Very slow loading of textures and models

[Linny]

Hi everyone! So recently I've started having some troubles with models/textures loading times. It can happen that during cutscene there is only one character and no backround/furniture/surroundings.

It wasn't very apparent in Act1, it started being noticeable few days ago in the middle of Act2. Now I'm in Act 3 and need to wait between 3-4mins for a location to fully load.

Anyone else having similar issues recently?

I had no such issues back in EA, so I do believe something went wrong between Act 2 and 3.

I have all graphic drivers up to date. Besides that issue, game runs smoothly. It just tests my patience inbetween locations ;)

EDIT: Now some of the textures actually appear as black and never load properly...

[nurby]

Try some of these settings they might help......

Model quality: Although dropping this from High to Low only nudged performance up to 106fps, a 4% increase, this is actually one of the more impactful settings to change. It also doesn’t make models look that much worse, so it’s fine to reduce.

Detail distance: This can probably stay on High, as changing to Low only gave me an extra 1fps.

Instance distance: As above, there was just one additional frame per second to be gained from the Low setting, so keep this high.

Texture quality: I’m also not convinced that this needs lowering. Medium isn’t significantly faster, at 104fps, and Low just hurts fidelity too much.

Texture filtering: I’d suggest turning this right down to Trilinear mode. It gives a relatively spirited boost, up to 107fps on my RTX 3070, and the visual quality difference is minimal.

Animation level of detail: Stick to High. Low gave me a mere 1fps improvement, so isn’t worth the cut.

Slow HDD mode: This might help with slow-loading textures when enabled, but won’t visibly affect performance at all when Baldur’s Gate 3 is installed on an SSD.

Dynamic crowds: Switching this off is arguably unnecessary. Losing the extra detail didn’t change my average performance by a single frame, and large crowds are rare anyway.

Shadow quality: You can set this to Low for a modest yet tempting speed boost; up to 108fps in my case, and without seriously damaging how shadows look. There is one tradeoff, a weird raked effect on certain ground textures, but it’s not too frequent or bothersome.

Cloud quality: Leave this on High, I say. Low doesn’t seem to affect average performance either way.

Fog quality: This, on the other hand, can be reduced for a little framerate nudge. Low quality got me 107fps, a 5% rise.

Nvidia DLSS: The big gun. While DLSS is best deployed at 1440p or higher – 1080p with upscaling will always look slightly fuzzier – it’s highly potent in Baldur’s Gate 3, turning that 102fps average into 130fps on the sharpest Quality setting. If you’ve got both a GeForce RTX card and a high-res gaming monitor, it’s ideal.

AMD FSR 1.0: Other graphics cards still have an upscaling option, though again, I wish it was a newer version of FSR. This 1.0 iteration could get my test PC up to 128fps on Ultra Quality mode, but it looks nowhere near as crisp and clean as Quality DLSS. Maybe only consider it if you’re playing at 4K, or are really struggling with 1440p.

FidelityFX Sharpening: AMD’s sharpening filter doesn’t really help or hurt performance, though if you’re going to use it, I’d suggest leaving the sharpness slider no higher than about 25%. Any higher and it starts to look overly digital and processed.

Anti-aliasing: If you’re not using DLSS, which overrides this setting with its own anti-aliasing, stick to the default TAA. SMAA might prevent that texture flickering mentioned above, but otherwise doesn’t smooth edges as effectively – the entire point of AA. It performs identically, in any case. There’s also a DLAA setting, which is basically DLSS’ AA component without the upscaling. It does look a tad sharper than TAA, though is slower as well, dropping my test PC’s performance to 96fps.

Ambient occlusion: Ditch it. Sometimes, disabling ambient occlusion will rob a game of half its shadow detail, leaving everything looking flat and fake. Here, though, the visual loss is hard to spot, and jettisoning AO’s rendering needs got my PC up to 108fps.

Depth of field: You can turn this off, if you don’t like the blur effect that appears when chatting to party members, but know that it won’t affect performance if you do. Same for merely switching from the default Circular blur effect to the alternative option, Gaussian.

Depth of field quality: There’s no need to change this from the highest setting, Quarter Denoise, down to just Quarter. It’s no faster, and why would you not want de-noising?

God rays: Strangely, turning these off – they’re on with the Ultra preset – actually cut performance down to 99fps. Presumably because doing so angers God? Just leave them on.

Bloom: No oddities here, just a simple post-process effect that can be disabled or re-enabled with no impact on framerate.

Subsurface scattering: I only got a single bonus frame per second from turning this off. Leave it enabled, then, for better-looking soft textures.

Simple terms

Launcher option: DirectX 11
Model quality: Low
Texture filtering: Trilinear
Shadow quality: Low
Fog quality: Low
Ambient occlusion: Off
Everything else: Ultra preset equivalents

[arlon]

is your game installed on a HDD or SSD? I had the same issue with a slow HDD, switched the game to a faster SSD and the problem was gone.

[MahoganyCow]

Originally posted by arlon:

is your game installed on a HDD or SSD? I had the same issue with a slow HDD, switched the game to a faster SSD and the problem was gone.

I completely agree with this here, my game is currently installed on a really slow HDD and had no problems for the first few saves. But suddenly textures just are gone and slowly load in like nothing happened. Testing this out in a few days tho my new SSD is on its way

[forlorn platypus]

Originally posted by MahoganyCow:

Originally posted by arlon:

is your game installed on a HDD or SSD? I had the same issue with a slow HDD, switched the game to a faster SSD and the problem was gone.

I completely agree with this here, my game is currently installed on a really slow HDD and had no problems for the first few saves. But suddenly textures just are gone and slowly load in like nothing happened. Testing this out in a few days tho my new SSD is on its way

Did this work?

[Deemon Nest]

I´m having this exact same problem in my 3rd playthrough. Act 3 in my previous playthroughs was doing good with loading, but now I cant even get past Wyrms rock without the game breaking apart.

[rkonnertz]

Originally posted by Spooky Deemon Nest:

I´m having this exact same problem in my 3rd playthrough. Act 3 in my previous playthroughs was doing good with loading, but now I cant even get past Wyrms rock without the game breaking apart.

Act 3 is more or less unplaybale after patch 4.

[Ryanxx87]

Oddly enough for me, I have had no issues until the Morphic Pool and the end of the game, once I started progressing to the final boss encounter and definitely the end game cinematics (mostly cinematics), the final party rally speech before fighting through High Hall (not during any fights in High Hall), all epilogue including new reunion camp scenes, all of this was broken for me last night first time beating the game.

Originally posted by rkonnertz:

Originally posted by Spooky Deemon Nest:

I´m having this exact same problem in my 3rd playthrough. Act 3 in my previous playthroughs was doing good with loading, but now I cant even get past Wyrms rock without the game breaking apart.

Act 3 is more or less unplaybale after patch 4.

[KatnissFwuffkin1]

Originally posted by Ryanxx87:

Oddly enough for me, I have had no issues until the Morphic Pool and the end of the game, once I started progressing to the final boss encounter and definitely the end game cinematics (mostly cinematics), the final party rally speech before fighting through High Hall (not during any fights in High Hall), all epilogue including new reunion camp scenes, all of this was broken for me last night first time beating the game.

Originally posted by rkonnertz:

Act 3 is more or less unplaybale after patch 4.

Did you find a solution? I just finished the game for the 1st time and my problems started at the morphic pool too, but mostly once climbing the brain and the end cinematics are almost completely lacking all texture 😭 I thought it was my camera mod but I shut it down and restarted everything and it's still not working.

[アンジェル]

Originally posted by KatnissFwuffkin1:

Originally posted by Ryanxx87:

Oddly enough for me, I have had no issues until the Morphic Pool and the end of the game, once I started progressing to the final boss encounter and definitely the end game cinematics (mostly cinematics), the final party rally speech before fighting through High Hall (not during any fights in High Hall), all epilogue including new reunion camp scenes, all of this was broken for me last night first time beating the game.

Did you find a solution? I just finished the game for the 1st time and my problems started at the morphic pool too, but mostly once climbing the brain and the end cinematics are almost completely lacking all texture 😭 I thought it was my camera mod but I shut it down and restarted everything and it's still not working.

You will not get far without sharing a DxDiag report.

[-GEM- RoyRene]

for me the following worked:

go to App Data > Local > Larian Studios > Baldur's Gate 3 > LevelCache and delete all of it's contents. also dont use FSR2 in very high quality, just quality or disable FSR and use standard AA.

My System - Ryzen7 5800X, 32GB Ram on MSI X570 chipset, Radeon RX6950 16GB, installed on an average SSD.