Quest for 60 fps

[Netsa]

Graphics card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 960M (16 gb ram, intel i7, Windows 10)

I'm riding at about 45-50 fps no matter how high or low I set the in-game graphics settings and I'm not sure why. I'm assuming this is a similar problem as was in the first game, where there's some things that can't be turned off without console commands or .ini changes, so the game continues to look just a little too nice even at the lowest settings. Which is weird, since the graphics don't seem as good as they were in Shadow Warrior 1.

As a side question, this game makes my eyes hurt. Is it something with the field of view, or what?

[Slowpork]

Turn off V-sync.
Too much action and strange brightness/colours/lighting are what make your eyes hurt. But you'll get used to it.

[Netsa]

Probably.

My V-sync is already off.

[Slowpork]

You should also check Nvidia GPU settings. It could be turned on by default there. Also, you didn't mention your i7 model because there are lots of them, but I guess it's a notebook version and notebooks are not gaming friendly unless you buy one for 2-3k $.
When FPS doesn't change much after fiddling with settings it often means two things: CPU bottleneck or V-sync is on.

[SkacikPL]

I assume your laptop model does use optimus tech so firstly make sure you're running the game on NVIDIA GPU instead of intel.

To check whether you're GPU bound try dropping resolution, if it doesn't help then CPU may be the issue.

[Netsa]

Here's the CPU: i7-4720HQ.

I didn't have a reason for not mentioning it, I just didn't know if it was important.
V-sync is set to follow the application in the Nvidia control panel.

Edit: Tested the resolution slider. Putting it down to 50 drastically improved fps, but only if I turned V-sync back on.

[Netsa]

Bumping for hope for a better solution.

My rig isn't so bad that I should be getting good framerates only with everything turned down to minimum and having the resolution down 50%. Reading the forums, other people have seen better results with worse setups. Playing at medium, my fps is around 45 and overtime drops down to 20 even in town. Something is wrong here.

[Phoenix]

Your system should not be running the game that poorly with those specs. I'm getting a smooth 75FPS with very high settings on the following:

Core I7 3770K
32GB RAM
GTX 860
Windows 7
Vsync ON
Res 1152x864 (I'm running on a CRT for very specific reasons)
All game settings on highest that are supported, except shadows.

If your resolution isn't too high then it may be either OS or driver related or a problem with a background application. You might check what other processes are running. Sometimes antivirus software or other background applications can eat CPU cycles when you really don't want them to. Best way to check that is with Task Manager and order the processes by CPU usage from highest to lowest and see what pops up at the top, and check the CPU and RAM overhead on the graphs. Also... you might want to check the multiple display settings in the Nvidia control pannel, in the 3D settings and make sure it's set to Single Display Performance Mode in the default settings. There's no reason to set it to multi unless you're doing a multi-monitor setup and stretching the view across screens.

Before launching Steam, after a fresh boot I'd close out everything on the task bar that isn't absolutely necessary to have running. Then start Steam, then start Shadow Warrior 2 and see if that doesn't improve things.

Lastly... this is a long shot, but how's your system ventillation-wise? If you haven't dusted your case for a while or there's inadequate airflow the CPU will automatically throttle down to prevent overheating. Modern GPU's tend to do the same, so if, after verifying you're dust-free and all the fans are working (or water cooling, however you do it) you have any thermal monitoring software you might want to check to see if the temps are going crazy when running Shadow Warrior 2.

[Netsa]

I checked one of the FAQs that recommended setting battery settings to "maximum performance" for Win10 users, along with setting a bunch of things in the Nvidia panel to maximum performance and setting Single Display Performance Mode. Those tweaks, along with setting Vsync on, boosted my FPS significantly. I'm getting mid-50s in most places except for weather effects and big fights, which sometimes drops to around 45 or so. It's more than playable, and I'm now playing at normal resolution, High textures, everything else off. I also set game to Fullscreen instead of Fullscreen Windowed and closed all other applications, just in case.

One of my previous FPS drops, on my previous post where I said it dropped to 20, I actually did have one of the fans partially covered. So, that hasn't happened again. Shadow Warrior 2 doesn't seem to want to play nice with my graphics card, but I'm glad I was able to get things to a reasonable level.

[Phoenix]

Glad to see you're getting some results! The only other thing I can think of that might be a factor... someone mentioned the word "laptop", though I don't see it in your original post. Are you on a laptop or desktop machine? Your motherboard chipset could be the bottleneck, and laptops are notorious for heat buildup (saw the fan comment, doh!).

[Netsa]

960M is a laptop graphics card. Looking up the i7 model I posted will even tell you my laptop model.

With so many games pushing for 4k and VR, mid-tier cards like mine are probably falling to wayside faster than I thought they would.

[Terepin]

Originally posted by Slowpork:

Turn off V-sync.

Yes, that will magically fix every problem in the world.

[Slowpork]

Originally posted by TJ Terepin:

Originally posted by Slowpork:

Turn off V-sync.

Yes, that will magically fix every problem in the world.

Quick ! Call the hardware police! We have an ignorant user here.

[Terepin]

Originally posted by Slowpork:

Originally posted by TJ Terepin:

Yes, that will magically fix every problem in the world.

Quick ! Call the hardware police! We have an ignorant user here.

I am sorry, my PC doesn't know it should have performance issues when VSync is on. Yet. I shall rectify this by explaining to my rig that it breaks the very foundation of the universe itself by running great with VSync on.

[Netsa]

My old computer actually did have problems with some games if I had Vsync on, it's fairly common advice. No use having an argument about it. New rig, new rules.

[Phoenix]

So many people misunderstand how Vsync works. I'll offer a little technical explanation.

The only problem vsync normally causes is if your actual framerate is below your screen refresh rate. If your screen is 60Hz and your machine can't keep up, it will tend to half the refresh to 30 whenever it drops below 60. If your machine can't keep up then turning Vsync off will prevent this specific behavior.

When Vsync is off, if your machine CAN keep up and exceed the screen's refresh rate then you'll get visual tearing. This is very noticeable in action games like FPS shooters when there's sudden movement, such as turning in place or strafing sideways. Turning Vsync on stops the visual tearing as it forces the renderer to wait until the next refresh to commit the render frame over to the screen instead of updating it mid-draw.

There's a compromise option available in a lot of games now, and can sometimes be forced by hardware called "adaptive Vsync", which will keep Vsync on unless your framerate drops below screen refresh, which it then temporarily disables it until the system can catch up again. That prevents the massive FPS drop inherent to sub-refresh framerates with Vsync on and also prevents visual tearing.

That being said, it is possible for certain games to not behave correctly with Vsync enabled due to a programming glitch or an issue with frame-synchronous physics behavior. I would say the latter should be inexcusable, but with more modern games it's a bit more complex than it used to be. It could be that data is being handed off to the GPU for physics that might need to be returned back into the main program for collision data. If that's the case then a low framerate could easily screw up hit detection between two objects if the calculations can't be properly interpolated. That would be less a Vsync issue than a general low FPS problem, but Vsync causing a drop to half refresh causes low FPS, which would create that very problem.