Biggest FPS hitting settings other than lighting?

[Alio]

Have a pretty beefy rig, i9-10850k OC'd to 5ghz and an RTX 3070, noticed with everything cranked up I was getting 40fps dips at 1080p Ultra in the first village in one of the alleyways. Changed lighting to Very High instead and now getting mostly a solid 60. Noticing 55-57 sometimes on quick 180's.

What other setting is a huge hit to fps? I changed a couple down to very high (Shader/Volumetric) and noticed no improvements.

I want to keep as many settings turned up to keep at the very minimum a stable 60, but if I can get 72 or 75fps locked that'd be preferable.

[Four Little Diamonds]

I have a GTX 1080 and the biggest impacts for me are shadows and shaders, I always keep them on low but everything else is either very high or ultra. Setting some things to high or maybe medium could get you there. Might be my particular card that makes changing shaders actually effect the fps.

[Bandy]

It's been a while but If remember correctly, yes, shaders have huge impact in this game engine and the 'game physics' setting. Turning those two down just for the big battles changed it from literal slide show to passable play. In big battles you don't need eye candy.

Big battles are fun, but the engine (more so) and hardware (less so) simply not up to the task.

[Alio]

Originally posted by Bandy:

It's been a while but If remember correctly, yes, shaders have huge impact in this game engine and the 'game physics' setting. Turning those two down just for the big battles changed it from literal slide show to passable play. In big battles you don't need eye candy.

Big battles are fun, but the engine (more so) and hardware (less so) simply not up to the task.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on my framerate and adjust settings as needed I suppose. I did notice just setting the game to Very High increased performance a lot but I could tell the visuals downgraded a bit from Ultra.

[Uncle Ruckus]

This game is poorly optimized. Not much you can do. I have similar hardware and my settings are at High + few tweaks. Locked fps to 60 with file parameter. Stable, more or less. Shaders and shadows are indeed the most demanding options. There was another one I can't remember. There is an article somewhere, with images that show each graphics option and performance hit level. Try not going beyond Very High, but even that can be too much...

[DargonBlak]

Rendering distance is typically a big hitter (there are 2 distance sliders)

And anything with "Quality" name

[Four Little Diamonds]

Originally posted by Alio:

Originally posted by Bandy:

It's been a while but If remember correctly, yes, shaders have huge impact in this game engine and the 'game physics' setting. Turning those two down just for the big battles changed it from literal slide show to passable play. In big battles you don't need eye candy.

Big battles are fun, but the engine (more so) and hardware (less so) simply not up to the task.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on my framerate and adjust settings as needed I suppose. I did notice just setting the game to Very High increased performance a lot but I could tell the visuals downgraded a bit from Ultra.

Yea you can really tell the decreased image quality when lowering shadows since the amount of distance shadows will decrease by quite a bit, especially along tree-lines. It is the price you've gotta pay though for the increase in fps; with my low shadows and shader settings I get approx 60 frames even when galloping through rattay quickly so it definitely pays off. However night time in Rattay is always demanding, in the 40's and 50's with the major increase in light sources from the npcs with torches and lanterns.

[Lieste]

With a 3.5GB GTX970, a mechanical HDD and an older architecture i7 I needed to drop texture resolution to avoid issues with texture streaming breaking down when riding fast across multiple segments and through towns - easily avoidable by slowing on approach to the town gates/village outskirts.

I also for this reason (and because of the less optimal tactical situation on being loaded into an ambush, compared to riding up to it) don't use fast travel except where it is required by the quest design.

Lighting and geometry don't do too much to frame rates, shadows eat a bit more, and look a bit goofy at the highest value under some lighting conditions. Volumetric fog looks good (except when there is water in the scene, where it 'snaps through' the fog) but causes some slow down. I left this off and went for high lighting and shadows and slightly longer draw distance for vegetation.

[tiger305]

hey alio, I just started playing this game (gog ver.) and have 10700, and 3070ti...
win 10 , ssds..
have a 1080p monitor, but set to 4k with dsr 3840x2160 ... everthing on ultra and using
hd pack... and in talmberg now... I can get down to 50fps sometimes, but usually above 60fps.
This game puts my cpu at 70c and gpu 75c.... , putting out alot of heat

you have the latest drivers for gpu ?

what drive you using hdd, ssd or m.2 ?

what windows ver. ?
seems like you should be getting better fps than what you posted at 1080p...

[LArc7thHeaven]

first you can absolutely have to accept this game fps will NEVER smooth especially in rattay and sassau. Set everything to medium and tweak from there. for shadows use e_shadowsmaxrestex 2048 to increase the smoothness of shadows because even you set the shadows to ultra their resolution only 1024 (still looked jaggy). Geometry now related to LoD and higher the setting the more farther they load their hi-res tex.

Some said HD textures gives better performance vs normal textures but there's still some texture pop in (in my game) especially the dirt with cartwheel mark usually pop in late compared to other HD textures.

Shaders, lighting, shadows, view distances were main performance cruncher. Setting them to medium will saves some fps. Also you can check nexus for .cfg they posted there. Using .cfg setting is like more advanced setting they don't include in option menu can it's setting will bypass your current options so you need understand each value and treat carefully from there.

Your main fps target should be 60 in all area except rattay, sassau, and dense forest

[Alio]

Originally posted by tiger3044:

hey alio, I just started playing this game (gog ver.) and have 10700, and 3070ti...
win 10 , ssds..
have a 1080p monitor, but set to 4k with dsr 3840x2160 ... everthing on ultra and using
hd pack... and in talmberg now... I can get down to 50fps sometimes, but usually above 60fps.
This game puts my cpu at 70c and gpu 75c.... , putting out alot of heat

you have the latest drivers for gpu ?

what drive you using hdd, ssd or m.2 ?

what windows ver. ?
seems like you should be getting better fps than what you posted at 1080p...

There's no way at 4k you're getting that fps? Are you sure you have everything cranked to max? Even LoD? Setting to Ultra High you don't have LoD maxed by default.

My game is on a SATA SSD, 2TB Crucial MX500. Windows 10 is up to date and latest drivers for my 3070.

My PC specs are on my profile.

[Bandy]

Originally posted by Alio:

There's no way at 4k you're getting that fps? Are you sure ...

They said they just started the game, so likely they have not experienced what the rest of us already know...

Again, when KCD first came out I researched optimizing CryEngine, which as most of you know is notoriously demanding. But Maybe things have changed with the last major patch, I haven't played since before that, but planning on replaying and am lurking here.

EDIT: found an old post of mine from 2018 discussing this a bit, my bad for saying 'game physics' earlier, it is 'game effects'... And now I remember how important tweaking via the user.cfg file was. Search for that in this forum or the 'Guides' section:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1304651875&searchtext=user.cfg
https://steamcommunity.com/app/379430/discussions/0/1700542968203108335/?ctp=4 <<<not sure why this topic was 'locked'...

While I agree KCD has taken me longer than any other game to research and tweak the GFX settings via user.cfg and in game, it now runs 2560x1440 Gsync monitor quite well (few mediums - most high, few+) on my i7 2700K o'c to 4.5 GHz and 980Ti hybrid 6GB.

The problem most people don't understand is that certain in-game settings <must> be dialed back for the bigger battles to render them acceptable for combat, otherwise what was smooth render as you gallop cross-country can immediately turn into a slide show.

For cryengine in big battles lower these...
Textures: turn off HD
Game effects: controls the reality of combat: consider medium, or low, dead bodies disappear faster at low so beware if you want to loot.
Postprocess quality: has major impact on performance, consider medium to low
Shader quality: Low -- apparently this one has major impact on both performance and image quality
Shadows: only set to High if 4GB of VRAM
Textures: only set to High if 4GB of VRAM

[tiger305]

hey alio just checked in more detail... well, I said I have my 1080p monitor set to 4k using dsr... might be different than running straight 4k monitor.. ?
just checked game again:
I have everything on ultra high
full screen
all the distance stuff maxed
blur full and in talmberg getting ready to leave for 1st time
walking around with horse and getting around 50fps average
and it's raining/thunder in game right now...

If I lower shadow quality to very high I'm getting about 55-60fps in talmberg on average

seems like lowering all the distance settings by 5 raised fps a few... but not much

also you have the hd package installed ?

[Handsomest]

Originally posted by tiger3044:

hey alio, I just started playing this game (gog ver.) and have 10700, and 3070ti...
win 10 , ssds..
have a 1080p monitor, but set to 4k with dsr 3840x2160 ... everthing on ultra and using
hd pack... and in talmberg now... I can get down to 50fps sometimes, but usually above 60fps.
This game puts my cpu at 70c and gpu 75c.... , putting out alot of heat

you have the latest drivers for gpu ?

what drive you using hdd, ssd or m.2 ?

what windows ver. ?
seems like you should be getting better fps than what you posted at 1080p...

I got almost same system as yours, just mine is 7700k, but after install Optimized Graphic Mod, my fps constantly above 80

[CalicoJack]

Originally posted by tiger3044:

... well, I said I have my 1080p monitor set to 4k using dsr...

hey tiger, just a little advice because i also often game with DSR resolutions on my 1080p TV.
try out the new DLDSR option from nvidia.
with DLDSR@1620p youll save some headroom on your GPU but the quality should be on par with standard DSR@2160p.
even DLDSR@1440p looks very nice

[tiger305]

thanks for info calicojack ... so do you need to have gforce experience ?
I don't really want that software...

Ok, just read a few articles on this ... I'll update my drivers in a few days
and see how it runs ..

Hey Alio , what calicojack just posted will probably be good for you to try
too...