Why Ubisoft Games Are Badly Optimized?

[Khader87]

From experiance and after reading multiple threads on the subject i noticed that many gamers are having issues with ubisoft games and servers. 

 

I noticed that ubisoft games are always badly optimized and their games updates having issues. 

 

Eg assassins creed odyssey is extremely badly optimized and Origins was as well, far cry 5, servers and updates issue with R6S! 

 

The thing that makes us angry is that ubisoft doesnt seem to care about issues being faced by their fans, and they are losing many fans because of those issues.

 

Why is that? 

[Derrk]

Their games always seem poorly optimized because of digital rights management. Basically, there will always be an additional load on your cpu on top of the game, to make it harder for people to pirate the games.

 

spoiler:

Spoiler

people always pirate the games anyway

 

[Majestic]

High quality assets and drawcall ceilings designed for 30fps. Drop the object quality and it'll be ok.

[Jurrunio]

1. Denuvo and other anti-pirate stuff

 

2. Broad, open game areas with good looking scenes and a lot of AI controlled things like weather, time, NPC etc

 

3. ultra settings effectively makes the game render at 1440p and scale it back down to 1080p. You cant see most of the extra detail, but it is rendered anyway

 

I dont think it's 'poorly-optimized' for the amount of work needed to make their games work like they now do, but I agree that they arent 'well-optimized' either.

[Majestic]

I don't think it's denuvo, from what i've seen the geometry just goes banana's when you switch it to ultra. And yeah, you'd be hardpressed to notice the difference between high and ultra when in motion.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The answers provided explain why the games may perform worse than you expect for your configuration, but that alone by no means makes it a badly optimized game. Optimized based on what baseline?

 

People like to say DOOM is highly optimized. But DOOM is also not a wide-open sandbox.

[Majestic]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

The answers provided explain why the games may perform worse than you expect for your configuration, but that alone by no means makes it a badly optimized game. Optimized based on what baseline?

 

People like to say DOOM is highly optimized. But DOOM is also not a wide-open sandbox.

Yes the levels are quite small and the geometry is very simple. It does most of the work with large textures.

[kasugatei]

4 hours ago, Derrk said:

Their games always seem poorly optimized because of digital rights management. Basically, there will always be an additional load on your cpu on top of the game, to make it harder for people to pirate the games.

If that is the case, I will have to repeat my self again:

STOP TREATING THE LEGITIMATE USERS LIKE CRIMINALS!!!

 

That message is for all developers that are implementing DRM into their software which kills the performance and/or make usage of the software inconvenient.

[Derrk]

18 minutes ago, Niksa said:

If that is the case, I will have to repeat my self again:

STOP TREATING THE LEGITIMATE USERS LIKE CRIMINALS!!

Couldnt agree more. In my experience though, i played AC origins while running my old haswell processor & had a lot of frame drops/stuttering. I upgraded to ryzen and have not noticed any frame drops/stutters since. The extra cores/threads have really helped with cpu load

[xAcid9]

50 minutes ago, Niksa said:

That message is for all developers that are implementing DRM into their software which kills the performance and/or make usage of the software inconvenient.

Is this actually proven? Does the *cough* game perform better than the original copy using the same hardware? 

[JZStudios]

52 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Is this actually proven? Does the *cough* game perform better than the original copy using the same hardware? 

There's a few games on Steam that have Denuvo, that later got released on GOG or updated to remove it on Steam. It depends on certain games implementations I guess, but yes, it always performs better without Denuvo. Some games aren't as huge a boost as others.

Some people do the fun thing of comparing cracked games with legit games, which is stupid because the Denuvo is still there but is just fooled into thinking it's working properly.

 

 

Denuvo aside, Ubisoft games just don't perform well period. After so many years on a stable console platform they still can't make things perform in a stable satisfactory manner. The argument for open world games is pretty moot because there's other games that perform better while being open world, and it's not like the entirety of the world is rendered all at once anyways.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

way before Denuvo was used, Ubisoft is known for very bad optimize and incredible amount of bugs 

[Paul Rudd]

9 hours ago, Khader87 said:

From experiance and after reading multiple threads on the subject i noticed that many gamers are having issues with ubisoft games and servers.

From experience and after squashing bugs and optimizing my PC to it's fullest, I notice that Ubisoft games I run have no issues after making a few tweaks to things here and there.

9 hours ago, Khader87 said:

I noticed that ubisoft games are always badly optimized and their games updates having issues.

Good thing PC's and PC games have so many different things you can do to them to MAKE them run correctly.

9 hours ago, Khader87 said:

Eg assassins creed odyssey is extremely badly optimized and Origins was as well, far cry 5, servers and updates issue with R6S!

Both Odyssey and Origins have the whole DRM Denuvo issue going on with them. However, we as PC gamers still have ways around that. Haven't obtained Far Cry 5 so I can't speak on it but Rainbow Six Siege runs excellent on an i5/1070. I rarely play it so I can't exactly speak on their updates.

9 hours ago, Khader87 said:

The thing that makes us angry is that ubisoft doesnt seem to care about issues being faced by their fans, and they are losing many fans because of those issues.

 

Why is that?

You'd have to talk to these angry people to find out why they're angry. Optimizing PC games can be frustrating when you first get into PC gaming. Over the years, you learn the tricks of the trade and it becomes less frustrating and steers towards becoming a form of art once you know what you're doing. When it comes to PC gaming, beauty is in the hands of the gamer. Ubisoft can't make you learn how to run their games correctly. They know you'll figure things out for yourself if you put your mind to it.

 

Quick question, what issues in which Ubisoft games are you having? The better you describe each issue with each game, the better I can guide you in the direction to a fix for it. I got time.

[Guest]

Yeah no... rainbow six is very well optimized. 

 

Are your readings old & outdated? 

My pc specs: i5 3450, R9 390

i even ran a gtx1050 TI And has zero issues. 

No one I’ve seen playing far cry 5 had any issues including noticeable glitches. 

So either the new assassins creed has tons of drm or you’re reading 2013 articles. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Taking a chart from https://www.notebookcheck.net/Assassin-s-Creed-Odyssey-Notebook-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.337682.0.html, I see an odd thing already: the performance difference between 1080p ultra and high is significant. As in, an up to 70% increase in performance by going from ultra to high. Though for most high-end GPUs, the performance bump is around 20%-30%. And the quality performance between the two is something I'd argue you have to stop and scrutinize.

Ultra is supposed to eat your hardware alive, but in most cases it won't drastically improve the visual quality over the previous setting. I would wager many PC gamers with high-end hardware set it to ultra, call it a day, then whine when they don't see 60 FPS.

 

On that note, there are other games out there that with contemporary hardware, achieve similar performance to AS:O

• https://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page4.html (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1006-the-witcher-3-benchmarks/page4.html (The Witcher 3)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1128-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-benchmarks/page2.html (Rise of the Tomb Raider)
• https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1370 (Grand Theft Auto V, kind of)

Maybe I have short term memory, but I don't recall people whining about these games being poorly optimized. I recall in particular GTA V getting praise for being better at launch than GTA IV.

 

At the end of the day, PC games often enjoy fine tuning graphical settings for the purposes of finding the best compromise between visual quality and performance. If all you do is select presets, then whine about performance, that's not mostly the developer's fault.

[Paul Rudd]

19 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

On that note, there are other games out there that with contemporary hardware, achieve similar performance to AS:O

• https://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page4.html (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1006-the-witcher-3-benchmarks/page4.html (The Witcher 3)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1128-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-benchmarks/page2.html (Rise of the Tomb Raider)
• https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1370 (Grand Theft Auto V, kind of)

The following guides work remarkable wonders when optimizing these games individual graphic settings:

• https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-graphics-performance-and-tweaking-guide
• https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/rise-of-the-tomb-raider-graphics-and-performance-guide
• https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/grand-theft-auto-v-pc-graphics-and-performance-guide

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided doesn't have a guide on geforce.com but that could possibly be because Deus Ex: Mankind is quite a challenge when it comes to optimization. You have to know a LOT of tiny tricks to maximize fps in that game. Stuff like playing in windowed mode instead of full screen for example. Or making sure to not have a single setting at Ultra and more settings on low or off than you usually want to have set at. And 16GB of ram is a MUST just to have a shot at the bare minimum ram necessary to have smooth performance in Deus Ex Mankind Divided.

 

However, I did find this guide on Steam. It's pretty basic but it does provide you with general information on performance.

• https://steamcommunity.com/app/337000/discussions/0/355043117525800870/

It's also wise to watch as many optimization videos on Deus Ex Mankind Divided as humanly possible. Performance in that game is sort of a weird nightmare. I even recommend going the "Batman Arkham Knight" route and changing a few things in the ini(configuration) files. Just be sure to make subtle changes when doing so and always note down every single modification you make so if you run into a mistake, you can change it back.

 

I like what you mentioned about the difference between Ultra and High when it comes to performance. This makes it very important to learn to use custom settings in ALL the games you play. Each individual graphic setting has its own life form that varies dramatically from game to game. I've learned to never underestimate the power of putting the right settings on low, medium, high, very high, and/or ultra. But my most favored setting is OFF. Especially in higher resolutions.

[Mira Yurizaki]

11 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

-Snip-

Heck in the video I was thinking to myself "low looks fine, just bump up the texture quality."

[JZStudios]

13 hours ago, A Random Dude said:

From experience and after squashing bugs and optimizing my PC to it's fullest, I notice that Ubisoft games I run have no issues after making a few tweaks to things here and there.

Good thing PC's and PC games have so many different things you can do to them to MAKE them run correctly.

Both Odyssey and Origins have the whole DRM Denuvo issue going on with them. However, we as PC gamers still have ways around that. Haven't obtained Far Cry 5 so I can't speak on it but Rainbow Six Siege runs excellent on an i5/1070. I rarely play it so I can't exactly speak on their updates.

You'd have to talk to these angry people to find out why they're angry. Optimizing PC games can be frustrating when you first get into PC gaming. Over the years, you learn the tricks of the trade and it becomes less frustrating and steers towards becoming a form of art once you know what you're doing. When it comes to PC gaming, beauty is in the hands of the gamer. Ubisoft can't make you learn how to run their games correctly. They know you'll figure things out for yourself if you put your mind to it.

 

Quick question, what issues in which Ubisoft games are you having? The better you describe each issue with each game, the better I can guide you in the direction to a fix for it. I got time.

I got Ghost Recon Wildlands and haven't bought Steep for the sole purpose of it running exceptionally poorly based on a free weekend.

I have a GTX 960 and a FX 8350. GRWL runs basically the same around ~40fps on low and ultra, barring MSAA and other downsampling. 

I got Steep to be very unstable and stuttery on low... If I recall, it's been a while, in the 20s.

Oh, I've also got The Crew which also runs at a pretty unstable ~40fps. Actually most newer Ubi games I've tried run about 40. "Optimizing" the game for my PC also doesn't really seem to do much. Most settings have very little to no performance delta, and I turn off AO, AA and downscaling in pretty much everything.

 

I guess for comparison running the Witcher 3 even with Hairworks on I get a smoother ~30-50 depending on how much is going on, and including Halk Hogans high-res texture pack. I just like my pretty hair, even if TW2 managed to do Geralts better without using hairworks.

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Taking a chart from https://www.notebookcheck.net/Assassin-s-Creed-Odyssey-Notebook-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.337682.0.html, I see an odd thing already: the performance difference between 1080p ultra and high is significant. As in, an up to 70% increase in performance by going from ultra to high. Though for most high-end GPUs, the performance bump is around 20%-30%. And the quality performance between the two is something I'd argue you have to stop and scrutinize.

Ultra is supposed to eat your hardware alive, but in most cases it won't drastically improve the visual quality over the previous setting. I would wager many PC gamers with high-end hardware set it to ultra, call it a day, then whine when they don't see 60 FPS.

 

On that note, there are other games out there that with contemporary hardware, achieve similar performance to AS:O

• https://www.techspot.com/review/1235-deus-ex-mankind-divided-benchmarks/page4.html (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1006-the-witcher-3-benchmarks/page4.html (The Witcher 3)
• https://www.techspot.com/review/1128-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-benchmarks/page2.html (Rise of the Tomb Raider)
• https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1370 (Grand Theft Auto V, kind of)

Maybe I have short term memory, but I don't recall people whining about these games being poorly optimized. I recall in particular GTA V getting praise for being better at launch than GTA IV.

 

At the end of the day, PC games often enjoy fine tuning graphical settings for the purposes of finding the best compromise between visual quality and performance. If all you do is select presets, then whine about performance, that's not mostly the developer's fault.

I've only got DEMD and TW3, but for me both of those games run better and more smoothly than the Ubi titles. I can actively play through and enjoy both of those without hating it. Although DE does probably take more resources than needed, I managed to get it at a good place for me.... until I started piling bodies and the game shit the bed, but I think that's more of the ragdoll physx making it freak the hell out.

 

I wish games would give more options for texture details and LOD distances. There's a few mostly older games that let you change the vegetation draw distance, along with geometry and shadows in their own slider. I guess like Arma 3 does, but that game's so CPU limited you may as well just max everything.

[Paul Rudd]

18 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I have a GTX 960

2GB or 4GB? What brand? Model?

 

How much RAM do you have total in your PC?

 

What is the speed of your RAM?

 

What resolution do you game in?

 

What version of Windows do you use?

[JZStudios]

10 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

2GB or 4GB? What brand? Model?

 

How much RAM do you have total in your PC?

 

What is the speed of your RAM?

 

What resolution do you game in?

 

What version of Windows do you use?

2gb Strix. Pretty sure the 4gb didn't exist when I bought it.

Total ram 24gb, usable due to Win7 version, 16gb

I don't remember the ram speed, but I remember reading that it doesn't matter much on DDR3. It'd be mid to high end.

1080p in single, I've also got triples because... why not I guess. It works for some games.

Win7

I've also got my CPU OC'd to 4.2ghz.

[Mira Yurizaki]

19 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I got Ghost Recon Wildlands and haven't bought Steep for the sole purpose of it running exceptionally poorly based on a free weekend.

I have a GTX 960 and a FX 8350. GRWL runs basically the same around ~40fps on low and ultra, barring MSAA and other downsampling. 

This is indication of a CPU bottleneck. GRWL is known to scale with CPU performance.

19 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I got Steep to be very unstable and stuttery on low... If I recall, it's been a while, in the 20s.

Oh, I've also got The Crew which also runs at a pretty unstable ~40fps. Actually most newer Ubi games I've tried run about 40. "Optimizing" the game for my PC also doesn't really seem to do much. Most settings have very little to no performance delta, and I turn off AO, AA and downscaling in pretty much everything.

The Crew uses a different game engine, but GRWL, R6S, Steep, and Assassin's Creed use the same game engine, more or less (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnvilNext). So if you see performance issues with GRWL, then it's not unexpected to have the same issues in other titles that use the same engine.

 

19 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I guess for comparison running the Witcher 3 even with Hairworks on I get a smoother ~30-50 depending on how much is going on, and including Halk Hogans high-res texture pack. I just like my pretty hair, even if TW2 managed to do Geralts better without using hairworks.

If we're talking about "smoothness", the we need something that shows over time. A single number doesn't mean anything.

[JZStudios]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

This is indication of a CPU bottleneck. GRWL is known to scale with CPU performance.

The Crew uses a different game engine, but GRWL, R6S, Steep, and Assassin's Creed use the same game engine, more or less (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnvilNext). So if you see performance issues with GRWL, then it's not unexpected to have the same issues in other titles that use the same engine.

 

If we're talking about "smoothness", the we need something that shows over time. A single number doesn't mean anything.

Well then GRWL performs worse than ARMA 3.

 

Your second point... points out that I should just avoid Ubi titles. Don't have the money to buy a new Mobo, ram, and CPU. At that point the 960 (It kind of already is) is pretty paltry and pathetic. Pretty much every other game I have doesn't get as throttled if that's the case, and that applies to lower end Intel CPUs too.

 

I suppose that's also true since Assetto Corsa in triple screens claims to be running at 70fps but for some reason only displays like 15. Don't have that issue in single though. It's just an arbitrary "I can see/feel the stutters and variation."

[Paul Rudd]

3 hours ago, JZStudios said:

2gb Strix.

Here's your first issue. In newer AAA titles, 2GB is not a whole lot to work with.

3 hours ago, JZStudios said:

1080p in single

Ghost Recon Wildlands Official Recommended System Requirements For 1920x1080, High Settings

 

CPU: Intel Core i7- 3770 @ 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz

GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 or GeForce GTX 970 (4GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better)

VRAM: 4GB

RAM: 8GB

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)

HDD: 50GB free space

4 hours ago, JZStudios said:

GRWL runs basically the same around ~40fps on low and ultra

Your GPU is holding you back. Had you went with the 4GB 960, you still would have only gotten roughly 3-10% better performance in 1080p, depending on the game of course. 40 fps is actually good fps with your PC in GRWL.

4 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I got Steep to be very unstable and stuttery on low... If I recall, it's been a while, in the 20s.

This is odd. You should be getting above 50 fps in Steep in 1080p on both low and medium settings and a good 33-43 fps on high. It should definitely dip into the 20's on ultra but should also run around 30 fps. Do you by chance play this game with a controller? And if so, is it by chance a PS4 controller? One more thing, if it's been a while since you played, it is very possible that if you tried to play now, there could have been an update/patch that fixed your issue. Here's a link with possible results... 

 

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1MSIM_enUS746US746&ei=UGzKW-39E4OXzwK-4LL4Cg&q=steep+fps+patch&oq=steep+fps+patch&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160l2.2003.2003..2212...0.0..0.51.51.1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71.dTbRL-jh8kw

 

Read through the first 10 links or so and you might find something worth trying.

4 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Oh, I've also got The Crew which also runs at a pretty unstable ~40fps.

Also odd. You should easily achieve 60 fps in this game with your PC.

 

First thing I would try here(and for most games run on UPlay or Origin) is to disable the in-game overlay for the game in UPlay. 

 

I would also try doing the following to give your gaming a significant boost in general, if you have not already done so. Since you are running Windows 7, this might differ a little but it hopefully is self explanatory.

• Click on the Start menu in the bottom left hand corner of your PC and go into your settings. Then click on Power & Sleep. Then click on Additional Power Settings. Then click on High Performance. Apply the setting if given the option. Close out everything.
• Right click on your desktop and click on NVidia Control Panel. Then click on Manage 3D Settings. Under Global Settings, look for Power Management Mode. Click on it and then click on Prefer Maximum Performance. Apply the setting(wait about 3-10 seconds after the click). Close out everything.

I have also found out that The Crew has patches that you can apply to the game to make it run at a locked 60 fps with low vram GPU's. What this means is that most likely the ini(configuration) files were basically modified to achieve the 60 fps. So if you can't find the patches I speak of, you can always go into the configuration files yourself and lower settings that you may not realize you can lower. While this may seem complicated, it's actually quite fun.

 

Also, I have read that The Crew performs much better in fullscreen than in borderless so you can also try that. And there's also trying to set max prerendered frames(in Nvidia Control Panel) and max virtual prerendered frames(I think that's what it's called) to application controlled. They should both be set to 1 right now. Make sure to do this one in The Crew ONLY. Don't do this in Global settings or else it will apply this to ALL your games. And make sure to try this one early to rule it out before trying other options. Change it back if no changes occur but make sure you play the game for a good 15 minutes or so to rule it out.

 

There's more you could try but I don't even own The Crew so I've never looked much into a fix for low fps on a 2GB GPU other than what I just found. If none of this works, let me know and I'll see if I can find the culprit keeping you from a locked 60 fps.

 

One final thought, how long have you had your GPU? And is it by chance overclocked?

[JZStudios]

1 hour ago, A Random Dude said:

Here's your first issue. In newer AAA titles, 2GB is not a whole lot to work with.

Ghost Recon Wildlands Official Recommended System Requirements For 1920x1080, High Settings

 

CPU: Intel Core i7- 3770 @ 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz

GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 or GeForce GTX 970 (4GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better)

VRAM: 4GB

RAM: 8GB

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only)

HDD: 50GB free space

Your GPU is holding you back. Had you went with the 4GB 960, you still would have only gotten roughly 3-10% better performance in 1080p, depending on the game of course. 40 fps is actually good fps with your PC in GRWL.

This is odd. You should be getting above 50 fps in Steep in 1080p on both low and medium settings and a good 33-43 fps on high. It should definitely dip into the 20's on ultra but should also run around 30 fps. Do you by chance play this game with a controller? And if so, is it by chance a PS4 controller? One more thing, if it's been a while since you played, it is very possible that if you tried to play now, there could have been an update/patch that fixed your issue. Here's a link with possible results... 

 

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1MSIM_enUS746US746&ei=UGzKW-39E4OXzwK-4LL4Cg&q=steep+fps+patch&oq=steep+fps+patch&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160l2.2003.2003..2212...0.0..0.51.51.1......0....1..gws-wiz.......0i71.dTbRL-jh8kw

 

Read through the first 10 links or so and you might find something worth trying.

Also odd. You should easily achieve 60 fps in this game with your PC.

 

First thing I would try here(and for most games run on UPlay or Origin) is to disable the in-game overlay for the game in UPlay. 

 

I would also try doing the following to give your gaming a significant boost in general, if you have not already done so. Since you are running Windows 7, this might differ a little but it hopefully is self explanatory.

• Click on the Start menu in the bottom left hand corner of your PC and go into your settings. Then click on Power & Sleep. Then click on Additional Power Settings. Then click on High Performance. Apply the setting if given the option. Close out everything.
• Right click on your desktop and click on NVidia Control Panel. Then click on Manage 3D Settings. Under Global Settings, look for Power Management Mode. Click on it and then click on Prefer Maximum Performance. Apply the setting(wait about 3-10 seconds after the click). Close out everything.

I have also found out that The Crew has patches that you can apply to the game to make it run at a locked 60 fps with low vram GPU's. What this means is that most likely the ini(configuration) files were basically modified to achieve the 60 fps. So if you can't find the patches I speak of, you can always go into the configuration files yourself and lower settings that you may not realize you can lower. While this may seem complicated, it's actually quite fun.

 

Also, I have read that The Crew performs much better in fullscreen than in borderless so you can also try that. And there's also trying to set max prerendered frames(in Nvidia Control Panel) and max virtual prerendered frames(I think that's what it's called) to application controlled. They should both be set to 1 right now. Make sure to do this one in The Crew ONLY. Don't do this in Global settings or else it will apply this to ALL your games. And make sure to try this one early to rule it out before trying other options. Change it back if no changes occur but make sure you play the game for a good 15 minutes or so to rule it out.

 

There's more you could try but I don't even own The Crew so I've never looked much into a fix for low fps on a 2GB GPU other than what I just found. If none of this works, let me know and I'll see if I can find the culprit keeping you from a locked 60 fps.

 

One final thought, how long have you had your GPU? And is it by chance overclocked?

GRWL still has minimum specs that are way too high. Even just looking at the suggested VRAM for the low res textures makes me wonder how in the hell it can be that poorly optimized. To not mince words, the low-res textures for GRWL are utter dogshit and would've looked bad on 360. How the VRAM requirement is so high baffles me.

My brothers got the same game (I bought it to play with him) for his (admittedly) laptop that contains a 1050ti and... I'm pretty sure some form of i7.... sorry I can't be more specific, but even with his higher VRAM and what I think should be a better "gaming" CPU he gets pretty much the same performance. Maybe it comes down to some thermals though, I don't know.

 

I last played Steep on a free weekend... probably a year ago. I've got a XBO controller, but the poor performance is the main thing that prevented me from buying it. I'm pretty sure GRWL and maybe Splinter Cell Blacklist are the only Ubi titles I actually bought, I got everything else during some free giveaway or I wouldn't own it. I looked into googling "Steep optimization patches" which don't turn much up. Seems like you linked more "tricks," but I guess I could look into them.

 

I try to disable in game overlays n such as much as possible. Any time I reboot I go into the task manager and kill my Wacom tablet drivers since I almost never use it, along with anything else that isn't immediately necessary for system functions.

My power settings are at max

Apparently Nvidia is using custom settings because I think there was one or two games that freak out and don't really work properly otherwise.

I always run games in fullscreen.

I don't know if it's entirely true, but I was told by someone in-game in The Crew that the physics are tied to framerate, so if you can't maintain a solid 60 it'll freak out and you should just set it to 30. I actually don't know how much of a difference it made, but it seemed to help a bit I guess. Haven't looked at the .ini files for it. To be honest I've uninstalled it and the only Ubi game I currently have is GRWL.

 

I've had my GPU for... well before TW3 launched since that was the promo game I got with it, so ~3 years. It's been OC'd for maybe half that.