for context)

Scenario & Performance:
(Your fps range/average and game scenario you measured it from)

---

Example:

Specs & Settings

CPU	i10-10000
GPU / VRAM	QTX 8080 / 8GB
RAM	16GB DDR4 3200
Display resolution	1920x1080p
KSA version	vXXXX.XX.X.XXXX
Visual settings	Shadows: 16k Textures: Unlimited Other: Any settings not left at default

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gemini 7 orbiting Earth at 100km looking down at the surface	60-90
Gemini 7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	70-95
Map view around Saturn with all moons visible	95-110

Whispered encouraging words to my PC during testing to boost frames, seemed to work.

---

Feel free to contribute! Include any other information you think might be useful in your post / experiment with graphics settings to optimize / etc. Any suggestions to improve or standardize this process is appreciated. Once there's enough info it could probably be used to make an optimization guide and compete for "highest fps possible".

It might be a good idea to copy entries here to a Google Sheet or some public spreadsheet too. If anyone wants to help set that up that would be great or I'll look into it when I can. A public Google sheet is here! Feel free to fill this out as well. Open to improvements in style and such.

Thanks and I'm looking forward to some data entry with y'all!

 

[Kiwi Shark]

I'll kick off with my own contribution.

Specs & Settings

CPU	i5-10600K
GPU / VRAM	RTX 3080 / 10GB
RAM	32GB DDR4 3600
Display resolution	1920x1080p
KSA version	v2025.10.6.2584
Visual settings	Shadows: 16k Textures: Unlimited Other: Defaults

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	70-110
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	134-152
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	68-72
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	80-110
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	62-87
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	90-121
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	155-168

All of these were taken over a few minutes each. Time warp speed did not affect any of the ranges. Each one in orbit spanned both the surface being illuminated and in the dark, with the dark usually having a slightly higher average. I didn't try anything firing the engines or RCS thrusters.

Overall, good!

 

[MrNeon]

I'll kick off with my own contribution.

Specs & Settings

CPU	i5-10600K
GPU / VRAM	RTX 3080 / 10GB
RAM	32GB DDR4 3600
Display resolution	1920x1080p
KSA version	v2025.10.6.2584
Visual settings	Shadows: 16k Textures: Unlimited Other: Defaults

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	70-110
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	134-152
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	68-72
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	80-110
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	62-87
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	90-121
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	155-168

All of these were taken over a few minutes each. Time warp speed did not affect any of the ranges. Each one in orbit spanned both the surface being illuminated and in the dark, with the dark usually having a slightly higher average. I didn't try anything firing the engines or RCS thrusters.

Overall, good!

Nice!
I got better PC specs, but i don't have KSA yet (waiting for the public build) and this is definitely a helpful post. Seems that optimization won't be that much of a problem.

 

[DrVenkman]

I built my new PC for flight simulation, so it's higher end than your baseline. I don't have access to KSA yet, but I don't expect the game in its current state is going to challenge my system that much, at least until we have a craft editor and a wider variety of parts. At that point, we will have the ability to create some "stress test builds" like we used to do in KSP: lots of complex parts interacting, fuel and other resource flows being simulated in real-time, etc. That kind of thing.

That said, once we all have access to a public build, threads like will be helpful in case people have under-performing systems, or for people considering trying it out who want to know how hardware similar to theirs performs.

 

[Barney]

GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB
CPU	Ryzen 5 5500 @ 3.6GHz
MEMORY	32GB DDR4

Average framerate on KSA Looking at a celestial body: ~65+ Consistently
Average framerate on KSA Looking away from a celestial body: ~160+ Consistently

 

[Psycho_zs]

I wonder what I will be able to achieve with my measly Core Ultra 5 125U with integrated graphics...
At least I have 32GB RAM (I thank KSP for that ).

 

[Weather Tracker]

wonder what I will achieve with my 5600g rx6400 4g and 24gb ram

 

[GreatToCreate]

Placeholdering for the hopeful soon-to-be release:

Specs and Settings

CPU	R7-9700x
GPU/VRAM	RTX 5060 TI / 16GB
RAM	32GB DDR5 6400
Display Resolution	2560x1440
KSA Version	N/A
Visual settings	N/A

Scenario & Performance

Scenario​	FPS​
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	N/A
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	N/A
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	N/A
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	N/A
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	N/A
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	N/A
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	N/A

 

[Frosty]

Specs & Settings

CPU	R7-9800X3D
GPU / VRAM	RX 7800 XT / 16GB
RAM	32GB DDR5 6000
Display Resolution	3440x1440
KSA Version	2025.11.4.2742
Visual Settings	Shadows: 16k Textures: Unlimited Others: Default

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	70-90
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	175 (V-Sync)
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	65-75
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	95-105
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	70-90
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	105-140
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	175 (V-Sync)

I had similar results to #2 where time warp seemed to have no effect on performance, while night time had a noticeable improvement over day time. I will also note that, for me at least, reducing the shadow resolution to a more reasonable number seemed to improve my performance quite significantly. Results for that below:

Specs & Settings

Specs	... The same.
Visual Settings	Shadows: 4k Textures: Unlimited Others: Default

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	115-130
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	175 (V-Sync)
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	95-110
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	135-155
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	90-105
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	165-175
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	175 (V-Sync)

Overall, I'm quite pleased with this! Curious to see everyone else's results.

 

[Zincboy]

ATTEMPT N°1
Specs & Settings

CPU	r5 7535HS
GPU / VRAM	RTX 4050 /6GB (75watt version)
RAM	32GB DDR5 4800mhz
Display resolution	2560x1440p
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Shadows: 2k Textures: 4k

Performance: crashes on launch when loading the spherical billboards.

ATTEMPT N°2

Specs & Settings

CPU	r5 7535HS
GPU / VRAM	RTX 4050 /6GB (75watt version)
RAM	32GB DDR5 4800mhz
Display resolution	2560x1440p
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Shadows: 2k Textures: 2k

It works !

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gemini 7 orbiting Earth looking down at the surface (alt: 290km)	~35 fps
Gemini 7 orbiting Earth looking up towards the cosmos (alt: 290km)	~42fps
Map view around Saturn with all moons visible	~25fps (at one time it was above 50)

After returning to the vessels, the game started to struggle, reaching 12fps. If you have similar specs, I'd recommend trying 1080p.

Notes:
All fps numbers and usage %s are according to the nvidia overlay and task manager.
My 4050 was struggling, with 99% usage and using up nearly all the vram.
The 1440p screen is connected directly to the rtx4050 via HDMI, bypassing the iGPU.
My cpu was doing fine while the game was running, didn't go over 20%.
I had a second screen (1080p) with youtube discord and the forums open while the game was open.

 

[hiccup]

Quick baseline. Borderless, no vsync, 75hz refresh rate. Earth only.
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC.

Specs & Settings

CPU	R7 5700X
GPU / VRAM	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB
RAM	32GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
Display Resolution	1920x1080
KSA Version	2025.11.4.2791
Visual Settings	Everything: 2K, Earth only

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth (290km x 392km) looking down at the surface	140-175
Map view, same as above	160-215
Kitten in default orbit (290km x 392km)	60-75

Increasing sim speed has no impact on performance in LEO which is pretty neat.

 

[Frentru]

Specs & Settings

CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D (24) @ 5.66 GHz
GPU / VRAM	AMD 9070xt 16GB
RAM	16GB DDR4 3200
Display resolution	3840x2160p
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Default
OS	Linux Bazzite Linux 6.17.7-ba01.fc43.x86_64

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Starting Scene looking at earth	75-80

Figured I'd toss my stuff here since I'm running linux and that might be useful.
It was fairly simple to install using lutris, though I did have to install dotnet 9 onto the prefix, but it works pretty much out of the gate. Mangohud seems to cause the settings menu to crash the game when hitting the apply button for some reason though.
I'm also having a graphical oddity when the game first launches, with the clouds all turning into white boxes. Tweaking the cloud settings to anything and applying fixes it, even if I go back to high after a tweak. It happens every time I launch the game.
There also appears to be issues with shadows if I tweak the settings up at all, but I haven't paid enough attention to know if that's a known issue or not.

 

[Domonian]

Specs & Settings

CPU	R7 7800x3d
GPU / VRAM	RX 7900XTX 24gb
RAM	64GB DDR5 6000mhz
Display resolution	2560x1440p
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Everything at maximum i.e. Unlimited/High/16K

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	115-120
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	210-220
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon	110-115
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	160-165
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	105-110
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	115-120
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	165-175

Seems to run well, as it should on this grade of hardware. Much better than KSP2 while also looking better with less artifacting on stuff like clouds. Not really noticing any dips/stutters either. Super smooth overall, very impressed for such an early version!

 

[had_and]

contribution running solar system preset


Specs & Settings

OS	Windows 11 Home Edition
Resolution	1920x1080 @ 144hz
CPU	Ryzen 7 5700x3D
GPU / VRAM	RX 7800 XT / 16gb
RAM	64GB DDR4 3200
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Shadows: 16k Textures: Unlimited Other: Defaults

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	100-130
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	128-178
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon (Clear sky, only water)	109-120
Gem7 splashed down on Earth looking at the horizon (Clouds, some coastline)	96-102
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface (Depends on if looking straight down or horizon)	93-150
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	95-110
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	146-159
Gem7 Inside Jupiter at ~150km	96-102
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	155-172

 

[Kiwi Shark]

Great stuff in here! Thank you all so much for your data points!

 

[Kiwi Shark]

KSA version

v2025.10.6.2584

I think you meant to update this!

 

[MrAndroPC]

Specs & Settings

CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 2600
GPU / VRAM	AMD Radeon RX 6600 / 8GB
RAM	16GB DDR4 2400MHz
Display resolution	1920x1080p @ 75Hz
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Textures: 4K Terrain: 8K AA: Disabled (MSAA 2x causes visual bug) Ocean: Disabled (causes bug) Borderless No VSync

Scenario & Performance

Scenario	FPS: min-max (avg, 1%, 0.1%)
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 2305km looking down at the surface	42-56 (avg: 49, 1%: 41, 0.1%: 37)
Gem7 orbiting Jupiter at 45,000km looking at the planet	116-153 (avg: 128, 1%: 89, 0.1%: 79)
Gem7 falling through Jupiter atmosphere from lowest orbit	37-118 (avg: 60, 1%: 37, 0.1%: 33)
Gem7 falling through Jupiter's Great Red Spot from lowest orbit	56-116 (avg: 71, 1%: 48, 0.1%: 27)
Map view over Jupiter zoomed out to see the full orbits of all moons	75-177 (avg: 141, 1%: 43, 0.1%: 41)
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	55-74 (avg: 62, 1%: 51, 0.1%: 47)
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	96-194 (avg: 171, 1%: 78, 0.1%: 63)
Gem7 orbiting Luna at 12km looking down at the surface	59-78 (avg: 67, 1%: 54, 0.1%: 49)
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	65-83 (avg: 70, 1%: 58, 0.1%: 54)
Gem7 orbiting Titan at 350km looking down at the surface	72-99 (avg: 81, 1%: 63, 0.1%: 59)
Gem7 falling through Titan atmosphere	40-55 (avg: 49, 1%: 39, 0.1%: 36)
Gem7 landed on Mars during sandstorm	46-65 (avg: 50, 1%: 42, 0.1%: 39)

Benchmarked with Afterburner, didn't include any earth landed tests since there's no water for my card yet, but there's anyway around 60fps landed on Earth.
In most tests camera wasn't static, so it is better to look at avg FPS, since I could accidentally break max fps statistics.

AA decreases fps quite enough, by game looks cool even without it, much better as, let say, Elite Dangerous. Titan surprised me by being so performance intense, as well as Jupiter Eye optimization. Falling in some random spot of Jupiter atmo was more intense (and honestly boring, the eye is beautiful inside).

Had to terminate all other apps consuming VRAM to run KSA on these settings, I believe it might even run better settings if there would be some dynamic loading maybe, at least for bigger textures. E.g, if FPS would allow to use bigger texture (let say we use 4k, but FPS now is 120), the game would try to load and use 8k in current scenario.

 

[AndyMt (UTC+1)]

CPU	i5-12600k
GPU / VRAM	RTX 3060 / 12GB
RAM	32GB DDR4 4600
Display resolution	3280x2560p
KSA version	v2025.11.4.2791
Visual settings	Shadows: 2k Textures: 2k

Note the 5K display. Lower resolutions in settings seem to have no effect at all and it also looks the same. I have to reduce systems display resolution instead. Then performance basically doubles.

Scenario	FPS
Gem7 orbiting Earth at 250km looking down at the surface	37-40
Map view above Earth looking at the planet	58-62
Gem7 landed on Luna looking at the horizon	42-45

 

[Frosty]

Lower resolutions in settings seem to have no effect at all and it also looks the same.

Yup, can confirm that changing resolution only works in windowed for me.

 

[Domonian]

I think you meant to update this!

Yup, updated! Just wanted to toss my results in there and didn't really pay attention to the version