Patch 1.5 significant performance loss with Raytracing enabled

[dampflokfreund]

With the new 1.5 patch, CDPR decided to include local light shadows and changed roughness cutoff for RT reflections as a standard.

This results into a big performance loss which is absolutely unacceptable, given the game is already demanding as it is.

For example, GPUs which previously held 60 FPS decently are now struggling very much. For GPUs which previously held 30 FPS, RT effects are now unplayable.

Take a look at this video:

Performance loss is even bigger indoors.

It's cool that they improved RT effects, but for the love of god, make it an additional option and not just include them as a standard, making it perform far worse than before the patch. Games should get faster not slower over updates.

 

[Mortilla]

Thank you for sharing this!

This would explain the difference in performance while running RT in 1.5

It seems like a strange oversight -- I'm sure it will be addressed eventually.

 

[Azulath]

With the new 1.5 patch, CDPR decided to include local light shadows and changed roughness cutoff for RT reflections as a standard.

This results into a big performance loss which is absolutely unacceptable, given the game is already demanding as it is.

For example, GPUs which previously held 60 FPS decently are now struggling very much. For GPUs which previously held 30 FPS, RT effects are now unplayable.

Take a look at this video:

Performance loss is even bigger indoors.

It's cool that they improved RT effects, but for the love of god, make it an additional option and not just include them as a standard, making it perform far worse than before the patch. Games should get faster not slower over updates.

The things gamers find "unacceptable" is interesting. If companies would listen to those statements, games would never be released because you would find them to be contradicting in the end. I mean I get it, you would have preferred it the other way and you want to give voice to your opinion, which is fair, but this does not automatically make something unacceptable, even if other people agree with you.

Personally, I find it laudable that CDPR increased the visual fidelity for Cyberpunk 2077 and was brave enough to sacrifice some performance for it. Now, the game looks even more amazing. This is contrary to recent patches where gamers complained CDPR allegedly downgraded the visual fidelity (LOD, RT reflections, light pop-in) in order to increase the performance on lower end hardware. It seems like they have listened in this regard and bumped it up a bit.

Also, you must not forget that they are indeed optimising the performance of the game and for example RT shadows might be 30% faster to render now, but they are casting twice as many which leads to a net performance loss. (Obviously, I'm working with arbitrary but fixed numbers here.)

Likewise, gamers - and you might not be one of them - often complain about being unable to run a game on high on a potato PC and get furious about poor optimisation because this one rail-shooter looks good on their PC. Dying Light 1 had a view distance slider that could cripple any modern hardware when put to the limit and it was added in order to allow for high visual fidelity on future PCs. Gamers ranted so much about not being able to put it to the limit even on high end hardware, that the company decided to severely reduce said limit in a future patch. Now, I fear CDPR might listen to those complaints and act on them with "optimisations" that result in a loss of visual fidelity. (Let's hope it does not come to this.)

For you, the best approach is either to find settings which suite your PC or if you absolutely do not want either reduce visual fidelity or accept lower FPS, to go ahead and buy a new GPU.

Edit:
Also, have a look at this:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1493657623836733441

 

[dampflokfreund]

The things gamers find "unacceptable" is interesting. If companies would listen to those statements, games would never be released because you would find them to be contradicting in the end. I mean I get it, you would have preferred it the other way and you want to give voice to your opinion, which is fair, but this does not automatically make something unacceptable, even if other people agree with you.

Personally, I find it laudable that CDPR increased the visual fidelity for Cyberpunk 2077 and was brave enough to sacrifice some performance for it. Now, the game looks even more amazing. This is contrary to recent patches where gamers complained CDPR allegedly downgraded the visual fidelity (LOD, RT reflections, light pop-in) in order to increase the performance on lower end hardware. It seems like they have listened in this regard and bumped it up a bit.

Also, you must not forget that they are indeed optimising the performance of the game and for example RT shadows might be 30% faster to render now, but they are casting twice as many which leads to a net performance loss. (Obviously, I'm working with arbitrary but fixed numbers here.)

Likewise, gamers - and you might not be one of them - often complain about being unable to run a game on high on a potato PC and get furious about poor optimisation because this one rail-shooter looks good on their PC. Dying Light 1 had a view distance slider that could cripple any modern hardware when put to the limit and it was added in order to allow for high visual fidelity on future PCs. Gamers ranted so much about not being able to put it to the limit even on high end hardware, that the company decided to severely reduce said limit in a future patch. Now, I fear CDPR might listen to those complaints and act on them with "optimisations" that result in a loss of visual fidelity. (Let's hope it does not come to this.)

For you, the best approach is either to find settings which suite your PC or if you absolutely do not want either reduce visual fidelity or accept lower FPS, to go ahead and buy a new GPU.

Read my post.

I don't complain about them improving the graphics, I complain that the game runs worse than before on the same settings.

There's a very, very simple solution to this: just add these two improvements as seperate settings and everyone profits, you can have better graphics by enabling these options and I can have my performance back. That is what they should have done in the first place but they didn't, and that is what is unacceptable in my eyes because I have tuned the game specifically and carefully to meet my performance target on my laptop with RT on, now I can't hold that performance target anymore because of this patch and thus RT is now unplayable with all effects turned on. Also you know fully well that "buying a new GPU" is very hard these days and not everyone has the income to buy a new device every year. And why should I? I was perfectly happy how the game was running before the patch.

I get what you mean, progression is good and all and I fully agree, but this is an already excisting, very demanding game that they have made run worse because of something they should have included as option.

 

[Vicious00]

Personally, I find it laudable that CDPR increased the visual fidelity for Cyberpunk 2077 and was brave enough to sacrifice some performance for it. Now, the game looks even more amazing. This is contrary to recent patches where gamers complained CDPR allegedly downgraded the visual fidelity (LOD, RT reflections, light pop-in) in order to increase the performance on lower end hardware. It seems like they have listened in this regard and bumped it up a bit.

wow.. so going from 50 FPS to 17-18 is brave and laudable.. good to know

 

[tandreas]

wow.. so going from 50 FPS to 17-18 is brave and laudable.. good to know

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[Phragmites]

Sad to say that the performance drop has made me revert to 1.3.1 (on GOG). I was having a great time with the game until 1.5 - 85 hours and about half way through the main story. I'd probably still be having a great time in 1.5 if it weren't for the headache-inducing poor framerates on the same settings as before. I'll look at re-patching to 1.5 (or later) if there's ever a fix or workaround. Here's hoping there is

 

[FiberPunk]

My performance loss is consistently 1-3%. More than acceptable for the better visuals, LOD fixes, less obvious pop-in, etc.

 

[eggahmanos]

Xbox series X with ray tracing on with zero issues its working great.

 

[Itsdacisco]

My problem is everything seems fine, then I open the map and it dips below 10 fps, once it loads I can look around just fine, but then I close the map and enter the game and fps drops to less than 10 and then gets back to normal. In some cases the game just drops to less than 10 fps altogether after closing the map.

 

[Mortilla]

CDPR released a patch/hotfix today which enables you to disable the improved RT (local shadows).

 

[_OmniaMorsAequat_]

All global shadows are now in RTX, i'm playing in 1620p with DLSS quality and no problems with fps, disable shadows rays if you have problem at higher resolution.

 

[witblitz]

The game looks so much better, I for one love the improved raytracing from night lights. Never revert, never go back. Just upgrade

 

[Azulath]

wow.. so going from 50 FPS to 17-18 is brave and laudable.. good to know

If you have that much of a performance impact from 1.32 to 1.5 than something else is going wrong.

 

[ForzaMartini]

With the new 1.5 patch, CDPR decided to include local light shadows and changed roughness cutoff for RT reflections as a standard.

This results into a big performance loss which is absolutely unacceptable, given the game is already demanding as it is.

For example, GPUs which previously held 60 FPS decently are now struggling very much. For GPUs which previously held 30 FPS, RT effects are now unplayable.

Take a look at this video:

Performance loss is even bigger indoors.

It's cool that they improved RT effects, but for the love of god, make it an additional option and not just include them as a standard, making it perform far worse than before the patch. Games should get faster not slower over updates.

I would like it if they reduce the resolution more on console so it can more comfortably allocate recourses for Ray Tracing

 

[d4edalus]

My problem is everything seems fine, then I open the map and it dips below 10 fps, once it loads I can look around just fine, but then I close the map and enter the game and fps drops to less than 10 and then gets back to normal. In some cases the game just drops to less than 10 fps altogether after closing the map.

Yeah same problem. Also, whenever someone's face gets close in a cut scene, the framerate tanks.

Post automatically merged: Feb 19, 2022

Yeah same problem. Also, whenever someone's face gets close in a cut scene, the framerate tanks.

RTX 3070 with i7, 16GB RAM, running from SSD. Maybe the 10.41GB patch that just came down the pike will fix the framerate drop from using the map at least.

Post automatically merged: Feb 19, 2022

Yeah same problem. Also, whenever someone's face gets close in a cut scene, the framerate tanks.

Post automatically merged: Feb 19, 2022

RTX 3070 with i7, 16GB RAM, running from SSD. Maybe the 10.41GB patch that just came down the pike will fix the framerate drop from using the map at least.

Nope. Whatever was in the update didn't solve the perf issue exiting the map. Drat. I wonder if they just made recommended PC into minimum spec PC. That would suck.

 

[Bealdor]

With the latest hotfix, CDPR split up the RT Shadow options in two separate entries:

http://imgur.com/FFzkOrJ

Also, anyone having significant performance issues, please delete your usersettings.json file, reconfigure your settings ingame and try again.
You can find the file in C:\Users\*your username*\AppData\Local\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077

 

[medion_no]

Other tips:

Set DLSS to auto.
Manually update the dlss file to 2.3.7 for a little perfomance boost. You can replace it back if it doest work for you.
In-game V-sync really takes a toll in this game.
Dont push antisotropy up on older systems.
Try windowed fullscreen and fullscreen alternatively.
RTX shadows destroy perfomance even in 3070 series.
Older cpus are gonna suffer in the city center no matter what.
Smoke, clouds, fog and cascade resolution can be turned down with not that much impact in graphics.
Turn game mode on in Windows. Disable microsoft DVR in older systems. (google it)

 

[Vicious00]

Also, anyone having significant performance issues, please delete your usersettings.json file, reconfigure your settings ingame and try again.
You can find the file in C:\Users\*your username*\AppData\Local\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077

Other tips:

Set DLSS to auto.
Manually update the dlss file to 2.3.7 for a little perfomance boost. You can replace it back if it doest work for you.
In-game V-sync really takes a toll in this game.
Dont push antisotropy up on older systems.
Try windowed fullscreen and fullscreen alternatively.
RTX shadows destroy perfomance even in 3070 series.
Older cpus are gonna suffer in the city center no matter what.
Smoke, clouds, fog and cascade resolution can be turned down with not that much impact in graphics.
Turn game mode on in Windows. Disable microsoft DVR in older systems. (google it)

i don't know which one of this did the trick cause i tried them all at once but it seems to finally be getting somewhere. getting a constant 30-33 fps now and setting DLSS to Ultra Performance can get me up to 40-45.

either way thanks a lot for the tips i can finally play this patch !

 

[dampflokfreund]

I can confirm the local shadow option has been added, which is good. I am glad CDPR is listening to feedback.

However, sadly disabling it has not improved my performance, the game still performs a lot worse than pre-1.5 with RT on. Something else is going on here.