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Dying Light PC Performance Thread

Couldn't test the SweetFX profile, apparently you need to install some stuff to make it work on 8.1, and I didn't really feel like it.

Dont know why games dont come with a 30fps lock personally.

They really should. I'm hoping The Witcher 3 will, since they're listing recommended settings aiming for 30fps.
 
Game runs fine after the 1st patch not great but fine

Gtx 970, i7 3770 3.4, 16gb ram

All settings maxed except shadows on high and dof off ,view distance 100%, vsync on

Get Solid 60 inside, 40-60 outside, Its better without vsync but the tearing bothers me far too much. At least whatever the patch fixed it fixed the hitching on my end
 
I notched down textures to medium and it does run way smoother, far less hitches.

Some of the textures are seriously downgraded though. Especially elements like graffiti and small world objects like notes on walls, labels on small objects.

I can confirm this. I made a post earlier in this thread with a few quick screenshot comparisons: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=149428718&postcount=338

Thankfully, it does look like the only texture detail that really takes a hit are on the signs though, and I have heard that texture loading bug depicted in the last screen of my post may have been fixed with the 1.2.1 patch.
 
Game runs fine after the 1st patch not great but fine

Gtx 970, i7 3770 3.4, 16gb ram

All settings maxed except shadows on high and dof off ,fov 100%, vsync on

Get Solid 60 inside, 40-60 outside, Its better without vsync but the tearing bothers me far too much. At least whatever the patch fixed it fixed the hitching on my end

If by FOV you meant View Distance, you can try bringing that down to half.
 
Wow this game is bigger and better-looking than I expected, really not surprised at how demanding it is.

4670k @ 4.2
780 @ 1110Mhz (running lower profile due to crash at usually stable 1123)
16Gb RAM
Driver 344.75
Win 8.1
SSD
144Hz monitor
VSync disabled
Everything else maxed out or on in game settings except FOV which is halfway.
1920 x 1080

Using Afterburner, lowest recorded framerate was 34 when that first big zombie comes crashing out of the building. Otherwise mostly in the 40-70 range outdoors.

Game scales well really across 4 cores usually all in the forties. At one point I saw the 4th core at 68% but this was a temporary blip. GPU use a constant 98% so I'm clearly GPU bottlenecked which is how it should be. Lowering draw distance to 0 earned me about 10% improvement in FPS.

VRAM is almost locked at 2900Mb, playing for 2 hours made no difference. Only a couple of occasions early on did it max out at 3072. System RAM 6300Mb which is as high as I've ever seen.

Nothing out of the ordinary with the frametimes, only a handful of serious spikes which were detectable during play. As usual with my monitor, screen tear is barely detectable with VSync disabled.

Overall I'm happy, but I'm beginning to wonder if I'm lucky with my setup or my expectations are in check. These threads have a familiar ring to them.

If you haven't already, you could try lowering the shadows from the (4096 res) "Very High" setting to the (2048 res) "High" setting. In my opinion, there isn't a massive difference in visual quality for the performance difference, and It could net you up to 10-15 (maybe more) fps in the game's more demanding areas.

On my 770 4GB, It was taking up to 20-25% extra GPU usage with shadows at max when compared to the "High" setting.
 
Couldn't test the SweetFX profile, apparently you need to install some stuff to make it work on 8.1, and I didn't really feel like it.



They really should. I'm hoping The Witcher 3 will, since they're listing recommended settings aiming for 30fps.

It's probably because it's not difficult to lock your framerate on PC. You can simply use MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision's RivaTuner frame cap or in Nvidia Inspector.
 
So I'm getting huge frame-rate dips and I'm not sure what is causing it tbh. I thought with my setup I'd be able to run this close to maxed out but that is not the case.

4570s @ 2.9 (could this be it, I haven't had any issues running other games but maybe the low clock for power efficiency is starting to affect games?)
GTX 970 @ 1102MHz
8gb RAM
347.25 Drivers
Win 8.1
1920 x 1080
No Vsync

I'm having issues even when I set the textures to medium and it has me puzzled. I just got the GPU too! I should add that I have a second monitor but that is just for casual browsing or watching a show while gaming.
 
So I'm getting huge frame-rate dips and I'm not sure what is causing it tbh. I thought with my setup I'd be able to run this close to maxed out but that is not the case.

4570s @ 2.9 (could this be it, I haven't had any issues running other games including a but maybe the low clock for power efficiency is starting to affect games?)
GTX 970 @ 1102MHz
8gb RAM
347.25 Drivers
Win 8.1
1920 x 1080
No Vsync

I'm having issues even when I set the textures to medium and it has me puzzled. I just got the GPU too! I should add that I have a second monitor but that is just for casual browsing or watching a show while gaming.

It's the game. I get random drops as well here and there. I just had to lock to 30 and call it a day.
 
I'm concluding the hitches are due to texture streaming, it's badly implemented.

Lowering texture resolution fixes this, everything else can stay as is.

Also me and two buddies experienced random crashes, they're extremely rare though.

Hopefully the next patch is deployed soon.
 
It's probably because it's not difficult to lock your framerate on PC. You can simply use MSI Afterburner/EVGA Precision's RivaTuner frame cap or in Nvidia Inspector.

Agreed, but how many years have we struggled with "why is 30fps on PC worse than consoles?" before people found out about 1/2 refresh rate + Rivatuner Statistics + Max-prerendered Frames=1 to produce "smooth" 30fps?

Even games that are actually 30fps on PC some times fuck up the framepacing, this kind of shit is ridiculous.
 
Agreed, but how many years have we struggled with "why is 30fps on PC worse than consoles?" before people found out about 1/2 refresh rate + Rivatuner Statistics + Max-prerendered Frames=1 to produce "smooth" 30fps?

Even games that are actually 30fps on PC some times fuck up the framepacing, this kind of shit is ridiculous.

Yup, and even when games do feature a 30 fps option, they almost always only set a 30Hz refresh, or only set a 30 fps framelimit (as you said, often with no framepacing). I've never seen both.

However, like others on this thread have already stated, I think most developers just don't find it to be a high priority, especially with how many of the less informed PC gamers find the very idea of 30 fps PC gaming "heresy" under any circumstance.

Thankfully, both the needed programs are entirely free, and once learned, it's easy to cap games to 30 fps on the fly. Not to mention the fact that Afterburner is indispensable for tracking performance, and Nvidia Inspector is, in most ways, superior to the Nvidia Control Panel if you know what you're doing.

That said, it is too bad this simple knowledge isn't more widespread.
 
How would an AMD user like me do it?

I haven't had an AMD card for a long while myself, so I can't confirm this, but I believe RadeonPro is a rough equivalent to Nvidia Inspector for AMD users.

It looks like RadeonPro has an "Always on (Double vsync)" option (along with many other frame-limiting selectors from the configuration options I saw) that works the same way as Nvidia's 1/2 refresh option. Original link here: http://www.radeonpro.info/manual/contents/the-tweaks-tab

Besides that, my instructions would remain the same.

Download link for RadeonPro: http://www.radeonpro.info/download/
 
Yup, and even when games do feature a 30 fps option, they almost always only set a 30Hz refresh, or only set a 30 fps framelimit (as you said, often with no framepacing). I've never seen both.

However, like others on this thread have already stated, I think most developers just don't find it to be a high priority, especially with how many of the less informed PC gamers find the very idea of 30 fps PC gaming "heresy" under any circumstance.

Thankfully, both the needed programs are entirely free, and once learned, it's easy to cap games to 30 fps on the fly. Not to mention the fact that Afterburner is indispensable for tracking performance, and Nvidia Inspector is, in most ways, superior to the Nvidia Control Panel if you know what you're doing.

That said, it is too bad this simple knowledge isn't more widespread.

Yeah, I guess that's the issue, it's not as common knowledge as it should be.
 
For anyone else that was suffering some severe performance drops when getting grabbed by a zombie or slimed by a spitter, turn off the Nvidia depth of field. It completely got rid of the issues for me.

From what I can tell, the depth of field is only really used during cutscenes (and the two situations above, apparently), so it's not a big loss to visual quality.

Funnily enough, I didn't realize how much of my fear of getting grabbed or slimed came from the potential performance drop until I got rid of it. Now I don't even care.
 
For anyone else that was suffering some severe performance drops when getting grabbed by a zombie or slimed by a spitter, turn off the Nvidia depth of field. It completely got rid of the issues for me.

From what I can tell, the depth of field is only really used during cutscenes (and the two situations above, apparently), so it's not a big loss to visual quality.

Funnily enough, I didn't realize how much of my fear of getting grabbed or slimed came from the potential performance drop until I got rid of it. Now I don't even care.

I noticed the same thing. In my opinion, Nvidia DoF really isn't a visual improvement over the default anyway, it just has a stronger/larger blur radius.

In other news, it looks as if they just released another minor patch, which mostly addresses multiplayer: http://steamcommunity.com/games/239140/announcements/detail/112923269201683635?l=english
 
Maybe I'll try High textures on my 970 now. Turning them to Medium completely removed the stuttering but hoo boy some of them textures look rough.
 
Patch specifically mentions tweaks for 970 users, which I know this thread has a few of, including me.

Could be a complete shot in the dark, but maybe one of those tweaks (or one that will come further down the line) is to limit the "High" texture setting's maximum cache to 3.5GB or under when a GTX 970 is detected by the game, and thus reduced perceived stutter; at least if the purported 3.5GB VRAM issue on the 970 is to be believed.

I did hear Nvidia confirm something about the issue, I'm just not sure if they've explicitly stated it can cause performance-debilitating stutter. Ah well, I guess we'll find out if all of the sudden multiple 970 users start noticing lower VRAM usage and less stutter on the "High" texture setting.
 
Indeed, looks like VRAM allocation now maxes out at ~3.4GB after extended play with High textures instead of going to 3.5+ as before.
 
I haven't had an AMD card for a long while myself, so I can't confirm this, but I believe RadeonPro is a rough equivalent to Nvidia Inspector for AMD users.

It looks like RadeonPro has an "Always on (Double vsync)" option (along with many other frame-limiting selectors from the configuration options I saw) that works the same way as Nvidia's 1/2 refresh option. Original link here: http://www.radeonpro.info/manual/contents/the-tweaks-tab

Besides that, my instructions would remain the same.

Download link for RadeonPro: http://www.radeonpro.info/download/
Thank you for this post -- I recently upgraded from a GTX 570 to an R9 290, so from someone who is still somewhat unfamiliar with how AMD does their stuff, this will really help me out. Getting tired of my card fluctuating, so having a console-smooth 30fps (especially in a game like this) is something I look forward to trying to set up. Thanks again.
 
Thank you for this post -- I recently upgraded from a GTX 570 to an R9 290, so from someone who is still somewhat unfamiliar with how AMD does their stuff, this will really help me out. Getting tired of my card fluctuating, so having a console-smooth 30fps (especially in a game like this) is something I look forward to trying to set up. Thanks again.

Hey, not a problem. Glad it may help ;)
 
I refuse to believe that this is actually a product of the High texture setting D:

dyinglightgame2015-02khuns.png
 
I've found that has happened sort of randomly throughout my experience with the game since launch. Random textures not popping in right until very close, though some not at all. I'll go through the same area later and find it looking perfect.
 
Hey, not a problem. Glad it may help ;)

Just looked into this slightly -- Seems like the guy who did most of the work on Radeon Pro left to work on AMD Raptr, which I have installed already since it came with my 290. Although I couldn't find any info regarding it, would these commands/utilities that Radeon Pro have be on this AMD Raptr program as well? (If you know, by chance)

Thanks
 
I refuse to believe that this is actually a product of the High texture setting D:

The correct texture isn't loaded there.
So no. It's not a product of the high texture setting.

Have to say that Dying Light looks absolutely fantastic. Puts Far Cry 4 running on Ultra to shame. The textures all look really detailed, the amount of zombies on screen at once can be really high and the character models themselves look stunning. They all even have cloth physics wiggling about in the wind. How much of those that are actually physics calculations I leave open for debate.
Every single piece of object I've seen in this game is of a high quality. The assets I mean.
Lighting also looks great and so does the shadows.

The game itself is really well made. The free running, the combat, character progression, the crafting and resource gathering all works without them making me feel that something is missing. Nice balance to all aspects. Well done Techland.
Now if only they can squeeze out more optimizations that doesn't affect the visual quality somehow.
 
The correct texture isn't loaded there.
So no. It's not a product of the high texture setting.

Well the game must have failed to load a bunch of textures then. Basically every texture that has some letters inside (like signs) looks exactly the same as on Medium.
 
Well the game must have failed to load a bunch of textures then. Basically every texture that has some letters inside (like signs) looks exactly the same as on Medium.

Can happen to more than just signs. Only other object I can recall seeing this happen to though are doors. Might vary depending on hardware.
 
If you haven't already, you could try lowering the shadows from the (4096 res) "Very High" setting to the (2048 res) "High" setting. In my opinion, there isn't a massive difference in visual quality for the performance difference, and It could net you up to 10-15 (maybe more) fps in the game's more demanding areas.

On my 770 4GB, It was taking up to 20-25% extra GPU usage with shadows at max when compared to the "High" setting.

This is the best advice and worth bolding. 20% better FPS at least and I'm buggered if I can tell the difference while playing. VRAM is also lower, peaking at 2800Mb.
 
What are your settings if you don't mind my asking? Your GTX 980+4790K should give you 55-60fps at all times with shadows on "high" instead of "very high", and view distance set to a notch below half.

Otherwise, follow jorimt's advice for a "smooth" 30fps lock.

I'm not ok with 55-60 fps. I hate tearing / judder yet I can't seem to avoid it even at low settings. I've tried the 30 fps lock and it seems to work fine. Thanks!
 
Just looked into this slightly -- Seems like the guy who did most of the work on Radeon Pro left to work on AMD Raptr, which I have installed already since it came with my 290. Although I couldn't find any info regarding it, would these commands/utilities that Radeon Pro have be on this AMD Raptr program as well? (If you know, by chance)

Thanks

As far as I understand it, if "RadeonPro" is AMD's equivalent to "Nvidia Inspector," then "Raptr" is AMD's equivalent to Nvidia's "GeForce Experience/Shadowplay." In other words, no, Raptr doesn't look to be a substitute for RadeonPro.

RadeonPro is basically an advanced version of the AMD graphics control panel (with other useful features, like SweetFX injection management for instance), whereas Raptr is a program mainly focused on providing in-game video capture and automatic game settings optimization.

Hope that helps.
 
I've found that has happened sort of randomly throughout my experience with the game since launch. Random textures not popping in right until very close, though some not at all. I'll go through the same area later and find it looking perfect.

I can attest to this. When making comparisons between the "Medium" and "High" textures settings after I first got the game, I was experiencing this "unloaded texture" bug with both settings.

However, a couple of game restarts fixed it for the "High" setting, and, devoid the (I think normal) behavior of some sign or door textures not fully loading until getting closer to them, I haven't experienced the issue since. Seems random.
 
OK, so I just finished the prologue and my experience so far is pretty good, better than expected. 99% of the time I'm at 60fps locked, the only noticeable dips I've had were during cut scenes which absolutely tanked my frame rate. The lowest frame rate I saw while just playing the game was 55 which wasn't even noticeable. I have everything on/max apart from view distance which is on minimum as I didn't notice any quality difference or pop in but it has a massive impact on performance. The only other setting that made any difference at all to my frame rate was FoV which I have set to 85 as that's my preference. No other video setting made even 1fps difference.

MSI GTX 970 4G @ +140/+500
i5 3570k @ 4.5GHz
8GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz
Samsung 850 EVO
Windows 7 64
347.25

PS: The game is a resource hog, I was seeing 7GB of RAM and 3.3 - 3.5GB of vRAM which is just massive, I've never seen a game use so much RAM before.
 
Guys can I get constant 60fps with all settings maxed (no AA) at 1080p on the following system?

2500k oced to 4.6GHz
SLI 680 GTX
8 gigs of ram
 
Guys can I get constant 60fps with all settings maxed (no AA) at 1080p on the following system?

2500k oced to 4.6GHz
SLI 680 GTX
8 gigs of ram

You'll have to turn a few settings down. Also texture & draw distance will depend if they're 2gb or 4gb vram cards.

Still bummed they downgraded with the initial patch. WTF
 
I can attest to this. When making comparisons between the "Medium" and "High" textures settings after I first got the game, I was experiencing this "unloaded texture" bug with both settings.

However, a couple of game restarts fixed it for the "High" setting, and, devoid the (I think normal) behavior of some sign or door textures not fully loading until getting closer to them, I haven't experienced the issue since. Seems random.

Has happened to me also on my 970. I reset my overclock and it seemed to fix it but unsure if it was related to that it not.

Patch 1.3.0 has seemed to reduced the amount of stutter when getting grabbed. Wonder what they turned off to make that happen. 😉
 
OK, so I just finished the prologue and my experience so far is pretty good, better than expected. 99% of the time I'm at 60fps locked, the only noticeable dips I've had were during cut scenes which absolutely tanked my frame rate. The lowest frame rate I saw while just playing the game was 55 which wasn't even noticeable. I have everything on/max apart from view distance which is on minimum as I didn't notice any quality difference or pop in but it has a massive impact on performance. The only other setting that made any difference at all to my frame rate was FoV which I have set to 85 as that's my preference. No other video setting made even 1fps difference.

MSI GTX 970 4G @ +140/+500
i5 3570k @ 4.5GHz
8GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz
Samsung 850 EVO
Windows 7 64
347.25

PS: The game is a resource hog, I was seeing 7GB of RAM and 3.3 - 3.5GB of vRAM which is just massive, I've never seen a game use so much RAM before.

That CPU overclock is probably helping you the most here; this game is pretty CPU dependent.

And yes, it does use a lot of system memory. I average around 7.1GB after I've been playing the game a while, according to Afterburner. Keep in mind though, I believe the RAM readout displays "total" system RAM usage. So in reality, the game is probably taking up about 5.5GB of RAM on average, at least when running at a 1440p resolution or under.

If you have it enabled, the Nvidia DoF is probably to blame for the cutscene drops, and is only active in the title screen, cutscenes, and certain zombie attacks. It's really performance intensive (the developers are working on this for a future patch), and the visual difference isn't worth it currently in my opinion. Comparison shot here: http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/dying-light/dying-light-nvidia-depth-of-field-comparison-1-on-vs-off.html

Lastly, not saying you need it (from what you said about your performance in your post), but you can get an easy performance boost (up to 25% at some points) by turning the shadows down to "High," and with very little visual difference. You may even be able to bump up the draw-distance a few notches.
 
That CPU overclock is probably helping you the most here; this game is pretty CPU dependent.

And yes, it does use a lot of system memory. I average around 7.1GB after I've been playing the game a while, according to Afterburner. Keep in mind though, I believe the RAM readout displays "total" system RAM usage. So in reality, the game is probably taking up about 5.5GB of RAM on average, at least when running at a 1440p resolution or under.

If you have it enabled, the Nvidia DoF is probably to blame for the cutscene drops, and is only active in the title screen, cutscenes, and certain zombie attacks. It's really performance intensive (the developers are working on this for a future patch), and the visual difference isn't worth it currently in my opinion. Comparison shot here: http://international.download.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/comparisons/dying-light/dying-light-nvidia-depth-of-field-comparison-1-on-vs-off.html

Lastly, not saying you need it (from what you said about your performance in your post), but you can get an easy performance boost (up to 25% at some points) by turning the shadows down to "High," and with very little visual difference. You may even be able to bump up the draw-distance a few notches.

Ah good tip, I turned the DoF on and off just out in the world and there was no difference in frame rate so I left it on, I didn't know it was for only certain mobs/cs. That can go straight off then.
 
I agree that Nvidia's DOF does not make a significant difference in this game except....in the main menu. :]
 
I'm concluding the hitches are due to texture streaming, it's badly implemented.

Lowering texture resolution fixes this, everything else can stay as is.

Also me and two buddies experienced random crashes, they're extremely rare though.

Hopefully the next patch is deployed soon.

I'm having strong notions that they've gone and done texture streaming with weird mip mapping like Ubisoft did with things like Watch Dogs.

Similar hitching issues that are heavily mitigated by toning down texture settings.
 
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