1440p 144fps stuttering test showing frametimes (both RT off and RT on)

[Lince_SPAIN]

See for yourself, no tricks here, 1440p gameplay 143 fps (my panel is G-Sync 1440p 144Hz) at 1440p and testing with and without ray-tracing and graphics set at EPIC settings, unlike those that claim "no stutter" and just play at 1080p with a 4090 at 200+ fps with custom graphics to hide the stutters (fps still drop 30-40 fps randomly during fights and traversing the map). The game needs some major optimization pass,

I don't believe the devs wanted to ship the game like this, my personal opinion is that they were given a tight budget from Sony so they only were able to put a DirectX layer on top of the PS5 code while adding DLSS support to make it all run somehow. I can imagine they are disgusted with the game running at high fps / high settings and seeing that the frametimes can't keep a flatline not even for a single second even if you stop and look at the sky, it's just sad

Then they'll wonder why the game isn't selling... this is a niche game and most of those that could have double-dipped are avoiding it like the plague, they wanted a high fps mouse and keyboard experience but they found these frametimes instead:

https://youtu.be/_L2Z61mQY94

[C1REX]

Without looking at the graph I wouldn’t know there are any stutters.
The game has some serious problems but I can’t understand how this performance can be considered “unplayable” by some.

[Galandil]

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

Without looking at the graph I wouldn’t know there are any stutters.
The game has some serious problems but I can’t understand how this performance can be considered “unplayable” by some.

Because it's a video, captured at 60 fps. If you're playing, with an avg frametime of X, and you get constantly a bunch of frames with a lot higher frametime, even if that high is lower that 16,67ms you notice it, *a lot*.

Also, it ruins the input latency, all things that you can't notice just by looking at a 60fps video without checking the frametime graph.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

Without looking at the graph I wouldn’t know there are any stutters.
The game has some serious problems but I can’t understand how this performance can be considered “unplayable” by some.

I'm trying to show that on a system 3 times as powerful as a PS5 the game has some barely noticeable stutters but rather noticeable wildly varying frametimes that can't keep a flatline not even for a second at high fps/ high settings, if you don't look at the graph of course you won't notice anything since on modern hardware the game never gets below 120 fps or so, but let me show you a different PC than mine, this is on a 3070 + 10400 which is still PS5 level or better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHk1RS0x4NA

anywhere close to a loading point and the game stalls, it's completely unoptimized and sad to see, whoever paid full price for such frametimes / performance in a game where reflexes and input latency are paramount should be kicking themselves in the teeth. The solution is dropping the graphics settings and keeping the framerate at around 60 fps so you can more or less play with a controller, which is a joke for PC gamers.

One of the reason the game isn't selling at all on PC is because those on PS5 that wanted a PC port to play with mouse and keyboard at higher fps are avoiding the game after seeing the stutterfest it is if you don't have the latest Intel 13XXX or Zen 4 DDR5 system, which is absurd for a PS5 port. And if you want to enable ray-tracing and play without hiccups then yeah, drop it to 60 fps so Restutternal turns back into Returnal but at full price.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Originally posted by Galandil:

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

Without looking at the graph I wouldn’t know there are any stutters.
The game has some serious problems but I can’t understand how this performance can be considered “unplayable” by some.

Because it's a video, captured at 60 fps. If you're playing, with an avg frametime of X, and you get constantly a bunch of frames with a lot higher frametime, even if that high is lower that 16,67ms you notice it, *a lot*.

Also, it ruins the input latency, all things that you can't notice just by looking at a 60fps video without checking the frametime graph.

yep, that's it, at high fps / high settings (ray-tracing disabled or enabled) the game can't keep a flatline with regards to frametimes not even for a single second, it's wildly wavering and varying even if you stop to look at a wall, with the GPU and the CPU far from being fully utilized it's clear this is due to poorly written software. Playing Horizon Zero Dawn after this and traversing the huge map at 200+ fps from one corner to the opposite one without a single spike in the frametimes is rather telling.

[Glowhawk44]

It was not unplayable for me, but I still refunded because i wanted to play with ray tracing. And when I buy a game, I want to experience everything it has to offer. Ray tracing looks absolutely amazing on this game, so I will wait until that is completely fixed.

[C1REX]

Originally posted by Lince_SPAIN:

Playing Horizon Zero Dawn after this and traversing the huge map at 200+ fps from one corner to the opposite one without a single spike in the frametimes is rather telling.

Returnal have serious problems for sure but I’m surprised people call it unplayable. However I play at 60fps with a controller on a few years old machine that is weaker than ps5 so it’s a completely different perspective :)

It doesn’t feel fair to blame devs just yet and giving ps4 game as an example that runs on a nearly 10 years old console that was weak back then. Does the game run on a 2013 PC or do you brute force it? Let’s see how ps5 exclusives are ported and how other devs manage to port their games. Games that are not available on ps4 and ideally not available on potato series s.
Then lets see how ps5 games run on a 2030 PC to have a fair comparison to ps4 ports.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

Originally posted by Lince_SPAIN:

Playing Horizon Zero Dawn after this and traversing the huge map at 200+ fps from one corner to the opposite one without a single spike in the frametimes is rather telling.

Returnal have serious problems for sure but I’m surprised people call it unplayable. However I play at 60fps with a controller on a few years old machine that is weaker than ps5 so it’s a completely different perspective :)

It doesn’t feel fair to blame devs just yet and giving ps4 game as an example that runs on a nearly 10 years old console that was weak back then. Does the game run on a 2013 PC or do you brute force it? Let’s see how ps5 exclusives are ported and how other devs manage to port their games. Games that are not available on ps4 and ideally not available on potato series s.
Then lets see how ps5 games run on a 2030 PC to have a fair comparison to ps4 ports.

Yeah it's far from unplayable, as my video in this thread shows my PC can run it easily at 1440p Epic settings and medium ray-tracing (higher than that the ray-tracing bug they haven't fixed yet forces most users to cap the framerate to 80-90 or so to avoid huge spikes in frame times), in my case I play at rather steady 144fps G-Sync with some huge fights bringing the game down to 125 fps when ray-tracing is enabled.

The issue is the framerate delivery inconsistency that in less powerful hardware can become annoying and distracting, forcing a lot of users to cap the framerate to a measley 60 fps figure and use a controller, thus negating all the PC advantages.

We need to have higher standards and don't normalize full price products with such unoptimized frametimes, granted you won't notice the flaws by using a fast DDR5 system with a 13XXX CPU, but this is beyond what they recommend in the store page.

Horizon isn't exactly a fair comparison but it is a game with far more complex graphics and detailed long distance views with no "loading doors" whatsoever, you can run everywhere with a perfect frame delivery at 200 fps and flatline frametimes. Returnal map on the other hand is divided into small rooms with loading areas and can't keep consistent frametimes at high fps even if doing nothing but facing a wall.

[C1REX]

It seems that the game mostly disappoints people with high end PCs with ultra high expectations. I’m impressed that my lower end PC runs the game better than a stronger console. It’s fascinating how different perspectives people may have looking at exactly the same game. :)

Horizon1 was optimised for a super weak console with slow hdd and little ram/vram. Also no unique tech like on ps5. Similar PC is below potato level. We can blame the same port to be so bad that needs few times stronger PC to brute force it.

In summary I refuse to not be happy with the game. :)
PC master race for me.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Originally posted by C1REX-PL:

It seems that the game mostly disappoints people with high end PCs with ultra high expectations. I’m impressed that my lower end PC runs the game better than a stronger console. It’s fascinating how different perspectives people may have looking at exactly the same game. :)

Horizon1 was optimised for a super weak console with slow hdd and little ram/vram. Also no unique tech like on ps5. Similar PC is below potato level. We can blame the same port to be so bad that needs few times stronger PC to brute force it.

In summary I refuse to not be happy with the game. :)
PC master race for me.

It's not just "expectations", it's what they sold us vs what they marketed, they were hyping the unlocked framerate, the higher res, the ray-tracing features and the improved EPIC settings and now it turns out the game has a hard time to run flawlessly at anything over 60 fps regardless of the resolution.

They now have downgraded the visuals by reducing the level of detail (draw distance) so the CPU doesn't need to calculate all the geometry it used to do before the latest patch, the game looks worse now with an awful popping and some problems arised after this geometry change, like some rooms won't load properly and your character gets stuck, needing to reset the cycle which is a tremendous annoyance.

[YoLolo69]

With an RTX3070 OC and an i7 10700K OC, the game run at 4K 60fps, DLSS Performance, all settings at Epic and RT Ultra, BUT Texture at high. We discovered the last stutters my friend PC had was due to the 8GB VRAM only. After lowering Texture to high, stutters was gone for good. Saying that, I understsand OP arguments, but as my frametime, and so my fps, can fluctuate a lot between 60 to 100, setting Vsync ON fix all stutters and it's smooth and perfectly playable no issue.

[Buntkreuz]

It can be unplyable for sure.
Especially when started up the first run is pretty much one i just go to die, because it will stutter the entire run, as the game doesnt properly load something (textures maybe).
I even had moments where i respawned and nothing would load properly, the entire scene looking like a mess without any textures.

After one or two rounds, it becomes stable.
So my guess is, the game has some serious issues loading up stuff but after some time when it already rendered most scenes, it becomes less of an issue.
However, even then i have severe stutters at times.
Mind, the ingame benchmark noted me to be able to play with nearly maxed settings and i toned them down a good bit (because shadows for example eat up tons of resources without providing a noticable visual improvement).

Besides, tweaking settings had no impact on the stutter itself.
Im not talking about framerate drops due to performance or such. Its basically the game telling "dude, i didnt load that area fast enough so the game needs to slow down for a moment until im done."
And its no SSD issue either, because its installed on one.


And dont get me started on cutscenes. They stutter so heavily, that i have secondlong freezes and desyncs with sound.
The first intro cutscene was so drastically desynced that they sounds were coming 3 seconds before the visual action happened.
I now skip cutscenes anyway, knowing they wont be enjoyable.

Im not saying i have a perfect PC, but dont be company shills, it wouldnt matter anyway.
Even with a low or mid tier PC you could expect to have ZERO stuttering in any game that is coded well enough.
Bad performance? Sure. Im not expecting to punch up every setting and play with 300fps no matter my hardware.
But your hardware cant cause that type of stuttering, because its no performance related stuttering.

I also noticed that most games these days dont even need the actual hardware generation to be played at 60fps on max settings.
I had no game as of now even use close to 50% of my Ryzen 2700X.
My RAM was not exhausted by any game as of now (16GB DDR4) and my RTX2080 might sometimes come to its limits when put on heavy load with Raytracing and such, but even that "old" card only tends to have roughly 3/5 of its VRAM being used.
Just to be clear, that its not a hardware problem, its something in the games engine that doesnt properly work at times.
And i play anything available out there.
If performance tanks, then my experience is, that its because a game is badly optimized.
As weirdly, games from larger studios that put an excessive amount of money into performance optimizations run perfectly fine.

[Lince_SPAIN]

Originally posted by Zero Fox Given:

Besides, tweaking settings had no impact on the stutter itself.
Im not talking about framerate drops due to performance or such. Its basically the game telling "dude, i didnt load that area fast enough so the game needs to slow down for a moment until im done."
And its no SSD issue either, because its installed on one.

In order to try and gain some performance they dialed draw distance back and now the game has texture and geometry pop-in regardless of VRAM capacity and storage speed, this is leading to a tremendous bug where some items are loading later than expected (specially floors) leading to game-breaking bugs, a lazy "fix" downgrading visuals and introducing a tremendous bug that ruins the game, there's absolutely no Quality Assurance whatsoever in this game, no play testing, no pinned threads for users to give their feedback, it's like the game is abandoned and a junior dev changes some stuff once every 3 weeks to make things worse, (no offense for other junior devs).

Originally posted by YoLolo69:

setting Vsync ON fix all stutters and it's smooth and perfectly playable no issue.

That's fine but why did they marketed this port as a "high framerate experience" when the game needs to be capped at 60 fps just to avoid the horrible frametimes? If they wanted to sell us the PS5 version as it is then charge 30 bucks for it and no one will complain, the problem is charging full price for improvements that are not working as intended.

[Hazard]

Lol all these ppl "with controller capped st 60 fps u cant notice"

Well no sh1t sherlock, that does not excuse this garbage poty for paying customers who want to play at high fps with a mouse does it?

[Galandil]

Originally posted by Lince_SPAIN:

In order to try and gain some performance they dialed draw distance back and now the game has texture and geometry pop-in regardless of VRAM capacity and storage speed.

To be fair, the pop-in was present in the pre-patch version too, it's the most noticeable in Crimson Wastes on the obolite rocks, you can see them change to a more detailed mesh the more you get near to them.

The floor/endless fall bug too, I encountered it just once after 140 hours of playtime, and it was in the pre-patch version.

Imo, they just fixed some stuff in order to use RT (which, to be completely honest, it's absolutely useless and unnoticeable in this game, unless you stand still to look at the reflections/shadows), but the non-RT code has been left mostly untouched.

[Arkanis]

anybody got any fixes i can try for the stutters? game is playable but its soo annoying
RT turned off

RTX 3070ti
i7 12700k
32gigs