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Nier: Automata PC performance thread

Perfec7_

Neo Member
It could be load stutter. Is your game installed on a HDD or SSD?

I initially had it installed on my HDD and that produced some occasional load stutter. Moving the game to my SSD pretty much removed almost all of the stuttering.

Oh, it's definitely not the load stutter, I get that too when entering newer areas. I'm talking pretty major stutter in the main city area. Like, every 3-4 seconds there's hitching/stuttering.
 

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Oh, it's definitely not the load stutter, I get that too when entering newer areas. I'm talking pretty major stutter in the main city area. Like, every 3-4 seconds there's hitching/stuttering.
This seems to be a problem inherent to this game and was a huge issue in the PS4 version as well.

I'm also getting this on the PC version, though it's significant reduced compared to PS4. I assume fast enough hardware could eventually overcome it?
 

Philtastic

Member
Finished the first ending. Other than the fullscreen bug (which I ignored since the game isn't much of a looker anyway so the blur didn't bother me), didn't run into any problems or crashes over 19 hours. Ran at mostly 60 fps on High (minus MSAA) at 1440p with a GTX 1070 and Core i5-4690K. I'm pretty satisfied with this game.
 
If you're using a controller and are seeing flickering between keyboard and controller button prompts, try disabling any overlays you have running (specifically disabling the Steam overlay fixed it for me and the Afterburner/RTSS overlay is still usable w/o button flickering).
 

Alienfan

Member
Wow this game runs like absolute garbage. It's basically the choice between screen tearing and fucked framerates. Running on a i7 + GTX 1070, installed on a ssd as well. :(

Refund or not to refund, this is hands down the worst PC port I've ever played. Batman ran better
 

Ascheroth

Member
Wow this game runs like absolute garbage. It's basically the choice between screen tearing and fucked framerates. Running on a i7 + GTX 1070, installed on a ssd as well. :(

Refund or not to refund
Have you turned off AA (or, at least not turned it up to x8)? What resolution?
A 1070 should easily run this.
 
Ok GAF, I finally broke down and bought this. $48 on GMG, I decided to just get over myself about the resolution bug.

i5 6500
GTX 1070
16GB RAM
SSD

Fullscreen, "1920x1080" (I know, not really)
AA off
Texture filtering 4x
Blur on
Shadows medium
Effects high
AO on

With vsync on performance in the initial factory level is not good - dropped frames all over the place when panning the camera. With vsync off it's totally fine (but screen tearing, obviously). This is pretty surprising to me given my rig is fairly decent and the resolution it's running at. Any ideas?

Run the game in a borderless window (you can find out how by taking a look at the OP) and it should fix your tearing and hopefully make things smoother.
 

ramshot

Member
Surprisingly, I'm having a pretty decent experience with my rig:

1440p
All Maxed except MSAA at 2x
Vsync off (Gsync)

Pretty much a locked 60 with some drops to 58-59 every now and then. I don't mostly even notice the drops. GPU usage hovers around 70-90% avg. CPU usage is really low, around 20-30%.

It's certainly not especially pretty and it's disappointing that it's capped at 60, but at least it's pretty consistent as far as performance goes.

6700k @ 4.5
1080 STRIX
Win10
16Gigs DDR4 @ 2600
Gsync

Judging by this thread the only reason it's pretty decent is my raw horsepower. A shame, but ah well, one of those times when all that money is worth something.

Game is pretty good, even if the very beginning kind of promissed more than I've been getting since. Lots of running around and the map isn't very good, which can get annoying.
 

Echoplx

Member
JaseC time to add this to the OP

oK5057m.gif
 
I'm still puzzled on how pc gamers with great rigs complain about performance when using 8xmsaa at resolutions above 1080p.
Guys the game might be broken up to some extent, but it's not the only one to blame.
Probably lots of people need to go back to pc gaming abc.

As for me, i'm running it on 21:9 1080p (2560*1080 @ 75hz) with a single 1080, 2xMsaa and Nier Fix.
Installed on SSD. 6700k.

Performance is perfect. I get 1ms pause when switching to big areas to another (literally it's a split second, nothing big), but anything else (even with big bossess) is rock solid 60fps. Fullscreen.
 
the game crashes on me at the worst god damn times. I'm not even sure what causes the crashes, but the screen freezes even though menuing and sound works. Im using the older amd drivers and running it in borderless windowed. It's happened multiple times but honestly not sure what the reason is
 

Echoplx

Member
the game crashes on me at the worst god damn times. I'm not even sure what causes the crashes, but the screen freezes even though menuing and sound works. Im using the older amd drivers and running it in borderless windowed. It's happened multiple times but honestly not sure what the reason is

According to kaldaien that's a problem with the engine and it needs to be patched by the devs.
 

Vitor711

Member
1440p
i5-4690k
GTX 1080

Game runs locked at 60FPS (minus very infrequent drops during in-engine cutscenes). It's also hilarious that the pre-rendered video files that play at 900p for story beats also show really, really bad frame drops. Never seen that in a gamebefore.

It also looks like a last gen title with the texture resolution, shadow draw in and general LOD issues that see grass/details appearing mere feet in front of you. Enjoying the game but man, it's not a looker.

And I just came off playing Remember Me, a game nearly 7 years old that looks, runs and scales way better at 1440p. True, it's linear vs open world but even then, this tech is poor.
 

Durante

Member
I'm also getting this on the PC version, though it's significant reduced compared to PS4. I assume fast enough hardware could eventually overcome it?
I don't get any stutter anywhere during gameplay except when traversing the city area at top speed, and then it's once every 30 seconds or so.
(I have the game on a NVMe SSD)

It also hasn't crashed once in ~24 hours of play time so far. I have the good version :p
 
The City Ruins area is definitely the one giving me the most stutter, at least until now.
The other areas I've visited don't hold a solid 60fps but they're ok.

This is with borderless windowed at 1080p with AO on, AA off and medium shadows.

I'm on a 280x with a i72600k and 12gb ram.
 

Durante

Member
The City Ruins area is definitely the one giving me the most stutter, at least until now.
The other areas I've visited don't hold a solid 60fps but they're ok.

This is with borderless windowed at 1080p with AO on, AA off and medium shadows.

I'm on a 280x with a i72600k and 12gb ram.
That's interesting data, since a 280x is very close to a PS4 Pro, and your settings are probably exactly the PS4 Pro settings. And the performance you get also sounds pretty much like what people get on PS4 Pro.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
JaseC time to add this to the OP

oK5057m.gif

Haha, well, given that the OP does cover less-expensive AA in its own, unassuming way, I think this is actually a fantastic opportunity to reinforce how important reading an OP is in general, let alone when you're in a thread whose express purpose is to provide technical assistance. ;)
 
That's interesting data, since a 280x is very close to a PS4 Pro, and your settings are probably exactly the PS4 Pro settings. And the performance you get also sounds pretty much like what people get on PS4 Pro.

You're right, now that I think about it. Well, I only have a second class PS4 and the PC version is cheaper so this version is a better bang for my buck.
 

ezodagrom

Member
I am so sad :(
I think this is a poor port guys. Really. Ok, my specs are not high as expected, at least not the GPU (940m, 2GB), but I'm getting 10fps with graphics options in LOW quality. I can play games like MGSV with medium-low graphics at 40~60fps. Saddly I'll need to refund the game. Im so sad coz I was very hyped to play :(
Comparing to a desktop, the 940M is a GTX 745 tier card or worse. It's far below minimum specs.

Still, it's possible the game is just using the integrated gpu, so I would try setting the game to use the dedicated gpu in the drivers control panel before refunding.
 
Game continues to run like a dream for me, 3 hours of post-prologue glitches on day 1 notwithstanding.

City Ruins are ~50fps for me, same as everyone I assume. I'm running with 4x AA and 16x AF. I'm sure I could get 60 locked at 2x AA but I don't really feel any framerate lag or anything like that so I'll leave it as is.

I've had no crashes to date, though on a very rare occasion (maybe once every couple of hours), the game will sort of freeze? Then unfreeze itself after about 2 seconds and be fine again for another couple of hours. I don't know what that's about, but it's not enough to frustrate me. I'm playing at 3440x1440 and almost bought this on PS4 because I didn't realize it was coming out for PC, so I'm grateful every day, regardless of small technical details.
 

ToKre

Member
anyone else suffering with fps droping to 30 every minute or 2 i can't play the game anymore because of it

its like the game is choking is freeze then goes down to 30 for a second.
 

Paragon

Member
It isn't.
Turn off MSAA.
Requiring a GTX 1070 to run the game at 1080p60 with no MSAA doesn't seem that well optimized to me, considering how the game looks.
People using MSAA and then complaining about performance is making it seem worse than it is though.

Games should not include MSAA/SSAA in their presets, as it seems that some people just assume their PC should be able to run the highest preset a game offers no matter what.

This seems to be a problem inherent to this game and was a huge issue in the PS4 version as well.
I'm also getting this on the PC version, though it's significant reduced compared to PS4. I assume fast enough hardware could eventually overcome it?
Thanks for confirmation. I assumed it would happen on the PS4 version as well, but sometimes issues like that can be introduced in a bad port.

Strange, I can use AA on almost all other PC ports without issue. Most don't look this bad either.
MSAA/SSAA are very demanding forms of anti-aliasing.
Post-process anti-aliasing like FXAA/SMAA/TAA are generally less effective, but have a minimal performance hit. And TAA is starting to get very good.
 

KainXVIII

Member
MrBonk take on game "optimization"
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5409579&postcount=3768
Turns out Nier is more messed up than thought.

Their line of "4k is not officially supported" goes beyond what you'd think. Game's internal resolution is locked to 2k basically. I mean don't even, it's not hard to support arbitrary resolutions. There's already a fix.

Shouldn't expect more I guess considering they couldn't even get a stable 1080p60 out of PS4Pro. (When has Platinum ever gotten a stable 60 out of anything????)
And I can see why too, the game is savage in performance. 1600x900 I've seen usage up to 80% when some alpha effects are going.(Otherwise 50-60%) And this with MSAA and SSAO disabled. At 1080p with 4x or 8xMSAA GPU usage instantly jumps to 100. With 2xMSAA it's in the 70-100% range.

In-engine (1600x900 video files! /face palm)30FPS FMVs couldn't even be bothered to super sample them. So tons of aliasing there in places. Compression is actually not bad so at least there's that. (Mind you these are apparently MPEG-2 videos. Yes you read that.)But that's gonna hurt for anything higher than 1080p and in the future 5 years down the road when the game is stuck with those 1600x900 FMVs. (No game should do this in 2017. It was bad enough with Rising)
What's worse is that all the ones i've seen could clearly be done in engine no problem. (Like one that is literally like 5-10 seconds long that switches back and forth in engine really quick. It's just like really???) There are small scenes done in engine at 60FPS. They just don't have the DoF and stronger Motion blur.


SSAO is awful. Shadow draw distances/Lod distances are really short.
Platinum needs to hire some new people or let someone else port their games. (In this case however, Square Enix would probably **** it up more themselves.)

And with all the scaling issues, it's like they only tested this game at 1080p. And only 1080p. The game, which runs at 1600x900 on standard Ps4, doesn't even run properly in 1600x900 full screen.

How, does this **** make it past testers? I doubt it does, I bet management just says "That's shippable. Maybe we'll fix it if enough people complain!"
And this is Square Enix. They do not fix. ANYTHING. EVER.

https://abload.de/img/nierautomata_2017_03_l3lul.png

Lawd have mercy.



Anywho, you CAN enhance the game with SGSSAA. However, edge quality becomes worse than standard in game MSAA and most fine specular issues and other stuff are just missed.

Ex: 4xSGSSAA https://abload.de/img/nierautomata_2017_03_7cxlr.png

MFAA doesn't work properly either. Just fuzzy edges that look worse.
 

Durante

Member
I have no idea who that person is, but this part: "Game's internal resolution is locked to 2k basically" is just plain objectively wrong.

Also, the whole "in engine no problem" rant is not accurate either. Sure, no game should ship with 900p videos, but the fact that they are videos rather than in-engine is unavoidable for at least some of them. Why? Because they feature quick cuts between entirely distinct environments, which the engine (and most engines really) isn't built for.
 

heringer

Member
I don't get any stutter anywhere during gameplay except when traversing the city area at top speed, and then it's once every 30 seconds or so.
(I have the game on a NVMe SSD)

It also hasn't crashed once in ~24 hours of play time so far. I have the good version :p

So every 30 seconds when you are running at top speed, which is pretty much almost all the time (in my case at least)? That sounds like a lot of stuttering. :p

Well, at least it's not all the time. It's pretty much my experience too. I've had surprisingly little issues with the game (I didn't have the low resolution problem on full screen some people apparently have, no crashes so far), but the occasional stuttering is annoying.

I really wish the game was better, technically. I don't mean the port, I mean the engine itself. I love, love, love the game and it's aesthetics, but the LOD transition issues, stuttering and shockingly bad textures are a bit of a shame. I get that it's open world on a budget and I'm glad it was made though.
 

Gbraga

Member
I need some help guys.

I have a GTX970, 4790k and 16GB Ram, yet I still can't get the game to run very well at all.

I'm at 1080p (windowed), Vsync off, no AA, no blur, Shadows Medium, Effects High, and AO enabled. Even with AO disabled and AA completely off it's still totally stuttering.

I've tried the fullscreen fix program (this makes it run even worse), Borderless Window, and Rivatuner capping at 60, but I'm still having an absolute shit load of stutter in the main city hub area.

It ran a better in the desert, but it still wasn't devoid of stuttering and some drops.

Did anyone else have this issue with a 970 that was able to get this fixed? I've tried almost everything that I can think of, and I see other people in this topic saying it runs great with a 970. I'm starting to get frustrated. I still have 6+ hours even with these issues. The game is amazing so far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Did you try capping it at 59 on RTSS? I've seen people saying the game's fps cap is poor because it doesn't take into consideration the real refresh rate, in cases where it's not exactly 60, but something like 59.97 or whatever, and causes stutter.
 

Exentryk

Member
I really wish the game was better, technically. I don't mean the port, I mean the engine itself. I love, love, love the game and it's aesthetics, but the LOD transition issues, stuttering and shockingly bad textures are a bit of a shame. I get that it's open world on a budget and I'm glad it was made though.

Hopefully making this open world RPG will give Platinum some experience on what they can improve going forward with their engine. Plus with the relative success of Automata, hopefully they'll get a little more budget for their next game.
 

gngf123

Member
Strange, I can use AA on almost all other PC ports without issue. Most don't look this bad either.

Very very few PC games use MSAA. This isn't a cheap post processing AA we are talking about here. The only other game which has it that I remember is XCOM 2.

Most games only offer FXAA or SMAA options which are far cheaper.

Unless you've somehow been injecting MSAA into everything then this is a completely different scenario.
 

Zomba13

Member
I dunno if this will help most people but to "fix" the stuttering while running around areas I just moved the game to my SSD. I think the stutter is to do with streaming in the environment so it needs to load from the HDD every so many meters and when running from one place to another then it's loading each chunk after chunk and can make it feel stuttery. On my SSD I've not noticed it happen.

Wouldn't make a difference if you are stuttering in combat or something like that where you aren't travelling but I dunno. It helped me.
 

Parsnip

Member
MrBonk take on game "optimization"
Bonkers has a gaf account, surely he can post his own rants if he wanted to?

I have no idea who that person is, but this part: "Game's internal resolution is locked to 2k basically" is just plain objectively wrong.

Also, the whole "in engine no problem" rant is not accurate either. Sure, no game should ship with 900p videos, but the fact that they are videos rather than in-engine is unavoidable for at least some of them. Why? Because they feature quick cuts between entirely distinct environments, which the engine (and most engines really) isn't built for.
You can call yourself lucky if you've never seen a Bonkers rant before.
 

didamangi

Member
If you only need a fix for the fullscreen bug, Armada651 on the steam forums created this dxgi.dll that only fixes that, based on Kaldaien fix.

Before the fix I have to play fullscreen to get rid of stutter I have on borderless since capping it with rtss to 60 or 59 doesn't make a difference for me, still a stutter fest despite the fps counter saying it's 60. Tried both Kaldaien fix and the Armada651 fix. Both works and i found performance to be the same for me, but maybe it'll be different for you.

Playing at 1440p fullscreen, no AA, AO on, everything else on high. Smooth 60, drops to 50 in some very intensive scenes but not that bothered in fullscreen since it doesn't stutter except when streaming new stuff in.

3570k@4.3 GHz
GTX 1070
16 GB RAM @ 2133 MHz

Not too bad looking on my 4K monitor, but would've loved playing it in native res obviously. Maybe next year on a GTX 1170 or something.
 

Zomba13

Member
Anybody installed the newest NVIDIA driver and noticed improvements?

I dunno. Maybe? I'm on the latest ones (ME: Andromeda ready ones) and I think it's more stable for me on a GTX 780. At least it seems to have stopped (or delayed at least) the "whitescreen" crash while I use borderless gaming. I managed to play for a while, do a bunch of quests, go to a bunch of areas etc with no issue. Though saying that, just when I thought "oh it's fixed!" I did get a crash. Though it's your run of the mill "____ has stopped responding" crash and not due to the Nvidia drivers crashing and recovering.
 

JustinBB7

Member
I did suddenly get the white screen crashes. I've played since steam release and it only happened last night for the first time, and twice at that. Dunno if related but it was in the
forest
where it happened.
 

QisTopTier

XisBannedTier
Wait I have my settings maxed out on a gtx 1070 and I haven't been having any frame rate issues like it's constantly at cap at 1080p why are some people having issues with the Same card?
 

Akronis

Member
Strange, I can use AA on almost all other PC ports without issue. Most don't look this bad either.

There are tons of different kinds of AA and in most modern games, they are post processing anti-aliasing which has a much smaller impact.

MSAA is not a type of PPAA and it's very expensive.
 
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