Crowd Density really does a number on performance... [FIXED WITH 2.01]

[Majestic]

Even my 5800X3D can't keep up with a 6800XT at 3440x1440p when you turn it to high.
Notice the GPU BUSY graph being significantly lower than the frametime. Meaning its hung up at the CPU/Driver side. At Low the GPU BUSY and FRAMETIME graph are overlapping, which is what you want. This is not covered in most "optimization guides", because they only test GPU features.

Crow Density High:
https://i.imgur.com/XfhrWN4.jpg

Crowd Density Low:
https://i.imgur.com/TQckDCS.jpg

If you're struggling or have annoying stuttering (CPU bottlenecks are not smooth..), try lowering this..

Yes the 5800X3D is running as it should, 4450mhz, which is the highest it'll go.

[Nick]

With 2.0, this game got way more demanding on CPUs. My 5600x used to handle RT perfectly fine at 1080p, and now I need to lower tons of other settings if I want to be stutter-free. I've just settled to playing without RT.

But yeah, lowering crowd density and shadow distance settings will help with CPU bottleneck issues.

[Banzai]

I had pretty good performance prior to 2.0, and it got a little more stuttery with the update. Long distance shadows and crowd density from high to medium made a nice difference, and it's barely noticeable. If anything it's a little nicer running down the sidewalks in some areas, less people in the way.

[Loop123]

I lowered the crowd to minimum. They look terrible and animations are pretty bad anyway. Less is more.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Nick:

With 2.0, this game got way more demanding on CPUs. My 5600x used to handle RT perfectly fine at 1080p, and now I need to lower tons of other settings if I want to be stutter-free. I've just settled to playing without RT.

But yeah, lowering crowd density and shadow distance settings will help with CPU bottleneck issues.

The problem is though, I can clearly see it hung up on a single core. And if you run the game in Linux it performs 30-40% better on vulkan API. I'm pretty sure its API overhead..

Originally posted by Banzai:

I had pretty good performance prior to 2.0, and it got a little more stuttery with the update. Long distance shadows and crowd density from high to medium made a nice difference, and it's barely noticeable. If anything it's a little nicer running down the sidewalks in some areas, less people in the way.

Ambient Occlusion is another by the way, setting that to medium is another couple FPS. Again this made no difference for the hardware unboxed video because of their CPU.

Originally posted by Loop123:

I lowered the crowd to minimum. They look terrible and animations are pretty bad anyway. Less is more.

Have you played starfield? It's honestly not bad. But I think the amount of people at high is unrealistic. So Medium it is..

[Bumbule]

I don't know, my game runs the best it has ever with even better graphical fidelity.
From 46-56 FPS to 55-76.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Gu | Lucius Artorius Cactus:

I don't know, my game runs the best it has ever with even better graphical fidelity.
From 46-56 FPS to 55-76.

Did you atleast bother to open the screenshots? It's clearly there when you look at GPU BUSY. I'm not talking about absolute performance, im saying the CPU is a big limiting factor. 95 or 119 fps would in both occasions be decent. But I can't turn the settings up high enough to have more GPU load (RT increases CPU load). So it just runs with the CPU as the bottleneck, which is always more unstable in terms of frame pacing.

If you dont know what GPU BUSY is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAy5V91Hr4

[Majestic]

I guess they fixed it. Thanks CDPR.

https://i.imgur.com/4dNY6hr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fzMkQcm.jpg