Dear fellow Players,

I am aware there have been a number of such thread, and I humbly apologize for yet starting another one. I guess I just need some feedback on whether technology or myself am to blame for the issue in question.

In a nutshell: I recently invested in a new graphics card (R9 380 4 GB) in hope of being able to run the game on (at least close to) Ultra preset in 1080p. In fact I am, but with results not quite pleasing. While trying to tweak with the settings in the past weeks I found that I can have everything maxed out except for Shadow Quality, which I have to set to Low in order to get satisfactory FPS (we are not talking warzones now). No other setting - AA included - seems to have significant effect on the matter (hence I keep AA on max).

My problem is, that turning Shadow Quality down basically devastates the looks, while the whole point was to be able to play with nice graphics. Which brings two questions:

- what kind of machinery it takes to run the game with very nice graphics?

- may I be the one who's doing something wrong?

I would be very grateful for your kind advice.

My rig's specs are the following (I have the game installed on the SSD):

CPU: Intel Core i5-3550 3.30 GHz (3.70 with Turbo)

VGA: MSI R9 380 Gaming 4G

MB: Asus P8B75-M LX Plus

RAM: 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz

SSD: OCZ Vertex3 120 GB

HDD: Western Digital WD5000AAKX 500 GB

Display: Dell P2314H (1080p)

Hey man.

It really all comes down to what you consider a good FPS. To put it in perspective, I usually end up with around ~30 FPS during intense gameplay or near large groups. Some people demand higher, but I survive on it. This game is incredibly poorly optimized. Don't believe me? Turn off your UI (Ctrl + U) and watch your FPS spike. The UI alone kills your FPS. Anyway, light and shadows in this game engine are extremely hard on your system. My rig is as follows:

AMD FX8350 4.0ghz 8core processor

NVIDIA GeForce 670

16 gab ram

Corsair 220gb Solid state hard drive with the game and OS

Win 10

With that I can get ~30 FPS on a normal day with dynamic shadows on at the lowest map resolution.

I also knock down grass and trees to ~50% for good measure.

From what I have heard and seen, processor is more important than Graphics card for this game. That's just how the game engine works. And even with that their code is pretty bad at using your hardware to its optimum. The game one accesses 2 CPU cores even if you have more. (No hyper threading either.)

Hope that helps.

'Shift+ Ctrl+ F' brings up the FPS counter in the lower left corner.

From an old BW post:

So the actual explanation of the FPS display colors:

Red = Rendering bound/Video Card

Green = Simulation bound/CPU

Yellow = Mix of both

Current FPS (Lowest FPS over the last 10 seconds or so)

Have you tried between Windowed mode and Fullscreen mode?

Hey I'm running a similar rig to what you are

Asus h97 plus motherboard

Asus R9 380 (4 gb)

Samsung 250 gb ssd (Samsung 850 evo) with game + OS

16 gb ddr3 ram

1 Tb 5400 rpm drive to hold pics/files/other random junk

Intel i5-4690 processor (3.5 ghz)

I run ultra settings also, the only time I've needed to lower this (mine was the AA setting) was during a 16 man op. Strangely the 8 on 8 PVP matches don't throw it off.

'Shift+ Ctrl+ F' brings up the FPS counter in the lower left corner.

 

From an old BW post:

 

So the actual explanation of the FPS display colors:

 

Red = Rendering bound/Video Card

Green = Simulation bound/CPU

Yellow = Mix of both

Current FPS (Lowest FPS over the last 10 seconds or so)

 

 

Have you tried between Windowed mode and Fullscreen mode?

Then BW mixed up red and green:

Red = CPU

Green = GPU

A month or two ago NVIDIA driver update messed up game peformance, I got a lot of "green".

Prior to that,one day the game suddenly dropped to single digit FPS (red) - reason was that my CPU fan died.

To the OP:

What's your setting for shadow map resolution?

That slider has (at least for me) a huge impact on FPS.

Thanks for all the input. Switching between windowed and fullscreen mode didn't significantly affect performance for me. While Shadow Quality on High, I turned Shadow Map Resolution all the way down to 1024 (with SQ on low it doesn't really make any difference no matter how I adjust it). FPS counter is normally green for me, flicking around 60, turning red when FPS drops.

As far as I remember, with everything maxed out I ended up getting like 30 FPS downs, too (quite often though). Lowering Shadow Map Resolution and AA helped a bit, but not much.

Should I just accept that it won't go any better with the current gear?

Until a few months ago, I was running an i5-3570 with an HD7870 graphics card. I could only get what I'd say was "high-ish" graphics settings, with some things turned down, such as Shadows.

But then the 7870 died and I replaced it with an R9 390. With that I was able to turn Shadows to high - with an fps hit, but still playable.

The R9 380 is between the HD7870 (R9 270/370) and the R9 390, so I suppose the results should be somewhere in between as well. But to really crank up the graphics you need something better than the 380, I guess. Even the R9 390 doesn't quite get what I'd call "ultra".

Just a few weeks ago I put together a new mini-ITX system using an i5-6600 and that R9 390. I haven't done any actual testing, but it appears to run noticeably smoother. I used to get around 70 fps (i5-3570/R9 390) just sitting in my SH and moving around. Now I g3t around 100fps in the same situation.

Current settings: 1920x1080

Everything high except - AA medium, Shadow Map Cascades Medium. (Trees and Grass @ 100, Bloom Off)

(I'm going to set things higher and see how it goes. )

Update - turning AA and SMC to high made no difference to fps, but the fans on the 390 got louder.

FPS only went "green" when I set shadow map resolution above 2048

Thanks for all the input. Switching between windowed and fullscreen mode didn't significantly affect performance for me. While Shadow Quality on High, I turned Shadow Map Resolution all the way down to 1024 (with SQ on low it doesn't really make any difference no matter how I adjust it). FPS counter is normally green for me, flicking around 60, turning red when FPS drops.

 

As far as I remember, with everything maxed out I ended up getting like 30 FPS downs, too (quite often though). Lowering Shadow Map Resolution and AA helped a bit, but not much.

 

Should I just accept that it won't go any better with the current gear?

Hm, flickering around 60 and downs to 30 - Vsync activated?

Sounds like your system can't maintain 60 FPS with max settings and Vsync therefore cuts it down to 30.

I used to get that on planets with lots of vegetation, especially on entering new areas for the first time on that day.