Waterfalls in DLC caused the FPS drops !

[<RAVAGER>]

I can now confirm that the waterfall is one of the main causes, and can be the most terrible one, for the FPS drops. From the beginning of the DLC, everything is perfect for me, not a single drop in FPS, it's always around 58-60 fps. But when I travel to the area of "Ancient Ruins of Rauh", issues happened. For people who not know, this area have many waterfalls, whenever I walk out of the waterfalls, fps is just fine, 58-60 as usual, but when I'm near by the waterfalls, it instantly drops to only 40-45 fps. Something is not right with the optimization and rendering of these waterfalls in DLC, main game have waterfall too, but I've never got my fps drop when I stand by the waterfall in the main game, only the DLC. So, that's that, anyone got the same problem like me in Ancient Ruins of Rauh?

[freaky]

i too have this problem , but sadly haven't found a solutuion :(

[BingusDingus]

Are you sure it's the waterfalls? They're pretty much just a moving PNG.

[Cutie Patootie]

Im having the same issue, lowering water surface and reflection quality improved fps a bit, but there's still noticeable drops. Really frustrating that fromsoft still releases content with poor optimization, especially with how great their games are. Hopefully they release a patch soon that addresses this

[ᴢᶻᶻ]

Originally posted by BingusDingus:

Are you sure it's the waterfalls? They're pretty much just a moving PNG.

Well... its only when you are close and looking at it so... its a pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tough png lol
Also the problem is the particles, not the png haha

[Sam Urai]

I have the exact same issue. Looking at the still water in Rauh and my framerate drops to 40 FPS on a GTX 3080. The weird thing is that neither GPU or CPU are maxed out and even switching graphics settings and between 4K and 1440p make zero difference.

[Todd Howard]

The best talisman is behind a waterfall so that's sad for all the people having this problem.

[Kraak]

putting effects on medium solved most of my fps issues

[Undertheline]

Originally posted by Kraak:

putting effects on medium solved most of my fps issues

+ borderless window...works great in the Rauh Area. Thanks!
By the way: Instead of using borderless window you can also limit your framerate in nivida control panel to max. 60 for this game. Then you should use the fullscreen mode correctly (+ HDR) without these micro-stutters in each areas.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Originally posted by Porcelain:

The best talisman is behind a waterfall so that's sad for all the people having this problem.

Super sad. That momentary frame rate drop when you do a one time trip to get an item is sad

[Clockwork]

Originally posted by BingusDingus:

Are you sure it's the waterfalls? They're pretty much just a moving PNG.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure. In the base game, waterfalls caused no problem, but in the DLC, when I go east near the beginning and look at that big waterfall, I can feel my CPU actually getting hot through the side panel of the computer. I suspect the game is using CPU computing power to generate random particles

[The}{unter]

its waterfalls for me too changing effects quality to low solves the problem but idk why this happens? maybe my OCed 3060 ti isn't enough

[ezpz]

You can try…
Disabling Ray Tracing
Verifying Game Files via Steam
Disable and/or remove any unnecessary USB peripherals such as mice, keyboard, etc. (there is a known issue where GPU/CPU gets tied up with certain USB Device Drivers causing freezing/stuttering)
Close/disable Game Bar (it’s trash anyways, should do this regardless)
Fix full Shader Cache via NVidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Global Settings -> Shader Cache Size - Change to Unlimited (there are some other optimizations that can be made in this menu)
And/or
Delete Shader Cache Files at C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\AppData\LocalLow\NVIDIA\PerDriverVersion\DXCache
Uninstall/Reinstall Game
Uninstall NVidia Drivers with DDU, reinstall only recommended/core components via NVCleanstall
Install Process Lasso and elevate/optimize CPU usage (ex. disable efficiency/e-core usage on Intel CPUs)
Play game in Windowed/Borderless Window mode

[toughnails]

Originally posted by Tarnished:

its waterfalls for me too changing effects quality to low solves the problem but idk why this happens? maybe my OCed 3060 ti isn't enough

It's a CPU bottleneck, the waterfalls are poorly optimized and create too many particles.

Dropping EFFECTS to LOW is the current workaround. Outside of buying a top end CPU.

[SoulSlayer]

Don’t even bother using any setting other than low for effects. The particle effects in this dlc are even more unoptimized than base game making the game unplayable. Best remove EAC, play offline with performance optimize mods and lower your settings. It isn’t a fix either I have stutters and fps drops even with performance mods and tweaked settings/no EAC but it will at the very least reduce it to make the game playable.