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[Durante]

Play Mankind Divided with AA off and then come back to me.

Nier:A has a very good post-processing AA implementation though.

Without MSAA Nier:A runs much better? Even if it port of 60 fps console game?

Yes, without MSAA the GPU load is significantly lessened, especially in areas with foliage.
I don't understand the second part of your question. Yes, it's a port of a 60 FPS (well, "60 FPS" on consoles really) game, that's why even with 8xMSAA it runs better than e.g. DE:MD as the charts on the previous page show.

Edit - direct comparison:

NOTE IF YOU ARE JUST JOINING US: BOTH OF THESE RUN WITH 8XMSAA; UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS BEFORE COMMENTING.

 

[Moldiver]

Nier:A has a very good post-processing AA implementation though.

But I hear the argument all the time here, 1440p you don't need AA, but some games just look horrible without it, currently going through Mankind Divided and without AA it looks like i'd cut myself going up a ladder.

 

[gngf123]

Without MSAA Nier:A runs much better? Even if it port of 60 fps console game?

It being a 60fps console game is fairly irrelevant - I'm pretty sure the PS4 version is not using 8x MSAA, and it's not stable 60fps on console either.

Without MSAA the game performs much better as expected.

 

[JaseC]

It being a 60fps console game is fairly irrelevant - I'm pretty sure the PS4 version is not using 8x MSAA, and it's not stable 60fps on console either.

Without MSAA the game performs much better as expected.

Indeed, neither PS4 version has MSAA.

 

[Moldiver]

I see 980 sli in the Nier table there, does this have an sli profile? afterburner only has one of my cards running.

 

[Dinjoralo]

Nier:A has a very good post-processing AA implementation though.

But for some reason, I think it's tied with the ambient occlusion option. :/ Turning that off makes the game a lot more jaggy.

 

[NeoRaider]

I think that DE: MD and NieR can't and shouldn't be compared just because they are using same AA technology. Graphically there are a lot more things happening in DE and everything looks more complex. But maybe it's just me.

 

[Akronis]

Oh man this reminds me of the XCOM 2 "performance disaster" when it turns out everyone left MSAA 8x on and complained about shit performance

 

[Dream_Journey]

I've posted these a few times too, but may as well post them in comparison form.

AA off / AO on compared to AA off / AO off:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/203877

AA off / AO on compared to AA 8x / AO on:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/203878

Possibly due to the lighting, in these shots AA8x actually looks worse when looking at the stairs and the fence.

Wow, thanks for these. Just disable AA damn it, lol.

Also look at steel wire wall, yuck! Is this bug or what, anyone can tell? (Durante pls.)

 

[Wonder Peter]

My old 7870 can't run this properly at 1080p 60fps, any tips to try to improve the performance?
It runs about 45-50 fps medium settings without AO

 

[dsk1210]

Making me consider getting a gaming PC at the end of the month.

My issue is that no matter what, I still have this horrible TN panel. Hrmmm

Don't you have a nice Tv you can hook the PC up to?

 

[Moldiver]

I think that DE: MD and NieR can't and shouldn't be compared just because they are using same AA technology. Graphically there are a lot more things happening in DE and everything looks more complex. But maybe it's just me.

It's not really meant to be a comparison, more of a, AA can be used at 1440p in certain situations instead of 'at 1440p you don't need AA'

 

[Durante]

I see 980 sli in the Nier table there, does this have an sli profile? afterburner only has one of my cards running.

If you look at the GameGPU chart SLI clearly isn't doing anything. I think I saw someone post an unofficial profile though.

I think that DE: MD and NieR can't and shouldn't be compared just because they are using same AA technology. Graphically there are a lot more things happening in DE and everything looks more complex. But maybe it's just me.

I'm not comparing the absolute performance. I'm using it as an example to try and show people the relative impact of MSAA on modern games, which is very high.

Oh man this reminds me of the XCOM 2 "performance disaster" when it turns out everyone left MSAA 8x on and complained about shit performance

Every. Time.

Games with MSAA options should come with a lengthy unskippable essay on what that means.

My old 7870 can't run this properly at 1080p 60fps, any tips to try to improve the performance?
It runs about 45-50 fps medium settings without AO

You have disabled MSAA, right?

That said, a 7870 might well not hit 60 FPS reliably regardless of settings at 1080p -- it's slower than a PS4 Pro, and a PS4 Pro can't do it either.

 

[Akronis]

Every. Time.

Games with MSAA options should come with a lengthy unskippable essay on what that means.

To be fair, it's become so rare with deferred being the go-to for everything these days. It would be nice for devs to do a better job explaining what every form of anti-aliasing did.

 

[gngf123]

My old 7870 can't run this properly at 1080p 60fps, any tips to try to improve the performance?
It runs about 45-50 fps medium settings without AO

Disable AA if you haven't already.

 

[Wonder Peter]

Yeah i already have the AA disabled, time to get a new graphics card i guess... I'll wait for the new 5XX from AMD

 

[heringer]

To be fair, it's become so rare with deferred being the go-to for everything these days. It would be nice for devs to do a better job explaining what every form of anti-aliasing did.

They could just label MSAA instead of just "AA" and give a note saying "warning: this is very demanding and only recommended for very powerfull machines", or something like that.

 

[ezodagrom]

Wow, thanks for these. Just disable AA damn it, lol.

Also look at steel wire wall, yuck! Is this bug or what, anyone can tell? (Durante pls.)

It's possibly due to the lighting in those shots I guess.
Possibly in other locations the AA option may look better, but the post-processing AA (AA off / AO on) is good enough, especially for those with performance issues.

Though on another note, post-processing AA off (AO off) and AA on looks awful from what I saw.

 

[Gbraga]

At 1080p? Yeah you'll be fine without hairworks and idk what else. Don't sacrifice HBAO+ though.

Thanks! Yeah, HBAO+ is awesome in Witcher 3, I'll keep that on no matter what.

Honestly, the game looks fantastic already, I can just keep the same settings and play at 60 and it'll be a huge improvement.

 

[gngf123]

Yeah i already have the AA disabled, time to get a new graphics card i guess... I'll wait for the new 5XX from AMD

I'm thinking of doing the same.

You might be interested in running it on low though. I slightly overclocked my 7950 and that is just enough to hold a decent 55-60fps on low settings + medium shadows. In my opinion low settings still looks good.

 

[dr_rus]

Tbh, I've ran the opening battle with MSAA 4x instead of 8x and didn't notice much of a performance difference. Generally, the way the game runs (like, for example, memory on my 1080 is downclocked while running the game even in "prefer high performance" mode; or the fact that I'm getting ~100% GPU usage but the GPU rarely goes past 70C mark which means that it's underused somewhere) points to there being several issues with how current NV drivers are running this game.

 

[SapphiCine]

About the start the game up. If I use Borderless Gaming do I still need to enable V-sync?

 

[Paragon]

Paradoxically, I am 100% convinced that this port would have been far better received if they had simply not offered a MSAA setting at all.
Which sends a rather bad message to developers.

Unfortunately that's proven to be the case with a lot of recent games that offer MSAA or SSAA options - at least when they include them in the presets.

I do think that it's an unexpectedly demanding game though, for how it looks.
I have an overclocked GTX 1070 and at 1080p with no AA, it's hitting 90%+ GPU load.
Some areas or encounters are also stuttering or dropping frames for a brief moment, but I assume that's my old 2500K + DDR3 and not the game, if you aren't seeing the same thing. (it's not GPU load)

But I hear the argument all the time here, 1440p you don't need AA, but some games just look horrible without it, currently going through Mankind Divided and without AA it looks like i'd cut myself going up a ladder.

The point is that you don't need to use MSAA or downsampling in Deus Ex though, you just need post-process TAA enabled. (with tessellation disabled and a post-process sharpening step)
It's a shame that NieR:Automata only has a SMAA-like post-process AA solution and not a TAA option, but at least MSAA exists for future hardware.

 

[JaseC]

About the start the game up. If I use Borderless Gaming do I still need to enable V-sync?

Nope. Windows forces triple buffering when an application is running in a window.

 

[Corpekata]

XCOM 2 is not a good comparison if you're trying to make this port look good. To this day certain building destruction elements will tank my computer, and yes, that's with no MSAA.

 

[Zafir]

I feel like people are complaining about more things than just "can't get 60fps with 8xMSAA" though.

I'm disappointed I can't get even get 60FPS with everything off/low at 1440p(my native res).

I know a 970GTX is old now, but, I don't think it looks that amazing over all.

I also gave ME:A a shot this weekend, and I can get that running at 1440p/60FPS. I think that probably looks better too, outside of the animations of course.

Now I'm willing to admit it's not a port fault, and probably the game in general since the PS4 was struggling too, but doesn't make me any less disappointed.

 

[Paragon]

XCOM 2 is not a good comparison if you're trying to make this port look good. To this day certain building destruction elements will tank my computer, and yes, that's with no MSAA.

Yes, XCOM2 has performance issues beside MSAA, but the biggest issue at launch was that the presets included MSAA which tanked performance.

Nope. Windows forces triple buffering when an application is running in a window.

If you don't have v-sync enabled the game will stutter badly.
That's possibly why some people have suggested implementing a 60 FPS cap via RTSS.

 

[Finaika]

They could just label MSAA instead of just "AA" and give a note saying "warning: this is very demanding and only recommended for very powerfull machines", or something like that.

That would be too much work.

 

[UrbanRats]

I think people expected this game to be lighter than it is, because of how it looks.

Something like Shadow of Mordor for example was the opposite, I was able to have decently stable 60fps, with a game that looked pretty damn impressive (at least on a technical level, artistic direction is going to be very subjective).
This game, mostly in the environment department, looks really rough, and so people were probably expecting it to run very smoothly, even with downsampling, for example.

I mean even if I tried to lower Witcher 3 to where it kept stable-ish 60fps, I think it would still look better than this.

 

[Wonder Peter]

I'm thinking of doing the same.

You might be interested in running it on low though. I slightly overclocked my 7950 and that is just enough to hold a decent 55-60fps on low settings + medium shadows. In my opinion low settings still looks good.

I already tried that but it doesn't make much of a difference on the fps performance. Thanks anyway . Will change if it drops a lot mid combat

 

[JaseC]

If you don't have v-sync enabled the game will stutter badly.
That's possibly why some people have suggested implementing a 60 FPS cap via RTSS.

RTSS has been known to smooth out frametimes... which is why it's a part of literally every single PC perf. thread OP I've made.

 

[Dream_Journey]

It's possibly due to the lighting in those shots I guess.
Possibly in other locations the AA option may look better, but the post-processing AA (AA off / AO on) is good enough, especially for those with performance issues.

Though on another note, post-processing AA off (AO off) and AA on looks awful from what I saw.

Yes, as far as i see while AO on there is no need AA. Also probably downsampling is better option than 8xMSAA because of these graphic bugs and GPU usage.

 

[Cannon Goose]

I feel like this gif from the DSfix thread should be put in the OP

 

[Xyber]

I'm disappointed I can't get even get 60FPS with everything off/low at 1440p(my native res).

I know a 970GTX is old now, but, I don't think it looks that amazing over all.

I also gave ME:A a shot this weekend, and I can get that running at 1440p/60FPS. I think that probably looks better too, outside of the animations of course.

Now I'm willing to admit it's not a port fault, and probably the game in general since the PS4 was struggling too, but doesn't make me any less disappointed.

Check that the game isn't running on your Intel GPU, that seemed to be the problem for my friend who couldn't get the game to run good with his 970 no matter the settings.

 

[KainXVIII]

I'm disappointed I can't get even get 60FPS with everything off/low at 1440p(my native res).

I know a 970GTX is old now, but, I don't think it looks that amazing over all.

I also gave ME:A a shot this weekend, and I can get that running at 1440p/60FPS. I think that probably looks better too, outside of the animations of course.

Now I'm willing to admit it's not a port fault, and probably the game in general since the PS4 was struggling too, but doesn't make me any less disappointed.

That's what i'm talking about, if 60 fps console game can't maintain 60 fps on GTX 970 (MSAA off) - this is NOT good port. But you run it 1440p though 😀

 

[Zafir]

Check that the game isn't running on your Intel GPU, that seemed to be the problem for my friend who couldn't get the game to run good with his 970 no matter the settings.

It manages to run mostly at 60FPS(some drops here and there) @ 1080p which I doubt an Intel card would do. Which is what I ended up just doing, decided to just play it on my 1080p TV that's hooked up instead of playing it on my monitor.

I just don't think the 970GTX can play it at 1440p for whatever reason. With every setting ramped up(including MSAA) I was getting 30-35FPS at 1440p, with every setting off/low I got 45FPS(with maybe some jumps to 50FPS when there was very little on screen).

 

[Kurt Russell]

I've tried everything yet I can't get rid of random framerate drops.

This is what I'm getting:

https://vimeo.com/209073641


AA is off, the game is windowed (with Borderless Gaming turning it borderless) and vsync is off.
The other settings are enabled (tried going up and down, no difference)

I'm running on a 3570k @4ghz, 16gb RAM, a 1070 and Windows 10 (Game DVR disabled)

Anyone else with a similar problem?

I also tried locking the game to 60 and later 59 fps with RTSS, and set my monitor's refresh rate to 59 as someone suggested here.

 

[Ascheroth]

I've tried everything yet I can't get rid of random framerate drops.

This is what I'm getting:

https://vimeo.com/209073641


AA is off, the game is windowed (with Borderless Gaming turning it borderless) and vsync is off.
The other settings are enabled (tried going up and down, no difference)

I'm running on a 3570k @4ghz, 16gb RAM, a 1070 and Windows 10 (Game DVR disabled)

Anyone else with a similar problem?

I also tried locking the game to 60 and later 59 fps with RTSS, and set my monitor's refresh rate to 59 as someone suggested here.

Out of curiosity, are you running the game on an SSD or HDD?

 

[Renekton]

XCOM 2 is not a good comparison if you're trying to make this port look good. To this day certain building destruction elements will tank my computer, and yes, that's with no MSAA.

Try a clean reinstall with no mods.

 

[Kurt Russell]

Out of curiosity, are you running the game on an SSD or HDD?

HDD, but the framedrops that I'm getting don't seem to be the same thing that I'd get if it was an asset streaming issue (and let's be honest, if the game runs like this because it's not on an SSD, then yeah, it's a pretty bad port)

 

[mcmmaster]

So my DS4 pad just doesn't want to work, it keeps forcing it to input as keyboard and mouse once I boot the game and its driving me insane. Anyone know of a solution?

So I did some more testing with my DS4 pad not working and it turns out my Xbox pad also doesn't work with the game. It's recognising both of them as KB/M controls, and before anyone suggests messing around with Big Picture Mode's controller settings, using Input Mapper or DS4Windows they don't change a thing.

Just opened up several other Steam games and both controllers work flawlessly without any external programs or any extra tinkering with Big Picture Mode's controller settings, i'm out of solutions at this point. Going to try a fresh install and see if that works, if not then i'm swamped.

Both controllers are wired by the way so their is no bluetooth interference.

FINALLY I fixed my DS4 issue, it was Fraps all along! I can't believe it was something that simple that solved all of this, I wasted so much time with drivers and fiddling with settings in both Steam and DS4 programs, heck I don't even need the latter as the pad works natively in Steam. What happened was Steam overlay wouldn't open with Fraps so once I closed it and got in, I just toggled Controller Options > Use Steam Configuration for Non-Steam Controllers and it worked.

Anyway onto the performance, kind of surprised i'm getting a jittery 59-60fps (rarely ever locked 60) when casually walking, when running through environments it can go from 50-60fps, and in battles 45-60fps on my rig with both AA & AO disabled and everything else on max at native 1440p.

GTX 1070
i7 2600k OC 4.2Ghz
12GB Ram

Any tips for improving performance?

 

[longdi]

Turn off AA, and yep the open level with grass is 60fps most of the time. However the image seems to have more shimmers, especially the water.

Playing the game with Xbox one controller is painful, trigger and hard buttons and all..

 

[SapphiCine]

Started playing and the stuttering is bothering me. Using Borderless Gaming and set a 60 FPS cap with RTS.

 

[Gbraga]

Started playing and the stuttering is bothering me. Using Borderless Gaming and set a 60 FPS cap with RTS.

Try capping at 59

 

[Yappadappadu]

So if I understood correctly as long as Fullscreen doesn't work properly downscaling instead of ingame AA isn't an option because I would also have to change the resolution of my 16:10 monitor (playing on a TV) which is annoying.
Which means that Reshade is currently the best option?
(My computer being a 7700K with GTX 1080)

 

[Tizoc]

Nier:A has a very good post-processing AA implementation though.

Yes, without MSAA the GPU load is significantly lessened, especially in areas with foliage.
I don't understand the second part of your question. Yes, it's a port of a 60 FPS (well, "60 FPS" on consoles really) game, that's why even with 8xMSAA it runs better than e.g. DE:MD as the charts on the previous page show.

Edit - direct comparison:

NOTE IF YOU ARE JUST JOINING US: BOTH OF THESE RUN WITH 8XMSAA; UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS BEFORE COMMENTING.

Durante any suggestions for getting best performance on a GTX 970M?

 

[SapphiCine]

Try capping at 59

Doing this while have the game running caused a crash. Oh bother, I hadn't even reached a save point.

Update: Capping 59 FPS helps with gameplay stuttering but pre-rendered cutscenes are worse.

 

[TheSpoiler]

So if I turn off AA it'll take an even bigger load off?

 

[collige]

Nope. Windows forces triple buffering when an application is running in a window.

Does it still do this on Gsync monitors?

 

[JaseC]

So if I turn off AA it'll take an even bigger load off?

MSAA is relatively expensive, yes, but you can force FXAA/SMAA externally (see "Use a less expensive form of anti-aliasing" in the OP).

Does it still do this on Gsync monitors?

I believe so.