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Dark Souls 3 PC performance thread

K

Kaldaien

Neo Member
FlyinJ said:
I wouldn't mind if the game consistently ran at say 25 fps if I lock it to 30 or 55 fps if I lock it to 60.

What drives me to the point of insanity is that regardless of where I lock it, it randomly stutters down to 25/55 for a second then back to 30/60 when I'm walking around. I just can't deal with that.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you just need a better framerate limiter? At the risk of shameless self promotion, the limiter I wrote for Tales of Zestiria and Fallout 4 is included in Souls Unsqueezed.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=663922936

Even if you don't need aspect ratio correction, it has a pretty sophisticated limiter that avoids hitching. I'd encourage you to try different values for TargetFPS in dxgi.ini.

I run the game at 4K locked to 48 FPS and it works very well on my 3-way GTX 980 system (2 of the GTX 980s are disabled because input latency was annoying me).
 
O

Oreoleo

Member
taahahmed said:
Eh? What settings did you use for a generally locked 60 FPS? Running a 660 as well. Running max settings except with high lighting and shadows for a solid 30 FPS.
Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't respond to this, kinda forgot about the thread. I would not describe what I was getting as "generally locked" at all, it's just that I'm mostly able to ignore the dips into 50's and high 40's, thankfully. Anyway, I had pretty much everything set to High (no max) except lighting, motion blur and DOF all set to low. Now, post-Pontiff/Dancer sub-20fps experiences, I've got effects and shading quality set to medium as well and the game runs swimmingly. Not even really seeing the drops into the 40's/50's anymore. Though I don't run FPS counters since I'll drive myself mad chasing locked 60 so I'm just going by feel.

I didn't realize the lighting-related crashes had been fixed though, gonna have to play around with that to see if it's safe/worth bumping back up.
 
F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
Kaldaien said:
Perhaps you just need a better framerate limiter? At the risk of shameless self promotion, the limiter I wrote for Tales of Zestiria and Fallout 4 is included in Souls Unsqueezed.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=663922936

Even if you don't need aspect ratio correction, it has a pretty sophisticated limiter that avoids hitching. I'd encourage you to try different values for TargetFPS in dxgi.ini.

I run the game at 4K locked to 48 FPS and it works very well on my 3-way GTX 980 system (2 of the GTX 980s are disabled because input latency was annoying me).
Click to expand...

I just tried your frame limiter, and I'm still getting the 1 second frame rate stutters in the exact same spots.

It's definitely a problem with the engine... seems like a memory/streaming issue.

Did any of the PC performance articles talk about this issue? It's crazy so many people have it.
 
K

Krusenstern

Banned
J

JudgmentJay

Member
Krusenstern said:
Can confirm too.
I the only occasional micro stutters I'm getting now are unrelated to autosaves. Probably due to asset loading or something. But happens quite frequently in the I
rithyll
D
ungeon
.
Click to expand...

Yeah, same. It's the same stutter that's on console, but less noticeable... probably because of my SSDs.
 
J

JudgmentJay

Member
Orthogonal said:
I'm still having stutter. It might be a little less severe, but definitely still there.
Click to expand...

Did you have save stutter in the first place? Before, the game would basically freeze for 0.5-1 second almost every time an item was looted or the menu was exited. That type of stutter is now gone... for me at least. The asset loading-related stutter you get when moving around a level is still there (as it is on console... I have my doubts it'll ever be fixed).
 
O

Oni Jazar

Member
What are the best settings to drop to improve framerate?

I've got a 980M with 8GB VRAM / i7-4710MQ and my fps fluctuates 45-60 no matter what depending on the area.
 
T

TheThunder

Member
Oni Jazar said:
What are the best settings to drop to improve framerate?

I've got a 980M with 8GB VRAM / i7-4710MQ and my fps fluctuates 45-60 no matter what depending on the area.
Click to expand...

Shadows, motion blur, SSAO.

Also, effects can have a big difference in boss fights since some bosses can go really crazy with that.
 
T

Trigker

Member
JudgmentJay said:
I just tried it... if anything, it made it worse for me.
Click to expand...

I didn't try it, but i saw it on Reddit in the PC megathread so i thought to share it with you anyway.

For the guy asking how to do it, it's in the control panel of the gpu.. it's in both Nvidia Control Panel and Crimson
 
E

Envelope

sealed with a kiss
i'm getting 40-60 fps maxed at 1080p on my 660+i3 with the very occasional stutter, legit surprised at how well it runs.
 
D

darkvir

Member
I go from 60fps for awhile then the game crawls to 15fps... When I change the resolution up or down it goes back up to 60 until it drops again. Makes it unplayable and I can't even play online.
 
F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
So, yeah. Absolutely ZERO improvement on all stuttering. Still get a huge dip when it saves, and constant microstutter when walking around and fighting enemies.

Even tried the disable shader cache thing. It did nothing, I got the exact same stutters in the same places.

Absolute garbage. God damn I wish I got the PS4 version. It has stutter, but no where near as much as the PC sku.

Inexcusable that my 970 locked at 30fps has this much stutter.
 
S

SZips

Member
Did they ever fix the issue with Nvidia cards where the display driver would crash near bonfires on anything other than the low lighting setting?
 
S

sheaaaa

Member
Damn I was hoping this patch would fix the issues but doesn't seem that way. Disgraceful that the game was released like this.
 
F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
Did the Digital Foundry article mention the constant microstuttering? I seem to remember them gushing about what an amazing perfect port it was.
 
F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
The microstutter is so bad when fighting some enemies the game actually doesn't recognize button presses if the game is microstuttering when you press.

I just died in the swamp fighting one of those log guys because of this.
 
S

shiyrley

Banned
Am I the only one getting random massive framerate drops when accessing the graphics menu? The game runs fine on my 660ti ("60 FPS" with drops at ~medium settings at 1080p) but when I enter the graphics options menu the framerate tanks to about 10 FPS until I close it. This means that if I spend too much time changing graphics options I will be kicked out of the online mode until I restart the game. It's super annoying because I would like to tweak the settings around and I can't. This happens even if I change the graphics from the main menu, so it's obviously some kind of bug. Anyone?
 
J

JudgmentJay

Member
darkvir said:
No other games my GTX 680 have similar issues... I may try downgrading to th 314 drivers... Wish I got PS4 version.
Click to expand...

Worth noting that I don't have any of the FPS drops you're describing. I have a GTX680 SLI setup, but even when I run the game on a single card it's smooth sailing.
 
J

j0hnny_385

Member
WTF is wrong with this update?
Why is DS3 preallocating tens of GBs on my HDD for a 88MB update? o_O

edit: back to normal now, after 10min of applying a 88MB patch. *sigh*
 
D

darkvir

Member
Dictator93 said:
Hence why I ask, as it could be game specific.

Post screenshots of the OSD and all its metrics while at proper FPS vs. when it is tanking if you could. Then we can help you get it to work correctly.
Click to expand...

Will do...Thanks. I was just playing it without any issues. Only thing I tried was changing NVidia Power settings from 'Adaptive' to 'Prefer max performance'

I don't think the new update had anything to do with it.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
darkvir said:
Will do...Thanks. I was just playing it without any issues. Only thing I tried was changing NVidia Power settings from 'Adaptive' to 'Prefer max performance'
Click to expand...
Nice to hear!
Changing that perameter would force your GPU to maintain the same core and mem clocks in games instead of dynamically up and downclocking based upon measured metrics. Some games mess that up sometimes and cause the card to downclock when it should not.
 
O

Orthogonal

Member
JudgmentJay said:
Did you have save stutter in the first place? Before, the game would basically freeze for 0.5-1 second almost every time an item was looted or the menu was exited. That type of stutter is now gone... for me at least. The asset loading-related stutter you get when moving around a level is still there (as it is on console... I have my doubts it'll ever be fixed).
Click to expand...

I'll have to pay more attention to it, but I noticed it in Firelink, can't imagine it was still doing asset loading around the bonfire.
 
H

Horsemama1956

Member
j0hnny_385 said:
WTF is wrong with this update?
Why is DS3 preallocating tens of GBs on my HDD for a 88MB update? o_O

edit: back to normal now, after 10min of applying a 88MB patch. *sigh*
Click to expand...

It probably has to extract the archived files(whichever format they use), add the updated files and then put it back together so you need the addition space for each extracted files. Most of the games content is in 5 separate archives in the Game folder.
 
D

darkvir

Member
Dictator93 said:
Nice to hear!
Changing that perameter would force your GPU to maintain the same core and mem clocks in games instead of dynamically up and downclocking based upon measured metrics. Some games mess that up sometimes and cause the card to downclock when it should not.
Click to expand...

What you said made sense, it's also what led me to change the setting. Thanks for your help. I played for another hour, no issues! Fingers crossed :)
 
T

TheRed

Member
It's weird to hear so many people having stuttering problems even with a 970. I've been in my own world playing this game for 40 hours and am almost always a solid 60 fps with no stuttering. I get an occasional drop to like 58 fps when running around some corners but visually it's not happening often that I never notice unless I look at the counter. I've been able to pick up items and open menus with no stuttering at all it stays at a flat 60 fps. I'm not blind to any stuttering either, had a hell of a time trying to get the Division to stop stuttering when I had that problem there.
 
F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
I FINALLY fixed my constant stuttering. Here's what I did:

Downloaded this:

https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming

Changed my monitor's resolution to 1080p 30hz in the Nvidia control panel
Ran DS3 in windowed mode, set the window resolution to 1080p
Ran the borderless-gaming app, clicked on Dark Souls 3 and clicked "make borderless" in the app.
NO external frame limiter running. Running a 30fps frame limiter will still give you stuttering if you do the above.

Now I have finally removed the constant travel and combat stuttering, getting a solid 30fps with all graphics settings at max.

Every once in a while I still do get a half second stutter when walking around, but the constant 28-30fps stutter is finally eliminated.

Whew... this is the first time I've ever had to go to such crazy measures to fix in-game stuttering. Usually I can just put a frame limiter on it and it solves the problem.

I have no idea what Dark Souls 3 is doing with it's video output to require me to do this. Everything else works totally fine on my Windows 10 970 system,
 
T

TheRed

Member
FlyinJ said:
I FINALLY fixed my constant stuttering. Here's what I did:

Downloaded this:

https://github.com/Codeusa/Borderless-Gaming

Changed my monitor's resolution to 1080p 30hz in the Nvidia control panel
Ran DS3 in windowed mode, set the window resolution to 1080p
Ran the borderless-gaming app, clicked on Dark Souls 3 and clicked "make borderless" in the app.
NO external frame limiter running. Running a 30fps frame limiter will still give you stuttering if you do the above.

Now I have finally removed the constant travel and combat stuttering, getting a solid 30fps with all graphics settings at max.

Every once in a while I still do get a half second stutter when walking around, but the constant 28-30fps stutter is finally eliminated.

Whew... this is the first time I've ever had to go to such crazy measures to fix in-game stuttering. Usually I can just put a frame limiter on it and it solves the problem.

I have no idea what Dark Souls 3 is doing with it's video output to require me to do this. Everything else works totally fine on my Windows 10 970 system,
Click to expand...
Do you have to limit to 30? Weird I have a Win 10 970 system and have enjoyed the entire game max settings at an almost perfect 60 fps. What cpu do you have? I have i5 4670k @4.1 ghz. Maybe my overclocking has made the difference. Both my cpu and gpu are overclocked.
 
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