Surface Conflict Zones Still Unplayable

[Alpha087]

Looks like Update 8 did pretty much nothing for me here. Still unable to maintain even a baseline 60 FPS during surface CZs. Anyone else paid a visit to these want to share their results?

For the sake of clarity my specs are as follows:
i9 9900k
RTX 2080 Super
32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz

I'm running the game at only 1080p with no upscaling.

 

[Loeko]

Looks like Update 8 did pretty much nothing for me here. Still unable to maintain even a baseline 60 FPS during surface CZs. Anyone else paid a visit to these want to share their results?

For the sake of clarity my specs are as follows:
i9 9900k
RTX 2080 Super
32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz

I'm running the game at only 1080p with no upscaling.

this is really interesting. I have the same processor but a 1080ti and have no issues with FPS in conflict zones. I did have issues when first landing my ship at settlements, FPS would drop, then it would pick up after a bit . That is gone with patch 8. Didn't have much of an issue prior to 8. Now it's a bit better.

Makes no sense. In theory, you should have better performance than I do.

1080p Ultra setting.

 

[ubermick]

To be fair, title seems a bit misleading. OP is saying his framerate isn't staying above 60. The same applies for me, and I have a 3080 - I usually hover between 35 and 60 depending on the action. I might not LIKE that framerate, but I personally don't find it unplayable in the least.

That said, with hardware like theirs/mine, it really SHOULDN'T be dropping below 60.

 

[Shockbot]

I played my fourth Ground CZ with no problems. Even a slight performance boost is noticable and with FSR CAS my FPS getting even higher with no quality loss.

ryzen 7 3800x with noctua fan, gtx 1070 TI Palit, 32 GB RAM

 

[Sighman]

I'm running the game at only 1080p with no upscaling.

Graphics settings/preset?

I've seen two posts today (not here) where people are playing the game in Ultra+ terrain mode. Or, as it was previously known, ultraforcapture.

Just out of interest, if you change to medium preset, restart the game (essential) and try the CZ, what frame rates do you get then? Not suggesting you play on this setting, I'm just interested to see what baseline frame rate you can get.

When a game struggles on my hardware, my approach is always start with Low or Medium, find out the best FPS I can get, and then start upping the settings I care more about until I get a frame rate I can live with. E.g. I rarely notice texture detail but I do notice AA.

 

[CMDR Jayce MacLeod]

Is this in or out of ships? I posted a similar thread, but in regards to in ship planetary conflict zones, of which it's an absolute slideshow

 

[Northpin]

Still unable to maintain even a baseline 60 FPS during surface CZs.

And it's unplayable?

Anything above 30 is actually playable. Maybe not optimal, but pretty much playable
i did some medium ground CZ today and it felt pretty decent (ryzen 9 5900hx, rtx 3080, laptop, 1080p all on ultra/ultra+, super sampling 1.0 - no amd fsr/cas) - although i did not turn on the fps counter.

 

[Alpha087]

And it's unplayable?

Anything above 30 is actually playable. Maybe not optimal, but pretty much playable
i did some medium ground CZ today and it felt pretty decent (ryzen 9 5900hx, rtx 3080, laptop, 1080p all on ultra/ultra+, super sampling 1.0 - no amd fsr/cas) - although i did not turn on the fps counter.

Sub-60 framerate in a first person shooter in 2021 is absolutely unplayable. I know a lot of people who would even argue sub-144 is starting to get choppy, though that is more subtle and dependent on the person and what their eyes are able to perceive. Everyone can feel the choppy-ness of sub-60 though and in a first person shooter in the current year, on the current hardware myself and other people are using, this is frankly not acceptable and I would assume unintended performance at 1080p.

 

[Xae]

Sub-60 framerate in a first person shooter in 2021 is absolutely unplayable. I know a lot of people who would even argue sub-144 is starting to get choppy, though that is more subtle and dependent on the person and what their eyes are able to perceive. Everyone can feel the choppy-ness of sub-60 though and in a first person shooter in the current year, on the current hardware myself and other people are using, this is frankly not acceptable and I would assume unintended performance at 1080p.

That is a bit picky to be honest.

But yes, combat zones are largely unplayable because I can't even hold 15 FPS at 1400p/Medium on a 7800k/3080 system.

 

[Alpha087]

That is a bit picky to be honest.

But yes, combat zones are largely unplayable because I can't even hold 15 FPS at 1400p/Medium on a 7800k/3080 system.

Nothing about it is picky, this has been the standard for PC gaming for the past decade, possibly longer depending on who you ask...

Graphics settings/preset?

I've seen two posts today (not here) where people are playing the game in Ultra+ terrain mode. Or, as it was previously known, ultraforcapture.

Just out of interest, if you change to medium preset, restart the game (essential) and try the CZ, what frame rates do you get then? Not suggesting you play on this setting, I'm just interested to see what baseline frame rate you can get.

When a game struggles on my hardware, my approach is always start with Low or Medium, find out the best FPS I can get, and then start upping the settings I care more about until I get a frame rate I can live with. E.g. I rarely notice texture detail but I do notice AA.

I just tested this as well, turning the settings down to medium, restarting, then going to the exact same conflict zone that I visited when I made the initial post. There is no difference in performance on the Mid graphics preset vs the Ultra I was using previously.

 

[Ryox]

For sure the FPS is a lot worse in CZ than during the rest of the game. But it's playable, come on.
I can go as low as 30 FPS and still being able to frag in PvP.
Also if you really wanna be competitive, you got to use the lowest quality settings as possible (~ 1080p Low). Max FPS is key. In any shooter.

 

[RealPax]

I did had the same issue. Down to 15 fps after update 8.
Now I am back at about 35-40 fps by deleting the files inside the graphics folder and reconfiguring the graphics settings. At least I am able to play ground CZ again.
Maybe it might help you as well.
BR

PS: path C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics assuming you did install on c:\
Just delete the files inside the folder, not the folder!

 

[Alpha087]

For sure the FPS is a lot worse in CZ than during the rest of the game. But it's playable, come on.
I can go as low as 30 FPS and still being able to frag in PvP.
Also if you really wanna be competitive, you got to use the lowest quality settings as possible (~ 1080p Low). Max FPS is key. In any shooter.

That would be something if lowering the graphics settings, or hell, even the resolution had any effect on the framerate in this game. But as I (and other threads) have pointed out, this is not the case.

 

[Ryox]

That would be something if lowering the graphics settings, or hell, even the resolution had any effect on the framerate in this game. But as I (and other threads) have pointed out, this is not the case.

Not what I saw today during my tests in CZ. In 1080p, High : 40FPS, Mid : 50 FPS.
If you play PvP, those +20% of FPS are gonna save your life, guaranteed.

 

[dipper]

i5-4670K/1080ti/32Gb RAM - with a patch it became even worse, even on the minimum settings friezes were added also. Before the patch, there were sometimes settlements where almost everything stopped, but the vast majority and CZ allowed to play for 40-50 FRS. But now in all settlements where I was fps above 30-40 does not rise. Every few tens of meters on foot or in the SRV terrible drawdowns up to 5-10 and even friezes for 1.5-2 seconds.
FDevs talked about some optimization but apparently it remained somewhere in parallel reality...

 

[Ryox]

i5-4670K/1080ti

It could be that your CPU is the bottleneck there. The CPU must not reach 100% before your GPU does.

I say that because I also have a 1080ti and I had a good improvement (+20% FPS) after replacing my i5-7600K (3.8 - 4.2 GHz) by a i7-7700K (4.2 - 4.5 GHz).
Now the worst I got in CZ is ~40FPS.

 

[babelfisch]

Sub-60 framerate in a first person shooter in 2021 is absolutely unplayable. I know a lot of people who would even argue sub-144 is starting to get choppy, though that is more subtle and dependent on the person and what their eyes are able to perceive. Everyone can feel the choppy-ness of sub-60 though and in a first person shooter in the current year, on the current hardware myself and other people are using, this is frankly not acceptable and I would assume unintended performance at 1080p.

If sub 60 FPS is playable or not is completely subjective. I guess we can agree that it should perform better though.
I just checked a benchmark for Far Cry 6 on a similar setup like yours and it gets ~100 FPS. Of course you can't directly compare every game, but for me that would be a reasonable goal.

 

[Vingtetun]

3080 and an i5 9600k with a mild 30% overclock 64 gb ram and game on a fast Nvme drive
Conflict zones are smooth in 1440p and 4k.

Occasionally micro-stutter in concourse on stations, but combat is a riot.

 

[Xae]

3080 and an i5 9600k with a mild 30% overclock 64 gb ram and game on a fast Nvme drive
Conflict zones are smooth in 1440p and 4k.

Occasionally micro-stutter in concourse on stations, but combat is a riot.

3080 with a 8700k 32gb of ram (never uses a fraction of it) and the game is on an NVME drive.

30-40 FPS at best. Constant stuttering. Prolonged minute long periods of sub 1 FPS. Constant drops to low single digits.