[PSA] Regarding the performance of Dying light.

[Kevin_Walter]

What are your PC specs? and did you get pass that area already? Please respond, I'm curious about it. The devs definitely did a bad job on this one I'm not defending them, I'm just curious as to know who are the most affected by this bad optimization.

 

Admittedly, my specs are under-par compared to the minimum and recommended specs posted by Techland, I just don't understand how the game could possibly need so many resources.

 

It's mostly just my CPU. I'm running an FX6300, which I understand is pretty bottom of the barrel in terms of budget gaming CPUs, but it is a pretty beefy selection in its own right. It's endured hundreds of total hours between some quite demanding games like BF4, Planetside 2, Crysis 3, some MMOs like Guild Wars 2, as well as a lot of other things I could list but won't, because it doesn't really matter.

 

I'm also running an R9 270X and 8GBs of RAM.

 

I actually loaded up MSI Afterburner and did some monitoring after reading some other posts and some interesting results, I think.

 

With all of the settings at the rock bottom... so medium textures, low shadows, no AO, no AA, etc, and the resolution set to 1280x720, with view distance at 0, my FPS sat around 20-50fps depending on whether I was looking directly at the actual open city or at close-up objects. I would say the average was around 25-30fps.

 

My GPU usage never went above 45%, so that's obviously a non-issue.

 

My CPU usage, on the other hand, was anywhere between 90% and 100% on the first core, and sat around 35-50% on all other cores, with the occasional spike as high as 75%, but those spikes were rare and only seemed to happen on one core at a time.

 

The most interesting aspect of this for me was that even when my first core would fluctuate between 90-99%... never actually reaching 100%, there was no noticeable change in performance. Without any aspect of my rig hitting 100% usage, I was still getting 20-30fps most of the time.

 

Now, I understand the "minimum" specs call for an FX 8320 @ 3.5 and the recommended call for an FX 8350 @ 4.1. But I've seen no actual indication in-game or otherwise to suggest that either of those processors should actually be required. I've also seen several players on the Steam forums and elsewhere complaining of the exact same issue (20fps average) while running 8350s.

 

My FX 6300 runs at 3.5GHz, and is supposed to clock up to 4.1 when running 3D applications. I highly doubt the two extra logical cores provided by the 8320 would actually show much of a difference in performance on my rig. So that leaves me wondering why the game runs so damn poorly to begin with. There's just no logical reason as to why this game would have worse performance than Crysis 3 or Battlefield 4. Especially when everyone who is having issues, no matter their brand or model of processor, is reporting the same usage patterns.

 

It seems like either the game is incredibly poorly optimized out of incompetence or maybe for a purpose.

 

Or maybe I'm just an idiot and I need to go buy an 8350 and shut up.

[zappian]

 

Admittedly, my specs are under-par compared to the minimum and recommended specs posted by Techland, I just don't understand how the game could possibly need so many resources.

 

It's mostly just my CPU. I'm running an FX6300, which I understand is pretty bottom of the barrel in terms of budget gaming CPUs, but it is a pretty beefy selection in its own right. It's endured hundreds of total hours between some quite demanding games like BF4, Planetside 2, Crysis 3, some MMOs like Guild Wars 2, as well as a lot of other things I could list but won't, because it doesn't really matter.

 

I'm also running an R9 270X and 8GBs of RAM.

 

I actually loaded up MSI Afterburner and did some monitoring after reading some other posts and some interesting results, I think.

 

With all of the settings at the rock bottom... so medium textures, low shadows, no AO, no AA, etc, and the resolution set to 1280x720, with view distance at 0, my FPS sat around 20-50fps depending on whether I was looking directly at the actual open city or at close-up objects. I would say the average was around 25-30fps.

 

My GPU usage never went above 45%, so that's obviously a non-issue.

 

My CPU usage, on the other hand, was anywhere between 90% and 100% on the first core, and sat around 35-50% on all other cores, with the occasional spike as high as 75%, but those spikes were rare and only seemed to happen on one core at a time.

 

The most interesting aspect of this for me was that even when my first core would fluctuate between 90-99%... never actually reaching 100%, there was no noticeable change in performance. Without any aspect of my rig hitting 100% usage, I was still getting 20-30fps most of the time.

 

Now, I understand the "minimum" specs call for an FX 8320 @ 3.5 and the recommended call for an FX 8350 @ 4.1. But I've seen no actual indication in-game or otherwise to suggest that either of those processors should actually be required. I've also seen several players on the Steam forums and elsewhere complaining of the exact same issue (20fps average) while running 8350s.

 

My FX 6300 runs at 3.5GHz, and is supposed to clock up to 4.1 when running 3D applications. I highly doubt the two extra logical cores provided by the 8320 would actually show much of a difference in performance on my rig. So that leaves me wondering why the game runs so damn poorly to begin with. There's just no logical reason as to why this game would have worse performance than Crysis 3 or Battlefield 4. Especially when everyone who is having issues, no matter their brand or model of processor, is reporting the same usage patterns.

 

It seems like either the game is incredibly poorly optimized out of incompetence or maybe for a purpose.

 

Or maybe I'm just an idiot and I need to go buy an 8350 and shut up.

 

Same rig as mine , only different thing is i have an i3.

[That Norwegian Guy]

Supposedly the CPU optimisation is awful. I heard that people with 16GB of RAM have less issues than those with 8GB?? I don't know if that is true but... Memory leak?? I mean, what game actually uses 8GB of RAM?

 

Hmm I have 16GB of RAM and I'm not having issues on a GTX 760 and 3570K @4.8Ghz.

 

Running it maxed except for FXAA forced through the Nvidia control panel, in-game AA off, and textures reduced to medium. (which in this game means high, really, and the game uses 3.5GB of VRAM on high just as I expected for 1080p before launch)

Guys, accept that 2GB of VRAM isn't enough for maxed 1080p anymore.

[MunsonedForLife]

This may have to do with your FX-8320, one of the cores may be bottlenecking the entire experience. @Trik'Stari has the GTX 970, comparable to your 290X, but an i5-4690k paired with it instead, and he seems to be playing fine.

 

The FX-8350 is the "recommended CPU," so trying to bump the clock of the 8320 may help.

I highly doubt it's the CPU...currently running at 4.5GHz.

[MunsonedForLife]

Total Biscuit's Port Report video released today explains a lot.  That darn view distance slider has a huge impact in performance.  I adjusted and I'm back to playable frame rates.

[zappian]

I highly doubt it's the CPU...currently running at 4.5GHz.

 

Its not the cpu its the cpu optimization thats crap.

[Tim Drake]

I don't know what people expected from the devs that brought us dead island.

Dead Island wasn't bad though?

[Tim Drake]

Total Biscuit's Port Report video released today explains a lot.  That darn view distance slider has a huge impact in performance.  I adjusted and I'm back to playable frame rates.

I adjusted it from half to zero and gained zero fps.

[zappian]

Dead Island wasn't bad though?

Dead island was HL2 in terms of optimization compared to this.

[Tim Drake]

Dead island was HL2 in terms of optimization compared to this.

It ran smoothly for most people that I know that played Dead Island but this is terrible. GPU is perfectly fine but CPU won't use more than two threads wtf?

[zappian]

It ran smoothly for most people that I know that played Dead Island but this is terrible. GPU is perfectly fine but CPU won't use more than two threads wtf?

 

Its retarded than it can even use two threads decently.

 

Its not like im running a fucking space age cpu , its an i3.

 

*sigh* devs these days.

[zappian]

Guys at least we have this:

 

[Kevin_Walter]

Honestly, I'd take the PS4 graphics if it allowed me to gain a solid 60fps average. I don't really care what trees and shacks 200 meters away look like.

[zappian]

Honestly, I'd take the PS4 graphics if it allowed me to gain a solid 60fps average. I don't really care what trees and shacks 200 meters away look like.

 

Its 30 fpson the ps4.

 

[Kevin_Walter]

Its 30 fpson the ps4.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKuH40zGTwo

 

And it's around that on my rig, what's your point?

[zappian]

And it's around that on my rig, what's your point?

 

I run it over 30.

 

But with stutter.

 

It will be better on the pc once they fix it.

 

Pacience is the key.

 

Far cry 4 is much better now.

[Kevin_Walter]

I run it over 30.

 

But with stutter.

 

It will be better on the pc once they fix it.

 

Pacience is the key.

 

Far cry 4 is much better now.

 

Yeah, I run it at or under 30, but have no stutter.

 

Seems like a double edged sword of shittiness either way.

 

Hopefully you're correct. Hopefully it gets better. I've played about 2.5 hours total in the story/single player mode, and it's fantastic as a game. But the constant 20-25fps in a lot of places just does my head in.

 

I go into the tower and it spikes to as high as 80-100fps, and I'm just thinking "man, it would be nice if it ran like this all the time..."

[zappian]

Yeah, I run it at or under 30, but have no stutter.

 

Seems like a double edged sword of shittiness either way.

 

Hopefully you're correct. Hopefully it gets better. I've played about 2.5 hours total in the story/single player mode, and it's fantastic as a game. But the constant 20-25fps in a lot of places just does my head in.

 

I go into the tower and it spikes to as high as 80-100fps, and I'm just thinking "man, it would be nice if it ran like this all the time..."

 

The problem is your FX 6300 ( its you cpu right) isnt being used to its full potentcial.

 

The game uses about two cores on average at 100%.

 

So my i3 runs the game better because of better per core performance.

 

The devs fucked up.

[Kevin_Walter]

The problem is your FX 6300 ( its you cpu right) isnt being used to its full potentcial.

 

The game uses about two cores on average at 100%.

 

So my i3 runs the game better because of better per core performance.

 

The devs fucked up.

 

Yeah, I know what the issue is. The bigger issue is whether that's just attributed to design oversight and poor optimization, whether it's done on purpose as some stupid way to push newer hardware (wouldn't be surprised considering it's currently one of the top sellers on Steam and the game's requirements seem completely out of proportion), or whether it's an issue with the Chroma 6 engine itself.

 

Two of those issues are most likely relatively easy to fix.

 

The third, on the other hand...

[Andrewf]

some day i have a dream that they will get their act together or that i will be a big time dev which doesnt get this shit wrong. Dont worry ill optimize for you 18 core i7s or whatever its like in the next few years.

haha you think that. There's most likely a reason though. If you get there, you just may have to make the same or similar sacrifices. Happens to everyone.