Forspoken - PC Performance Thread

DefunctRez · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
RT in this game is really not good.
RTAO does not work, if it is working, it is the worst RTAO ever put in a game.
RT shadows apply to so few things and even then they are not exactly good looking.

On the RTAO it is applied very strangely, I thought it was pretty much broken but then once I got the the city of Cipal the RTAO was very noticeable in indoor cutscenes. It was fairly obvious it was doing something during these as often you transition from a cutscene with AO looking almost like in another modern title, back to the same location and the AO would disappear as the cutscene ended. Not sure 100% what's going on here buts its super strange I've never seen another title behave like this, I almost wonder if they toggle some settings on / up for cutscenes.

The only good thing I've noticed on the RT shadows is it solidifies some shadows at medium range under building eave's and the like. Some of these were flicking for me with RT shadows off. RT Shadows also break the lighting somewhat in several indoor cutscenes casting some characters in a grey pallor really obfuscating the scene.

I agree with the general sentiment of your comments though its an extremely poor implementation of both features in 2023.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

UltraJay said:
We have really close builds except I have a 3950X, so I have been following your posts closely. I too was getting the texture streaming issue at 32:9 (5120x1440) and it even occurred at 21:9 so I switched to 16:9 1440p and it stopped.

Hopefully with your suggestions I can up some settings and go into 21:9, I highly doubt I got the VRAM for 32:9.

Interesting, I hadn't even considered the possibility that the UW resolution could cause some problems here with textures.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

DefunctRez said:
On the RTAO it is applied very strangely, I thought it was pretty much broken but then once I got the the city of Cipal the RTAO was very noticeable in indoor cutscenes. It was fairly obvious it was doing something during these as often you transition from a cutscene with AO looking almost like in another modern title, back to the same location and the AO would disappear as the cutscene ended. Not sure 100% what's going on here buts its super strange I've never seen another title behave like this, I almost wonder if they toggle some settings on / up for cutscenes.

The only good thing I've noticed on the RT shadows is it solidifies some shadows at medium range under building eave's and the like. Some of these were flicking for me with RT shadows off. RT Shadows also break the lighting somewhat in several indoor cutscenes casting some characters in a grey pallor really obfuscating the scene.

I agree with the general sentiment of your comments though its an extremely poor implementation of both features in 2023.

I think what's happening is that the cutscene has no AO applied if you turn on RTAO and turn off screen space AO, so it looks different.
It's a bug for the screen space AO getting messed up, rather than RTAO working.

That said I have seen it work vs completely off AO (meaning no Screen space AO either), in very very limited cases where it puts some very faint almost nonexistent outlines in some select areas and only in select situtions but by and large, it still looks more or less the same as all AO off. So you don't see it often and it gets overridden by the screen space AO if you have it turned on. Ironically the standard screen space AO setting works the best due to having larger size than High AO which too sometimes just looks like thin black outlines.

Black_Stride · Jan 26, 2023

dgrdsv said:
I think it's unlikely that they are using GPU decompression - the feature is still very much in beta despite being released in DS 1.1.
All the tools which surround it are still in active development. Driver support is also quite a bit shaky most likely.

It probably is because there seems to be some load being place on the GPU causing average FPS to drop.
Though im also apprehensive about these results cuz I would think the 1% lows would be more affected than the average FPS.

Then again it could actually be DirectStorage leveraging the CPU which is causing the average FPS to drop.

More testing needs to be done.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
RT in this game is really not good.
RTAO does not work, if it is working, it is the worst RTAO ever put in a game.
RT shadows apply to so few things and even then they are not exactly good looking.

It also seems to add to the texture streaming issue, atleast on my ultra wide (it was suggested that this issue goes away at 16:9). Check one of my posts with screenshots that was quoted above for this. And it also seems to further add to the performance drop while panning the camera. I turned off RT and don't get those anymore.

So it seems the BVH is causing some sort of issue in texture streaming while doing the Directstorage GPU decompression, which is also leading to framedrops while panning the camera and turning RT off gets rid of all that.

Dictator · Jan 26, 2023

I still have yet to find evidence of GPU decompression in use here - when checking GPU compute usage when doing loads, it is a rather constant percentage and does not spike at all. IMO, I think it is safe to assume it is perhaps not in use.

Nooblet dgrdsv Black_Stride

dgrdsv · Jan 26, 2023

Black_Stride said:
It probably is because there seems to be some load being place on the GPU causing average FPS to drop.
Though im also apprehensive about these results cuz I would think the 1% lows would be more affected than the average FPS.

Then again it could actually be DirectStorage leveraging the CPU which is causing the average FPS to drop.

More testing needs to be done.

I've seen the posts and reports but they seem fishy to me as they don't really make much sense - why would DS GPU decompression affect NVMe devices so much while not affecting SATA?
Then this may be a driver bug. Hard to tell what's happening without testing other h/w.
Alas I don't want to buy the game so can't check it myself. (Can't download the demo either.)

Here's something to ponder about however: what happens if you delete the DS DLL from the game's installation folder?
This should force the game to not use DS on NVMe when running on Win10 at least, in theory.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
I still have yet to find evidence of GPU decompression in use here - when checking GPU compute usage when doing loads, it is a rather constant percentage and does not spike at all. IMO, I think it is safe to assume it is perhaps not in use.

Nooblet dgrdsv Black_Stride

Probably then.
Although that massive frame drop while camera panning with RT on is curious as it ends up spiking GPU usage. But again, I did this at UW resolution, were you able to replicate this drop too?

Dictator · Jan 26, 2023

Nooblet said:
Probably then.
Although that massive frame drop while camera panning with RT on is curious as it ends up spiking GPU usage. But again, I did this at UW resolution, were you able to replicate this drop too?

I am still doing a lot of testing, have yet to test such things. But I did note on the Intel A770 that panning the camera saw big FPS drops with RT on.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
I am still doing a lot of testing, have yet to test such things. But I did note on the Intel A770 that panning the camera saw big FPS drops with RT on.

Mine was on 3080 10GB, 5900x (win 11) latest driver and all. I did use DLSS 5.2.1 as well so not sure if that's a problem.
I'm sure you're having a fun investigating this one :P

Xshade90 · Jan 26, 2023

It seems that playing the demo on a 1080p G-Sync monitor ready with a 3080, 10GB, I7-11k processor without raytracing on gives me a consistant 60fps, don't know if that can help. For sure playing at a lower rez will of course give you better performance, but I found the graphics decent even so.

Black_Stride · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
I still have yet to find evidence of GPU decompression in use here - when checking GPU compute usage when doing loads, it is a rather constant percentage and does not spike at all. IMO, I think it is safe to assume it is perhaps not in use.

Nooblet dgrdsv Black_Stride

dgrdsv said:
I've seen the posts and reports but they seem fishy to me as they don't really make much sense - why would DS GPU decompression affect NVMe devices so much while not affecting SATA?
Then this may be a driver bug. Hard to tell what's happening without testing other h/w.
Alas I don't want to buy the game so can't check it myself. (Can't download the demo either.)

Here's something to ponder about however: what happens if you delete the DS DLL from the game's installation folder?
This should force the game to not use DS on NVMe when running on Win10 at least, in theory.

Yeah it does seem a bit fishy that its only affecting some devices and not others.
DF should have some answers or atleast observations soon, the Average FPS dropping might be something completely unrelated cuz well Forspoken doesnt seem to be the best game to use for testing DirectStorage even if its the only game with DirectStorage.

gabdeg · Jan 26, 2023

View: https://twitter.com/capframex/status/1618636871445393409?s=61&t=QkycYqz4z1msUxC5eFB6iA

So the average FPS isn't actually reduced with an NVMe, it's just that the loading screens run at a higher frame rate which means SSD and HDD get skewed results if you measure it continuously across all test scenes of the benchmarks. Basically the longer the load, the higher the reported avg fps in the end. If you cut those bits out, performance is essentially the same.

jony · Jan 26, 2023

FWIW, running smooth locked to 60fps on a 5800X3D and RTX3080..
1440p, maxed w/RT OFF, VRS OFF, DLSS 2.5.1 Quality
Samsung 980 PRO Nvme
I see no stutters or weird frame pacing, but I'm only a few hours in...

ManuZero · Jan 26, 2023

Just bought and downloaded the gamer after testing the demo the last couple of days. The demo was perfectly smooth for me.

Now right in the beginning of the game (New York) I noticed moving the camera has a slight impact on fps which results in stuttery camera movement.
I read about raytracing being responsible for this, but turning both RT features off doesn't change that.

So what else could do here?

benzy · Jan 26, 2023

Anyone got to Praenost and the huge zombie mob?

PC- · Jan 26, 2023

Using the -noDirectStorage launch option and comparing DS on vs DS off in the benchmark: the load times are very similar, with DirectStorage providing a small boost in load times. The average frame rate is the same. So DirectStorage doesn't appear to be resulting in performance degradation, despite the aforementioned claims.

There is also a -noGPUDecompression launch option, but it doesn't seem to make a difference, probably due to the fact that the game is not using GPU decompression, as Alex said.

burgerdog · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator said:
RT in this game is really not good.
RTAO does not work, if it is working, it is the worst RTAO ever put in a game.
RT shadows apply to so few things and even then they are not exactly good looking.

Been waiting for you to confirm this. Like I said earlier, folks, RT is trash in this game, turn it off and get more frames back.

dgrdsv · Jan 26, 2023

PC- said:
Using the -noDirectStorage launch option and comparing DS on vs DS off in the benchmark: the load times are very similar, with DirectStorage providing a small boost in load times. The average frame rate is the same. So DirectStorage doesn't appear to be resulting in performance degradation, despite the aforementioned claims.

There is also a -noGPUDecompression launch option, but it doesn't seem to make a difference, probably due to the fact that the game is not using GPU decompression, as Alex said.

Oh, that's even better. So as I've suspected DS doesn't make much difference here. The fast loading is due to game engine's handling of loading.

Greebman said:
View: https://twitter.com/capframex/status/1618636871445393409?s=61&t=QkycYqz4z1msUxC5eFB6iA

So the average FPS isn't actually reduced with an NVMe, it's just that the loading screens run at a higher frame rate which means SSD and HDD get skewed results if you measure it continuously across all test scenes of the benchmarks. Basically the longer the load, the higher the reported avg fps in the end. If you cut those bits out, performance is essentially the same.

Makes sense (the explanation, not the badly designed benchmark which counts loading screens fps into averages).

Gonzito · Jan 26, 2023

Adding -noDirectStorage to launch parameters has improved my performance quite a bit

Kickfister · Jan 26, 2023

JahIthBer said:
I don't think the port is that bad at all, but yeah it has a mediocre RT implementation but that's not a first. Honestly AMD's Fidelity FX is just really shit compared to what Nvidia offer. AMD did good with Mantle and TresFX years ago but since then it's been disappointing.
VXAO from FFXV would have been so much better.

The FidelityFX stuff is good, it's just performance focused for the most part. The issue with the AO is how they configured it. You can download the source code for CACAO and included is a Sponza demo that lets you configure it in real time with an imgui overlay. The default behavior is vastly superior to the tweaking they did lol. It's a good method, but it's not the best SSAO method out there. IMO that's still GTAO (and it's funny how close HBAO+ is in terms of quality despite being over 10 years old, but it also runs much worse than modern solutions).

Also I think they axed the FidelityFX reflections, these reflections in-game look just like the terrible ones in FFXV at a glance anyway. Given the resolution issues on ps5, I assume it was to claw back some performance. In the video they released showcasing it, the SSR looks so much better. EDIT: You know what, looking at it again, maybe they didn't axe it, it might just be differences in the bodies of water I've seen. It's very temporally unstable and does not look good (with DLSS anyway, haven't tried all AA methods).

The FidelityFX stuff is nothing to get excited about though, I'll give you that. Nvidia's stuff has always been about pushing what's possible on current hardware and that's simply not what FidelityFX is trying to achieve.

Kickfister · Jan 26, 2023

Nooblet said:
Interesting, I hadn't even considered the possibility that the UW resolution could cause some problems here with textures.

That is interesting, I'm also on a 21:9 monitor.

UltraJay · Jan 26, 2023

Nooblet said:
Interesting, I hadn't even considered the possibility that the UW resolution could cause some problems here with textures.

I can confirm that with some tweaks I can run in 21:9 without any major problems. 32:9 is right out; the same tex streaming issues crop up the moment you switch to it.

MilkBeard · Jan 26, 2023

Xshade90 said:
It seems that playing the demo on a 1080p G-Sync monitor ready with a 3080, 10GB, I7-11k processor without raytracing on gives me a consistant 60fps, don't know if that can help. For sure playing at a lower rez will of course give you better performance, but I found the graphics decent even so.

I think the game holds pretty decent image quality at 1080p so people should not be afraid to use it for good frames. Turning off depth of field and/or AO will also make the image more crisp too. The depth of field is a little weird in this game during cutscenes and I think it looks better without it, personally.

Reinhard · Jan 26, 2023

World of difference running it at 2560x1440 vs 3440x1440 on a 3070. I was getting low res textures all the time at ultrawidescreen, even with texture setting at low as it would shift constantly between low and high res textures. Running it just in regular 1440p seemed to fix things for me, texture settings at standard and some other settings are on high now.

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

Dictator
Have a look at this, this is what I was talking about GPU usage spiking during even minor panning while there's nothing going on. Granted this has been a LOT better since I turned RT off (simply due to more overhead), it seems it can actually do it even when it's off. Specs are Win 11 21H2, 10GB RTX 3080/5900x, 32GB of RAM @3200MHz RAM, Corsair MP600 1TB SSD, 3440*1440 resolution. The rest of settings are in the video.

Slow pan causes no to little drops, quick to medium pans, even when done at a small angle leads to this.

View: https://streamable.com/tbq93h

ManuZero · Jan 26, 2023

ManuZero said:
Just bought and downloaded the gamer after testing the demo the last couple of days. The demo was perfectly smooth for me.

Now right in the beginning of the game (New York) I noticed moving the camera has a slight impact on fps which results in stuttery camera movement.
I read about raytracing being responsible for this, but turning both RT features off doesn't change that.

So what else could do here?

So I found the culprit in my case: Texture Memory size

I turned down every single setting and this one made the difference. I get frame stutters when moving the camera if I set texture memory to anything higher than normal. (running on 32 GB DDR4 RAM, Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 4090, Win 11)

I made a quick comparison between texture memory high vs normal. You see it best if you look at the background buildings.

View: https://streamable.com/jul79c

Edit: In combination with all RT features off. Otherwise stutter is still there.

JahIthBer · Jan 26, 2023

ManuZero said:
So I found the culprit in my case: Texture Memory size

I turned down every single setting and this one made the difference. I get frame stutters when moving the camera if I set texture memory to anything higher than normal. (running on 32 GB DDR4 RAM, Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 4090, Win 11)

I made a quick comparison between texture memory high vs normal. You see it best if you look at the background buildings.

View: https://streamable.com/zfq7dj

Edit: In combination with all RT features off. Otherwise stutter is still there.

Well i guess it's not just 8GB cards getting left behind if the 4090 still has this issue. Which is good to hear.

Kami · Jan 26, 2023

Picked up the game. Any beginner tips or recommended settings to change?

Nooblet · Jan 26, 2023

Oofff the Middle Praenist and The Citadel areas runs abysmal, even at DLSS performance it's dropping to like 33fps during just traversal gameplay. It's definitely GPU bound here as my GPU spikes to 99%.

Afterturning off RT, I had thought the game was ok performance wise. But ofcourse an area had to come later that has terrible performance for no reason, the whole thing is just a wide corridor and yet it runs really bad. What's worse is that it also looks worse than other areas. It's just bland brown rocks.

BuBu Jenkins · Jan 26, 2023

Gonzito said:
Adding -noDirectStorage to launch parameters has improved my performance quite a bit

Yup doing this and the fps drops when panning the camera were completely eliminated for me, shit was infuriating. Load times are just as fast so i don't see what benefits direct storage even has for this game other than making it run like shit.

fulltimepanda · Jan 26, 2023

Gonzito said:
Adding -noDirectStorage to launch parameters has improved my performance quite a bit

The reverse for me lol. Start of the 2nd chapter I see 110-120fps normally, adding this drops it to around 80fps

TheJareBear · Jan 26, 2023

fulltimepanda said:
The reverse for me lol. Start of the 2nd chapter I see 110-120fps normally, adding this drops it to around 80fps

Same. Disabling DirectStorage hurts my performance

Human Resources · Jan 26, 2023

ManuZero said:
So I found the culprit in my case: Texture Memory size

I turned down every single setting and this one made the difference. I get frame stutters when moving the camera if I set texture memory to anything higher than normal. (running on 32 GB DDR4 RAM, Ryzen 9 5900X, RTX 4090, Win 11)

I made a quick comparison between texture memory high vs normal. You see it best if you look at the background buildings.

View: https://streamable.com/zfq7dj

Edit: In combination with all RT features off. Otherwise stutter is still there.

thanks, this is the one that helped me (3080ti)

ceevee · Jan 26, 2023

dgrdsv said:
Unlikely. It's a Win11 storage stack feature and DS works on Win10 without it.

Thanks. I haven't been able to get BypassIO working on 2 separate Windows 11 machines. But if it's not needed for DirectStorage, it doesn't matter for me.

Kickfister · Jan 26, 2023

Reinhard said:
World of difference running it at 2560x1440 vs 3440x1440 on a 3070. I was getting low res textures all the time at ultrawidescreen, even with texture setting at low as it would shift constantly between low and high res textures. Running it just in regular 1440p seemed to fix things for me, texture settings at standard and some other settings are on high now.

I tested it out and it has to do with the number of pixels, not the aspect ratio. Native 1440p 16:9 has texture issues for me but doesn't with DLSS on quality. Texture issues improve at ultrawide with lower quality DLSS settings.

Kickfister · Jan 26, 2023

Has anybody in this thread tested out a high vram card like a 3090 or 4090 at high texture/model VRAM settings? If so, how much VRAM usage do you see in the Cipal part of the benchmark?

ManuZero said:
Just bought and downloaded the gamer after testing the demo the last couple of days. The demo was perfectly smooth for me.

Now right in the beginning of the game (New York) I noticed moving the camera has a slight impact on fps which results in stuttery camera movement.
I read about raytracing being responsible for this, but turning both RT features off doesn't change that.

So what else could do here?

Nothing you can do. Presumably it's a performance penalty from the way the game streams in assets but it's just speculation. Cap your framerate and have some headroom.

Kami · Jan 26, 2023

Dualsense features randomly stopped working for me even with Steam Input disabled.

northnorth · Jan 26, 2023

Nooblet said:
You can hit 60FPS at a higher resolution than that (like 1620P) with no RT and everything else at max, and DLSS set to performance mode. (Turn off VRS as it causes texture flickering issues)

Make sure to download the DLSS 2.5.1 dll using DLSS swapper (Google for the GitHub, it also has the instructions and very easy to use on all your steam games) as that has the improvements to performance mode that makes the game look significantly similar to quality mode outside of minor differences in hair, and it completely gets rid of the ghosting and noise that you usually find in performance mode. I'm doing 60FPS at 3440*1440 using the aforementioned settings on my 5900x/3080 10GB.

Hell you might even be able to hit 4K/60 with that.

I'm about to look into this now! Thank you for the suggestions!

northnorth · Jan 26, 2023

JahIthBer said:
I don't think the port is that bad at all, but yeah it has a mediocre RT implementation but that's not a first. Honestly AMD's Fidelity FX is just really shit compared to what Nvidia offer. AMD did good with Mantle and TresFX years ago but since then it's been disappointing.
VXAO from FFXV would have been so much better.

Off topic, just wanted to say I love your username. d2 is life.

dgrdsv · Jan 27, 2023

ceevee said:
I haven't been able to get BypassIO working on 2 separate Windows 11 machines.

That's weird. What SSD models are they using?

ceevee said:
But if it's not needed for DirectStorage, it doesn't matter for me.

I mean it's not required but we don't know right now how well DS will work without it.

fulltimepanda · Jan 27, 2023

Oopy Doopy said:
Has anybody in this thread tested out a high vram card like a 3090 or 4090 at high texture/model VRAM settings? If so, how much VRAM usage do you see in the Cipal part of the benchmark?

13.7-13.9GB with Model Memory on High and Texture Memory on Ultra. No RT enabled. In game it's a little more, 13.9-14GB.

this is on my 7900 xtx at 1440p UW.

Kickfister · Jan 27, 2023

fulltimepanda said:
13.7-13.9GB with Model Memory on High and Texture Memory on Ultra. No RT enabled. In game it's a little more, 13.9-14GB.

this is on my 7900 xtx at 1440p UW.

Could you test it out with Texture Memory on High? It defaults to that for my 3080 but Standard seems to push it, so I'm curious how much usage High will actually reach.

JahIthBer · Jan 27, 2023

fulltimepanda said:
13.7-13.9GB with Model Memory on High and Texture Memory on Ultra. No RT enabled. In game it's a little more, 13.9-14GB.

this is on my 7900 xtx at 1440p UW.

That's way too much for this games visuals. Probably tweaked to benefit AMD's more common 16GB GPU's.

Gitaroo · Jan 27, 2023

Anyone know any work around with the bypassIO thing that is blocking direct storage? I read that malwarebyte does that, I hope I won't have to uninstall it

fulltimepanda · Jan 27, 2023

Oopy Doopy said:
Could you test it out with Texture Memory on High? It defaults to that for my 3080 but Standard seems to push it, so I'm curious how much usage High will actually reach.

Sits in the 11.8-12GB range, the second city section (not sure if it is Cipal or not) sits at around 11.5GB.

dgrdsv · Jan 27, 2023

Forspoken Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis Review

Forspoken is the newest open-world action RPG from Square Enix. It uses the Luminous engine, which supports DirectX 12, ray tracing and Direct Storage. In our performance review, we're taking a closer look at image quality, differences between the graphical setting presets, VRAM usage, and...

www.techpowerup.com

Also:

Forspoken Simply Doesn't Work with AMD Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 "Polaris" GPUs

AMD Radeon RX 400 series and RX 500 series graphics cards based on the "Polaris" graphics architecture are simply unable to run "Forspoken," as users on Reddit report. The game has certain DirectX 12 feature-level 12_1 API requirements that the architecture does not meet. Interestingly, NVIDIA's...

www.techpowerup.com

Tremorah · Jan 27, 2023

benzy said:
Anyone got to Praenost and the huge zombie mob?

Got something similar in the demo where there was a place where it loaded infinite amount of crocodiles

Nooblet · Jan 27, 2023

Praenost runs absolutely awful btw...even with no enemies around.
I think the people doing benchmark should include that area and the one after that as well.

The game would run at 60FPS locked for me, but in those areas drop to 30s...even at Performance DLSS.

Zafir · Jan 27, 2023

Gitaroo said:
Anyone know any work around with the bypassIO thing that is blocking direct storage? I read that malwarebyte does that, I hope I won't have to uninstall it

Just shut the program from the taskbar tray when you're playing the game is what I'd recommend. Assuming you're not doing anything else while playing it of course. Then re-open after.

Apparently it's to do with their ransomware protection, so you could disable that, but that would mean you'd have to re-enable it when doing other things anyway or you wouldn't be protected by it.

Apparently they're working on a fix, but not sure when it will be out. Currently in testing.

Forspoken - PC Performance Thread

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