Is this game well optimized?

[Ludwig II of Bavaria]

So a good friend of mine gifted me a $10 steam gift card and I wanted to buy this game because of the sale it has.

Anyway I was playing the demo to see if I liked it and if my PC could run it but I encountered some really bad frame drops even on minimum settings on Bank Heist (last night I had 60 constant FPS on the same map though), I've watched some videos and noticed that the demo has significantly less graphics option that the full game which is kinda weird, but it makes it impossible for me to test it properly, so I just wanna know how well optimized do you think the game is. As you would understand I don't want to pay for a game my PC can't run well.

Here are my specs, I would like to run the game at least on low to medium settings:

Intel Core i7 3.20GHz
6GBs of RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5700 1GB VRAM

Thanks.

[Falconpolat]

badly optimized games loves intel especially DX9 games

[marijn211]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

"Intel CPU"? c:

You're unfamiliar with current state of things? Intel CPUs got higher per-core performance.

hahaha no, I help compose and build people PC's, quite the opposite, just mean that this game in particular really doesn't need that much performance as Intel CPUs offer (I know they are vastly superior for a lot of cases of gaming especially with Payday's one core limit), the CPU together with RAM are the very low-end bottlenecks while after that it is almost always the graphics card (I never checked but likely with exception for the poorly optimized maps) when your PC was more than €350 (in parts, pre-build systems will have less value in parts, based on recent prices).

[Snow]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

You're unfamiliar with current state of things? Intel CPUs got higher per-core performance.

:awkward:hahaha no, I help compose and build people PC's, quite the opposite, just mean that this game in particular really doesn't need that much performance as Intel CPUs offer (I know they are vastly superior for a lot of cases of gaming especially with Payday's one core limit), the CPU together with RAM are the very low-end bottlenecks while after that it is almost always the graphics card (I never checked but likely with exception for the poorly optimized maps) when your PC was more than €350 (in parts, pre-build systems will have less value in parts, based on recent prices).

Oops, an accident! GPU can't reach 100% utilization despite the 7700k running @4.8GHz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wIYE8jArEc
Another accident, now with i7-8700 @4.6GHz and GPU at 60%. What a coincidence!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iueTxsMHeoo
On no, i9-7900X bottlenecks outdated GPU even at 1440p.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usAag9PsGEs
Damn those tests must all be fake, PD2 absolutely doesn't need Intel's per-core performance just like you've said. Except for the fact even Intel's top dogs are not good enough to not bottleneck in PD2.
I'm not even going to comment the "one core limit". It's just clear you've never actually played the game so there's no point in discussing this further.

[drewbstar]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

"Intel CPU"? c:

You're unfamiliar with current state of things? Intel CPUs got higher per-core performance.

Except Zen 2 stomps Intel, lol. Even Ryzen 1st/2nd Gen gave them a run for their money. This game was made in 2013, it doesn't need anyone to overspend hundreds on a "very fast Intel CPU."

The budgets of people that ask if a game is optimized puts it outside the range of upper i7s.

[Snow]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย drewbstar:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

You're unfamiliar with current state of things? Intel CPUs got higher per-core performance.

Except Zen 2 stomps Intel, lol. Even Ryzen 1st/2nd Gen gave them a run for their money. This game was made in 2013, it doesn't need anyone to overspend hundreds on a "very fast Intel CPU."

The budgets of people that ask if a game is optimized puts it outside the range of upper i7s.

I don't get it. First you talk Zen2, and then all of a sudden you're talking budgets. People on budgets still run Sandy Bridge and Piledriver and the difference there is even more apparent. And talking newer hardware - it takes R7 2700X to beat i3-9100f in PD2. It's just like you've said, "overspending hundreds", only the other way around.

[drewbstar]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

I don't get it. First you talk Zen2, and then all of a sudden you're talking budgets.

I suppose the way I phrased it wasn't clear. The whole "Intel is worth it everyway because of IPC/GHz" mindset is outdated and has been since Ryzen started competiting. Look at the Zombieload and Spectre/Meltdown mitigation losses. The videos you cite are all using higher i7s and an i9. Are they factoring those in?

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

it takes R7 2700X to beat i3-9100f in PD2. It's just like you've said, "overspending hundreds", only the other way around.

Do you have a source for this? And besides, it isn't like the difference is that huge. You can grab a R7 2700X at Microcenter for $200, the i3 (not carriered by MC any longer) goes online for about $110-$120. Also ignoring the cheaper costs of AM4 boards.

Honestly, this whole debate has nothing to do with this thread. OP already got his answer. I'm not here to start another one of the million Intel vs AMD debates, I'm just saying that, in my experience with a <$200 R5 2600X, this game doesn't require you to drop $950 (per Amazon's Choice, idk what's with the prices right now.) on a i9-7900X.

[Ludwig II of Bavaria]

Well hello, I didn't expect to cause a whole debate here lol. You can keep talking if you want I don't mind.

On the other hand I've played the game for some hours now and I'm having a blast, I have everything on low except textures which are on high and I can keep 60 FPS throughout the entire experience, except when I'm in jewelry stores where I get like 40 to 50 FPS, but that's actually fine. Overall the game seems to be more optimized than the demo based on my personal experience where I could go all the way down to 20 just on the first available bank heist.

The only bad thing I could see so far is that the game uses just 1 core of my CPU which I think it's a total waste of processing performance, the peak temperature of my GPU was like 75°C I think had a 70-80% of load in most areas but 100% every now and then when in jewelry stores and such which is why I got the lower FPS.

OveralI think it runs very decently even though it could run better.

[Snow]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย drewbstar:

Do you have a source for this?

Wtf?[cpu.userbenchmark.com] I mean, if you can't even google, why am I wasting my time explaining obvious things?

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย drewbstar:

I'm just saying that, in my experience with a <$200 R5 2600X, this game doesn't require you to drop $950 (per Amazon's Choice, idk what's with the prices right now.) on a i9-7900X.

And I'm saying Intel CPUs will still provide a better price/performance in PD2 and similar games that don't require much cores. Simple as that.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย ☭ Stalin-Chan ☭:

Overall the game seems to be more optimized than the demo based on my personal experience where I could go all the way down to 20 just on the first available bank heist.

When people say the final game runs worse than the demo, they usually are talking most recent heists, as those require more CPU processing power than those available in demo. Overall it makes sense that final game runs better as there were tons of optimization patches and stuff like that. Glad to know it's all going well for you so far!

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย ☭ Stalin-Chan ☭:

The only bad thing I could see so far is that the game uses just 1 core of my CPU which I think it's a total waste of processing performance, the peak temperature of my GPU was like 75°C I think had a 70-80% of load in most areas but 100% every now and then when in jewelry stores and such which is why I got the lower FPS.

Now that's weird. I've got a quad-core CPU and I can assure you game can fully utilize 2 cores, and put some load on one more from time to time, most likely AI and physics and whatnot. 100% GPU load is never good, you might want to drop shadows or something just a bit so it won't ever hit 100%. I strongly recommend using RTSS utility to limit the framerate, it makes any game way smoother, and old ones even more so. Also, when it will come to you trying out various modes, try the one called Low Violence. It makes killed cops simply disappear, which, considering how many cops you kill per minute, can both clean up the picture and reduce CPU/GPU load for even smoother experience.
Oh, and don't turn on VSync and "Flush GPU" options. Just don't. Both are glitchy and both can lead to lower framerates and microstutters. If you desperately want to remove tearing - try ScanlineSync that comes with RTSS, that little thing is a gamechanger.

[marijn211]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

hahaha no, I help compose and build people PC's, quite the opposite, just mean that this game in particular really doesn't need that much performance as Intel CPUs offer (I know they are vastly superior for a lot of cases of gaming especially with Payday's one core limit), the CPU together with RAM are the very low-end bottlenecks while after that it is almost always the graphics card (I never checked but likely with exception for the poorly optimized maps) when your PC was more than €350 (in parts, pre-build systems will have less value in parts, based on recent prices).

Oops, an accident! GPU can't reach 100% utilization despite the 7700k running @4.8GHz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wIYE8jArEc
Another accident, now with i7-8700 @4.6GHz and GPU at 60%. What a coincidence!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iueTxsMHeoo
On no, i9-7900X bottlenecks outdated GPU even at 1440p.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usAag9PsGEs
Damn those tests must all be fake, PD2 absolutely doesn't need Intel's per-core performance just like you've said. Except for the fact even Intel's top dogs are not good enough to not bottleneck in PD2.
I'm not even going to comment the "one core limit". It's just clear you've never actually played the game so there's no point in discussing this further.

Yeh I totally idled those 750 hours and got most of the achievements, got hundreds of crashes and created 120 mods, dozens of screenshots and 8 guides without ever opening the game.

I do play the game and benchmarked it too, the game indeed seems to limit around 50-80% GPU usage but so does the used CPU core(s) actually too for....some reason
(I thought it was 2 cores but a moderator said me it was 1 so I still assume that number)

[Snow]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

I do play the game and benchmarked it too, the game indeed seems to limit around 50-80% GPU usage but so does the used CPU core(s) actually too for....some reason
(I thought it was 2 cores but a moderator said me it was 1 so I still assume that number)

There is one thing really wrong with your statement. The game does not limit around 50-80% GPU. I've actually never seen a single game that will be somehow able to stop trying to render more frames before reaching full GPU utilization. The problem with GPU not reaching 100% usage is clear as a day - CPU just can't render that much frames. To be able to do its job, GPU needs to get data from CPU, else it has nothing to do.
Now, CPU not reaching the 100% utilization is way another story. While GPU's job can easily be parallelized (i.e. to make a nice smooth shadow for object B you don't need to know what object A's shadow is like), but most of the job CPU does have to come in strict order (i.e. to make object B exist 2m away from object A, you have to make object A exist first). That's why typical modern PC has got 4-8 CPU cores and ~1000 GPU cores, and that's pretty much why CPU usage stays low with modern CPUs in PD2. They can say it's bad optimization or whatever, but game's engine wasn't meant to meet that much cores at all. It simply has no way the job across the cores, and has no extra job to put some load for bells and whistles.
It's an old game with an old engine that was meant to meet 10GHz+ CPUs, yet the CPU development has gone the other way. Some goes for say Crysis that can still run like crap on modern hardware. The game can and will stutter a bit hitting the CPU bottleneck pretty much like any other game, but by no means it's unoptimized. People manage to get 150-250FPS with modern hardware with dozens of NPCs all around. I'd say it's actually a miracle to pull this out of such an old engine.

[marijn211]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Snow:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

I do play the game and benchmarked it too, the game indeed seems to limit around 50-80% GPU usage but so does the used CPU core(s) actually too for....some reason
(I thought it was 2 cores but a moderator said me it was 1 so I still assume that number)

There is one thing really wrong with your statement. The game does not limit around 50-80% GPU. I've actually never seen a single game that will be somehow able to stop trying to render more frames before reaching full GPU utilization. The problem with GPU not reaching 100% usage is clear as a day - CPU just can't render that much frames. To be able to do its job, GPU needs to get data from CPU, else it has nothing to do.
Now, CPU not reaching the 100% utilization is way another story. While GPU's job can easily be parallelized (i.e. to make a nice smooth shadow for object B you don't need to know what object A's shadow is like), but most of the job CPU does have to come in strict order (i.e. to make object B exist 2m away from object A, you have to make object A exist first). That's why typical modern PC has got 4-8 CPU cores and ~1000 GPU cores, and that's pretty much why CPU usage stays low with modern CPUs in PD2. They can say it's bad optimization or whatever, but game's engine wasn't meant to meet that much cores at all. It simply has no way the job across the cores, and has no extra job to put some load for bells and whistles.
It's an old game with an old engine that was meant to meet 10GHz+ CPUs, yet the CPU development has gone the other way. Some goes for say Crysis that can still run like crap on modern hardware. The game can and will stutter a bit hitting the CPU bottleneck pretty much like any other game, but by no means it's unoptimized. People manage to get 150-250FPS with modern hardware with dozens of NPCs all around. I'd say it's actually a miracle to pull this out of such an old engine.

Yeh my point which I forgot and diverted from was that even with very low core speeds you will be limited, but not hurting noticible performance in by far most cases, clocks as low as 2,5 GHz clocks still support 144Hz on my machine which I consider the top (240Hz is a joke)
So what I meant to say was that you don't need the Intel CPU for reaching a good framerate even though you get CPU bottlenecked with most setups.
And I was already aware the GPU runs lower because of the CPU neck.
(I run the highest settings, the most common AMD Ryzen CPUs go from 3.5GHz so higher resolutions than mine would also be supported with that speed)

[S E X Y]

Game isnt optimized,but with your pc ,you ll be fine,i rly recomend you to play with v-sync or G-Sync or 144hz on to have a smoother gameplay

[Ichigo]

the game isnt really optimized in general, increasing the graphics seems pretty useless past a point, you cant really put more shine on ♥♥♥♥

[Snow]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย marijn211:

Yeh my point which I forgot and diverted from was that even with very low core speeds you will be limited, but not hurting noticible performance in by far most cases, clocks as low as 2,5 GHz clocks still support 144Hz on my machine which I consider the top (240Hz is a joke)
So what I meant to say was that you don't need the Intel CPU for reaching a good framerate even though you get CPU bottlenecked with most setups.
And I was already aware the GPU runs lower because of the CPU neck.
(I run the highest settings, the most common AMD Ryzen CPUs go from 3.5GHz so higher resolutions than mine would also be supported with that speed)

Well, if you put it like that - yeah, pretty much any modern-ish CPU can achieve decent framerates in PD2, so it isn't that important these days to go Intel for PD2. One thing I'd like to point out tho - the frequency of the CPU doesn't really matter all that much, i.e. my old i5-2500 @3.4GHz will beat the living ♥♥♥♥ out of FX-9590 @5GHz in PD2. There's always more going on than just that number.

[MaxHardcore]

Dude, its the Buldozer Engine.

A damn Intel Core 2 would probably get 40 fps w a GT 600