Frame rate / fps locked at 21-23 despite working before

[mk7676]

Hi all. Not sure if anyone would be able to answer my question, but I've scoured the internet and I can't find a specific answer to this problem.

Minor spoilers ahead.

The first disk and first flashback in the second disk all played fine. No lagging, proper speed, etc. There were times within a battle where, if I increased to 3x (usually to draw), it seemed to lag after I returned to normal speed. However, I figured that was just my own internal clock getting used to the increased speed and didn't think anything of it. And the game would return to normal after the battle.

Starting around the end of the prison escape, everything started to lag really bad. I'm now right after the garden first moves (NORG battle) and it's still lagging/running slow. I didn't change anything in the game.

It shouldn't be my computer. I have an i7 4790 4 GHz processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card with 3.6 vRAM (advertised at 4.0...anyone remember that fiasco?), and 16 gigs RAM (2x8). Everything is about 5 years old but I don't put a lot of strain on it, and again, everything was good until recently.

Fiddling around I discovered the following:

- The FPS locks at 21-23 fps during the regular non-world maps (should be 30). So, it runs smooth because it never goes outside that range, but runs very slow.
- When I increase to 3x it goes to 60 fps and runs smooth. That is, it can support 60 fps because when it goes to that speed it still runs well.
- No matter what my resolution and window-type, the fps remains the same. I was playing at the full 2560x1440, fullscreen. However, the fps remains the same if I go to windowed or borderless windowed, and I've tried several resolutions (including 4:3 resolutions), and including 640x480...still 21-23 fps!!!

Thus, it seems like the game is intentionally running that slow.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[Blackened Halo]

yeah, my idea is throw away this garbage

[r3d33m3r]

I have the same issue.. maybe it was caused by the latest update??

[Vagrant]

Originally posted by mk7676:

~

Here's a shot in the dark: it may tied to your monitor's refresh rate. Try forcing VSync in nvidia control panel.

Originally posted by r3d33m3r:

I have the same issue.. maybe it was caused by the latest update??

Nope, patch was yesterday, he posted 2 days ago.

Originally posted by Blackened Halo:

yeah, my idea is throw away this garbage

Maybe you should save this good idea for your own body.

[r3d33m3r]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Originally posted by mk7676:

~

Here's a shot in the dark: it may tied to your monitor's refresh rate. Try forcing VSync in nvidia control panel.

Nah that won't do it. The games battle fps and menu fps and world fps are tied to a certain fps limit.
The 2013 Steam version works perfectly, this one is still buggy as hell. It shouldn't be too much to ask for Square to fix this pile of garbage game's fps.

[Vagrant]

Originally posted by r3d33m3r:

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Here's a shot in the dark: it may tied to your monitor's refresh rate. Try forcing VSync in nvidia control panel.

Nah that won't do it. The games battle fps and menu fps and world fps are tied to a certain fps limit.
The 2013 Steam version works perfectly, this one is still buggy as hell. It shouldn't be too much to ask for Square to fix this pile of garbage game's fps.

I haven't seen any bugs on my end and had no problems with the FPS.

Legend has it that if you ask for support at the correct place, games get patched faster. Another one is how complaining on any steam forum in an arrogant, insulting manner will get anything done...

[r3d33m3r]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

Originally posted by r3d33m3r:

Nah that won't do it. The games battle fps and menu fps and world fps are tied to a certain fps limit.
The 2013 Steam version works perfectly, this one is still buggy as hell. It shouldn't be too much to ask for Square to fix this pile of garbage game's fps.

I haven't seen any bugs on my end and had no problems with the FPS.

Legend has it that if you ask for support at the correct place, games get patched faster. Another one is how complaining on any steam forum in an arrogant, insulting manner will get anything done...

The framerate bug is horrible enough and it makes ppl wanna quit...
Do you know how sluggish it all feels?! We don't always wanna use the speedup x3, cause if we don't, the game just lags like hell.
This is a stupid programming mistake and Square Enix keeps botching up their old releases...
Players have wrote hundreds of constructive e-mails, yet nothing happens. Why does the 2013 Version not use the correct music?!?
Why don't we have analogue movement with a controller like the PS1 version did which came out 20 years ago?!?
Why are the fps on the PS1 better than on any other version?!?
There is no excuse for their stupid behaviour, stuff like this needed to be sorted out many years ago, writing "unarrogant e-mails" will not solve anything.
Look at the release of FF6 on Steam, or FF 13.. fps drops problems till this day and no patches in sight.
The only remaster they really did well was the Chrono Trigger one... after a couple of months all big grievances with the game have been fixed, which they announced in blog posts prior. That's how it's done...

[Lloyd87]

I am experiencing the same trouble. I am now just before visiting Trabia's garden, the frame rate has decreased and the whole appears slowed down. I am going to reinstall the game, hoping the save states won't be lost.

[Vagrant]

Originally posted by Lloyd87:

I am experiencing the same trouble. I am now just before visiting Trabia's garden, the frame rate has decreased and the whole appears slowed down. I am going to reinstall the game, hoping the save states won't be lost.

Nope, your saves will be intact. It's all in your My Documents folder.

There's also a config.ini file. Might be worth trying to fiddle around with the Antialiasing setting. You can't tweak that setting in the launcher...

[r3d33m3r]

Originally posted by Vagrant:

There's also a config.ini file. Might be worth trying to fiddle around with the Antialiasing setting. You can't tweak that setting in the launcher...

No need to, you can just fiddle with the Antialiasing setting in the systems menu ingame.
Press Escape and go to System. You can change the Antialiasing setting from completely off to FXX, SMAA Low, Medium or High.
It doesn't matter though, the lower than usual fps will not be fixed by this. They need to get a patch out asap to fix this crap.
No ff8 game ever had this issue, yet this brand new remaster does..
60 menu fps, 30 world & battle menu fps and 15 combat animations fps was the standard in FF8 on PC.
Yet it's 50 for menus in this remaster and 25 in battle, often times dropping to 21 or so.
Also, I checked with MSI Afterburner and this game runs on OpenGL!!
Why?! Was it so hard to just use DirectX?

[mk7676]

Hey everyone, thanks for the responses.

So I ended up going into my graphics card's settings and changing it from "detect graphics v. performance" to just "performance" and....it worked. The framerate is now back at 30 fps. At 3x speed, it actually goes up to 90, not the 60 I said earlier. The background doesn't scroll well since I changed the settings but that's a minor issue I can easily ignore. So, it looks like it was a problem with my computer/graphics card strength.

Except that can't be right:

- My specs exceed the recommended specs in every single area, including graphics card (recommended is nVidia 960). Also, my computer runs far more graphically intense games just fine, at 60 fps.
- It ran perfectly for a substantial part of the game before mysteriously slowing down. Also, it slowed down across the board, not just in graphically- or cpu-intensive moments.
- While the 3x speed only went up to 60 fps, not 90 fps, it did so smoothly, so why couldn't it handle 30 fps (there may be a reason for this tied to whatever 3x speed does, idk)
- It still ran slower than 30 fps when I switched to 640x480 resolution.

So, while I "fixed" the problem by nerfing my graphics card (at no cost to the actual graphics in game btw), the slowdown still doesn't make sense. It'd be one thing if it was slow since the beginning; I just would've assumed the game ran inefficiently (VERY inefficiently) and the recommended specs were wrong. But it was good good good until it wasn't.

@Lloyd did reinstalling the game help for you?

[r3d33m3r]

Originally posted by mk7676:

My specs exceed the recommended specs in every single area, including graphics card (recommended is nVidia 960). Also, my computer runs far more graphically intense games just fine, at 60 fps.
- It ran perfectly for a substantial part of the game before mysteriously slowing down. Also, it slowed down across the board, not just in graphically- or cpu-intensive moments.
- While the 3x speed only went up to 60 fps, not 90 fps, it did so smoothly, so why couldn't it handle 30 fps (there may be a reason for this tied to whatever 3x speed does, idk)
- It still ran slower than 30 fps when I switched to 640x480 resolution.

So, while I "fixed" the problem by nerfing my graphics card (at no cost to the actual graphics in game btw), the slowdown still doesn't make sense. It'd be one thing if it was slow since the beginning; I just would've assumed the game ran inefficiently (VERY inefficiently) and the recommended specs were wrong. But it was good good good until it wasn't.

For the millionth time, it has nothing to do with our specs.... you could run the game perfectly with half the specs you got.
They just made a stupid programming error, capping it at lower fps than it should be.
It seems like some people have that issue, while others do not.
We need a fix for this issue as soon as possible.

[mk7676]

Well it went back to 30 fps after I nerfed my graphics settings, so I don't think there's an improper cap. I do agree it's almost certainly a glitch/error on their end though.

[r3d33m3r]

Originally posted by mk7676:

Well it went back to 30 fps after I nerfed my graphics settings, so I don't think there's an improper cap. I do agree it's almost certainly a glitch/error on their end though.

What settings did you change?

UPDATE: So it didn't fix it, it just improved things a bit.
Still waiting for a real update on Square's part...

[mk7676]

Well after a few days of 30 fps, it returned to 21-23 today. Including during times where it ran at 30 fps yesterday. Nothing on my end changed.

I put it a support ticket. We'll see what happens.

[Lloyd87]

Originally posted by mk7676:

Hey everyone, thanks for the responses.

So I ended up going into my graphics card's settings and changing it from "detect graphics v. performance" to just "performance" and....it worked. The framerate is now back at 30 fps. At 3x speed, it actually goes up to 90, not the 60 I said earlier. The background doesn't scroll well since I changed the settings but that's a minor issue I can easily ignore. So, it looks like it was a problem with my computer/graphics card strength.

Except that can't be right:

- My specs exceed the recommended specs in every single area, including graphics card (recommended is nVidia 960). Also, my computer runs far more graphically intense games just fine, at 60 fps.
- It ran perfectly for a substantial part of the game before mysteriously slowing down. Also, it slowed down across the board, not just in graphically- or cpu-intensive moments.
- While the 3x speed only went up to 60 fps, not 90 fps, it did so smoothly, so why couldn't it handle 30 fps (there may be a reason for this tied to whatever 3x speed does, idk)
- It still ran slower than 30 fps when I switched to 640x480 resolution.

So, while I "fixed" the problem by nerfing my graphics card (at no cost to the actual graphics in game btw), the slowdown still doesn't make sense. It'd be one thing if it was slow since the beginning; I just would've assumed the game ran inefficiently (VERY inefficiently) and the recommended specs were wrong. But it was good good good until it wasn't.

@Lloyd did reinstalling the game help for you?

Hi, thanks for the reply.
Reinstalling the game did not change anything. I am now at the battle between the two gardens (disc 2), most of the time the game runs at low fps except in some specific area (like outside the garden where the party stage used to be). During battles it never goes smooth; I am actually using the 3x speed to run the game at its normal speed!
I even tried to edit the setting of my graphic card (Nvidia Geforce MX 150) by emphasizing "performance" rather than quality, but it didn't fix the problem.

I am now going to fiddle with the graphic card again. Since you managed to sort the problem this way, then it's possible that I just need to find the right setting of my graphic card to sort this problem. Hopefully...