RT+Path Tracing Performance Issue

[Hellcapone]

Severe FPS drops and stuttering after opening menus/map with Path Tracing + DLSS enabled


I’m experiencing a severe performance issue in Cyberpunk 2077 that consistently occurs when Path Tracing and DLSS are enabled.


After playing for some time, if I press ESC to open the map, inventory, or game options, the game can suddenly drop to around 12 FPS. After several seconds, the FPS gradually stabilizes and returns to around 60 FPS.


When I close the menu and return to gameplay, I can experience the same thing again: severe stuttering, around 12 FPS, followed by a gradual recovery back to approximately 60 FPS.


The issue does not appear immediately after launching the game. It seems to develop after playing for some time.

An observation that may help identify the cause​

I use MSI Afterburner with RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS) to monitor FPS, CPU/GPU usage, temperatures, VRAM and RAM usage.


I noticed that the menus themselves can run at extremely high frame rates:

• Normal gameplay: ~60 FPS
• Main pause/options menu: up to ~500 FPS
• Inventory: ~120 FPS
• Map: ~120 FPS

This makes me wonder whether some of the menus are uncapped or have very high FPS limits, potentially causing an unnecessarily high GPU workload.


The problem seems particularly relevant because the severe stuttering/FPS drops occur after I have been playing for some time and then interact with these menus.

Steps to reproduce​

1. Enable Path Tracing and DLSS.
2. Start playing normally.
3. Play for an extended period of time.
4. Press ESC and open the Map, Inventory, or Game Options.
5. Observe the very high FPS in the menus using MSI Afterburner/RTSS.
6. At some point, the FPS can suddenly drop to approximately 12 FPS.
7. Wait several seconds and the FPS eventually stabilizes.
8. Return to gameplay and observe severe stuttering and another temporary drop to around 12 FPS before recovering to ~60 FPS.

Possible clue from another game​

I experienced a similar issue in Battlefield 6 after its early release. That problem appeared to be related to performance while interacting with the menus, and the developers eventually addressed it by limiting the menu FPS to 60 FPS.


I obviously don't know whether the underlying cause is the same in Cyberpunk 2077, but I wanted to mention it in case it provides a useful lead.


Perhaps CD PROJEKT RED could investigate whether the Map, Inventory, and Options menus are rendering at unnecessarily high or uncapped frame rates, and whether limiting their FPS could prevent excessive GPU workload or memory/resource management issues during longer play sessions.


I don't know whether the root cause is related to VRAM, memory management, shader compilation, Path Tracing, or menu rendering, but the combination of Path Tracing + DLSS + very high menu FPS + the subsequent severe stuttering seems worth investigating.

System specifications​

• GPU: MSI RTX 5070 12 GB Ventus 2X OC
• CPU: Ryzen 7 5700X
• RAM: 32 GB DDR4
• Resolution: 4K
• DLSS: Enabled
• Path Tracing: Enabled
• OS: Windows 11
• Monitoring: MSI Afterburner + RivaTuner Statistics Server

Hopefully these details can help identify the cause. The issue is particularly noticeable during longer play sessions and makes opening the map, inventory, or options menus very disruptive because of the severe temporary FPS drops and stuttering.

 

[SigilFey]

Post moved.

In response to the issue, this is normal performance, as you're clearly running with unlimited frames per second. The menus/inventory contain far fewer triangles than the full, in-game world, and therefore the teraflops the GPU is capable of producing massively exceed what's needed for those screens. This results in a massive FPS spike when entering the menus and then a sudden dip in when returning to the world.

The period of 12 FPS is likely the GPU clearing the hundreds of pre-rendered frames from the VRAM and re-caching all of the graphical data needed to display the gameworld and get ahead of the game again, which is why it eventually smooths out.

The solution:

1.) Your monitor determines the max FPS you'll ever see. So, with a 120 Hz monitor, that means it can only ever draw 120 FPS. Even if you render 500 FPS, you'll still only see 120. While disabling Vsync can improve performance a bit, the more partial frames that are displayed will result in more noticeable screen tearing. Even with things like G-Sync or FreeSync, it's still only going to display 120 FPS. Using unlimited FPS is just cooking your hardware for no meaningful performance gain.

2.) Enabling Vsync will force the GPU to draw only 100% completely rendered frames. Naturally, this looks the best, but it can mean much lower minimum FPS for complex scenes. Dips that would go to 40 FPS with unlimited frames might plummet to 15 FPS with Vsync on. Likely, if your average FPS is 60 while playing.

3.) Best bet: set the FPS in game to Unlimited, then use a Frame Cap/Frame Limit of 60 or 64 FPS. This will prevent the GPU from rendering like crazy in the menus and inventory, and also give it plenty of overhead to get rolling again when you exit the menu screens to return to gameplay. You can do this either in-game or through RTSS, but not both. One may work more smoothly than the other; that depends on your system.

_______________


That should give a better experience, but ray tracing with path tracing is very demanding, especially at 4K resolutions. Overall RT performance has always been a bit slower on AMD GPUs, so this could simply be a driver or partial driver issue. Updating or rolling back drivers may smooth things out. Impossible to say for sure, as which driver version will work the best for your PC will be unique to your PC.

But the frame limit should have a good effect on it, regardless. That's just foundational performance tuning for any PC, depending on the average FPS for this or that game, the monitors native resolution and refresh rate, and ensuring good frame timing for a given game's engine. In general, it's not high FPS that feels smooth. It's steady FPS than makes things feel silky.