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Dishonored 2 PC performance thread

When motion blur kicks in, my FPS drops.

Ah motion blur, the destroyer of pixel response time.

I bought a 144 Hz monitor with excellent overdrive implementation for increased motion clarity, and what does Arkane give me? Forced motion blur and an engine with a tick rate that maxes out at 60 fps :P

I too hope they add a toggle soon.
 
When motion blur kicks in, my FPS drops.

bGrtWCu.jpg


Normally I'm sitting here at 60, but if I pan the camera, FPS drops. When I take a screenshot, you can see that motion blur is active. Thing is, my GPU usage doesn't seem to increase.

That's 2 overclocked 980TIs dropping below 60 FPS here. Just crazy. Is there a way to force motion blur off?

What resolution are you running at?
 
As someone that has thought about buying this game, can anyone explain what's wrong with it? What's causing the performance issues? Engine choice? Laziness? All of the above?
 
The fact that they had all the necessary interface assets/flags in place to add these complex options to the settings menus so quickly leads me to suspect that their original twitter responses were quite disingenuous. They've obviously been working on a graphics update for some time leading up to the launch.

Edit: It really didn't make any significant improvements to my testing area (looking over the Dunholm port at the end of chapter 1). It's still varying between 40-50 on my 1060/4790k on the Auto preset (mix of high / very high). Even with all settings at medium I can't hit a constant 60 in this location. I'm disappointed after reading the positive response elsewhere.
 
Runs a lot better, with a mix of ultra and high set it to locked 75fps. I might finally be able to play this now, jesus christ.

Still feel sorry for the poor bastards that don't have a 1070/1080 thoug. What the fook.
 
I set view distance to shadows to just high and everything else on ultra and I haven't noticed a single dip below 60 with adaptive reso off locked at 75hz

my specs are

MSI GTX 1070 GAMING X OC +150/300
I5 6600K 4.5ghz
16gbDDR4
installed on an SSD
 
I installed the new beta patch and the latest nvidia drivers and noticed a significant difference. I'm on the Dr Hipatia mission and in the main lobby I am now getting a consistent 60 where before it was all over the map.

This is on a GTX 980ti and a 4.2ghz 3570k.
 
Man, setting this to a 30 FPS frame limit looks all wrong. Feels more 20 FPS than 30.

edit: I tested with recording a Fraps video. It's definitely 30 FPS (I see 30 unique frames per second). I'll try 60 just to make sure.

edit2: 60 FPS checks out as well. I must be crazy.
 
Ah motion blur, the destroyer of pixel response time.

I bought a 144 Hz monitor with excellent overdrive implementation for increased motion clarity, and what does Arkane give me? Forced motion blur and an engine with a tick rate that maxes out at 60 fps :P

I too hope they add a toggle soon.

I've recently upgraded to a 165Hz G-Sync monitor - should I always turn motion blur off??
 
Should those with a GTX 970 think about buying now or wait still?

I'm getting 55-60 through most of Karnataka on a 1060, which is just between the 970 and 980. It sounds like Karnataka is the worst area of the game for fps (though I could be wrong about that), so I would say it feels playable. I still think that a 970/1060 should be sitting at a constant 60 with Very High settings based on the terrain/model complexity/textures/image quality I'm seeing rendered out, but 55-60 is far closer than what was available before this 1.2 beta patch.
 
I installed the new beta patch and the latest nvidia drivers and noticed a significant difference. I'm on the Dr Hipatia mission and in the main lobby I am now getting a consistent 60 where before it was all over the map.

This is on a GTX 980ti and a 4.2ghz 3570k.

What graphics options?
 
anyway to give feedback to the dev? I think if the game support triple buffer, that should smooth things out a lot.

It does, in the beta patch. It's in the menu now.

Your best bet is likely the Steam forums. They have some reps there and it seems to be where they are collecting a lot of info.
 
anyway to give feedback to the dev? I think if the game support triple buffer, that should smooth things out a lot.

A triple buffering option is in as of the latest beta patch, however to answer your question, your best bet is tweeting Harvey Smith as the game's Steam Community hub is still quite busy and e-mails to all Zenimax-owned studios go through Bethesda.

I'll be updating the graphics settings section of the OP in a little while.
 
Man, setting this to a 30 FPS frame limit looks all wrong. Feels more 20 FPS than 30.

edit: I tested with recording a Fraps video. It's definitely 30 FPS (I see 30 unique frames per second). I'll try 60 just to make sure.

edit2: 60 FPS checks out as well. I must be crazy.

You are probably not crazy. I haven't tested the new patch, but one thing I know for certain is that there is a stutter / frame pacing problem in the game, or at least there was, that doesn't show in the framerate, nor does it show in the frametimes graph. Everything looks as good as possible when looking at numbers and afterburner graphs, but the actual game image is not updated smoothly.

I've never actually seen anything quite like it before. Stutters certainly usually show at least in the frametimes, if not the framerate.
 
You are probably not crazy. I haven't tested the new patch, but one thing I know for certain is that there is a stutter / frame pacing problem in the game, or at least there was, that doesn't show in the framerate, nor does it show in the frametimes graph. Everything looks as good as possible when looking at numbers and afterburner graphs, but the actual game image is not updated smoothly.

I've never actually seen anything quite like it before. Stutters certainly usually show at least in the frametimes, if not the framerate.

All I can tell you is that Fraps records 60 frames per second regardless of what is happening in-game. It showed 60 unique frames in one second. I've done it a few times to make sure. I even ran a test where I recorded a 60 FPS video of 30 FPS gameplay. Each and every game frame lasted exactly two frames in the video.

I still think there was something wrong before this performance patch but it looks like it's working correctly now.
 
It does, in the beta patch. It's in the menu now.

Your best bet is likely the Steam forums. They have some reps there and it seems to be where they are collecting a lot of info.

A triple buffering option is in as of the latest beta patch, however to answer your question, your best bet is tweeting Harvey Smith as the game's Steam Community hub is still quite busy and e-mails to all Zenimax-owned studios go through Bethesda.

I'll be updating the graphics settings section of the OP in a little while.

nice to know, they just need to give the 970 another 10-15fps boost to I can actually run it at 1080p 60fps. I am surprise DF has don't a comparison video yet.
 
New patch has made it playable for me on my r9 290, i5 4690k. I do have a freesync monitor however so that may be helping. Everything feels a lot smoother and looks better.
 
New patch!!

Very nice, but how does it work ? Does this patch actually make a difference ?

The last one added like 1-3 fps for my config, mouse issue fixed ?
 
New patch!!

Very nice, but how does it work ? Does this patch actually make a difference ?

The last one added like 1-3 fps for my config, mouse issue fixed ?

Don't know about the eariler levels but I have played the last three levels with this patch and it was rock solid 60 all the way.

1080p Very High, no adaptive resolution.
980ti and i7 6700k.
 
What in the world is the patching doing? It's like downloading a ps3 game. Game suddenly takes up double it's own size. 4gb patch needs over 30gb space.
 
What in the world is the patching doing? It's like downloading a ps3 game. Game suddenly takes up double it's own size. 4gb patch needs over 30gb space.
It's probably using an antiquated method of delta patching. It backs up the old files, while it creates new ones with the updated data.
 
It's probably using an antiquated method of delta patching. It backs up the old files, while it creates new ones with the updated data.

More or less. Steam copies in their entirety the files that are being updated to the "downloading" filer, updates the data, then replaces the previous files. The change to this system roughly five-and-a-half years ago solved the issue of having to download a ton of unnecessary data but there remains the matter of having enough space to temporarily hold two copies of whichever files are being modified.
 
Is everyone turning on triple buffering for smoothness? Without it I find it quite stuttery on the Karnaca docks.

Also does triple buffering impact controller response or am I just imagining it?
 
Is everyone turning on triple buffering for smoothness? Without it I find it quite stuttery on the Karnaca docks.

Also does triple buffering impact controller response or am I just imagining it?

Yes, with it enabled it helps quite a bit with the stuttering but it does increase input lag, but worth it imo.
 
When motion blur kicks in, my FPS drops.

bGrtWCu.jpg


Normally I'm sitting here at 60, but if I pan the camera, FPS drops. When I take a screenshot, you can see that motion blur is active. Thing is, my GPU usage doesn't seem to increase.

That's 2 overclocked 980TIs dropping below 60 FPS here. Just crazy. Is there a way to force motion blur off?


This area right there is the worst I've seen in the game for my machine. With a 1080 I get down to <30 FPS when I look at the small canal.
 
Is Karnaca docks confirmed to be the most demanding area of the game? Because if so I could actually tolerate playing this. Things are pretty smooth after this patch when running in less demanding areas.
 
Is Karnaca docks confirmed to be the most demanding area of the game? Because if so I could actually tolerate playing this. Things are pretty smooth after this patch when running in less demanding areas.

The mission after Karnaca was worse for me. Not sure if everyone else experienced that.


I wrote a post about the game being unplayable for me on a 1080gtx, with this patch yeah it's playable. It still doesn't feel very smooth but at least it's good enough for me to actually play the game now.

I got a gsync 144hz monitor. Anyone who's been fiddling with the settings with a similar setup? What would give me the smoothest experience (my fps isn't really the problem almost always above 80). Tripple buffering OFF felt better for me for some reason.
 
Try to lower shadow quality in the first place, then textures if you're playing at 4k. After the patch this setting is much more demanding (I can also notice that because my HDD is constantly loading the textures to stream as soon as I move the camera).

Anyway, do you guys suggest to disable GSync since the game has an internal cap?
 
Karnaca docks are a stable locked 60fps for me, but I only play on high. 980ti here.

It's not perfect, yet. But playable. It still feels a bit stuttery. I will continue and hope they fix it suoersmooth. Gane seems to be pretty cool.
 
Karnaca docks are a stable locked 60fps for me, but I only play on high. 980ti here.

It's not perfect, yet. But playable. It still feels a bit stuttery. I will continue and hope they fix it suoersmooth. Gane seems to be pretty cool.

I'm running a 980Ti too and playing on very high. You're right, even when it's running at 60fps there is still some stutter, though much better than before.

Have they confirmed that this is just an initial performance patch and they're working on further improvements? I really hope they don't just accept this (admittedly big) improvement as good enough and just move on.

Edit: Just discovered that switching to borderless window mode almost completely eliminates the frame rate drop when turning quickly into complex scenes... weird. You'd think the performance would be better in fullscreen mode.
 
I seem to have gained a decent amount of FPS by going to Fullscreen instead of Borderless windowed.

Have been playing Borderless since launch.

So weird, I get a much better frame rate when turning into a complex scene while running borderless window.

There's still something not quite right with performance.
 
Went to some earlier saves, since Im more than half done with the game and I did notice an improvement, around 10 fps more on my 970 in the most demanding areas. I've had it locked at 35 with settings on very high but now it seems I can lock it to 45. Its something but too late in my case but good to know its being improved so that when I return to play the game again in a year or so with all its dlc's with corvo on kill everyone playthrough, these improvements will be welcomed. Heh
 
You are probably not crazy. I haven't tested the new patch, but one thing I know for certain is that there is a stutter / frame pacing problem in the game, or at least there was, that doesn't show in the framerate, nor does it show in the frametimes graph. Everything looks as good as possible when looking at numbers and afterburner graphs, but the actual game image is not updated smoothly.

I've never actually seen anything quite like it before. Stutters certainly usually show at least in the frametimes, if not the framerate.

New patch dramatically improves frametimes at 60 fps. Not totally stutter free but much, much better. However 30 fps is still a stuttery mess.

This area right there is the worst I've seen in the game for my machine. With a 1080 I get down to <30 FPS when I look at the small canal.

I'm getting 60 fps on a 1070 but I'm only running 1080p.

So weird, I get a much better frame rate when turning into a complex scene while running borderless window.

There's still something not quite right with performance.

Better frametimes running in borderless window is pretty common for quite a few games. It's one of the reasons that borderless window mode is so popular.
 
ok. just played for a couple of hrs. With a GTX 1080 running at 1080p, everything on ultra, and using their new settings i get 60fps most of the time, there are still weird drops in Karnaca for no good reason. But at least the micro stutter is gone. I am running the 60fps lock tho, with VSync to go along with it. That seemed to help the micro stutter somewhat, tho i still see it in some areas.

Also, GPU just running at 40% most of the time. =/

Maybe I'll wait for the next patch and see if there is more optimizations done. Also, the distance rendering is awful, lots of shimmering, things disappearing and appearing for no reason. The AA in the game has to be some of the worse i have ever seen in a game period.
 
For me, SLI is essential to maintain 60 with a mix of very high and ultra. But it's working much better now with this patch.

I mostly notice stuttering now when the game is using ALL 6GB VRAM. I also reduced it some by disabling depth of field.
 
I noticed that the game is running a little smoother with the new driver and update. Even using a controller it feels more responsive than before.

Pre-driver and patch i would average around 80fps with low drops to 40s in intensive areas. Now I have it locked at 60fps. Ultra preset with sharpening on to help with the image blur with TXAA.

980ti
i7 6700k
16GB DDR4
 
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