1.0 Performance

[FT]

Adjusting these settings can boost FPS mainly when your GPU isn't the limit (often called a CPU-bottleneck):

ReflectionQuality has very little CPU-hit at LOW, but higher settings hit the CPU while your character walks/runs or jumps in certain areas.

ShadowDistance MED 15%-CPU hit, HIGH additional 10%-CPU hit, Ult/Ult+ usually additional ~5%-CPU hit or less in many situations.

ObjectQuality LOW 10%-CPU, MED additional 10%-CPU hit, HIGH additional 15-20%CPU hit, ULT additional 15-20%-CPU hit.
Settings below MED may not help CPU performance when ShadowDistance is set HIGH/ULT/ULT+.
Settings below HIGH will currently make some lootable items (like small stones) only appear when you're standing pretty close to them, making spotting them tricky in this first Experimental build.

The Boot.Config Tweak is still working well in A22/1.0 b309. It seems to increase city performance by around 30%+.


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Adjusting these settings can boost FPS mainly if your GPU is running at 98-100% (often called a GPU-bottleneck):

Resolution and Resolution-Scaling obviously have a big effect, but keeping resolution up and Resolution-Scaling OFF while using the new AntiAliasing-FSR-LOW or MEDIUM can help the GPU work less, and FSR is one of the least jagged-looking anti-aliasing options in this game.

ShadowQuality has a big hit from LOW to MED and an even bigger hit from MED to HIGH, but turning ShadowQuality OFF drastically changes how the game looks so I don't recommend it for most. Setting ShadowQuality to LOW can really help a struggling GPU without hurting the game's appearance too much.

SSReflections hits the GPU pretty hard as you raise its settings and its visual effect is somewhat small in many areas...it'll also become invisible if you turn ReflectionQuality OFF so doing this also warrants turning SSReflections OFF. I suggest leaving SSReflections at MED or lower.

TerrainQuality switching from LOW(or lower) up to MED(or higher) can cause a decent GPU hit if you also have SSReflections set to HIGH or ULT. With SSReflections at MED or lower, cranking TerrainQuality doesn't hit the GPU that hard.

SSAO can hit weaker GPUs modestly in some situations, but turning SSAO OFF really makes the building/object shapes look a lot flatter and more 2D. I usually only turn SSAO off as a last resort on really weak GPUs.

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I'm a little surprised to see that ViewDistance and main-menu-adjusted TerrainQuality don't appear to hit the CPU noticeably like they used to in A21. I'm guessing LOD and block-geometry and distant terrain had their performance boosted enough where these don't hit the CPU like they used to?
Neat.


The FPS drop around the start of night and morning still happens, though it appears less drastic at around a 25-30% hit. It's pretty dependent upon area and direction-facing though, so I'll need to do more testing to say how much of a problem it really is.

[CatPerson]

There you are. I was waiting for all your 7 Days performance wisdom posts. ;)

Agree re: shadows - they're a much bigger hit then they were in A21, where I was able to keep them all at High/Ultra without much issue. But they also look a lot better even when turned to Quality Low/Distance Medium than it did in A21. At least in my opinion. I noticed a much bigger drop-off doing that in the past than in current 1.0.

[FT]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

There you are. I was waiting for all your 7 Days performance wisdom posts. ;)

Agree re: shadows - they're a much bigger hit then they were in A21, where I was able to keep them all at High/Ultra without much issue. But they also look a lot better even when turned to Quality Low/Distance Medium than it did in A21. At least in my opinion. I noticed a much bigger drop-off doing that in the past than in current 1.0.

Thanks. I was trying to sneak my way into the early weekend but couldn't do it this year, lol.

I was initially seeing basically no GPU-hit from the ShadowDistance setting (opposed to the ShadowQuality setting) on my faster Nvidia GPU but that GPU-testing wasn't rhorough at all and I've seen ShadowDistance (and ObjectQuality) hit the GPU hard when I'm using Integrated graphics so It's probably just that I wasn't pushing the Nvidia GPU hard enough to begin with.

I agree with you about the shadows looking nice even at low/med settings.
Even ObjectQuality at lower settings (below HIGH) looks a lot nicer than I remember for most things with less pop-in...except a few things like Small Stones which I suspect are mistakenly being culled too early.

[Nuke_Story]

thx pretty genius

[Gjafar]

Try to cap FPS to 60. Press F1 ingame and type settargetfps 60.

[Korser]

Originally posted by FT:

Adjusting these settings can boost FPS mainly when your GPU isn't the limit (often called a CPU-bottleneck):

ReflectionQuality has very little CPU-hit at LOW, but higher settings hit the CPU while your character walks/runs or jumps in certain areas.

ShadowDistance MED 15%-CPU hit, HIGH additional 10%-CPU hit, Ult/Ult+ usually additional ~5%-CPU hit or less in many situations.

ObjectQuality LOW 10%-CPU, MED additional 10%-CPU hit, HIGH additional 15-20%CPU hit, ULT additional 15-20%-CPU hit.
Settings below MED may not help CPU performance when ShadowDistance is set HIGH/ULT/ULT+.
Settings below HIGH will currently make some lootable items (like small stones) only appear when you're standing pretty close to them, making spotting them tricky in this first Experimental build.


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Adjusting these settings can boost FPS mainly if your GPU is running at 98-100% (often called a GPU-bottleneck):

Resolution and Resolution-Scaling obviously have a big effect, but keeping resolution up and Resolution-Scaling OFF while using the new AntiAliasing-FSR-LOW or MEDIUM can help the GPU work less, and FSR is one of the least jagged-looking anti-aliasing options in this game.

The ShadowQuality has a big hit from LOW to MED and an even bigger hit from MED to HIGH, but turning ShadowQuality OFF drastically changes how the game looks so I don't recommend it for most.

SSReflections hits the GPU pretty hard as you raise its settings and its visual effect is somewhat small in many areas...it'll also become invisible if you turn ReflectionQuality OFF so doing this also warrants turning SSReflections OFF.

SSAO can also hit the GPU solidly in many situations, but turning SSAO OFF really makes the building/object shapes look a lot flatter and more 2D. I usually only turn SSAO off as a last resort on really weak GPUs.

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I'm a little surprised to see that ViewDistance and main-menu-adjusted TerrainQuality don't appear to hit the CPU noticeably like they used to in A21. I'm guessing LOD and block-geometry and distant terrain had their performance boosted enough where these don't hit the CPU like they used to?
Neat.


The FPS drop around the start of night and morning still happens, though it appears less drastic at around a 25-30% hit. It's pretty dependent upon area and direction-facing though, so I'll need to do more testing to say how much of a problem it really is.

Thank you! I was considering making a post like this because there are so many complaints about performance. "I have a 4090 but only 16fps" or "I have a really good PC but 20 fps" gets old really fast. I wish people would actually take to time to visit the graphic settings to improve their experience instead of complaining here. Your post or something like it should be pinned.

[Dean]

Thank you!

[Doctor3D]

Originally posted by FT:

I'm a little surprised to see that ViewDistance and main-menu-adjusted TerrainQuality don't appear to hit the CPU noticeably like they used to in A21. I'm guessing LOD and block-geometry and distant terrain had their performance boosted enough where these don't hit the CPU like they used to?
Neat.


The FPS drop around the start of night and morning still happens, though it appears less drastic at around a 25-30% hit. It's pretty dependent upon area and direction-facing though, so I'll need to do more testing to say how much of a problem it really is.

I've noticed this as well. The game does seem to be a bit less CPU bound than it was.

[FT]

I did some better GPU testing, with my fastest Nvidia GPU at a high enough resolution to knock it down around 60fps. It looks like most individual graphic settings (other than ShadowDetail and SSReflections) only hit the GPU around 3-8%. But I noticed TerrianQuality (switching between LOW and MED) suddenly causing a much larger GPU hit than normal and here's what I found when digging a bit more into it.

SSReflections at higher settings (above MED) also seems to affect how heavy the GPU is hit by TerrainQuality (at MED or higher). Normally the switch from TerrainQuality LOW to MED hits the GPU less than 10% when SSReflections is set to OFF/LOW/MED, but TerrainQuality hits the GPU about 2X harder when SSReflection is HIGH and about 3X harder when SSReflection is at ULT.
I don't believe these options had any noticeable interaction in A21, and I'm not noticing a visible interaction currently other than the strange extra performance hit.


I remember a time around A19 when ReflectionQuality and TerrainQuality were bugged in some way where the ground could appear glossy at certain settings, but that was fixed with the next alpha. There was also a while where TerrainQuality and TextureFilter (AF) hit the GPU really hard at higher TextureQuality settings. I'm wondering if there's some SSReflection subtle effect on the terrain that I'm not seeing (when TerrainQuality is MED or higher) and it's just a weirdly heavy effect despite the subtle visual difference.?
I know some grass shadowing/SSAO was added at some point in A21 or current A22/1.0, but I'm seeing this GPU hit while standing in a large paved city.

[FT]

I tried the Boot.Config tweak during a small Day14 hordenight in a POI at a Forest Town on a dedicated server (just on my/client end...not the host/server). With graphics mostly cranked I went from mid-60's without the tweak up to the 90's after the tweak. I jumped back and forth a couple times and it seemed to consistently give me a nearly ~50% FPS boost!

This is a bigger boost than I got outside of hordenight, but the hordenight is also the lowest my FPS dipped (without the tweak), so the Boot.Config tweak was helping the most when I needed it the most. This really seems to help keep FPS more consistent.