FPS drops overtime

[Paul Bulva]

Hello, I have a problem with FPS.
It's really strange because I start off with 60 or 60+ FPS but after a while, like 10 to 30 minutes, it gets gradually worse.
For example:

Start: 60/60+FPS
after 10 to 30 mins: 45/35 FPS
after 30 to 60 mins: 25/15 FPS
60+ mins: 10 or lower FPS

It got to the point, where I was fighting the first goliath class enemy with around 5 or less FPS. I could've have restarted the game, but didn't wanted to do all of that fighting again.

It's really strange because I think my PC should run this game without any issues.
I have:
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060ti
Intel Core i5 - 10400F
16GB RAM

Also, I should mention I am running the game without any mods, just a clean install.
I stumbled upon some steam forum post from 2020 which describes similliar problem but in that post they mention some FAR mod, is it something I should get?
Anyways, I would be glad if anyone could help me out here.
I really like this game but this is annoying as hell.
Thank you in advance.

[Kushi]

if you have a clean install you can install Special K (known as FAR mod): https://github.com/SpecialKO/SpecialK/releases

download the zip file and insert the 64bit version (.dll) into the directory of the game and rename it to d3d11

launch the game again and everything should be fixed.

[Paul Bulva]

Okay, thanks, I will try it as soon as I get home.

[Paul Bulva]

Okay, I tried it and it does not seem to do anything. I will do a little bit more testing later today. But as far as I got now, after using Special K that is, it's still the same. I will try to fully reinstall the game again and/or tweak some options in game and Special K settings. Will report later on.

[EpycXT]

if you have MSAA enabled then switch to SMAA, that fixed the performance issue for me

[Paul Bulva]

Publicado originalmente por EpycXT:

if you have MSAA enabled then switch to SMAA, that fixed the performance issue for me

Tried it now and it does not work. I will try to reinstall the game and switch to SMAA or disable any kind of anti-aliasing ASAP. If that does not work I will try it with Special K.

[Paul Bulva]

I've tried reinstalling the game and immediately turning off anti-alialising, that didn't work.
Also tried it with Special K, didn't work either.
One thing I noticed, according to Nvidia App the GPU usage is at 0% at all times. Shouldn't it be way higher? This would mean that the game isn't even using GPU, wouldn't it?

[Kushi]

Publicado originalmente por Paul Bulva:

I've tried reinstalling the game and immediately turning off anti-alialising, that didn't work.
Also tried it with Special K, didn't work either.
One thing I noticed, according to Nvidia App the GPU usage is at 0% at all times. Shouldn't it be way higher? This would mean that the game isn't even using GPU, wouldn't it?

It's strange. Your rig seems good enough to handle this game. I do not know how nvdia works since I am using AMD only. How high did you set you anisotropy? Maybe 16x is too high. Make sure to turn off FidelityCAS and turn the slider complety to the left.

[Paul Bulva]

I have these settings (I will write out all of them, since it could be helpful):

Resolution: 1920x1080
Screen Mode: Borderless (tried Fullscreen too)
V-Sync: On (tried Off too)
Anti-Aliasing: SMAA (had MSAA x8 too, aswell as none)
Texture Filter: Off (had 16x too)
Blur: Off
Shadows: Low
Effects: Low
AO: Off
GI: Low
FidelityFX CAS: Off
FidelityFX CAS Level: none (Slider is on the left side)

When I installed the game for the 1st time I set everything to the max because I thought it would run nicely.
Then I found out about this issue and set everything to min in hope that this could resolve it.

[Paul Bulva]

I tried to run the game on different PC and it ran smoothly with 60FPS without any drops.
It's a weaker build so it's even more odd that on main build it has so many performance issues.
I installed just the game without Special K or any other mods.
According to Nvidia App the GPU usage was about 60%, so I guess that's the issue on my main PC. The game is not, for some reason, utilizing my GPU, or at least that's my best guess.

[Paul Bulva]

It looks like Nvidia App stats are bugged or something.
In Automata it shows GPU usage at 0% but the same thing was showed while I was testing Resident Evil 7 and RE7 is steadilly at 140FPS without drops.
I decided to monitor GPU usage through task manager and the usage is:
NieR: Automata: ~30%
RE7: ~60%

I don't really know where the problem could be now...

[Kujeilij@]

And do you also have a drone that starts shooting when the lmb + rmb is clamped?

[Paul Bulva]

Publicado originalmente por Kujeilij@:

And do you also have a drone that starts shooting when the lmb + rmb is clamped?

I went to try that and yes, when I press LMB and RMB at the same time my pod starts shooting and also 2B starts doing heavy(?) attack.
I was always shooting from pod with shift button, which the game taught me.
Is this normal behaviour?

[Paul Bulva]

So, I have finally fixed this annoying FPS degradation issue. I played for about 20 to 25 hours without FPS degradation, so I would say, this worked for me.

I have 3 solutions to this problem. Two of the are pretty random, but the other is organized in steps below.

Solution 1:
1: Download and Install Special K
2: In Special K settings, enable "Load Steam Client DLL Early"
3: Go to "NieRAutomata\d3d11.ini"
4: Find and change "ForceLoadSteamAPI=false" to "ForceLoadSteamAPI=true"
This should be all, you should be able to launch the game and continue without any issues.
Credit goes to LittleJon for finding this solution.

Solution 2:
1: Update Windows
That's all.
All I did was that I just updated Windows 10 to the latest version. I don't know if this worked, because before I did solution 1, but after it the FPS degradation stopped.

Solution 3:
1: Do solution 1
2: Update Windows (so basically solution 2)

As I said, these two last solutions are pretty random, but after I did that, the game works flawlessly.
Most of the time I get around 110FPS (I turned off FPS limiter in Special K) without need to relaunch the game or any other thing like that.

[Kujeilij@]

Publicado originalmente por Paul Bulva:

Publicado originalmente por Kujeilij@:

And do you also have a drone that starts shooting when the lmb + rmb is clamped?

I went to try that and yes, when I press LMB and RMB at the same time my pod starts shooting and also 2B starts doing heavy(?) attack.
I was always shooting from pod with shift button, which the game taught me.
Is this normal behaviour?

That is, it is impossible to make a strong attack on a PC without the participation of a drone?

[Paul Bulva]

Publicado originalmente por Kujeilij@:

That is, it is impossible to make a strong attack on a PC without the participation of a drone?

Well, I was playing on controller, because as much as I love this game, I find keyboard and mouse controls totally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
I played on Xbox controller so I had heavy attack on "Y" button, but I think heavy attack on mouse should be RMB, but I'm not sure of it.

Also, could you repost my solution to that problem that was having? Steam doesn't let me mark it as "solution/best answer", because It was written by me.