I just thought the FPS dropping to 30 fps when I open my inventory or status window, etc. was "normal" for this game... like the Boffs who sit a foot above their chairs or sunk into the floor of the bridge; something we learned to live with.

Note the fps in the top right. Using FRAPS my framerate went from 20 to 40 and back down to 20 again as I turned the UI on and off.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BhFn9QzrzU

I would also like to chime in on this. This is also happening to me as well and it is ruining the game experience.

/showfps 1 reports 30+ fps in a large engagement with ALT-F12 UI off, and less than 10 fps with it on. In quiet areas I can achieve over 120 fps with UI off and 40 fps with it on.

Checking task manager, STO is only using 40-50% of my quad core...so it isnt even taking advantage of my CPU's power!

Fix this, and I'll throw Cryptic Points your way to show my gratitude. I mean it. Please.

Related threads:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/sho...6&postcount=20 Dev post explaining the problem
http://forums.startrekonline.com/sho....php?p=3968270

I seem to be having the exact same problem since recently. Not sure if it's patch related or not, but it sure is annoying.

At first I thought this was an issue with the inventory window, which I described here, but now that I tried Alt+F12 I also noticed significant increase in game's overall performance, so it must be the HUD.

I'm using:
Windows XP Home Edition SP3
AMD Athlon II X2 240 (2.81GHz)
3,12 GB RAM (2x 4GB RAM inserted, but my OS doesn't support more than ~3,25GB)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 460

The reason I'm not sure whether this was introduced with any recent patch is that I did change my RAM (from 2x1GB) around the time F2P went live and wasn't able to play for about a week (a couple of patches), but I do remember having similar issues before, like the one described in my topic above. That one was fixed though, and aside from that I was able to play normally before. It's just now that I can barely operate with my inventory.

Anyways, the game itself runs perfectly fine, as well as any other applications, and it's only the UI that reduces the framerate significantly - especially windows such as the inventory, accolade journal, or fleet news.

/showfps 1 shows something like this on average
~60fps with no UI at all
~40-50 fps with basic UI
~20 with inventory etc. window opened

More data - I went into Tribble just now and faced black space, took note of FPS with and without ALT-F12 pressed

Test conditions:
Set graphics settings to minimum slider setting
Turn off Vertical Sync
Go to Advanced and uncap the framerate in Troubleshooting section
Face empty space in Vulcan sector block

Empty Space:
FPS with UI: 60.33
FPS w/o UI: 340.86

Estimated with heavy combat from playing LIVE:
FPS with UI (Heavy Combat): 11 (unplayable)
FPS w/o UI (Heavy Combat): 45

Interestingly, in both cases UI off multiplied the framerate by roughly 5 times.

Test system:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5ghz***
EVGA NVIDIA 9800 GT SuperClocked Edition 512MB
8GB DDR2-667 system memory

My system is already out of date by about 3 years - if STO's UI is causing my system to choke I can only imagine what it's doing to less fortunate systems.

***Note that on modern Core i7 systems this problem probably doesn't crop up seeing as the CPU is fast enough to not even notice.

This issue may be going under-reported in the forums due to the extra FPS only manifesting when the ship goes to warp or the ESC key is pressed.

The above has been submitted to Cryptic as a bug report.