[SOLVED] First scene of game drops to 10fps on decent hardware, other games 60+?

[Uber Goober]

I have pretty decent hardware (listed below post text) and yet the very beginning of this game dips to 10fps and even lower when riding on the bike chasing Leon. It's...unplayable. I'm glad I picked it up on sale for $16 bucks and rather than get a refund I'd prefer to figure out the fix here because I played it through on PS4 and it was a fantastic game with an incredibly well-executed plot and great gameplay delivered by fantastic actors. Such a shame to have the very first thing I'm experiencing on a device capable of so much more be this bad.

Anyway, here's what I've tried, all to no avail:

- All the AMD special sauce in Adrenaline turned OFF
- All the graphics options reduced to the absolute minimum
- Tried field of view at the lowest setting, then at the highest setting, zero change in frame rate
- Texture streaming quality set to the lowest, no change. Tried highest on a whim, no change (NVME2 SSD here)
- Reduced resolution from 4k down to 1920x1080. No change.
- Went from full screen to windowed mode at 1920x1080. No change.
- Reduced texture, and lighting quality to absolute minimum, no change.
- Reduced foliage draw distance to minimum, no change. Theorizing that maybe this is causing frequent disk I/O and pegging the CPU for some reason, I jacked this to the max to see if maybe it would load larger chunks into memory at one point in time, bigger "gulps" if you will, and be smoother, so I tried that - but nope, no difference.
- Reduced geometric detail to minimum. No change.
- Vsync off, no change, vsync on, no change
- Monitor does support HDR but for some reason the software doesn't realize this so HDR is locked out anyway, so that wasn't even enabled in the first place and thus a non-issue.

Specifications:
- Windows 11 fully patched
- AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3.25GHz, 24 cores, 48 threads
- AMD 6600XT video card, DisplayPort, 4k curved monitor operating at 120hz, 3840x2160 operating system resolution, multiple attempted resolutions and screen modes in-game
- 64GB RAM
- 1TB NVME2 SSD
- No antivirus installed (this is a dedicated gaming machine)

Other games run at 4k resolution getting anywhere from ~45-60+ fps depending on how much visual rendering detail I tell it to use, so the fact that this one can only top out at 10-15 when dude's on the bike in the very first scene proves that there is something wrong with this game and only this game, but I'm hoping there's a configuration directive I can tweak somewhere to bypass this, or at least make it tolerable, because I'm eager to experience the deeply-relatable plot that is Days Gone once again.

Any suggestions are, indeed, appreciated. Thank you.

[Uber Goober]

Forgot to mention: the funny thing is, let's say I'm on the bike and the framerate is horrible, ~6-10fps. Then I hit pause.

I jumps all the way to 90+ when the pause screen is on! :-)

[chugzillafx]

are you talking the first scene as it no game play just the cinematic? or when deek and boozer are chasing leon ?

try these guides i have a very fast new smoking gaming pc and i even had to optimize for the game i think its windows 11 my windows 10 never did this stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ids-klxMyRk&t=418s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI_7CzmNZtY&t=161s

[Uber Goober]

> [...] i think its windows 11 my windows 10 never did this stuff

I can confirm this was indeed the cause.

Earlier today I got fed up with this issue and a plethora of others I *suspected* may have been caused by the changes in 11 (vs 10) and nuked the OS install entirely, then re-installed Win10 from scratch, fully patched it, installed the latest AMD drivers/Adrenaline, then Days Gone.

And now, like the title, the stuttering on the bike is gone, too.

So, for those of you from the future (hi! do we have flying cars yet?) looking for a fix, this is it:

Dump 11, reinstall from 10 from scratch

[gatto_nero]

... cash grab ... xd

[360Fov]

I've had the same issue; something clearly wrong with the way the performance tanks once it starts streaming data in such as travelling on bike, or swarms of zombies....ive just finished setting up a USB with Win11. I'm going to try Windows 11 blank install just to see if it's definitively Windows10... or possibly a settings, or unplanned behaviour, as a result of having a fairly well used Win11 install. I have a feeling it's going to be fine once I'm on a clean install...but we'll see.

Thanks for updating the thread to let us know you got your Days Gone working properly after installing Windows 10, as a fresh install.

[simon.pete15]

I played it on Win 10, on a toaster, no issues.
Then played it on a decent spec 'new' computer on Win 11, no issues.

I don't think the dial back to Win 10 is what fixed those issues on Win 11.
More likely the re-install fixed the game.