How to ensure the best performance of SMB3

[popoki]

Thank you a ton to everyone who’s given SMB3 a go! This post is here to help you get the best performance and experience from the game.

There are a lot of variables that affect performance on PC. The basic things you should look to first are:

• Make sure you’re on the latest version of Windows 10
  
• Make sure your PC’s drivers are up to date (video card, bios, etc.)
  
• If playing online, use a wired ethernet connection or make sure your WIFI signal is very strong (lag can resemble framerate problems)

With those basics taken care of, find graphics settings that make sense for your PC. A good strategy is to lower your graphics settings (in Exhibition mode!) so you get a solid 60fps in a demanding ballpark (such as Founders Field in the Night/Fair lighting condition) and then slowly raise your settings back up while making sure that you’re still holding 60fps during all gameplay sequences.

Let’s dig into the options available to you:

• Resolution has a large and direct impact on performance. Higher resolutions will give you a crisper look overall but are more demanding of your GPU.
  
• Anisotropy has a huge impact on performance. It also becomes more costly the higher the resolution you are using. Higher settings will affect the sharpness of the grass and dirt in particular, but this is a great place to start to lower the load on your GPU.
  
• Antialiasing also has a major impact on performance and like Anisotropy, becomes more costly with higher resolutions. It helps reduce jagged edges on geometry, such as railings, seating, and character details. This is another good setting to lower to ease load on your GPU.
  
• Shadow Quality has a more modest impact on performance and you can likely keep this setting fairly high unless you’re on an older GPU or a laptop. It’s best to lower the above settings before this one.
  
• Crowd Density affects the number of crowd members that are drawn in the stadium. Lowering this can reduce GPU load but is going to be very visually impactful. We’d recommend lowering this only as a last resort on lower spec machines.
  
• Crowd Variation can have a large impact on performance, especially on your CPU load. It controls how many different animations are used at the same time for the crowd. Higher settings will give you a more organic crowd with less ‘in-sync’ animations.
  
• Shader Quality can have a large impact on GPU load. It controls rendering quality of the crowd members, field surfaces, and accumulated dirt detail. Lowering it can help a lot on older GPU’s or if you're seeing lower framerates in later innings.

Notable: There was a bug fixed in the Hotfix 2B update (the day after launch day) that fixed problems with graphics settings not being applied immediately, so you may have had unpredictable results tweaking your graphics settings on launch day.

[Dank Williams]

My performance is still pretty bad even with these tweaks. Founders Field is especially bad with the shadows.
Specs:
i7 4790
GTX 1060 6 gig
12 gig DDR3
Win10 64bit
Installed on an SSD

Setting are:
1920x1080
8x
2x
Med Shadows
50% crowd
low variation
med shaders

[boomhauertjs]

I've tried just about every setting and change that has been suggested and nothing has improved the framerate problems. I turned off VSync in SMB3 and ON in Nividia Control Panel, which worked for some people. It didn't work for me.
When I've switched to lower resolutions, the game moves like it's in slow motion. Not stuttering - just like watching a slow motion replay. I've seen people with similar PCs as mine having no issues and those with better ones having the same issues, so I think my system should be able to play the game.
I hope the developers are able to find a solution because the game is basically unplayable for me and I'm getting frustrating with trying to fix it. I think I'm putting in on the shelf until they patch it or give some solutions that work. It kills me because I was so looking forward to this game, but that's really been ruined because I can't get it to be playable.

[BCGaius]

I've been having weird issues I haven't been able to pin down yet.

I was playing for several days on Windows 7 absolutely flawlessly, high settings, zero problems whatsoever, smooth as butter.

Now, since upgrading to Windows 10, performance is a mixed bag. Sometimes it will run fine, same as before, no problem. At other times it will just run slow - 95mph pitches will come in feeling like they're only 60mph, and timing swings and power becomes very unpleasant. The first time it happened, I somehow managed to kick it back into gear by some nonsensical combination of opening and closing the Steam overlay and/or chat windows, so I wonder if it's related to that. Subsequent attempts to fix the problem when it shows up have not worked, however.

[ithinkimalion]

Mine was working fine and now it just is not. Same settings and everything. No diea what the issue is.

[tbenson65]

Originally posted by ithinkimalion:

Mine was working fine and now it just is not. Same settings and everything. No diea what the issue is.

I am in the exact same situation. Downloaded it yesterday and played 7 hours flawlessly then all of a sudden today it's playing in a weird slow mo. My specs are above the recommended ones.

[BHunterSEAL]

I tested in-game and NVIDIA settings fairly extensively in the days following release. Using just in-game settings (and keeping AA at 2-4x, with 4x being much worse) I experienced inconsistent FPS and in particular noticeable drops as the camera perspective moved. Given my hardware setup--and having seen issues like this on a number of other games, I had a good idea what NVIDIA driver settings should be used to maintain a stable ~60 FPS with no tearing or artifacing

I'm running a 970, 7700k, 32GB RAM with SMB on an SSD.

Low Latency Mode: On (or Ultra, potentially, if you are using G-Sync): Like many games, FPS consistency was improved by capping the number of frames the CPU pushes to the GPU in advance of rendering. This is basically the non-numeric version of the old Max Frames to Render Ahead setting. I would say that in roughly 35-40% of cases where you believe a game should be producing higher / more consistent FPS (given hardware / demands), enabling this will make a dramatic difference or even eliminate suttering entirely. (The other 60% of the time, it won't really do anything--some games have their own built-in limits, or your issue is unrelated to bottlenecking).

MFAA: On (this improves the results of in-game AA, getting better visuals at lower settings--allowing you to comfortably play on 2x or 4x.

Power Management: Max performance (I usually do this for games)

Anisotropic filtering: 16x (or whatever you can handle). It depends on the individual game, but for SMB3. I also disabled sample optimization since I generally do this when using NVIDIA filtering. By the way, unlike the AA settings, filtering is either applied by the driver or the game, not by both--I turn it off in-game just to remind myself that I've forced it with NVCpl. Driver AAF can look far sharper than in-game AAF--the difference in GTA V is astonishing.

VSync: Adaptive. I found that once the other options were properly configured with an uncapped framerate, I got significant, horrible, almost nauseating visual tearing while the scene was in motion. I tried the in-game option and other NVIDIA settings, but, as for most games, Adaptive preserved performance while eliminating tearing.

In game, everything is maxed with AA set to 16x. I was unable to run at 4x without choppiness prior to making the driver adjustments.

Note: Post edited to remove the caveat that I hadn't played since the latest patch. Performance is still butter.

[boomhauertjs]

Thanks for this suggestion. I still have stuttering, but it is much improved with taking the above advice, though I have a much weaker system than you (750ti, 8 gb ram).

[boomhauertjs]

I finally fixed my framerate issues. I started the game outside of Big Picture mode and it is consistently playing at 60 FPS.

[Zoidberg Jesus]

I'm having a lot of stuttering/slow down in game, noticeably so when the camera focuses on the crowd (example: during batting walk-ups), even when I set crowd density to 0%. Already tried verifying game cache and lowering graphics settings.

i5 4690K @ 3.5 GHz
GTX 1080
16 GB DDR3 RAM
Installed on HDD (not solid state)

Edit: Wow, you were right, BHunterSEAL. I didn't realize your settings would improve things so much. It's night and day. Thanks a lot!
I do think that Metal Head Software should still look into this for people who aren't used to tinkering with graphics control panels.

[BHunterSEAL]

Originally posted by Zoidberg Jesus:

I'm having a lot of stuttering/slow down in game, noticeably so when the camera focuses on the crowd (example: during batting walk-ups), even when I set crowd density to 0%. Already tried verifying game cache and lowering graphics settings.

i5 4690K @ 3.5 GHz
GTX 1080
16 GB DDR3 RAM
Installed on HDD (not solid state)

Did you try the NVIDIA settings I suggested? I'm thinking the latency setting should work for a lot of people, usually helps with the kind of stuttering not associated with GPU memory limitations or bumping up against RAM.

[Lord Valor]

I was playing postseason franchise as the away team at Sirlions home stadium and using a wired xbox controller with headphones plugged into the controller. When I unplug the headphones from the controller the framerate drops considerably to probably below 10 FPS when it was at 60 fps (my monitor max rate) normally no problem. As soon as I plug the headphones back into the controller, the FPS goes right back up to where it was before.

[DPHuda]

I meet the recommended requirements for this game, but I am getting a slow motion problem when batting only. I have tested the issue and, for me, it appears to only be doing this during night games. Day and Evening games do not have this slow motion issue.

[Liggy]

Originally posted by Sean Connery:

I meet the recommended requirements for this game, but I am getting a slow motion problem when batting only. I have tested the issue and, for me, it appears to only be doing this during night games. Day and Evening games do not have this slow motion issue.

I'm having the same problem, and it's quite annoying. I am experiencing it a lot lately, though day/night has no difference. I just played Buzzards(sp?) at their home field and the batting was atrocious for me. Slowing down below 50fps and I'm not even talking experiencing low fps, the game literally goes slow mo.

[DPHuda]

You are right, my original post was incorrect, there is the slow-motion thing during day games for me too, just not as frequently. I have also noticed that Sakura and Bigata Bowl (however you spell them) stadiums have much better performance than the other stadiums, especially the new ones.

[890901kevin]

I found a new way to play SMB3 on 60fps. Adjust "Crowd Density" to 0%. It seems the crowd
is a big load to GPU. Try to think that there is no fans because of corona virus. XD