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.

[DPHuda]

Автор сообщения: 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

I have tried this, it doesn't work 100% of the time. Sometimes I can run the game at maximum settings and then the slow-mo will be back for the next game.

[(WiFu) Kneesocks]

I'm also having the slo-mo problem when batting, specifically with right handed batters. No matter the settings, i'll go from 59-60 fps doing anything else to 47-50 with slo-mo as soon as the pitcher winds up to throw. As most of my roster bats right handed, this makes the game unplayable. This only started recently, at release it was perfect

[Aespa Enthusiast]

same at release the game was flawless now when batting (only batting not pitching) the game will appear to play almost in slow motion. It's very annoying. I'm not sure what changed with the game as it was fine for weeks. My specs are way above the recommended. I feel like Neo in the matrix when batting.

[loudee16]

I am having problems and i shouldt be. the game was running fine but the started every once in a while to get choppy and slow mo at the plate. a simple reboot did the trick, not anymore.

i am running a 2 month old gaming pc

I7 10700 3,8ghz
DDR4 3200
EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC Ultra .. please help

i used the setting above, but i dont know what to put in the ones not mentioned.

Please help

[loudee16]

Автор сообщения: loudee16

I am having problems and i shouldt be. the game was running fine but the started every once in a while to get choppy and slow mo at the plate. a simple reboot did the trick, not anymore.

i am running a 2 month old gaming pc

I7 10700 3,8ghz
DDR4 3200
EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC Ultra .. please help

i used the setting above, but i dont know what to put in the ones not mentioned.

Please help

and now my fielders have this weird glow to them... the game looks terrible now

[XCLBR]

fix the stutter or lose my support.

[XCLBR]

at least roll back the patch that caused it

[(ADORA)ble 🌈👊]

I don't know what happened. I just completed a full 162 game season mostly with no problems. There were periods of time where microstuttering would show up and I would stop playing for a bit but for whatever reason when I came back it'd be gone.

Now I've started a new season and I'm not getting microstuttering... my framerate just sucks and input lag is about half a second. Completely unplayable as I have to commit to a swing before the pitcher releases the ball. My hardware has not changed.

2080, i7 7700k, 32 GB Ram.

Unfortunately as this seems to be a common problem with others I'm going to have to change my review. Love the game but it's suddenly unplayable.

[BHunterSEAL]

Автор сообщения: Usmovers_02

2080, i7 7700k, 32 GB Ram.

We have identical stats except I have a Super 2070 not a 2080 and I have zero framerate drops, other than on fly balls hit in one specific stadium (forget which).

Are you playing at 1080p or 4k? I haven't made the switch yet.

[(ADORA)ble 🌈👊]

It's so weird that similar or same specs have totally different experiences. I've tried all max settings at 4k and all minimum settings at 1080. Obviously I get better framerate on low but drops while batting are still there

[DrDeath_MD]

The stuttering that was semi-fixed in update 5 is back with a vengeance in update 6. Others have reported the same thing with high end hardware.

[Anfield]

Автор сообщения: DrDeath_MD

The stuttering that was semi-fixed in update 5 is back with a vengeance in update 6. Others have reported the same thing with high end hardware.

Agreed with the return of stuttering. FPS counter doesn't waver, but the transition when the ball is put in play is often jagged and when the camera pans in the field I often experience stuttering.

[BHunterSEAL]

Автор сообщения: Usmovers_02

It's so weird that similar or same specs have totally different experiences. I've tried all max settings at 4k and all minimum settings at 1080. Obviously I get better framerate on low but drops while batting are still there

Автор сообщения: DrDeath_MD

Agreed with the return of stuttering. FPS counter doesn't waver, but the transition when the ball is put in play is often jagged and when the camera pans in the field I often experience stuttering.

I normally have no stutter whatsoever, but after the latest NVIDIA driver update DSR enabled itself and I figured I'd try experimenting with 4k upscaling in games which support it. In Call to Arms Ostfront, for example, the increase in the crispness and clarity of rendering is substantial and performance impact is hardly noticeable unless there's a lot happening onscreen. In Middle Earth: Shadows of War, upscaling improves the visuals but has an increasingly-noticeable impact on FPS as I move from 2k to 3k to 4k.

I mention these for comparison, since my results in SMB3 were the opposite--fairly-limited graphical improvement coupled with exactly the kind of FPS drops people have been describing, namely stuttering when the camera is panning or the viewing mode transitions. I'm not at all knowledgeable of how the underlying mechanics work, but given the nature of the framerate drops I'd guess that SMB3's issue lies with memory streaming for stadiums / crowds when rendering at 4k.

One potential fix--maybe something they could stick in a Steam-only dev branch for testing--might be to only use 4k textures for the field, fences and on-field / dugout character models. The crowd models and stadium architecture would take 2k textures, except in specific non-gameplay circumstances such as the close-up of cheering spectators after a homerun. If that fixes the problem for most people, it might be viable putting the effort into adding an in-game setting to that effect in a later patch. Again, not super-knowledgeable of this stuff but some of the most popular performance mods for FO4 were built on this concept, replacing textures with lower-res versions in places where the impact to overall quality / player experience is limited.

[(ADORA)ble 🌈👊]

I honestly doubt the stadium textures are even 2k. Not much need for them to be as you never get close to the stadium.

[C-FPAS]

Thank you ! For the Demo ... I lost the first 2 -1, Yesterday ... I won the second 2 - 0 today ... I decided to buy it ... Even with my Windows 7 pro ... i5 - 16G - gtx 660 evga ... it runs at 60 fps ... AND a really good game of baseball ... (50% crowd) ...