Thougts from a mid level user

Hardware & System
#1

This is my first post. As a mid level user familiar with mods, hacks, settings optimization and benchmarking I am a little disappointed with the performance of this game. I don’t much care about clipping, vegetation movement or any number of minor bugs in the game, what I care about is hardware utilization. Two days ago I started playing this game and noticed a number of optimization issues. I have had to turn to mods and console commands to resolve SOME of these issues. It is apparent to me this game has little to no hardware detection for higher end hardware.

My system specs are as follows: Ryzen 5 1600, GTX 1080, NVME boot drive, sata ssd games drive and 1080p 60Hz monitor. I had to lower my game’s settings to medium/low to maintain a steady 60FPS, even then the 1% and .1% lows were so bad I turned to the modding community to fix these issues. After tweaking many settings through mods and console commands I am still seeing below acceptable performance.

I believe the issue starts with poor hardware detection. I had to force the game to recognize my 6 core 12 thread cpu and 8 gb vram buffer among many other optimizations.

In my opinion the hardware detection issues need to be resolved immediately over clipping, pop in and other minor complaints. This game has sold rather well and the company needs to hire a good optimization team and push updates ASAP.

I understand these complaints may have been made in the past, I made this thread to bring attention to recent times. There is more that I could talk about but I wanted to keep this somewhat brief.

#2

Or lower level systems optimization help. I WISH I could get your fps lows.
Try one of the big battles at 8-10 fps! Walk thru parts of towns at 8-15 fps.
and NO I can’t afford an upgrade as I just did the wrong one.

#3

@longshot300mag If you would like some tips post your hardware specs.

#4

Here a tip for WH…
Optimization, but not at the expense of grass quality or vegetation in all

#5

#letsmakedandelionsgreatagain
:grin:

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#6

Many people don’t seem to be aware of this, but upscaling is your best friend when you have to compromise quality for performance.

Instead of lowering the graphics, lower the resolution at which the game is rendered.
That is usually much more effective at increasing the FPS than simply disabling features.

Sometimes up-scaling of a better rendered scenery yields a better performance-to-quality compromise than sticking to very high resolution but disabling everything and even using the crappiest textures. And that’s mainly because it is more effective at yielding better FPS and thus makes the whole experience more enjoyable… to the point one forgets about the surroundings.

At 1080p my crappy notebook can render as few as a dozen FPS with the lowest graphics settings, at 800x600 it renders over 120 FPS with medium graphics settings, at 1024x768 it renders 80 FPS at medium graphics settings… you got the idea. I decided to push the game at a compromise around 45/55 FPS on average.

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#7

Past talk on these forums is just as viable… why read some other thread when starting a new one is so easy… (?)

Your machine is neither mid tier nor needs optimisation (before others).

Your hardware is new and has come out after KCD development started.

My three-four year old rig (Id refer to as entry level enthusiast)… spits this game out very fast in Ultra plus level graphics (I drop shadows depending on need)

My six core/twelve thread is very well utilised (one of the best games to use it…)
My framerate average of 45-50 fps.

Tweaking for newest most powerful hardware should be way down the list (consoles having highest number of players).

I do agree the game could do with some options for setting up to utilise 8Gb vram /more system RAM etc…

This title is one of the few that reveal that the new AMD chips arent equivalent to the older 6c/12t intels etc (most benchmarks give favourable praise to new amd chips in select tests).
Whilst that ryzen is undoubtedly great value for money - it will get better utilisation when software is written with it in mind.
(Eg future console games)

KCD does have some steep requirements to achieve Ultra smoothly.

It doesnt require ‘future hardware’; but a cheap oart or two in a mod tier system will hold it back.
There is no doubt your 1080 is being held back.

Typical culprits are things like single channel ram (not dualnchannel), and incorrect pci-e speeds (not version 3 x4 /v2 x8 as a minimum)

In time the few trouble spots in game should be dealt with. At which point KCD makes a great system bench…

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#8

I actually think the game runs pretty well. Especially considering the kickstart development team and as amazing as the graphics actually are. I have a 1070 and I’m running at 1440p with HD texture packs installed, graphics setting all at Ultra High(except for 3 turned down to high), and a reshade and I’m getting around 45 FPS. And I’m completely fine with that considering how freaking amazing it looks.

#9

I said that I am a mid-level user, not that my rig is mid-level. CPU clocked at 3.8ghz, dual channel RAM 16gb 2933 cl16, I am not saying that I cannot hit high framerates with some ultra settings turned on. Before I made manual tweaks to the game config I experienced: all CPU cores weren’t being utilized, CPU cores were hitting 70% utilization, VRAM usage 2.2GB, VCore utilization 50%, Max fps in 90’s, average FPS in 50’s, 1% low 12 FPS, .1% low of 8 FPS. After I made the tweaks all CPU cores are being used, CPU utilization 50%, VRAM usage 5GB, VCore utilizattion 80%, (higher graphical settings) Max FPS 70’s, average FPS 50’s, 1% low 30’s, .1% lows 20’s. An open world game should be using 100% of the GPU Core and VRAM regardless of texture streaming. Speaking of texture streaming, it is set to 20mb/s in default config, I changed it to 460mb/s to reflect speeds of SSD’s. These are the kinds of things that should be done automatically with hardware detection.

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#10

Those settings in startup.cfg (dont remember exacty the name) are IMO set intentionaly by devs to bypass problems they could not sort out. For example collisions are switched off for NPCs, horse autonavigation etc. I dont know if it is wise to mess up with them. One change may lead to other unwanted effects and probably also mess with saves.

#11

Good point, maybe this game wasn’t ready to be released on PC yet. I’ll start playing again when this gets sorted.

#12

With no mods and default *.cfg I have no problems playing at very high settings. FPS capped at 60 by vsync. Game usually runs between 50-60fps.
AMD Ryzen 1600 at default 3.2GHz
SSD disk
16Gb RAM
GTX 970 4Gb VRAM

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#13

My usage mirrors this- (ultra plus rather than ‘very high’).
My rig has slight edge with video card/cpu/RAM/SSD

Given the age of my kit, and that it was never top tier, this game exceeds my expectations.

Feels like Battlefield 1 level system usage.
Admittedly I would like to have pre 1.4.x draw distances etc. A few things have been gimped in favour of everyone getting better framerate.

I dont adjust configs (like Skyrim etc) as the devs need people using vanilla builds for practical feedback.

Presently the game has caused me close to zero issues.
Biggest concerns has been controller layout issues- seems like a lack of thought went into some settings…
(Eg run button should be reachable by left hand, or made a toggle/pressing an attack button should draw last used weapon etc…)

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#14

I can get those numbers on a mix of low/very high/ultra but the 1% and .1% lows and hard stuttering break my immersion. Playing on low preset makes the game much more playable but it drives me mad that I am playing on the lowest settings with high end hardware.

I can see this game staying relevant for many years like skyrim but the current lack of optimization makes me want to play other RPGs over this one. I hope the devs can fix these issues in the next few months.

#15

I use a controller on RPGs as well, options to re-map buttons would be nice. Thanks for bringing my attention to vanilla feedback for the devs. Maybe I will have 2 builds of the game, one vanilla and one modded, to help the team fix some things.

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#16

Those lows (.1%/1%) - have you set affinity toba different core… or dropped core 0 from use etc?
Its odd that your getting that?

Loading off an 850 series samsung drive less than 1tb (doesnt have the MEX controller-doesnt multitask/run optimally when cpu is heavy hit)?

Cheaper SSDs (inc consumer class samsung) seem to not deliver data well/bottleneck needlessly for this game.
I agree most other games can get away with cheaper SSDs- but this one wants a proper SSD or as has been observed- runs better off a harddrive than a cheap SSD.

#17

Whilst I look forward to doing the standard Skyrim type modifiers (eg expanding ugrids) when game is stable/established…
And love the idea of tweaking RAM pools and texture streaming capabilities (I use a 1200mb per second enterprise M2 SSD)- I am so keen for this game to have life extension via modules…
-do keep feedback useful by knowing where issues stem from!

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#18

Maybe you can post your user.cfg settings?

#19

I had previously game installed on HDD. With moving to SSD ( Kingston UV400, 2,5" SSD, 480GB) I experienced some improvement in loading times, but nothing extraordinary. My HDD has quite fast read/write specs. Also adding +8Gb of RAM didnt have significant impact (had previously only 8Gb). What made a significant increase in fps was Ryzen CPU. Six cores and 12 threads show the difference very clearly, mainly in areas heavilly infested by NPCs :grinning:

#20

Currently the ssd will make a difference for loading the game but not much during gameplay, unless you change the config. I have 16gb of ram too and the game used about 7 gb of ram after I edited the config file, before is was 2-3 (can’t remember), I think I remember seeing the pagefile hit 11 gb during some testing.

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