Yesterday I tried to install the game to play it for my stream, 1080p windowed.

Last time I played the game it was when it was brand new, before even the first patch IIRC.
Same system I believe, only that then I had a GTX 970, where now for some time I have a GTX 1660 Super.

The performance was terrible. The game was stuttering even in the loading screen (stars) and while playing (forced 3rd person view now?) it felt slow with framerate definitely below 30s and drops way more often. Basically unplayable.

Was the game updated with increased requirements since release, that could explain my performance issues?

Running Windows 10 Pro updated, GPU drivers first July 2023, now latest, both same result.
64GB of DD4 RAM, i7 5960X (stock speeds), GTX 1660 Super. Game and OS installed on a ~3.3GB/s NVMe drive.

1080p window, I believe the graphic settings were on the second from the lowest? Called Enhanced? I don't know the game feels different.

Basically my question is, it it something I can fix or I might as well give up on it with this system?

Try to set most settings to standard (for textures follow the in-game guide chart based on VRAM), except for those not affecting the GPU - the game provides such info when hovering on those options. And most importantly: use DLSS on Ultra Performance - that should net u many more frames.

I have a GTX 1660 Super as I mentioned before. I have no DLSS to give.
But thanks I will check the rest.

Still don't know what happened as the game used to be so smooth with my much less powerful GTX 970. when the game was new.

On my old laptop that had the GTX 950 iirc, the only way i could play smoothly was to downscale the resolution. You can do this by selecting a percentage of less than 100% of the resolution in the options. It was a drastic measure that made everything blurry ofc, but smooth nonetheless.

Also try both fullscreen and borderless. Either might work better depending on ur system. Also make sure the CPU is working fully too, in turbo mode. If it has less than 100% cycles in power options the turbo is deactivated, and NMS does need it.

And ofc first try running it without any streaming software or other stuff. And make sure ur ram utilization stays below 90%, as seen in Task Manager, else u'll be getting very frequent stuttering even with an SSD hard disk drive. If needed terminate all unnecessary apps before launching the game.

But yea its true that the game seems to have become more demanding compared to what it was 7 years ago, since it has received many updates over the years that improved the gfx and engine, in addition to expanding the content of the game.

If I may, you should be able to use AMD's FSR (Super Resolution upscaling for games) - you set your game at, say, 1280x720 and it upscales (with some 'enhancements') to fill your screen at 1920x1080 or whatever. AMD's version of DLSS is supported at the driver level and game level, so it can be used with non-AMD videocards or older GPUs.

Not sure why it is 'worse' though since your GPU is about twice as fast, yes - do you have another drive to move the game to? I found that games don't like my NVMe drive for some reason (Windows is on that, as well as the "Temp" files, and the Swap File for Windows/Virtual Memory, maybe it's 'too much' for a game too haha) and when I moved the game to an SSD drive (much slower than an NVMe drive but still 2-5x faster than a HDD), the game loads faster and doesn't stutter while playing. Note that there is still stutter when loading at first, with the stars, and Warping to another Star System there is stuttering.

I have the game settings on Enhanced (lower TEXTURES to Standard as it eats up VRAM on the GPU) on an SSD with a 5600xt gpu (amd 3600 cpu) and run it at 1600x900 upscaled to 1920x1080 via FSR/RSR and while it stutters loading and warping, it's smooth to play at least.
GL with it

Upscaling/downscaling changes nothing.

Resolution, windowed or not mode, graphic settings, the problem does not go away.

It looks like the GPU utilization does not go higher than 14% and for the most part remains at about 1-2%.

This can't be right.

I made a video of 3 different settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDdqEYx8ACU

Problem fixed.

I don't know if that was it, I downloaded and installed one new? latest windows update for overall improvement or whatever it is called.

Restarted the computer for one more time, problem fixed.

Performance not that great, but it is now playable.