CCP Shares Details on EVE Online's Upcoming 'GPU-driven' Graphical & Performance Improvements

Recently, CCP has been talking EVE Online’s technology, the community, and the future in a series of deep dives, EVE Evolved. The most recent, and final EVE Evolved blog, is out now, and it covers client performance and this month’s introduction of a new graphical rendering improvement to the Trinity engine.

Whether you play EVE or not, chances are that you know it is a game with a lot of moving parts, variety, and a ton of ways capsuleers impact any given day, including some of the biggest sustained battles when they happen. The Trinity engine is custom, and while EVE dropped support for some of the very oldest machines, it still must make things work for a variety of players on a variety of rigs. This is also what makes performance improvements trickier, because they're dependent on the GPU and CPU combination of each machine. 

CCP has been adding and improving the game for over two decades now, and the team has talked about improvements on the way, including a “GPU-driven Pipeline” announced at Fanfest in 2023. “A more modern rendering pipeline allows the GPU to do more of these calculations overall, reducing the CPU overhead,” they describe. “EVE is often CPU-bound, meaning the CPU is the limiting factor and not the GPU. Freeing up the CPU in these situations can be very beneficial.” Wherever you jump in, it should look and feel good.

An increased performance update is set to launch this month, particularly for anyone running DirectX 12 (DX11 will get a small boost too). The team has worked to refactor the Trinity engine, but they're looking to set things up for the future, with increased performance capabilities and graphical fidelity. Framerates will also improve across a variety of machines. Using EVE Probe, CCP tested and showed FPS increases from 13-52%. The full breakdown is in the dev blog so you can see exactly what they tested, but even the 2016 release GTX 1060 saw a significant boost.

Last year, some got to preview things like upscaling, improved framerates, and other features in a series of playtests. Now, we’re waiting for more details and a push to Tranquility.