How to get more FPS?

[Is it okay if I touch you?]

Typical Fatshark optimization.

GTX 1070 i7700, I almost never have frame problems with modern games on mid-high settings.
I can maintain 60 FPS in most areas without action but as soon as the swarm starts it can drop to like 45 and even worse in particular levels like the bridge one.

I have most of the impactful settings like light and shadows set pretty low, and less taxing stuff at lower-mid. Is there anything else I can do in like .ini to get this piece of crap running like a normal game?

[Alio]

Then play at 30fps locked? Darktide is extremely demanding but your CPU isn't getting any younger either, coming up on 7 years old and your GPU on 8.

That's a whole console generation worth of age. Be glad you can even run it over 30fps.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

Originally posted by -ACK!:

Typical Fatshark optimization.

GTX 1070 i7700, I almost never have frame problems with modern games on mid-high settings.
I can maintain 60 FPS in most areas without action but as soon as the swarm starts it can drop to like 45 and even worse in particular levels like the bridge one.

I have most of the impactful settings like light and shadows set pretty low, and less taxing stuff at lower-mid. Is there anything else I can do in like .ini to get this piece of crap running like a normal game?

you don't.

[AzZotik]

My GTX 1660 and i10400f run this game on mid-high, you really botched something in your settings, next time try using FSR 2 on Balanced or Quality, I personally play on Quality helped me immensely.
Maybe also look up guides for optimized graphical settings.

[KingBaldFTW]

Originally posted by AzZotik:

Maybe also look up guides for optimized graphical settings.

Here are some optimizations I have found across reddit and youtube. This does not include messing with the .ini files.

Put worker threads @ 1/2 or less and disable SMT using Process Lasso. Experiment with 1/2 and decrease by one worker thread until you see maximum stability. Apparently many users have encountered crashing when going beyond the physical core count of their CPUs, especially near the maximum WTs in the launcher. Would recommend staying at 1/2 WTs until you crash then decreasing from there, otherwise 1/2 is a safe bet.

I would strongly recommend disabling anything that uses your CPU heavily, like the ragdolls and gibbing. Turn those last four options OFF. On a newer CPU, those can be fine.

Use any upscaling that you can if you care about FPS with the in-game options of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. If on 1080p, use the highest quality setting and downgrade from there until you find a manageable compromise between the reduced visual quality and fps gains. For the sake of your own sanity, avoid the strongest setting since you probably don't want to be larping as a nearsighted tunnel rat. Besides the in-game upscalers, image scaling should also be an option for you through the Nvidia Control Panel. For this, use the "image-scaling" option in "Manage 3D settings" under "Darktide.exe". YMMV, though DLSS may have the best performance for you b/c of your Nvidia card. I'm not sure if the 1070 can even use DLSS, so your next best bet might be FSR or image-scaling via the NVCP.

Your card has 8GB VRAM and this game wants VRAM headroom (this is a good universal thing to keep in mind when tweaking settings), so avoid all high settings, especially the GPU intensive ones and Texture Quality. Consider putting Texture Quality at Low since you're on an older card; continue this train of logic throughout every setting. e.g., "Do I want Sun rays enabled? They look nice but it's probably costing me valuable frames." Check out this youtube video and the graph from reddit for more information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgz8hvLEjZo&t=808s
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/12rhf9o/i_made_a_guide_to_the_performance_impact_of_most/

Make sure you're running at Native Resolution and the maximum refresh rate of your monitor. Cap your FPS with the in-game limter to the average of when you're in hordes vs. low intensity strolling. From what it sounds like you might need to cap to 30. See if you can get that average up to 60 from any tweaking on your end.

Finally, do your homework on modding this game. It will make the difference, especially in terms of QoL and performance. Besides the pre-cache mod which loads the mourningstar and the vendors faster, there's also a mod that lets you run uber potato mode with wonderful customization. Here's a video that will get you started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXwtI2McWS8

Hope this helps.

[Captain Worthy]

Originally posted by AzZotik:

My GTX 1660 and i10400f run this game on mid-high, you really botched something in your settings, next time try using FSR 2 on Balanced or Quality, I personally play on Quality helped me immensely.
Maybe also look up guides for optimized graphical settings.

Yeah, everyone is supposed to use FSR/DLSS with this game, large scale performance optimization hasn't been done yet.

There might be a heavy optimization patch when the console version launches in early October though.

[Judge Lazar]

This game is extremely CPU heavy. All the pathing and interactions of enemies with a player is calculated on that players CPU and relayed to the server for syncing with the other 3 players.

Go into the launcher settings and at the very bottom is a slider for "worker threads" mess with that until you get satisfactory results.

[=][=Alduran=][=]

Don't forget to turn down "Volumetric Fog" settings to mid or low. This boosted my FPS by alot, because there is fog nearly everwhere in the game.

[Kenpachi Ramasama]

its the stupid Ray Tracing if you turn it off in the game its still activated in the game after restert , you have to go into the ini files and turn it off and save. the game will look like minecraft but fps will improve drasticly.

i hate it so much it also bugs out after every update so i have to revisit the ini file over and over again.

i also have no problems playing new games on mid settings but this game is just beyond patching if you have a old pc you will suffer.

and no i´m not buying new pc just to play this game on solid fps, servers also sometimes lag like hell and game crashes its just unstable i dont even know if the servers can even handle big mobs invasions itself lol.

it also gets worse with every update

[KingBaldFTW]

Originally posted by Kenpachi Ramasama:

its the stupid Ray Tracing if you turn it off in the game its still activated in the game after restert , you have to go into the ini files and turn it off and save. the game will look like minecraft but fps will improve drasticly.

There's a post on reddit that states to disable everything from rt_checkerboard_reflections to rtxgi_enabled. I'm curious, can you specify which settings you disable in the .ini file? the only RT setting i found enabled (going from completely disabling them in-game without touching the .ini) was rt_mixed_reflextions being set to true.

[KingBaldFTW]

Originally posted by Kroopa Troopa:

Originally posted by Kenpachi Ramasama:

its the stupid Ray Tracing if you turn it off in the game its still activated in the game after restert , you have to go into the ini files and turn it off and save. the game will look like minecraft but fps will improve drasticly.

the only RT setting i found enabled (going from completely disabling them in-game without touching the .ini) was rt_mixed_reflextions being set to true.

For those concerned about the .ini settings, I have experienced a noticeable boost in performance from setting rt_mixed_reflections to false. If you want the changes to stick, you will need to set the .ini file to read only immediately after you save and before you launch the game next, or the .ini file will reset that setting. After each game patch, it may be worth it to double check on the .ini and see if your settings were changed.

[KingBaldFTW]

Also, consider lowering the texture quality in "Texture filtering - Quality" option in the NVCP. Like the aforementioned "image-scaling" option, it will be under "Manage 3D settings" under "Darktide.exe". Set it to either performance or high performance. This is additional potato-ing for the graphics but should afford you some more fps.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

Originally posted by Kenpachi Ramasama:

its the stupid Ray Tracing if you turn it off in the game its still activated in the game after restert , you have to go into the ini files and turn it off and save. the game will look like minecraft but fps will improve drasticly.

i hate it so much it also bugs out after every update so i have to revisit the ini file over and over again.

i also have no problems playing new games on mid settings but this game is just beyond patching if you have a old pc you will suffer.

and no i´m not buying new pc just to play this game on solid fps, servers also sometimes lag like hell and game crashes its just unstable i dont even know if the servers can even handle big mobs invasions itself lol.

it also gets worse with every update

You can't turn it off. It's literally used for all lighting. turn it off completely and see nothing.

[Excal]

Rtx card DLSS gives a ton of free FPS

[These stairs go up!]

Originally posted by Kroopa Troopa:

Originally posted by AzZotik:

Maybe also look up guides for optimized graphical settings.

Here are some optimizations I have found across reddit and youtube. This does not include messing with the .ini files.

Put worker threads @ 1/2 or less and disable SMT using Process Lasso. Experiment with 1/2 and decrease by one worker thread until you see maximum stability. Apparently many users have encountered crashing when going beyond the physical core count of their CPUs, especially near the maximum WTs in the launcher. Would recommend staying at 1/2 WTs until you crash then decreasing from there, otherwise 1/2 is a safe bet.

I would strongly recommend disabling anything that uses your CPU heavily, like the ragdolls and gibbing. Turn those last four options OFF. On a newer CPU, those can be fine.

Use any upscaling that you can if you care about FPS with the in-game options of DLSS, FSR, and XeSS. If on 1080p, use the highest quality setting and downgrade from there until you find a manageable compromise between the reduced visual quality and fps gains. For the sake of your own sanity, avoid the strongest setting since you probably don't want to be larping as a nearsighted tunnel rat. Besides the in-game upscalers, image scaling should also be an option for you through the Nvidia Control Panel. For this, use the "image-scaling" option in "Manage 3D settings" under "Darktide.exe". YMMV, though DLSS may have the best performance for you b/c of your Nvidia card.

Your card has 8GB VRAM and this game wants VRAM headroom (this is a good universal thing to keep in mind when tweaking settings), so avoid all high settings, especially the GPU intensive ones and Texture Quality. Consider putting Texture Quality at Low since you're on an older card; continue this train of logic throughout every setting. e.g., "Do I want Sun rays enabled? They look nice but it's probably costing me valuable frames." Check out this youtube video and the graph from reddit for more information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgz8hvLEjZo&t=808s
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/12rhf9o/i_made_a_guide_to_the_performance_impact_of_most/

Make sure you're running at Native Resolution and the maximum refresh rate of your monitor. Cap your FPS with the in-game limter to the average of when you're in hordes vs. low intensity strolling. From what it sounds like you might need to cap to 30. See if you can get that average up to 60 from any tweaking on your end.

Finally, do your homework on modding this game. It will make the difference, especially in terms of QoL and performance. Besides the pre-cache mod which loads the mourningstar and the vendors faster, there's also a mod that lets you run uber potato mode with wonderful customization. Here's a video that will get you started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXwtI2McWS8

Hope this helps.

Follow this advice and add a prayer to the Fatshark gods. For good measure.

[Alio]

Originally posted by Excal:

Rtx card DLSS gives a ton of free FPS

DLSS isn't free FPS. You're sacrificing input latency and image quality for those frames lol.