Dying Light Random FPS drops/low FPS

[Vaprek]

Im at my wits end with this game. After trying all the forum suggestions and disabling nvidia, lowering view distance to 0, and optimizing nvidia control panel. I still have sub 30 fps drops and stutter with this game.
Other games work just fine and benchmarks are usually at 60 FPS.
Is this just a poorly optimized game or only other thing I could think of is my gfx card, which is decent enough for this game.

PC:
ASUS Rog Strix
i7-9750H 2.6Ghz
16 GB DDR 4 2666Mhz RAM
GTX 1650 4 GB GDDR 5
512GB SSD

[Fallen]

That system definitely should be enough to run this fairly well.

My first thought is VRAM usage.

As an example: at high textures 1080p with most settings on (no dof/blur/grain/chromatic abb), It starts at 3.7GB used as soon as I load into the tower and jumps up past 5GB as soon as I start running around outside. Bumping that down to medium drops it to around 3GB VRAM usage steady after running around.

Once you fill that 4GB video RAM on your GPU that's when you'll start getting stuttering because it has to swap textures in and out from the SSD and/or RAM.

I would recommend lowering textures to medium and retesting.

[Maxoduke]

I'm having the same problem with my ASUS FX505DT-AL106T (Ryzen 5 3550H, 8GB DDR4, GTX 1650 4GB, 512GB SSD).

I've noticed that lag starts when I'm looking at an area where there are too many zombies, for example, the Infamy Bridge.

It doesn't matter what game video settings are. It happens on lowest possible settings too (even on 1280x720 resolution).

I'm having a hard time believing this processor or graphics card can't run this game because I ran this game on an AMD FX-4100, 8GB DDR3 and a 2GB 750Ti on nearly 60 FPS for almost a year.

I feel it's worth noting that the display of this laptop is a 120Hz panel.

On some instances, I did manage to run the game without any lags and stuttering but I had to perform some specific steps which are not guaranteed to work everytime.

These are the steps:

In Nvidia Control Panel, set these settings for DL:
---------
Power Mgmt. Console: Prefer max. Performance
Vertical Synchronisation: On

In-game Video Settings:
---------
Resolution: Anything below full
Full screen: Off
Vertical Sync: On
Motion Blur: On
Anti aliasing: On
Everything else: Off

Save the settings and restart the game. It should run in Windowed mode. If you're lucky, you won't get any FPS drops and stuttering.

If that works, you can turn Full screen On.

[Vaprek]

Originally posted by Maxoduke:

I'm having the same problem with my ASUS FX505DT-AL106T (Ryzen 5 3550H, 8GB DDR4, GTX 1650 4GB, 512GB SSD).

I've noticed that lag starts when I'm looking at an area where there are too many zombies, for example, the Infamy Bridge.

It doesn't matter what game video settings are. It happens on lowest possible settings too (even on 1280x720 resolution).

I'm having a hard time believing this processor or graphics card can't run this game because I ran this game on an AMD FX-4100, 8GB DDR3 and a 2GB 750Ti on nearly 60 FPS for almost a year.

I feel it's worth noting that the display of this laptop is a 120Hz panel.

On some instances, I did manage to run the game without any lags and stuttering but I had to perform some specific steps which are not guaranteed to work everytime.

These are the steps:

In Nvidia Control Panel, set these settings for DL:
---------
Power Mgmt. Console: Prefer max. Performance
Vertical Synchronisation: On

In-game Video Settings:
---------
Resolution: Anything below full
Full screen: Off
Vertical Sync: On
Motion Blur: On
Anti aliasing: On
Everything else: Off

Save the settings and restart the game. It should run in Windowed mode. If you're lucky, you won't get any FPS drops and stuttering.

If that works, you can turn Full screen On.

nada. nothing worked. still getting fps drops after doing all that. idk, ill call this one a wash i guess.

[Maxoduke]

Originally posted by Vaprek:

nada. nothing worked. still getting fps drops after doing all that. idk, ill call this one a wash i guess.

I'd like to add some more steps to my previous post.
It still doesn't work, like, 70% of the time:

In Nvidia Control Panel, set these settings for DL:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
Vertical sync: On

In-game Video Settings:
---------------------------------------------
Resolution: Anything below full
Full screen: Off
Vertical Sync: On
Motion Blur: On
Anti aliasing: On
Everything else: Off

Save the settings and restart the game. It should run in Windowed mode.

• As soon as you see the game window, take away focus from the game (click outside of the game window or open Windows Start Menu) and wait for about 10-12 seconds.
  
• After make it to the main menu of the game, wait for another 15-20 seconds doing nothing.

Now load your save and try. It worked for me about 3/10 tries.

[Vaprek]

Well it worked for a bit. I was getting good FPS for a good hour, until it dropped. I feel like this game is just not optimized. It's playable, on occasion at the moment.

[Maxoduke]

Glad to hear that.

[Maxoduke]

So, I found another workaround.

Keep all the settings for this game in Nvidia Control Panel default.
Launch the game and Turn Off 2 things: Vsync and Fullscreen

Now, restart the game, load the map, go to settings again and turn on Vsync and Fullscreen.
You just gotta launch the game in Windowed mode and with V-Sync off. After loading the map, you can turn them on.

When you're done playing, again turn them off and exit the game.
It works for me everytime.

[simon]

Vysnc has a relatively high cost in terms of FPS it will also step down from say 120 to 60 if it cant achieve 120.

[Maxoduke]

Turning on V-Sync after loading the map works perfectly fine. I just can't launch the game with V-Sync and Fullscreen on. If I do, I'll start lagging really bad. But I can turn them both on after loading the map (works in Slums at least). No lags whatsoever.

[simon]

Have you got a frame counter on? If you have you should see the FPS going up when you turn off vysnc. If not then you may have an issue with the game files or your drivers. Have you done a complete uninstall of the drivers with DDU?

I have an i5 3570k @3.4GHZ, 8 gigs ram, GTX980 and i run the game with everything on high (vysnc off) and i get over 100 FPS all the time and it mostly sits at about 120 even on the bridge.

[Maxoduke]

I re-installed so many different versions of AMD and Nvidia drivers to test this out, but results were same: Really bad lag. All the driver-changes were performed using DDU in safe mode

If you checked out my previous workaround (which involved Nvidia Control Panel), you'd get and idea of just how many different things I tried until I stumbled upon a workaround which worked 30% of the time.

I updated both AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers today (AMD Radeon 19.7.3 and Nvidia 431.60). Then, I tried some different things and eventually found this new workaround which works every-dang-time.

[simon]

Originally posted by Maxoduke:

I re-installed so many different versions of AMD and Nvidia drivers to test this out, but results were same: Really bad lag. All the driver-changes were performed using DDU in safe mode

If you checked out my previous workaround (which involved Nvidia Control Panel), you'd get and idea of just how many different things I tried until I stumbled upon a workaround which worked 30% of the time.

I updated both AMD and Nvidia graphics drivers today (AMD Radeon 19.7.3 and Nvidia 431.60). Then, I tried some different things and eventually found this new workaround which works every-dang-time.

Odd. At least you have a fix. I've read a lot of post in lots of different game forums (mostly games that are from a few years ago) that don’t seem to perform well with the 10 and 20 series cards but it doesn’t effect every one with new hardware. Its very inconsistent with who it effects.

[Maxoduke]

Originally posted by simon:

Odd. At least you have a fix. I've read a lot of post in lots of different game forums (mostly games that are from a few years ago) that don’t seem to perform well with the 10 and 20 series cards but it doesn’t effect every one with new hardware. Its very inconsistent with who it effects.

Agreed. I can run Killing Floor 2, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and a bunch of other games just fine. It's only Dying Light that's affected.

[Vaprek]

this is the only game where there's sudden FPS drops, but its still sorta playable

[Bum]

Same issue here. On Lenovo L340 Gaming with a gtx 1650 and i7 9750hq with no luck. I upgraded to 16gb ram thinking that was an issue but it didn't work :(