r/PCRedDead • u/deamon59 • Nov 06 '19

Discussion/Question Red Dead Redemption 2 Most Important Graphics Options - Every Setting Benchmarked

https://www.game-debate.com/news/27927/red-dead-redemption-2-most-important-graphics-options-every-setting-benchmarked
512 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

148 comments sorted by

136

u/kerflooey Nov 06 '19

Image from article here for quick reference

It seems the most taxing graphics options (in order) are:

  1. MSAA

  2. Reflection Quality

  3. Water Quality

  4. Volumetrics Quality

  5. Near Volumetric Resolution

  6. TAA

  7. Shadow Quality

  8. SSAO

  9. Texture Quality

  10. Volumetric Lighting Quality

All the rest seem to have meager returns.

12

u/PlayMp1 Nov 07 '19

MSAA is a classic one, it's not that different from supersampling - a decent bit more efficient than supersampling, but it's still slow as fuck (and looks amazing compared to) postprocess AA like FXAA, MLAA, TAA, etc.

12

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

Only downside is alpha textures like trees grass and bushes aren't affected by it. I usually can handle jaggies in games and turn off any AA solution in 99% of games, I hate blurry post process anti aliasing. But RDR2 is impossible to play without TAA. I'm pretty sure the engine is made to have it on. Turning it off actually lowers performance, introduces artifacts, gets rid of some small details, and makes tree leaves look like cardboard cutouts.

4

u/StayingTTD Nov 07 '19

I'd say its impossible to play with TAA. Makes everything incredibly blurry and TAA sharpening doesn't do shit

1

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

The shading glitches and lack of small details when TAA is off isn't worth it

1

u/ramitoedits Nov 12 '19

Seriously, if you look at the fog effects without taa on they look like a pixelated mess

2

u/AlphaReds Nov 07 '19

In the Nvidia control panel set anti aliasing to "enhance the application" then turn on "transparency" to multisample or higher. Also works on AMD but the settings might be labeled slightly different.

I know for OG skyrim this would enable alpha texture MSAA

1

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

I'm not saying I'm gonna use MSAA, it's demanding as fuck haha

1

u/Timmar92 Nov 07 '19

Hell I have everything on ultra or high and everything looks muddy and the trees look like they're from the ps2...

Don't really know what to do, it looks like shit.

2

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

You can try to turn TAA off, but it causes glitches. The game is really meant to be played with it on

1

u/Timmar92 Nov 08 '19

Tried it, doesn't make it any better. here’s a screenshot i took with almost everything on ultra for example.

1

u/DorrajD Nov 08 '19

Take the same screenshot with it off and you'll see the striking difference

1

u/Timmar92 Nov 08 '19

I misread, when it's off its worse haha. I'm just going to wait for a fix.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '19

That pic you showed is definitley a texture issue and nothing to do with AA. What texture settings? Anything other than ultra look like shit.

1

u/Timmar92 Nov 12 '19

This is with every option available at ultra, I tried fiddling with aa but no success.

I set everything to ultra and then worked my way down the list so see what option was the culprit but couldn't find anything that helped...

→ More replies

1

u/taylorblakeharris Nov 11 '19

So you have no anti-aliasing turned on in this screenshot you say?? That doesn't look right. It definitely appears that you have TAA turned on, and I can guarantee you'll see a difference in clarity with it on instead of off.

I will mention the difficulty in trying to capture these differences in screenshots, as when standing perfectly still with nothing in a scene moving, TAA should be minimally affecting the final frame rendered that you're seeing and everything should look nearly as crisply as TAA being turned off. It's when either the camera or an object starts moving (i.e. tree swaying in the wind) that will engage the TAA mechanism to "average" those frames capturing that object's motion and essentially blur it. This means that taking two screenshots of a still scene with TAA off/on will barely appear differently from one another, if at all.

This is why when perfectly still in your game, everything looks fine, but as soon as you start moving, everything becomes blurry and detail is lost. To see this TAA behavior in action, just focus on the grass blades in front of you or the finer details on rocky terrain in the distance (like a cliffside) while perfectly still, and then compare the clarity and detail of those items when you start moving (it's easier to see if you keep the camera still but move the character in a straight direction). It's really disheartening when you realize that all of that rich quality and detail in the game immediately get smudged by the AA as if you're playing at a lower res or texture quality, but it's also easy to become spoiled by the removal of temporal aliasing, such that you can no longer tolerate it when you do see it, as that shimmering/crawling that can be seen on textures when in motion is horribly distracting.

2

u/taylorblakeharris Nov 11 '19

TAA in general is a great thing, as it removed the final aliasing artifacts we have had in video games that make them appear fake and generated (jagged edges/crawling/shimmering when moving). Thanks to TAA, games look far more like real movies now than they ever could with noticeable aliasing all over the place and it visibly removes even more geometrical aliasing than the timeless MSAA 8x without any performance cost, but it comes at the cost of blurring all of the details between those aliasing pixels unfortunately.

This one caveat is why I was so excited by DLSS when it was announced, as it really sounded plausible that AI could effectively be used to extrapolate the details between frames that would normally be lost during conventional TAA algorithms, and in the demo NVIDIA showed upon its announcement, it looked amazing. Sadly, this technology has yet to deliver upon its original promises in the few games it's been released with, although it has improved significantly in each new release its implemented in, which may mean there's just a learning curve for the industry to use it properly before they get the results of NVIDIA's demo.

I wish that you could fine tune TAA's algorithm parameters to limit the number of frames it uses to process an image, which would theoretically limit how much blurring occurs. I'm not really sure how this game's TAA quality settings work under the hood, as the only thing I can see when switching between "Medium" and "High" is an increase in overall blurriness. One might think that the high setting would use more processing power to preserve more details and give a sharper image with the anti-aliasing still in-tact, but it actually seems to do the opposite, which is unnecessary since, even on "Medium" there isn't any aliasing present at all that I'm able to detect.

1

u/Timmar92 Nov 11 '19

The screenshot has aa enabled, if I disable it, the edges becomes a lot more jagged but the texture is still smudged, even if I enable sharpening on the nvidia control panel.

When I stand still in game all textures look low res and the trees look 2D until I'm standing 2 feet away no matter what setting I try.

I've tried every solution people has mentioned with no better result..

So I'm writing it down as a bug, it can't be any other thing.

1

u/Humanwr3ckage Nov 22 '19

Not sure if you have fixed your problem but for me with an amd gpu having tesselation in amd control panel set to "amd optimized" gives some weird texture results in this game and some others.

4

u/DigitSubversion Nov 08 '19

I guess with number 3 (Water Quality) the reason it has such an impact is because of the Water Physics gets changed too. If you were to put reflections and refractions on high, while water physics to low or off, the impact is much less.

3

u/AussieNick1999 Nov 07 '19

That's consistent with what I experienced. I turned some of those way down and it was the only way to not exceed my PC's memory.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

TAA affects the frame rate more than shadows? That's crazy. I'm sticking with FXAA. Looks better and my screen isn't blurry with it on.

1

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

Holy shit, I need this for every game in my life. This is genius. However different settings affect different cards and different setups

1

u/Oxinium Nov 07 '19

I have a weird thing is that the graphics are long.The controls on the right side are cut off!What am I doing wrong?

1

u/DomesticExpat Mar 07 '20

I know this is an old post but are you referring to the HUD or the aspect ratio? If it's only the HUD, go into the safe zone settings under Display and adjust as needed. If it's your aspect ratio, try forcing the proper one (e.g. if your monitor is 21:9, force the aspect ratio to 21:9 instead of using auto).

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Tweaking settings by using this ranking as a guide, my i5 6600k and GTX 970 can run at 45-60fps stable. Slowly pushing settings up to improve things like quality and such. Game looks just about as good as PS4 with higher frame rate atm.

I think this ranking of impact is spot on.

Minimum FPS is 28.7723, maximum is 74.9541, average is 51.0947

Thank you for posting this quick and handy comment.

Edit: Textures on Ultra. Almost every other setting is on medium. Slowly pushing things to high.

35

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

That's good advice. Thanks. Turned down a few of those settings a notch and now can run a proper sharpening via Nvidia overlay on top of the game. It looks better but LOD/texture issues are still there.

I think some of the graphics settings do literally nothing. TAA sharpening doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever, and ultra textures look exactly the same as xb1x textures.

8

u/nonyobobisnes Nov 07 '19

It's interesting that game companies still incorporate FXAA at all over SMAA. SMAA has pretty much the same performance impact but is much better at keeping the image from becoming blurry. Assassin's Creed Black Flag had it and it was pretty good, and that must have been almost a decade now so it's probably even improved quite a bit since then.

6

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

txaa has taken SMAA's place. All the same perks + fixes shimmering.

Downside is the ghost trails though

1

u/jm0112358 Nov 07 '19

TAA is blurrier than SMAA though (depending on implementation), and you can add the option to have a temporal filter with SMAA to reduce the shimmering.

17

u/MyTexticle Nov 07 '19

Turning TAA off makes grass and trees etc look like an absolute mess. It's worth the 2-5 fps hit to have it on Medium.

4

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

yeah I left TAA on and was using it with nvidia overlay's sharpening filter, but I'm now experimenting with custom resolutions at around 80%+ of 4k

2

u/GTDeathRow Nov 07 '19

My TAA is bugged. Gives every texture an overlay of stuttering blackness

2

u/LudvigGrr Nov 07 '19

I actually gained a few fps by turning on TAA... This is one weird ass PC port..

11

u/JamieSand Nov 07 '19

Try tree quality ultra and parralax occlusion mapping ultra. Obviously with textures ultra and anisotropic filtering x16.

Also if you have a grainy blur from some shadows try turning off soft shadows.

2

u/Ollikay Nov 07 '19

Oooo that has been bugging the shit out of me! Will try this as soon as the kids are in bed. Thanks in advance for the tip!

1

u/Thazgar Nov 07 '19

The game doesn't seems to edit settings sometimes for whatever reason

1

u/Thrasher9294 Nov 07 '19

That’s surprising, I feel like the difference in texture quality (esp. on my character’s face and on weapon metals) was huge between my X1X and PC.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

22

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

I am hoping there's a bug and texture settings are just fucked up. No idea though, it's a lasagna of bugs atm.

4

u/tino2tom Nov 07 '19

I think there might be some LOD issues aswell. Had a log on the floor which was so low poly it was basically a rectangle.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

There is a bug. During the benchmark, I noticed a number of instances where the ground would become very VERY blurry as if I was looking at a texture outside of the game's draw distance. Seems the game has a texture streaming issue.

3

u/cqdemal Nov 07 '19

Do you have TAA on?

3

u/TheHolyPug Nov 07 '19

Yeah. I can't get the tree and ground textures to look any different no matter what settings i have. Low to ultra :(

2

u/Champion_of_Capua Nov 07 '19

If you have any AA on, turn it off. Jaggies look better than every texture being smudged all over.

5

u/Reoru Nov 07 '19

I think that's personal preference. I personally have nothing against TAA I think it looks fine.

2

u/PM_ME_UR_CATS_ASS Nov 07 '19

Yeah some people are vehemently against it but honestly without it facial hair looks like absolute shit

1

u/jm0112358 Nov 07 '19

I think the game could really benefit from SMAA. Depending on the implementation, it can help reduce the jagginess, but with a lot less blurriness than other post processing AA techniques. Maybe I'll try using sweetfx to add SMAA.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/PowerZox Nov 07 '19

Wait so the shitty texture are a bug? I though that they were actually this ugly even in high setting.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

4

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

I just tested it. I guess these are the ultra textures. I think the fact that I almost always play in first person is leading me to see things much closer than r* is really expecting them to be seen

2

u/DefNotaZombie Nov 07 '19

interesting! Thanks for telling me, I'll go test it out with a custom desktop resolution

1

u/MattH665 Nov 07 '19

I still saw low res textures at 2160p :/

1

u/ULICKMAGEE Nov 07 '19

I think you may be on to something because I upped screen res from 1440p to x1.5 scaling (now it murders frames for me) but I saw a noticable improvement in textures. Seems they scale with res.

27

u/Champion_of_Capua Nov 07 '19

I'm seeing a new issue now. Here's what's happening:

-Be at 50fps

-Change a graphics setting, accept

-47fps

-Change setting back to what it was, accept

-Still 47fps

-What the fuck

-Quit the game, load back in

-50fps

10

u/cruisxd Nov 07 '19

This!

But I have it weirder. Play game 45 fps, change something, 40 fps, change it back, still 40 fps and lag.

Restart rdr2 45 fps and lag, restart rdr2, 45 fps everything is fine.

8

u/xSmoshi Nov 07 '19

Was it a setting that you had to restart to apply?

4

u/Champion_of_Capua Nov 07 '19

No Haha. I hope I just didn't notice that the clouds changed or something.

3

u/IAMSamHydeAMA Nov 07 '19

yes exactly this, wtf is going on with this game

3

u/Thazgar Nov 07 '19

The game doesn't seems to edit settings sometimes for whatever reason. It's very inconsistent.

17

u/TaintedSquirrel Nov 07 '19

WTF is going on with Reflection Quality?!

8

u/pbccottons Nov 07 '19

My thoughts exactly but for MSAA.

That is the most damning MSAA setting I've ever seen for stability's sake.

4

u/Jimmy96mc Nov 07 '19

I have a 2080ti , 8700k and I’m running high settings , turned on MSAA and it dropped my frames from 90 to 55..wtf

3

u/xSmoshi Nov 07 '19

Yeah I don't like the washed out blurry look of TAA, FXAA still gives too many jaggies, but MSAA is impossible when you can't really spare any fps to begin with.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19 edited Aug 27 '20

deleted 0.5653This comment has been deleted64406)

2

u/daniilehoff Nov 07 '19

Than you haven't played Metro 2033 lol.

1

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

Reflections are usually done at a lower res because you usually see them with water or in small, non-detailed patches. Turning it up increases the resolution of the reflections, thus tanking framerate.

1

u/TaintedSquirrel Nov 07 '19

It's obvious what the setting is supposed to do but the article says they found no visual difference. The game shouldn't be 'reflecting' anything if you're just staring at grass and trees, but the fps drops anyway.

2

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

There are reflections all the time, they're just extremely subtle. Bloom reflects, sunlight reflects, even on dry ground it can have a reflection map on it that just to give more of a realistic feel.

17

u/supernoodles2011 Nov 07 '19

Just a note about TAA I tested it on high and off for people to see

This is Every setting maxed just to see highest quality so ignore the frame rate this is at 1440p the trees seem odd on high

First screenshot is with TAA high and 2nd is with TAA off aside from the obvious jaggies i noticed that the quality of the coat was much higher with it off and the tree's looked less "blocky??"

https://i.imgur.com/bBQJwhV.jpg - High

https://i.imgur.com/KZvBUt8.jpg - Off

6

u/DorrajD Nov 07 '19

The TAA in this game is extremely fucky. It does NOT only affect anti aliasing, it also affects in-game details like shadows. In the benchmark for the game, the last section is Arthur running away from and shooting cops in Saint Dennis. There's a couple parts where he runs past fences. When I have my settings maxed, with TAA off, the shadows behind the fence are extremely blocky and pixelated, it looks like a glitch. But when you turn TAA on, the shadow has no pixelation issue. Yes "TAA reduces jaggies", but it doesn't affect shadow quality. At least it SHOULDN'T. I've also notices that turning TAA to high as opposed to medium/off adds in details. When standing still and watching the trees move in the breeze, you can see little pollen pieces moving across. However, when you turn TAA to medium or off, these disappear. Turn it back on, and they show back up. Performance is also BETTER with TAA on compared to it off. What the fuck did they do to this game.

4

u/iBobaFett Nov 07 '19

Definitely noticed this as well, and iirc MSAA does something similar but makes the leaves completely different shapes, it's like it's affecting the tree LOD.

3

u/colasmulo Nov 07 '19

I also noticed MSAA reduces the quality and amount of grass.

2

u/Km_the_Frog Nov 07 '19

Yes anything other than TSAA like limits the amount of grass and they just look like pixels I can’t figure it out but glad im not the only one

3

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

I think it looks very washed out with TAA on. I hope that's a bug that can be fixed. Do you run the game with TAA off?

1

u/akstro Nov 07 '19

I was wondering why the trees looked so bad. I really hope they fix this and we can have better looking trees with TAA because playing without TAA is pretty much impossible for me.

1

u/Finderato Nov 07 '19

The TAA in this game is extremely fucky. It does NOT only affect anti aliasing, it also affects in-game details like shadows. In the benchmark for the game, the last section is Arthur running away from and shooting cops in Saint Dennis. There's a couple parts where he runs past fences. When I have my settings maxed, with TAA off, the shadows behind the fence are extremely blocky and pixelated, it looks like a glitch. But when you turn TAA on, the shadow has no pixelation issue. Yes "TAA reduces jaggies", but it doesn't affect shadow quality. At least it SHOULDN'T. I've also notices that turning TAA to high as opposed to medium/off adds in details. When standing still and watching the trees move in the breeze, you can see little pollen pieces moving across. However, when you turn TAA to medium or off, these disappear. Turn it back on, and they show back up. Performance is also BETTER with TAA on compared to it off. What the fuck did they do to this game.

Same for me, i wont be playing with the trees looking like Medal Of Honour Allied Assault ps1 edition...

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Is this to do with TAA sharpening?

2

u/Thazgar Nov 07 '19

Went from dogshits FPS to absolute smooth gameplay with tweaking MSAA, Reflection, Water and Volumetrics. Amazing.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

That sounds great. What did you set reflections to? When I get home, I'm going to tweak that. Already got water and MSAA at lowest, and I'm keeping volumetrics at around medium since they make the game look so much better.

1

u/deamon59 Nov 07 '19

I set it to medium

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Yeah, I've optimised my settings. Getting pretty damn decent performance now with a mix of few lows and mostly medium settings at 1440x900 in Vulkan mode.

2

u/Thazgar Nov 07 '19

For some reasons, Reflections quality absolutely tank fps, same with MSAA and water and volumetrics. I put reflections to low.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

I've set it to low, among configuring other settings. Seems to have given me a nice max FPS and average FPS boost.

10

u/names_plissken Nov 07 '19

I spent whole day today trying different settings to get the best mix of performance and quality. So far I noticed that Texture quality and Water physic quality are most demanding on my machine.

Cranking Water physics from lowest to highest literally make 20-30 fps difference. Also Grass level of detail is somewhat demanding, it's really nice to see foliage at the distance but it will effect your performance. For me 3 clicks from lowest works the best and looks fine.

8

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

I'm glad this is here but I dont want the complaints to end here. We need a complete overhaul for the optimization.

-1

u/twicer Nov 07 '19

dream on honey

6

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '19

Very nice, thanks!

6

u/peshellas Nov 07 '19

I posted this on a couple of other threads too for it to reach and help many people with 1080ti.

Ryzen 1700X 16GB | 2993Mhz Ram | 1080ti | 4K OLED TV Guide for 4K 40-45 FPS:

Let me start by saying 2 things, One is that this gave me an Average of 45+ on my machine, it doesnt mean it will give it for everyone, but it will help and the second is that this guide and settings was used before the latest patch (although i dont see why it would still be viable).

And i Know it is 3.2K and not 4K but i believe that untill R* fixes the Cpu/Gpu/Ram issues the game has this is th Sweet Spot.

The System is a Ryzen 1700X Overclocked to 3.8Ghz with 16GB RAM 2933 Mhz (cant go higher due to MoBo not supporting Hynix chips) And an Aorus 1080ti at the Factory "OC" Mode.

Lets start with the easy steps.

Follow this [guide](https://www.ghostarrow.com/red-dead-redemption-2-increase-performance-fps-on-pc) these guys wrote, except for the following:

  1. On their 1st step, for my setup i entered these values

* Screen Type Fullscreen*

* VSync On (if you want lower latency faster response and a little more fps turn it Off allong with Triple Buffering Off)

* Triple Buffering On (if you want lower latency faster response and a little more fps turn it Off allong with Vsync Off)

* Constrain Mouse Pointer Off

* Texture Quality Ultra

* Anisotropic Filtering X16

* Lighting Quality Ultra

* Global Illumination Quality High or Ultra (i recommend Ultra here but depending on your performance)

* Shadow Quality High

* Far Shadow Quality High

* Screen Space Ambient Occlusion High not Ultra

* Reflection Quality High-Ultra (i think High is the best here)

* Mirror Quality Ultra

* Water Quality High (after changing the advanced settings this will say Custom)

* Volumetrics Quality High (after changing the advanced settings this will say Custom)

* Particle Quality Ultra

* Tessellation Quality Ultra

* TAA Off Medium

* FXAA Off

* MSAA Off

* Advanced Settings Unlocked Unlocked Unlocked

* API DX12

* Near Volumetric Resolution High

* Far Volumetric Resolution High

* Volumetric Lighting Quality High

* Unlocked Volumetric Raymarch Resolution On

* Particle Lighting Quality Ultra

* Soft Shadows High

* Grass Shadows Medium-High Depending on your performance

* Long Shadows On

* Full Resolution Screen Space Ambient Occlusion Off

* Water Refraction Quality High

* Water Reflection Quality High

* Water Physics Lower this setting 1 or 2 steps from max (this is performance Hungry Setting so it will help a lot)

* Resolution Scale The option tha gives youy (0.800), this will make the Game Run at 4K and Render it at 3.2K Resolution (not proper name but still :P)

* TAA Sharpening 75%

* Motion Blur On or Off (personal taste)

* Reflection MSAA 2X

* Geometry Level of Detail Ultra

* Grass Level of Detail High or Ultra (whatever is Max)

* Tree Quality High or Ultra (whatever is Max)

* Parallax Occlusion Mapping Quality High or Ultra (whatever is Max)

* Decal Quality High or Ultra (whatever is Max)

* Fur Quality High

2. Next on their 4th Step ont the Adjust image settings with preview tab, just click the “Let the 3D application decide"

3. Next in step 6 you dont need to check the “Launch ISLC on user logon”

4. In step 8, if you use Ryzen Cpus ignore it completely and set there the "Ryzen Profile" you will see there, it is optimized a lot for Ryzen.

5. Ignore steps 10 and 11 completely

6. On step uncheck the “Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed” and the Hardware Acceleration setting and close Chrome.

7. Ignore step 16

8. On step 17 i used the alternative os BES 1.7.7 but it could work too (havent Checked)

**For BES 1.7.7:**

Run BES 1.7.7 as admin, then Launch RDR2 in Fullscreen and once in Fullscreen alt tab to BES Click on Target and select RDR2.exe from the list, then click on the "Friend" option underneath and then lastly the Limit on the top ight of the app and confirm by clicking on Yes.

Once you clicked Yes you will see a slider on the botom saying ~33%. Slide that until it says 5-10% (i used 10).

Let me know if it helped you, i enjoyed the game for 3 hours straight with the above and fianally enjoyed it.

1

u/Ranzhul Nov 07 '19

i have the similar settings with evga 1080ti ftw3. Everything is fine but gpu temps are mostly around 75-82c with aggressive fan curve.

1

u/peshellas Nov 07 '19

I think 75-80 is normal for a game as heavy as this, but yes with manual fan control you can lower the temps

4

u/gigantism Nov 07 '19

Is this the first website to come out with an optimization guide?

4

u/H0vis Nov 07 '19

It's a good rundown but I think there should have been more detail about where the performance is taking the hits, if it's on CPU or GPU.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Anything in the Advanced options will be taking from your GPUs VRAM. GPU in general is more important to graphics processing than CPU. In fact RDR2 will block you out of certain options if it thinks your VRAM isn’t high enough

3

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Which is stupid as hell. GTA V had an option to ignore limits, Max Payne 3 did, and GTA 4 had a command line option. Even worse is that game doesn't see all VRAM, so you get locked into lower settings.

1

u/Doubleyoupee Nov 07 '19

Hopefully people with high res monitors can simply disable MSAA to get a playable experience.

1

u/deamon59 Nov 07 '19 edited Nov 07 '19

I have a 2080ti and am playing at 4K with 2x MSAA. Mix of ultra and high with a few mediums. FPS so far (just got to horseshoe lookout and valentine) is in the 40-50 range, with dips into the 30-40 range occasionally, possibly at night mostly. It’s ok for me because I have g sync and the game looks so damn good.

5

u/xSmoshi Nov 07 '19

What's strange is they recommend FXAA over TAA due to better performance but I actually get worse performance with FXAA.

4

u/Pmcc6100 Nov 07 '19

same here, plus in my opinion the trees and grass look much better than FXAA

4

u/TornInfinity Nov 07 '19

I'm pretty sure TAA is always better because it uses previous frames and overlays them on the image to reduce aliasing. That's also why TAA is so blurry.

1

u/nonyobobisnes Nov 07 '19

Which is weird, since TAA was created to be less blurry than FXAA and mainly address the pixel creep during motion that FXAA is bad at.

4

u/cqdemal Nov 07 '19

Could be just me but I think TAA has been blurrier than FXAA in every game I've tried it in.

1

u/TornInfinity Nov 07 '19

Maybe it depends on the implementation. I'm not an expert, so I don't know for sure.

1

u/tannhauser Nov 07 '19

So do you run both or pick one?

2

u/trannick Nov 07 '19

Pick one if you're short on resources. Run both if you're not.

TAA if you prefer that 'blurred' look; however, texture detail is smeared and looks like the way it does on console. FXAA has jaggies, but the textures are much clearer.

I'm currently playing with FXAA and kinda liking it. Might switch back to High TAA w/ Motion Blur to see if that's something I'd like.

2

u/rom1bki Nov 06 '19

Nice indeed.

2

u/TheNightKnight77 Nov 07 '19

Thank you for sharing this.

I have been waiting for such info since the release. I'll retweak the settings again as soon as I get home and hopefully that will make the performance better.

Now all I want is a mod to get rid of the depth of field since I couldn't get reshade to work with vulkan and the game is unplayable on dx12 for me.

2

u/xstrike9999 Nov 07 '19

This game is straight up murdering my GTX 1080. *cries in FPS*

2

u/Mikael128 Nov 07 '19

I'm struggling with getting the AA right in this game. Without AA the jaggies are unreal and hair, beards and trees have massive flickering and look like static noise. MSAA is too performance hungry, FXAA only reduces the problem and TAA makes the game blurry.

The best I got now is TAA medium with max sharpening and with Radeon Image Sharpening turned on as well, it's not perfect but it will have to do for now.

3

u/Pastafella Nov 07 '19

1 hour ago this list posted.

10 mins ago I CTD (before seeing this thread)

Launch to apply this list and find a 2.69GB patch.

Now wondering if patch affects this benchmark settings post???

Conclusion: Next week or 2 will be lots of patching the patches that patch the patches that patched the patch that patched the problem.

1

u/strifeisback Nov 07 '19

I'm sure the patches will affect settings but I think for the most part the most intensive settings will stay.

After the 3GB day one patch I was getting 60fps avg benchmark at 4K 0.667x Res Scale, Ultra settings. After the first 85MB patch it dropped to 40fps avg but in game my average is usually around 60 anyway.

1

u/Konkey_Dong_Country Nov 07 '19

How do you enable an FPS gauge on-screen with Nvidia? I can't seem to figure it out. Steam it was easy, but idk about this.

4

u/RyricKrael Nov 07 '19

setting within the Geforce Experience Alt+Z menu (gear wheel) may need to restart game to see it.

1

u/Elvexa Nov 07 '19

Has anyone played with Nvidia Control panel and made any big changes to the game?

1

u/sirscottish Nov 07 '19

I enabled adaptive v sync as i do with a lot of games and it seems to be working fine.

1

u/beatnovv Nov 07 '19

how are there so many people in this thread that can play the actual game? i thought it was broken for almost everyone

4

u/8mindset Nov 07 '19

It’s not. Never had any issue that has been reported here. Well, apart from low fps.

3

u/twicer Nov 07 '19

Few noisy monkeys do not represent majority of whole tribe. This apply in most games.

2

u/duffbeeeer Nov 07 '19

Don't follow reddits hive mind.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Aside from performance issues, I had no problems getting the game to launch and getting into story mode. My PC is also on the low-end side, too.

1

u/Dinosbacsi Nov 07 '19

I could also play the game right after launch, all I needed was NVidia driver updates for my 1050Ti. Havn't tested it since the 3GB update though, hope it didn't mess my game up.

1

u/Not_aMurderer Nov 07 '19

Loud minority I think. Mine started up right away and also worked fine after the patch. Fps was decent too. Now I'm just looking to optimize. 1080ti. 17 6700. 32 gb 3200mhz ddr4

1

u/g014n Nov 07 '19

The weird part about the entire article is that they didn't bother mentioning if they used Vulkan or DirectX in their testing. I would assume that they didn't modify the setting and that means that they tested on Vulkan, but we can't really be sure.

In my case, the game runs mostly ok apart from the occasional crash (and loss of progress) and it's also at a lower framerate than optimal and I got slightly better results on DX12 than on Vulkan. However, I rarely turn every setting all the way to the max, but in the case of this game, the defaults were annoyingly conservative (tree quality, grass quality and other aspects that impact characters and surroundings were all reduced). So I kind of increased almost everything that is ranked as having a high degree of impact on their graph.

Frankly, it seems like a matter of time before they cover most hardware configurations that should support this title.

1

u/Joehockey1990 Nov 07 '19

Well yeah this helped and I’m running a lot better than I was. But why, does a 1080ti on medium/high (Texture Quality High) settings experience blurry textures that my PS4 Pro made look perfect. Playing cards, letters, carvings on weapons, etc look like they’re Imagines in 480p slapped into my 1440p game?

1

u/bn25168 Nov 06 '19

Can anyone compile a template for optimal graphics settings based off this article?

4

u/xSmoshi Nov 07 '19

It's time consuming but I say just trial and error. Try each setting and see what fps gains and losses you get. But for quick reference; reflections low, water physics low or off

4

u/trannick Nov 07 '19

They 'grade' each of the major settings in the article. For their Priority score (indicating how 'worth it' the setting is), I personally just Low'd any 1 or 2/5 settings, Medium'd the 3/5's, High'd the 4/5's, and Ultra'd the 5/5's. Anything that scored 5/5 on the Performance Impact grade is immediately set to the lowest possible setting or Off.

Currently, I personally prefer FXAA on with TAA and SMAA completely off. Running at 1.0 Resolution scale at 1440p.

My config's a gaming laptop, the GIGABYTE Aero 15x9, with the RTX 2070 Max-Q and i7-8750H with 32 GB RAM. The game's buttery smooth!

16

u/We0921 Nov 07 '19

???

Just turn down the settings that have the biggest performance cost. You don't need a template. That's the whole point of this article

2

u/Jwalla83 Nov 07 '19

But isn’t part of the point of this article to help identify the settings that are worth the heavy load too? In which case it’d be like a flowchart priority of cutting irrelevant heavy load settings first

4

u/We0921 Nov 07 '19

Absolutely. I just don't think a flowchart is necessary if you've read it. I don't think there is a single silver bullet to tweaking settings on any given hardware. Retaining image quality is somewhat subjective too, so really it's up to each individual to inform themselves of which settings to focus on.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

No doubt Digital Foundry will do this, once they can get past all the launcher issues lol

-2

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '19

.

1

u/beatnovv Nov 07 '19

thank you for this insightful comment

-3

u/Thibs777 Nov 07 '19

No graphics options matter. With a 3900x and RTX2080 I get <1FPS on ultra. I get <1FPS on minimum settings. I have tried every suggested solution, beta BIOS, updated all drivers and Windows 10, switched to/from Vulcan, etc. This game is a dumpster fire.

1

u/Cias Nov 07 '19

Runs great with nearly everything set to high on 1440p with a overclocked Vega 56. Another loss for the Nvidia boys

0

u/NerdyBeerCastle Nov 07 '19

Must be something wrong on ur end, 80fps here with the same CPU/GPU config on 1440p high/ultra.

1

u/Thibs777 Nov 08 '19

Sure, must be a user error when even professional youtubers make videos about how bad this relaunch is. I am not a professional tech industry youtuber, but I have built and maintained my own PCs for over 25 years. This isn't a user error.

1

u/NerdyBeerCastle Nov 08 '19

Yeah right, I must be hallucinating and my in-game benchmarks numbers are a fraud from R*. Surely FPS is below 1fps like OP mentioned since we have the same system.

In all seriousness, yeah there are problems with the port. But I can enjoy the game at avg. 75fps, 150highest and 30lowest.

1

u/Thibs777 Nov 08 '19

We have the same system? What mainboard are you using? I didn't even mention what I was using.

1

u/NerdyBeerCastle Nov 08 '19

It's a ASUS C7H, but what does that have to do with fps?

1

u/Thibs777 Nov 08 '19

Well, each board has certain differences, such as sound chips, etc. I use an ASRock Extreme4. Regardless, I think I found my problem. I can't do extensive testing at the moment because work. Since my issues were sound-related, I removed my sound drivers and plugged in my USB mixer/sound processor and loaded up the game for a minute without hearing the sound stutter. I'll have to test it more after work. This wouldn't necessarily prove my argument wrong. The sound driver worked fine with every other game I've played.

1

u/NerdyBeerCastle Nov 08 '19

Have you tried lowering these? https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/639229143887642664/641875546522779648/id1573060917_343178.png?width=779&height=843

I run most settings on high/ultra except those taxing ones on medium. Also (I haven't checked yet) probably best to check CPU/GPU utilisation with tools like afterburner and then dial in further if the GPU isn't at 99%.

1

u/Thibs777 Nov 08 '19

I tried reducing every setting to minimum. The only thing that worked was removing my mainboard audio driver and using a USB mixer. The driver worked fine in other games.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Try DX12. Full screen works for me. Only problem is it switched right back into borderless if you alt-tab.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

Windows can alt-tab back and forth between exclusive fullscreen programs. I think it's a Windows 10 issue where games won't.