[DARK SOULS 3] "Fix" to FPS drops in some areas

[snipershotman]

There is a lot of "fixes" out there for this problem, but the real thing is that this game uses a lot of VRAM(videocard memory) in some areas and if you dont have the recommended videocard u will experience fps drops. The only way to "fix it" if u have a low/mid-end 2gb videocard is to lower the resolution. You cant make magic, but u can make the game run smoother and thats what this discussion is about. [Edit]

It is recommended a video card with 4gb, if your have 2gb version of an old video card there is nothing you can do to fix lag. Some areas of the game require more than 2gb and if you only have 2gb, ur system will use ur ram to compensate which is slower.

Lower your resolution from 1080p to 900p or 720p and lower graphics settings. Use the medium preset and low shadows, turn off antialiasing, depth of field and motion blur.

In my case lowering the resolution make the game playable w fps varying between 40-50 in most areas and on rare exceptions drops to 37 in firelink and even 30 in dragon barracks area.

You can make the fps drops less perceptable using a cap on ur max fps in game. I used the program rivatuner which came with msi afterburner to limit the fps to 50. Drops from 60 to 40 is much more perceptable than 50 to 40.

*There is another things that you can do to make the game run smother but this things wont fix the slowdowns.

-Make sure your system and drivers are up to date
-Make sure ur system is running at acceptable tempetures.
-Make sure ur overclocks are stable. (if u have any)
-Make sure u are using high performance settings in ur videocard panel control.
-Make sure ur harddrive is defragmented. (if the game is installed on a HD)
-Disable mods. (if u are using any)
-Disable powersaving features in ur system.

My system specs:
AMD FX 8350 (Watercooled) , XFX HD 6950 2GB OC (Watercooled), G.Skill Sniper 8GB(2x4) 1600MHZ DDR3, Kingston 240GB SSD (2x120GB raid 0) + 3TB Storage, Corsair CX750watts, Corsair Carbide 200R case, Windows 8.1 PRO 64Bits.

[StArE]

I have a 2GB card gtx750ti and i am getting 45-50fps no sudden aside from pontiff fight i was doing around 10-15 with fraps in that fight but no other drops, and i am using max settings on fullHD.

[GrimShins]

Like the original Dark Souls, performance is heavily dependent not so much on video card performance as single-threaded processor performance. This is why the current batch of AMD CPUs will never hold down a constant 60fps--the processor literally can't feed frames to the video card fast enough, so the video card stalls. There are so many instances of the game running at about 40fps while the GPU is only at around 70% utilization for me. One of my CPU cores gets hammered, while the other seven sit and twiddle their thumbs. I can pull 60 fps in the courtyard after Pontiff; everywhere else tops out around 54fps, if I'm lucky.

FromSoft designed the game around 30fps. They optimized their engine to hit that, and anything higher than that from brute force PC hardware is just gravy. So if you want 60fps, you need a high-end Intel chip or to wait for Zen. Can't overcome programming that easily.

[JimPappa]

Originally posted by Victor T:

There is a lot of "fixes" out there for this problem, but the real thing is that this game uses a lot of VRAM(videocard memory) in some areas and if you dont have the recommended videocard u will experience fps drops. The only way to "fix it" is to upgrade your videocard or lower the resolution.

This game is just poorly optimized. I don't think VRAM is a main cause for these issues. I get this issues with a graphic card that has 8 GB of VRAM. (R9 390)

I messed with the settings a bit at the large bridge at the beginning of Irithyll. (which is one of the places where my fps drops from 60 fps.)

@ 1440p - 40 fps
@ 1080p - 40 fps
@ 720p - 40 fps

[GrimShins]

CPU performance with no GPU bottleneck[gamegpu.com], for those interested. Sucks to be us AMD owners, essentially.

[SenMithrarin85]

Originally posted by GrimShins:

CPU performance with no GPU bottleneck[gamegpu.com], for those interested. Sucks to be us AMD owners, essentially.

They rely on mult-threading to conpensate for lower core clock speeds.

Dark Souls 3 is almost single threaded code. My intel cpu gets one core used to 70% and the others are near idle at 30%

My gpu also has 8gb vram (laptop 980m) so thats not a limitation either. I get the same fps at 1080p max that I get at 800x600 low, which should remove any and all bottlenecks at such a paltry resolution. The game is just awful on a performance level. Asthetically speaking its the ps4 version.

In 4 months Fromsoft have done nothing to fix performance in this game (but have introduced some nasty macro stutters in some places) and the netcode/invasion/summoning system remains broken.

But Fromsoft have released patches I hear you say! All they've done is tweak weapon stats....

[snipershotman]

Originally posted by GrimShins:

CPU performance with no GPU bottleneck[gamegpu.com], for those interested. Sucks to be us AMD owners, essentially.

If u have an fx8350 or better u are not that bad. U can easily overclock them and get solid performance in most cases. I wouldnt adivise someone to buy an amd cpu but if u have one is not the end of the world.

[snipershotman]

Originally posted by GrimShins:

Like the original Dark Souls, performance is heavily dependent not so much on video card performance as single-threaded processor performance. This is why the current batch of AMD CPUs will never hold down a constant 60fps--the processor literally can't feed frames to the video card fast enough, so the video card stalls. There are so many instances of the game running at about 40fps while the GPU is only at around 70% utilization for me. One of my CPU cores gets hammered, while the other seven sit and twiddle their thumbs. I can pull 60 fps in the courtyard after Pontiff; everywhere else tops out around 54fps, if I'm lucky.

FromSoft designed the game around 30fps. They optimized their engine to hit that, and anything higher than that from brute force PC hardware is just gravy. So if you want 60fps, you need a high-end Intel chip or to wait for Zen. Can't overcome programming that easily.

Yes, the game should run w no problems and even at higher fps than 60 but we are talking about from software.. :(

Try overclocking ur cpu!

[snipershotman]

Originally posted by sureshratanjoshi:

I have a 2GB card gtx750ti and i am getting 45-50fps no sudden aside from pontiff fight i was doing around 10-15 with fraps in that fight but no other drops, and i am using max settings on fullHD.

45-50fps at max settings and 1080p w this card (which is the minimum required 4 playing ds3) is very good.

10-15fps is weird, maybe using high settings instead of maxing out and try turning off motionblur "resolve" this problem.

U should get at least 30fps worst case..

[snipershotman]

Originally posted by Lashan.W:

Originally posted by Victor T:

There is a lot of "fixes" out there for this problem, but the real thing is that this game uses a lot of VRAM(videocard memory) in some areas and if you dont have the recommended videocard u will experience fps drops. The only way to "fix it" is to upgrade your videocard or lower the resolution.

This game is just poorly optimized. I don't think VRAM is a main cause for these issues. I get this issues with a graphic card that has 8 GB of VRAM. (R9 390)

I messed with the settings a bit at the large bridge at the beginning of Irithyll. (which is one of the places where my fps drops from 60 fps.)

@ 1440p - 40 fps
@ 1080p - 40 fps
@ 720p - 40 fps

Same problem as SenMithrarin85 in another discussion. If u have a good cpu, latest drivers, not overheating cpu/gpu, dont have a bad overclock and other games are running just fine the problem is nothing but Dark Souls 3. With 8gb of vram it is clear this is not the problem...

In my case and others the problem is really the vram, every time the game has a fps drop my vram max out. Obviously w poor game otpimization this problem gets worst.. :(

[JimPappa]

Originally posted by Victor T:

Obviously w poor game otpimization this problem gets worst.. :(

Indeed.

I did some more testing (this time at Dragon Barracks) and poor optimization is the only conclusion I can come up with.

Again I tested at 720p, 1080p and 1440p with minimum and max settings. CPU usage and the overall fps were pretty much identical regardless of the settings and resolution.

My main specs,
Intel Core i5 2400 @ 3.4GHz
2x4GB DDR3 Ram
R9 390
Windows 7 64bit

Here's the readings,

Core 1 - 65-80 % Core 2 - 30-45 %
Core 3 - 55-70 % Core 4 - 40-60 %

Fps - 40ish

As you can see, the game just can't utilize the hardware to its full potential in some PCs.

[Nicholas Steel]

Intel i7 920 @ 2.66GHZ (Released in 2008, D0 Stepping)
8GB DDR3 1600MHZ RAM
Windows 10 x64
ASUS P6T Motherboard

Geforce 560Ti 2GB = 40-60FPS at 1280x720, 20-35FPS at 1920x1080
Geforce 760 4GB = 40-60FPS at 1920x1080
Geforce 960 4GB = ~60FPS at 1920x1080 for most areas of the game

Minimum FPS depends on where you are in the game, it often hovers around 45-50FPS with a 560Ti or 760. The various video settings have barely any impact on the FPS.

There are a wide range of video driver releases from Nvidia that exhibit crippled performance for Geforce 400/500 video cards, they did eventually fix the issue though (So you didn't need to use ancient drivers anymore). With the buggy drivers you would see 10-20FPS regardless of resolution when using a Geforce 400/500 card.

As far as I can tell there MIGHT be some truth to the VRAM argument, on the other hand performance seems to increase with better more powerful video cards without needing a powerful/recent CPU.

[Erebus]

Originally posted by Lashan.W:

Originally posted by Victor T:

Obviously w poor game otpimization this problem gets worst.. :(

Indeed.

I did some more testing (this time at Dragon Barracks) and poor optimization is the only conclusion I can come up with.

Again I tested at 720p, 1080p and 1440p with minimum and max settings. CPU usage and the overall fps were pretty much identical regardless of the settings and resolution.

My main specs,
Intel Core i5 2400 @ 3.4GHz
2x4GB DDR3 Ram
R9 390
Windows 7 64bit

Here's the readings,

Core 1 - 65-80 % Core 2 - 30-45 %
Core 3 - 55-70 % Core 4 - 40-60 %

Fps - 40ish

As you can see, the game just can't utilize the hardware to its full potential in some PCs.

RAM, CPU, and OS are holding you back.

[JimPappa]

Originally posted by Erebus the Indolent:

RAM, CPU, and OS are holding you back.

Not sure about the OS. But other things aren't definitely holding anything back.

Only 52.5% of the RAM is being used while playing DS3. And the CPU load readings don't show any sign of CPU being a bottleneck here. It's allowed to go 100% if needed via power settings since my casing has proper airflow and a beefy PSU to handle that.

Besides that doesn't explain why these fps drops happen regardless of settings and resolution. I do get 60fps in most areas though.

[Erebus]

Originally posted by Lashan.W:

Not sure about the OS. But other things aren't definitely holding anything back.

Only 52.5% of the RAM is being used while playing DS3. And the CPU load readings don't show any sign of CPU being a bottleneck here. It's allowed to go 100% if needed via power settings since my casing has proper airflow and a beefy PSU to handle that.

Win 7 is getting up and years and isn't all that great at CPU/memory management compared to newer OSs. CPU utilization isn't a great metric for in-depth troubleshooting. CPU isn't a simple resource, there are a lot of different aspects to it and certain calculations depend on different aspects of it. Normal software isn't coded like p95 where it will max out everything no matter how inefficient. CPU can be holding you back without maxing out the cores. Also, CPU performance and memory performance tie together, RAM isn't just about quantity. This game since launch has been more CPU bound than GPU bound.

I mean unless you have some config issues or a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up driver it's probably the rest of your rig (which barely meets minimums) causing the issue.

Besides that doesn't explain why these fps drops happen regardless of settings and resolution. I do get 60fps in most areas though.

Resolution would help if it was a GPU issue. If it's having zero impact it's something else in your rig be it software or hardware.

[Erebus]

Originally posted by Lashan.W:

I do get 60fps in most areas though.

Out of curiousity what areas are you seeing the lower framerates?