CPU-related performance problems on AMD CPU

[sunnrocks82]

Since the game for me runs really lousy and choppy regardless of the targetted framerate and even on the overworld map, I suspected a CPU bottleneck and ran HWInfo64 for a while.

The game hammers cores 1 and 3, spikes to 100% happen not only during battles but also on the overworld map, in the menus and in cutscenes. So something seems to be wrong with the CPU usage of the game. This occurs regardless of the details and resolution, FPS cap, upscaling, etc. I also don't experience any thermal throttling.

Since I often read things like “CPU usage is between 30% and 40% and therefore ok” here for similar problems with the game - that's not how it works. If, for example, a game only uses two of eight cores, but these are used 100% and the other six are not used at all, then the general utilization would only be 25% and you would still be permanently in the CPU bottleneck. The decisive factor is what happens on the cores used.

Since comparable problems are usually reported by AMD users on the web and then an Intel user often replies that the game runs perfectly for him, my first guess would be that the problem could be exclusive to AMD processors, but not sure of curse. If anyone has a solution, I would be grateful. I haven't found one myself so far, the usual things such as power profiles, priorities, core unparking etc. have been unsuccessful. Please find my specs attached.



be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Midi Tower ohne Netzteil schwarz
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8x 4.20GHz So.AM5 WOF
MSI Tomahawk WIFI AMD B650 So.AM5 Dual Channel DDR5 ATX Retail
32GB (2x 16GB) G.Skill Flare EXPO X5 schwarz DDR5-6000 DIMM CL32-38-38-96 Dual Kit
1000 Watt be quiet! Pure Power 12 M Modular 80+ Gold
2TB Kingston KC3000 M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 3D-NAND TLC (SKC3000D/2048G)
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Tower Kühler
12GB Palit Geforce RTX 4070 Dual OC Aktiv PCIe 4.0 x16 1xHDMI 2.1a / 3x DisplayPort 1.4a (Retail)

[bownser]

I have a 7800X3D + 4090 and it runs great for me, locked 140fps with everything at max + upscale no drops.

[sunnrocks82]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bownser:

I have a 7800X3D + 4090 and it runs great for me, locked 140fps with everything at max + upscale no drops.

Thank you for the heads-up! May I ask:

- Are you on W10 or W11?
- Which GPU-Driver do you use?
- Do you use HAGS?
- Do you use Frame Generation?

[llll]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von sunnrocks82:

Since the game for me runs really lousy and choppy regardless of the targetted framerate and even on the overworld map, I suspected a CPU bottleneck and ran HWInfo64 for a while.

The game hammers cores 1 and 3, spikes to 100% happen not only during battles but also on the overworld map, in the menus and in cutscenes. So something seems to be wrong with the CPU usage of the game. This occurs regardless of the details and resolution, FPS cap, upscaling, etc. I also don't experience any thermal throttling.

Since I often read things like “CPU usage is between 30% and 40% and therefore ok” here for similar problems with the game - that's not how it works. If, for example, a game only uses two of eight cores, but these are used 100% and the other six are not used at all, then the general utilization would only be 25% and you would still be permanently in the CPU bottleneck. The decisive factor is what happens on the cores used.

Since comparable problems are usually reported by AMD users on the web and then an Intel user often replies that the game runs perfectly for him, my first guess would be that the problem could be exclusive to AMD processors, but not sure of curse. If anyone has a solution, I would be grateful. I haven't found one myself so far, the usual things such as power profiles, priorities, core unparking etc. have been unsuccessful. Please find my specs attached.



be quiet! Pure Base 500DX Midi Tower ohne Netzteil schwarz
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8x 4.20GHz So.AM5 WOF
MSI Tomahawk WIFI AMD B650 So.AM5 Dual Channel DDR5 ATX Retail
32GB (2x 16GB) G.Skill Flare EXPO X5 schwarz DDR5-6000 DIMM CL32-38-38-96 Dual Kit
1000 Watt be quiet! Pure Power 12 M Modular 80+ Gold
2TB Kingston KC3000 M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 3D-NAND TLC (SKC3000D/2048G)
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Tower Kühler
12GB Palit Geforce RTX 4070 Dual OC Aktiv PCIe 4.0 x16 1xHDMI 2.1a / 3x DisplayPort 1.4a (Retail)

first of all sorry, english is not my first language
and thank you for post this

i have save same problem, I have already reported to Koei Tecmo customer support, but their response has been very minimal, and they just provided a link to the minimum specs.

Such poor customer service, especially for a $100 game.
Now, all I can do is hope for a patch update to fix this issue.

[RoboDust]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von sunnrocks82:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bownser:

I have a 7800X3D + 4090 and it runs great for me, locked 140fps with everything at max + upscale no drops.

Thank you for the heads-up! May I ask:

- Are you on W10 or W11?
- Which GPU-Driver do you use?
- Do you use HAGS?
- Do you use Frame Generation?

May as well upgrade to Windows 11. It's cleared up a lot of small nagging issues. Too many to directly reference.

I'm running on a old i7-8700 & and 3080 and haven't run into any issues. Not playing at 4k, but 1440p with everything maxed with DLSS quality. Always 100fps +

[sunnrocks82]

Thx for the intel, guys!

Yeah, I have very high framerates, too, game does arround 110 to 120 FPS on 4k very high details, that´s not the issue. But I sure do have bad and very visible choppyness due to the CPU bottleneck even if I cap to 60FPS.

Not unplayable for me, but sure annoying. I´m playing on an OLED TV where you can see every frameskip.

Strange thing is that the CPU bottleneck is not permament but coming "in waves" which do not seem to be connected to anything special going on on the screen.

I have also noticed that the problem increases the higher I set the internal frame limiter while capping FPS external. Internal limiter alone gives worst results with every setting. If I now set it internal to 60FPS and simultaneously cap with RTSS or through the Nvidia Control Center to 60FPS, too, I achieve the best comparable results.

However, the higher I then set the internal frame limiter and at the same time leave the external cap at 60 FPS using RTSS or NCC, the more severe the problems become. Meaning cap internal 60 FPS / external 60 FPS works way better for me than cap internal 240 FPS / external 60 FPS or internal cap to 60 FPS without external cap. This may have something to do with the internal limiter.

[Imago]

Just change the cap to 120 fps and it should run fine. The game doesn't like being capped at 60 fps.

[sunnrocks82]

Tried this - actually worse than 60/60 for me. The higher I set the internal cap the bigger the problems become. Would be nice if I simply could DEACTIVATE the internal cap. Looking at you, Koei Tecmo.^^

[smokauweeds]

i was looking at your cpu and gpu on some bottle neck calculators, and it all looks fine. you may want to dig deeper and see if there is software running or something else thats the problem.

but as per your og post, it may just be amd and hows its running the game. can you set the amd to use 2 different cores for the main cores? as I was just messing around with this on the intel cpu I have.

maybe run the resource manager while playing. see if anything is hogging up your system resources.

[The Great White Shiekh]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von sunnrocks82:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von bownser:

I have a 7800X3D + 4090 and it runs great for me, locked 140fps with everything at max + upscale no drops.

Thank you for the heads-up! May I ask:

- Are you on W10 or W11?
- Which GPU-Driver do you use?
- Do you use HAGS?
- Do you use Frame Generation?

I have a 7800X3D and a 4070, get anywhere from 100-120 fps on max settings.

-i am on windows 10
-On the most up to date driver
-HAGS is on
-Recently turned on frame generation (was off before, didnt have any problems then either.)

[Sam]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von sunnrocks82:

Thx for the intel, guys!

Yeah, I have very high framerates, too, game does arround 110 to 120 FPS on 4k very high details, that´s not the issue. But I sure do have bad and very visible choppyness due to the CPU bottleneck even if I cap to 60FPS.

Not unplayable for me, but sure annoying. I´m playing on an OLED TV where you can see every frameskip.

Strange thing is that the CPU bottleneck is not permament but coming "in waves" which do not seem to be connected to anything special going on on the screen.

I have also noticed that the problem increases the higher I set the internal frame limiter while capping FPS external. Internal limiter alone gives worst results with every setting. If I now set it internal to 60FPS and simultaneously cap with RTSS or through the Nvidia Control Center to 60FPS, too, I achieve the best comparable results.

However, the higher I then set the internal frame limiter and at the same time leave the external cap at 60 FPS using RTSS or NCC, the more severe the problems become. Meaning cap internal 60 FPS / external 60 FPS works way better for me than cap internal 240 FPS / external 60 FPS or internal cap to 60 FPS without external cap. This may have something to do with the internal limiter.

the only annoyance i have now is during cutscene
not the rare prerenderer cinematic but the ingame conversation scene
it is sooooo annoying
ill check with capping both
iam on Oled LG C1 with Gsync (3080ti)
ryzen 5900x cpu

[sunnrocks82]

@all: Have many thanks for the feedback

Apart from RTSS and Display Fusion I don't use any background processes beyound the standard windows stuff. Of course, I switched off both of them for testing purposes, but that didn't produce any results. I benchmarked the CPU itself again and the results were all good, also I never reach more than 79 degrees Celsius on CPU, so everything should actually be fine on the technical side, especially since other games also perform within expected parameters.

Buuuut: During my session yesterday, the game suddenly ran much better out of the blue, no more stuttering in the overworld, no more stuttering in the in-game cutscenes, an almost clean gaming experience during battles.

I have no idea why this was suddenly the case, I didn't change anything on my side and there was no game update. But from one day to the next everything was like "magically" better. Maybe some shader compilation process that was stuck forever? No idea. However, I'm not complaining about the development and gratefully accept it.

I´ll monitor an give an update if things go south again.

[Sam]

"However, the higher I then set the internal frame limiter and at the same time leave the external cap at 60 FPS using RTSS or NCC, the more severe the problems become. Meaning cap internal 60 FPS / external 60 FPS works way better for me than cap internal 240 FPS / external 60 FPS or internal cap to 60 FPS without external cap. This may have something to do with the internal limiter."


dang i just try that and that kinda work
but not all the time but i agree with some form of compilation shader of something with the limiter

one thing i notice is if DLSS is active and you use a external framecap (rtss ect) and unlock the internal fps
during movement there is a lot of bluriness low res artefacting
but
if you use internal 60cap with external 60 cap
it all look very good an sharp

[sunnrocks82]

"one thing i notice is if DLSS is active and you use a external framecap (rtss ect) and unlock the internal fps
during movement there is a lot of bluriness low res artefacting"

Yes, saw that, too. You can maximise the visibility of this effect if you do it on the overworld map. If you set 60 ext. and 240 int. the whole map flickers and there is a lot of noise going on when you move the char.

Btw: I´m on LG C1 with GSYNC (even if I tried locked), too. From my experience you can get even better results if you set the TV also to 60Hz and do not use the native 120Hz.

60FPS int. / 60 FPS ext. AND 60Hz on TV - perfectly smooth for me. If I leave the TV at 120Hz I still get some stutters.

[oninezumi]

i have the same CPU but my proublem is hot CPU. Like 80 just in main menu very odd

[Harbi]

Ryzen 5800x3D, AMD 7900 XTX, 3440x1440p, Max settings

- High FPS but its not smooth, constant stutters, frame skipping & bad frame times.
- Freesync / Gsync not working correctly when it falls below frame rate.

The issue on my end was with the in-game Frame Rate Limiter. You can't turn it off, so I increased it above my monitor's limit ( to 240 fps ) and turn on in-game Vsync.

^ I also changed desktop refresh to 120Hz. Now I get a smooth & steady 120fps with no stutters or frame skipping. It would dip to 80 fps lows before.