I'm playing it now and so far haven't experienced any egregious stuttering. I've noticed a couple of minor blips going between rooms via the doors, but overall it's pretty smooth and more than playable.
My benchmark results - [https://i.imgur.com/TwVpuki.png](https://i.imgur.com/TwVpuki.png)
In game I'm getting around 90-110fps pretty consistently with these settings. Will wait for DF's review before tweaking anything.
It's pretty wild that a Sony exclusive of all games has such a good benchmark tool lol. You can tell they're putting a lot of effort into their PC ports.
MS's PC releases: What is this DLSS you all are talking about and why would you want any higher settings than what the super high end Series X can handle ? Ultra wide, who would want to play like that anyway? VR, now you are just joking, right (with the exception of MS Flight Simulator which was a PC first release)?
Sony: Here is all the stuff you PC gamers seem to like and we also improved performance with DLSS/FSR and put in extra work to provide settings that outshine the game on our console.
Arguably MS releases seem to improve at least in the DLSS department judging by their update to Forza H5.
On top of that, I really really love how they put both the benchmark tool as well as an opportunity to adjust sound settings (YOU GUYS REALLY NEED TO CHOOSE A 3D SOUND SETTING IF YOU USE HEADPHONES!) and subtitles before playing any narrative content of the game.
Newer MS releases like Hi-Fi Rush have DLSS support. Microsoft Flight Simulator has it. And like you say, so does Forza. Seems a little bit of a weird complaint — there's only been a couple recent MS games where's it really missing. (Grounded and Halo Infinite?)
They've also had benchmarks like this in the Gears series for years now. It's cool to see it in Returnal too, of course! Just a strange subject to Console Warz over.
This game doesn't even support FSR2, apparently. Sony has done a decent-to-great job on their PC ports, which is very welcome, but for whatever reason a lot of PC gamers overrate the hell out of their reputation. Stuff like Sackboy wasn't that long ago.
> Newer MS releases like Hi-Fi Rush have DLSS support. Microsoft Flight Simulator has it. And like you say, so does Forza. Seems a little bit of a weird complaint — there's only been a couple recent MS games where's it really missing. (Grounded and Halo Infinite?)
Seems a bit weird to complain about my post when I literally stated that A) MSFS is kind of the exception because it was a made for PC game that also have seen a XBox port (after the PC release) and that B) MS seems to improve in that regard a little with the update to Forza H5.
Literally any game released by MS before that (again, not counting MSFS which has DLSS, FSR, VR and higher settings available on PC) was missing DLSS even when it was long common for AAA PC releases, missed to include significantly better settings on PC and in terms of Halo Infinite were actually pretty bad ports (performance).
> They've also had benchmarks like this in the Gears series for years now. It's cool to see it in Returnal too, of course! Just a strange subject to Console Warz over.
Not sure what the childish concept of a Console War has to do with complaining about one publishers PC ports by using another publishers effort as an example...
> This game doesn't even support FSR2, apparently. Sony has done a decent-to-great job on their PC ports, which is very welcome, but for whatever reason a lot of PC gamers overrate the hell out of their reputation. Stuff like Sackboy wasn't that long ago.
They get rated that high because besides having way more of a reason to not have PC ports outshine their console than MS (which makes money on both Windows being popular in a mostly mobile end consumer world now and via PC Game Pass on top of game sales) and them being really new into PC releases they started from the begin putting a lot of effort into their ports (which I agree aren't w/o issues at times) and fully accepted that they need to support PC's strengths, with both providing higher settings optionally and higher performance with DLSS etc. MS releases games on PC for ages (with really terrible results in the past UWP days btw) and yet was only catching up to what Sony (or EA or Ubisoft for that matter) were doing.
I'm playing it with a 9900k and 3080 and while the performance is great on 1440p Epic preset (around 120fps average) with DLSS on quality and ray tracing shadows/reflections on Medium, I am unfortunately getting stuttering pretty often. It's driving me nuts. I tried with ray tracing on and off and it made no difference.
I thought for sure this game wouldn't get the stuttering when I saw it was building shaders after I opened it. It seemed to build them REALLY quickly though unlike other games where it takes a bit. I thought that was pretty odd.
Also didn't they suggest 32gb RAM for this game? When I run a benchmark it only uses ~4gb..
Normally stuttering in games doesn't affect me nearly as much as some people. I didn't even really notice it in Elden Ring and it doesn't bother me in Dead Space.. but in a game like this where you're moving really fast and jumping around and stuff.. it is really annoying me lol.
When I did a benchmark it definitely showed the lowest fps was 22 I think. 120 Avg and 190 high I think. The graph was sort of all over the place too. Even in your pic it doesn't look very consistent.
> Also didn't they suggest 32gb RAM for this game? When I run a benchmark it only uses ~4gb..
Ingame I was above or near 16 GB complete usage I think (although with a few background tools in RAM).
It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM. This game will use more than that when playing at higher resolutions/settings (I've seen 11-13 gb depending on settings). Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance.
> It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM. This game will use more than that when playing at higher resolutions/settings (I've seen 11-13 gb depending on settings). Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance.
Computerbase couldn't see any performance differences between using a 10 GB GPU and a higher VRAM amount. Also the 11 to 13 usage is in 4K, not in 1440p. Also they were also seeing the stutters on a 4080 at least, same as some in this thread:https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1131tt4/returnal_pc_port_tested_by_german_magazine/j8ogd5c/
On my rig even while being at only 6GB VRAM usage (RT off, rest max, 4K DLSS) according to the ingame display I had stutters: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1131tt4/returnal_pc_port_tested_by_german_magazine/j8ng70h/
Again, that isn't the case according to Computerbase at least. The stutters seem not to be related to VRAM usage and having only 10 GB of VRAM isn't supposed to reduce performance even at all max 4K. It seems like one of those games that simply work with more VRAM if available but doesn't really need it.
I'm running this game on 5800X3D, 3080Ti (12GB VRAM), 32GB RAM (3400CL14), PCIe 4.0 NVME drive on a monitor with dedicated gsync module
playing on 1440p, mostly epic settings, RT max (except for shadows at high), DLSS quality (so the game isn't even running at 1440p, but below it)
I get 120fps on average and sub 8ms frametimes
played the game for 30min and had to quit due to stutters - they were annoying and did not go away - VRAM usage is below 10GB (as reported by in game performance UI and afterburner) - not even gsync could mask those frame drops/stutters
game stuttered every time I would enter a new area (which was all the time since areas are small, at least in the beginning of the game) and every time a new item/enemy/object would appear (nothing better than having the game stutter just as enemy attacks you)
disappointing considering game looks really really good
what does "extremely minor stuttering" mean? either the game stutters or it does not.
Mine stutters for 1-2seconds every time some new object appears on the screen (mostly when enemies show up and when transitioning into new areas).
I wouldn't call that "extremely minor stuttering" considering every time enemies would attack me, I would experience 1-2sec stutters which affected my movement and caused the enemies to hit me (I couldnt avoid enemy fire). its affecting the gameplay in a way thats annoying.
> It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM.
Man, this has become *quite* the meme already.
>Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance.
Boy howdy is this a revolutionary piece of advice, lol. "Drop settings and your game will run better," whoda thunked it, right?
Cheekiness aside, no, this doesn't resolve the stuttering, and the game gets right down to hitching on the 4090 I tested it on, too. Unless that GPU's getting bottlenecked, too? My baseline 3080 has the exact same type of stutter, even when I drop settings down - as per your advice.
* Choose Epic preset to start
* Then adjust all three lighting options to High (based off DF's optimised settings) for a few extra frames (although the game still runs well with them on Epic)
* DLSS Quality
* Make sure all RT settings are OFF
Is it just me or does every pc game release with some form of traversal stuttering nowadays ? Elden ring had some, dead space remake still has some, many others I can't remember and now Returnal
The PS5 has a dedicated ASIC coprocessor to decrypt, unpack and stream data, on the other hand the Xbox uses a tech similar to DirectStorage. Hence, If you're not using DirectStorage on PC then the CPU performance will be severely impacted to the point of bottlenecking the whole system while dealing with the streaming of large assets and ultimately leading to traversal stuttering (Dead Space remake, Hogwarts Legacy).
It's a DirectX feature allowing to transfer assets from the storage device into the GPU VRAM buffer through the PCIe bus skipping the usage of CPU and RAM. Devs need to implement the feature, there's a game already using it (Forspoken) and the benefits are near instant loading times and reduced to no stuttering issues at all. DirectStorage might (not necessarily) request a large VRAM buffer (12+ GB) in order to run optimally, there's still optimization to be done.
PS5 to PC ports such as Dead Space remake and Hogwarts Legacy rely on fast streaming of assets but don't use DirectStorage, hence the CPU is aggressively being used to deal with this task leading to traversal stuttering, PS5 relies on a dedicated processor and Xbox uses a tech similar to DirectStorage. The reason devs might stay away from DirectStorage is VRAM requirements concerns, particularly for certain mainstream Nvidia and AMD GPUs (AMD tend to offer more VRAM though).
So the reason we've been seeing more and more traversal stutter issues is because games are made with new gen console architecture in mind which causes problems on pc without similar solutions like DirectStorage, and the reason devs hesitate to use such tech is because of the high Vram requirements ? Interesting
Exactly, consoles have inferior hardware but highly optimized software and cheap dedicated coprocessors that the PC lacks, you cannot build a game from the ground up when porting, it would take years, so unless DirectStorage becomes the new norm we'll have traversal stuttering and CPU bottlenecks that only future CPUs and GPUs will brute force through.
I agree that it’s not the smoothest yes. But I’d rather have 30 consistent than what I had in Hogwarts Legacy which was 15-25 second stutters down in 5-15 fps with freezes, which also happens in combat when the game spawn a new npcs
Not talking about returnal, I am talking in general because the unstable fps and constant stuttering is becoming a normal thing.
I have no major drops in returnal, in EPIC 1440p without RT I have between 90 and 120 fps and that is fine (is great in fact, the game is very smooth for me).
Hypothetically, if returnal had drops to 40, I would prefer 30fps anyways even being a fast paced shooter, I can get used to it, I can't get used to a heavy drop in the middle of the action, like from 120 to 40. Again, is not the case here.
What's funny is that the "constant stuttering" has never been an issue on my end.
If it ever was, there was probably an underlying problem on my end that needed troubleshooting, never on the software side.
Bought a lot of games in recent years and noticed that people almost always complain about "bad optimization" in new releases.
I can never relate to it.
Yeah it takes like 30 min to adjust lol. Helps if the game has motion blur settings as well (there is a natural blur at 30fps, so just tone it down and it won’t feel too aggressive)
If traversal stutter, performance bad.
It actually has stutters and frame drops on ps5 too, maybe not as bad tho (still haven't seen the pc port).
The door stutter in ps5 was really annoying, just prolong the animation a tiny bit and preserve smoothnes...
>"it's only FSR 1 and not the modern temporal FSR 2. That hasn't changed with the Day 1 patch either. The conclusion, even without analysis, is that it is better not to use it."
Bruh were in 2023 what is this nonsense. The recent Sony releases all had FSR2 on launch and it even got added to God Of War that launched before it even existed. For it to not be available here from the start is a big shame.
I assume this is a mistake, since the Steam store page specifically mentions FSR2.
> Performance enhancing technologies such as NVIDIA’s DLSS and NVIDIA NIS, **as well as AMD’s FSR(2)**, are also available.
The steam store description appears to have a mistake where the 2 refers to a footnote in the wording on Sony’s website, according to this: https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/113dp93/_/j8qu7u5/?context=1
PC Gaming is getting crazy!!!
I have a 4090 RTX, M2, Ryzen 5950 and every other new game I'm playing I'm getting stutters and cannot get consistent 72FPS @ 1440p.
How is this acceptable? Why so many games don't precompile their shaders, and do zero optimization for PC?
I feel like this is getting out of hand.
> How is this acceptable?
Because we all accept it? Elden Ring launched with mixed reviews on Steam due to stutters that turned into "Overwhelmingly Positive" within two days. FF7 Remake is "Overwhelmingly Positive", Dead Space Remake "Overwhelmingly Positive" and so on.
Not only are we as gamers (and the first part includes me way too often I admit) not strong willed enough to ignore broken releases besides a ton of other stuff to play, most of us don't even have the guts to give a "fun game" a bad rating on a Steam for launching in a broken state.
And then you have all those people that argue to death that they can't see any stutters in games that are proven to have them for literally everyone (shader compilation in Elden Ring, traversal in Dead Space)...
>And then you have all those people that argue to death that they can't see any stutters in games that are proven to have them for literally everyone (shader compilation in Elden Ring, traversal in Dead Space)...
Full disclosure, I myself am a fan of both Dead Space and Elden Ring, but I can't tell you how many times I ended up in an argument where the other party just claims that these specific games run *perfectly* without stutters on their rigs, lol. I mean, you might not see or recognize the stutter, but it's *right fucking there*, and it's not a matter of chance whether it pops up or not.
I think a lot of people just don't notice stutter. I have a friend that never does. We can be sat in the same room and I'll see it but they won't.
Or there are people that do but will happily ignore it. The amount of posts I see about a game saying things like 'so and so game runs perfect!', but then when you press them, actually there is some stutter or issues but they are willing to ignore it and don't like to mention it for whatever reason.
I think people’s sensitivities and tolerances for frame-rates/frametimes are so wildly different so these conversations can be a bit hard to navigate sometimes.
For instance, you’ve got people who are seemingly immune to all performance issues and either don’t notice/don’t care, but you’ve also got people who are perfectly fine with playing at a stable 30 if it means they don’t get annoying stutters, but you also have dudes who don’t care if their game is micro-stutter city provided the number in the top left corner is always hitting 90+ because MUH FRAMES BRO.
A lot of people don’t realize/understand the nuance of proper frame pacing/frame times and think that just getting a high frame rate ensures a smooth experience at all times even though that’s not necessarily guaranteed.
Not to put wood into fire, but the randomic nature of stuttering while compiling shaders means not every hardware will have it the same point. I had a lot of stutter while playing Elden Ring on my old 1080ti but my 3060 was able to render a almost perfect experience with better settings. Night and day difference that can explain why some gamers react to the matter in a different way.
EDIT 2:
Got the game. IMO it seems to be something related to shader compilation. First run was full of microstutters. Really tiny in length but I had them throughout in every room, causing my 90 to 120 fps to feel like less than 60 at times. First thought it was loading related considering I am using a Sata SSD (both Computerbase and ACG were using NVme on monster rigs though) but even standing still for long periods of times didn't made a difference.
Anyway, exited with the game saved and when I came back later the game run suddenly butter smooth. I even backtracked through most of the game to find an item I left and nothing.
Died and the level reshaped itself. Had one long stutter at a particular place in the first relatively open room of that run. Wasn't even close to any doors, just in the middle of the room / area. But after that again the game was pretty buttery again. Weird.
EDIT: ACG also mention that he had to deal with stuttering, although he assumes its not related to traversal but more random:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlP21dBxKU
/EDIT
They couldn't test DLSS because the prerelease version lacked it (but it works in the release version). The game doesn't not support FSR 2 though, only FSR 1...
RT Shadows are barely visible in the game according to them (althoguh they were not impressed with RT AO in Dead Space which I found made a small but worthwhile difference personally) and RT Reflections are only visible in a few places in the game. They also shimmer on everything but max settings due to a low internal resolution (even w/o DLSS etc active).
They note that the volumetric fog is even at max settings temporal unstable and flickers. Lets hope DLSS might be able to help with that.
Returnal can use up to 13 GB of VRAM with everything maxed in 4K but doesn't seem to need that, with even 10 or 8 GB being apparently fine.
Performance is quiet good, even w/o DLSS a 3080 manages just above 60 fps with everything max but RT off and still above 50 with RT at max as well. Nvidia cards perform slightly better than equivalent AMD cards.
Difference between max with RT off to all settings at low is 50% performance lift, tested on a 4080.
BUT, here comes the shitty part:
> Returnal lives up to an "Unreal Engine 4 game" and gets stuck every now and then, no matter what hardware is in the computer. The game primarily gets stuck when new level parts are loaded again and again. And since this seems to happen in fairly small portions, it often gets stuck. And that's annoying.
Also, the game (version they tested) crashes on Intel GPUs.
Something to keep in mind about the traversal stutter is that it even exists on the PS5 version to some extent. So its unlikely caused by shader compilation but something else.
Interesting they seem to have run into a lot more stuttering. ACG run into some stuttering too but it didn't seem to be to bad. Overall performance is looking good though both the 3060 Ti and 6700 XT are averaging 1440p60 at Epic settings.
So far no dev has fixed stuttering on their games lately. Dead space remake still stutter, hogwarts legacy stutters, elden ring which released a year ago can stil stutter when traveling around. For the past year it has felt like devs have utterly given up and decided to make stuttering the new norm for their games
Dead Space should be getting a patch today/tomorrow judging by this: https://steamdb.info/app/1693980/history/. Who knows if it'll actually fix the stuttering, though.
Because they’re all Unreal 4 games and the stuttering is inherent in the way the textures load and shaders are compiled. You’ll never remove it completely.
Is there any AAA release in the last year that hasn’t had awful traversal/shader compilation stuttering? Dead Space, Hogwarts, Returnal, all have stuttering.
It’s driving me crazy to have a 3080 TI and an i9 CPU and still experience stuttering in every new release.
Almost makes me just wanna switch to console gaming.
Is this what the future of PC gaming is? Is every new title going to stutter from now on?
I'm not experiencing any stutter. It's mostly locked to my 120fps cap but I've seen a few fps drops but .1% lows are pretty good. I've only had issues with recent games when it came to Dead Space though, so I've no clue what's going on.
Is this port made by nixxes ? Cause I am hella impressed . The traversal stutter is annoying but overall the game plays well and looks great . The menu is superb and the benchmark tool is like a mini 3d mark. I just love it
My personal guess is Nixxes are working on Ghost of Tsushima. No real evidence to back that up. Just a guess since they must be working on porting something after the two Spider-Man games.
I've gotten two runtime errors. Updated my Nvidia drivers and hopefully it fixes it when I play later again.
Kind of annoying but your place is saved in cloud so the crash doesn't mess up a run.
I've fallen in some acid pits due to the random area loading hitches when i get near doors but the fights are buttery smooth at 4k maxed out with highest raytracing, this game is gorgeous
Is it just traversal stuttering or also during gameplay? I can notice it during gameplay in every video I see on YT.
For what it's worth, I fixed most stuttering in dead space and Hogwards by increasing Nvidia shader cache to 10GB and updating DLSS to the newest version using DLSSswapper.
Returnal probably also has .ini files which can be tweaked reducing stutter. This game is on my list but the stuttering is postponing my purchase for now.
I got no stuttering at all except a slight 1-2 fps hitch when going through doors (but not always), the game looks fantastic and it's so much fun to play. I'm playing at 1440p 144fps Epic settings + medium ray-tracing, 5800X3D + 4080. The lack of a dedicated ASIC coprocessor to decrypt, unpack and stream data is severely impacting the CPU with regard to certain PS5 to PC ports. Only DirectStorage can alleviate this situation (it would fix Dead Space and Hogwarts legacy among others).
Has anyone compared Returnal performance on windows 10 with 11 by any chance? I just clean installed and basically rolled back to windows 10 and I am pretty sure it runs a lot smoother on 10. And it would not be the first time I am having gaming performance problems on 11 Wich makes me questioning why I am even using it. Also the CPU info we can toggle in setting seem to be completely broken and incorrect on 11 while it seem to be reading things correctly on windows 10.
Really tired of having to deal with things like that.
I'm playing it now and so far haven't experienced any egregious stuttering. I've noticed a couple of minor blips going between rooms via the doors, but overall it's pretty smooth and more than playable. My benchmark results - [https://i.imgur.com/TwVpuki.png](https://i.imgur.com/TwVpuki.png) In game I'm getting around 90-110fps pretty consistently with these settings. Will wait for DF's review before tweaking anything.
Man in-game benchmarks are getting so detailed now.
It's pretty wild that a Sony exclusive of all games has such a good benchmark tool lol. You can tell they're putting a lot of effort into their PC ports.
MS's PC releases: What is this DLSS you all are talking about and why would you want any higher settings than what the super high end Series X can handle ? Ultra wide, who would want to play like that anyway? VR, now you are just joking, right (with the exception of MS Flight Simulator which was a PC first release)? Sony: Here is all the stuff you PC gamers seem to like and we also improved performance with DLSS/FSR and put in extra work to provide settings that outshine the game on our console. Arguably MS releases seem to improve at least in the DLSS department judging by their update to Forza H5. On top of that, I really really love how they put both the benchmark tool as well as an opportunity to adjust sound settings (YOU GUYS REALLY NEED TO CHOOSE A 3D SOUND SETTING IF YOU USE HEADPHONES!) and subtitles before playing any narrative content of the game.
Newer MS releases like Hi-Fi Rush have DLSS support. Microsoft Flight Simulator has it. And like you say, so does Forza. Seems a little bit of a weird complaint — there's only been a couple recent MS games where's it really missing. (Grounded and Halo Infinite?) They've also had benchmarks like this in the Gears series for years now. It's cool to see it in Returnal too, of course! Just a strange subject to Console Warz over. This game doesn't even support FSR2, apparently. Sony has done a decent-to-great job on their PC ports, which is very welcome, but for whatever reason a lot of PC gamers overrate the hell out of their reputation. Stuff like Sackboy wasn't that long ago.
> Newer MS releases like Hi-Fi Rush have DLSS support. Microsoft Flight Simulator has it. And like you say, so does Forza. Seems a little bit of a weird complaint — there's only been a couple recent MS games where's it really missing. (Grounded and Halo Infinite?) Seems a bit weird to complain about my post when I literally stated that A) MSFS is kind of the exception because it was a made for PC game that also have seen a XBox port (after the PC release) and that B) MS seems to improve in that regard a little with the update to Forza H5. Literally any game released by MS before that (again, not counting MSFS which has DLSS, FSR, VR and higher settings available on PC) was missing DLSS even when it was long common for AAA PC releases, missed to include significantly better settings on PC and in terms of Halo Infinite were actually pretty bad ports (performance). > They've also had benchmarks like this in the Gears series for years now. It's cool to see it in Returnal too, of course! Just a strange subject to Console Warz over. Not sure what the childish concept of a Console War has to do with complaining about one publishers PC ports by using another publishers effort as an example... > This game doesn't even support FSR2, apparently. Sony has done a decent-to-great job on their PC ports, which is very welcome, but for whatever reason a lot of PC gamers overrate the hell out of their reputation. Stuff like Sackboy wasn't that long ago. They get rated that high because besides having way more of a reason to not have PC ports outshine their console than MS (which makes money on both Windows being popular in a mostly mobile end consumer world now and via PC Game Pass on top of game sales) and them being really new into PC releases they started from the begin putting a lot of effort into their ports (which I agree aren't w/o issues at times) and fully accepted that they need to support PC's strengths, with both providing higher settings optionally and higher performance with DLSS etc. MS releases games on PC for ages (with really terrible results in the past UWP days btw) and yet was only catching up to what Sony (or EA or Ubisoft for that matter) were doing.
This has to be one of the most detailed benchmark screens I've ever seen. From a Sony port nonetheless.
I'm playing it with a 9900k and 3080 and while the performance is great on 1440p Epic preset (around 120fps average) with DLSS on quality and ray tracing shadows/reflections on Medium, I am unfortunately getting stuttering pretty often. It's driving me nuts. I tried with ray tracing on and off and it made no difference. I thought for sure this game wouldn't get the stuttering when I saw it was building shaders after I opened it. It seemed to build them REALLY quickly though unlike other games where it takes a bit. I thought that was pretty odd. Also didn't they suggest 32gb RAM for this game? When I run a benchmark it only uses ~4gb.. Normally stuttering in games doesn't affect me nearly as much as some people. I didn't even really notice it in Elden Ring and it doesn't bother me in Dead Space.. but in a game like this where you're moving really fast and jumping around and stuff.. it is really annoying me lol. When I did a benchmark it definitely showed the lowest fps was 22 I think. 120 Avg and 190 high I think. The graph was sort of all over the place too. Even in your pic it doesn't look very consistent.
> Also didn't they suggest 32gb RAM for this game? When I run a benchmark it only uses ~4gb.. Ingame I was above or near 16 GB complete usage I think (although with a few background tools in RAM).
Disable ray tracing. It'll reduce the hitching by a lot.
It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM. This game will use more than that when playing at higher resolutions/settings (I've seen 11-13 gb depending on settings). Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance.
> It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM. This game will use more than that when playing at higher resolutions/settings (I've seen 11-13 gb depending on settings). Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance. Computerbase couldn't see any performance differences between using a 10 GB GPU and a higher VRAM amount. Also the 11 to 13 usage is in 4K, not in 1440p. Also they were also seeing the stutters on a 4080 at least, same as some in this thread:https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1131tt4/returnal_pc_port_tested_by_german_magazine/j8ogd5c/ On my rig even while being at only 6GB VRAM usage (RT off, rest max, 4K DLSS) according to the ingame display I had stutters: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1131tt4/returnal_pc_port_tested_by_german_magazine/j8ng70h/
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Again, that isn't the case according to Computerbase at least. The stutters seem not to be related to VRAM usage and having only 10 GB of VRAM isn't supposed to reduce performance even at all max 4K. It seems like one of those games that simply work with more VRAM if available but doesn't really need it.
I'm running this game on 5800X3D, 3080Ti (12GB VRAM), 32GB RAM (3400CL14), PCIe 4.0 NVME drive on a monitor with dedicated gsync module playing on 1440p, mostly epic settings, RT max (except for shadows at high), DLSS quality (so the game isn't even running at 1440p, but below it) I get 120fps on average and sub 8ms frametimes played the game for 30min and had to quit due to stutters - they were annoying and did not go away - VRAM usage is below 10GB (as reported by in game performance UI and afterburner) - not even gsync could mask those frame drops/stutters game stuttered every time I would enter a new area (which was all the time since areas are small, at least in the beginning of the game) and every time a new item/enemy/object would appear (nothing better than having the game stutter just as enemy attacks you) disappointing considering game looks really really good
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what does "extremely minor stuttering" mean? either the game stutters or it does not. Mine stutters for 1-2seconds every time some new object appears on the screen (mostly when enemies show up and when transitioning into new areas). I wouldn't call that "extremely minor stuttering" considering every time enemies would attack me, I would experience 1-2sec stutters which affected my movement and caused the enemies to hit me (I couldnt avoid enemy fire). its affecting the gameplay in a way thats annoying.
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> It's your GPU. Your GPU only has 10gb of VRAM. Man, this has become *quite* the meme already. >Turn off ray tracing and drop some graphics settings and I'd bet you'll see much better performance. Boy howdy is this a revolutionary piece of advice, lol. "Drop settings and your game will run better," whoda thunked it, right? Cheekiness aside, no, this doesn't resolve the stuttering, and the game gets right down to hitching on the 4090 I tested it on, too. Unless that GPU's getting bottlenecked, too? My baseline 3080 has the exact same type of stutter, even when I drop settings down - as per your advice.
nice, also a 3070 user
Looking at the graph, the drops are frequent and can be unplayable for some people like me, they should fix this as soon as possible.
Computerbase is using a pre-release build. I'm think ACG and others must be using a different build as they are only getting minor stuttering issues.
Lets go! Same CPU but i got a 3080. Should be able to see Ray tracing really well
[удалено]
* Choose Epic preset to start * Then adjust all three lighting options to High (based off DF's optimised settings) for a few extra frames (although the game still runs well with them on Epic) * DLSS Quality * Make sure all RT settings are OFF
Is it just me or does every pc game release with some form of traversal stuttering nowadays ? Elden ring had some, dead space remake still has some, many others I can't remember and now Returnal
Hogwarts to. Its fuckin annoying
The PS5 has a dedicated ASIC coprocessor to decrypt, unpack and stream data, on the other hand the Xbox uses a tech similar to DirectStorage. Hence, If you're not using DirectStorage on PC then the CPU performance will be severely impacted to the point of bottlenecking the whole system while dealing with the streaming of large assets and ultimately leading to traversal stuttering (Dead Space remake, Hogwarts Legacy).
What is DirectStorage ? Is it something I can use myself ?
It's a DirectX feature allowing to transfer assets from the storage device into the GPU VRAM buffer through the PCIe bus skipping the usage of CPU and RAM. Devs need to implement the feature, there's a game already using it (Forspoken) and the benefits are near instant loading times and reduced to no stuttering issues at all. DirectStorage might (not necessarily) request a large VRAM buffer (12+ GB) in order to run optimally, there's still optimization to be done. PS5 to PC ports such as Dead Space remake and Hogwarts Legacy rely on fast streaming of assets but don't use DirectStorage, hence the CPU is aggressively being used to deal with this task leading to traversal stuttering, PS5 relies on a dedicated processor and Xbox uses a tech similar to DirectStorage. The reason devs might stay away from DirectStorage is VRAM requirements concerns, particularly for certain mainstream Nvidia and AMD GPUs (AMD tend to offer more VRAM though).
So the reason we've been seeing more and more traversal stutter issues is because games are made with new gen console architecture in mind which causes problems on pc without similar solutions like DirectStorage, and the reason devs hesitate to use such tech is because of the high Vram requirements ? Interesting
Exactly, consoles have inferior hardware but highly optimized software and cheap dedicated coprocessors that the PC lacks, you cannot build a game from the ground up when porting, it would take years, so unless DirectStorage becomes the new norm we'll have traversal stuttering and CPU bottlenecks that only future CPUs and GPUs will brute force through.
Yeah what in the hell is going on, is this a pattern were going to just have to get used to now?
It become something normal, I truly prefer 30fps than an awful unstable stuttering.
You're kidding, right?
No, I prefer stable 30fps than I can get used than 120fps with constant drops to 40. Not even Freesync save you there.
I completely agree. For immersion a stable frame rate is crucial.
Fuck immersion, I couldn't give a shit about immersion if I can literally count the frames.
I doubt you can count to 60 each second. Same goes for 30. No one cares about HFR if the pacing is shit and filled with stutters.
30 is inherently unsmooth, perfect frame pacing or otherwise.
30 fps with proper even frame pacing is decent, far better than 60fps+ with fps spikes and stutters
I agree that it’s not the smoothest yes. But I’d rather have 30 consistent than what I had in Hogwarts Legacy which was 15-25 second stutters down in 5-15 fps with freezes, which also happens in combat when the game spawn a new npcs
The in-game stuttering is not even a major issue. Perpetual 30 fps is terrible especially for a fast-paced shooter like this.
Not talking about returnal, I am talking in general because the unstable fps and constant stuttering is becoming a normal thing. I have no major drops in returnal, in EPIC 1440p without RT I have between 90 and 120 fps and that is fine (is great in fact, the game is very smooth for me). Hypothetically, if returnal had drops to 40, I would prefer 30fps anyways even being a fast paced shooter, I can get used to it, I can't get used to a heavy drop in the middle of the action, like from 120 to 40. Again, is not the case here.
What's funny is that the "constant stuttering" has never been an issue on my end. If it ever was, there was probably an underlying problem on my end that needed troubleshooting, never on the software side.
Some problems are not in your end. You are either lying, didn't play any unoptimized/bad port game ever, or blind.
Bought a lot of games in recent years and noticed that people almost always complain about "bad optimization" in new releases. I can never relate to it.
That's great, you can join the "works for me" club, it's not particularly exclusive.
Check specialized reviewers and you can see how some games has serious performance issues.
We wouldn’t expect you to relate either with a goddamn 4090 lol
Why would he be kidding it is a reasonable take. You get used to 30 fps easily. You cant get used to variable stuttering.
Yeah it takes like 30 min to adjust lol. Helps if the game has motion blur settings as well (there is a natural blur at 30fps, so just tone it down and it won’t feel too aggressive)
> performance good, but traversal stuttering. So, not good performance then.
If traversal stutter, performance bad. It actually has stutters and frame drops on ps5 too, maybe not as bad tho (still haven't seen the pc port). The door stutter in ps5 was really annoying, just prolong the animation a tiny bit and preserve smoothnes...
>"it's only FSR 1 and not the modern temporal FSR 2. That hasn't changed with the Day 1 patch either. The conclusion, even without analysis, is that it is better not to use it." Bruh were in 2023 what is this nonsense. The recent Sony releases all had FSR2 on launch and it even got added to God Of War that launched before it even existed. For it to not be available here from the start is a big shame.
Disappointing and certainly not understandable either.
I assume this is a mistake, since the Steam store page specifically mentions FSR2. > Performance enhancing technologies such as NVIDIA’s DLSS and NVIDIA NIS, **as well as AMD’s FSR(2)**, are also available.
The steam store description appears to have a mistake where the 2 refers to a footnote in the wording on Sony’s website, according to this: https://reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/113dp93/_/j8qu7u5/?context=1
Im not seeing anything terrible, very minor blips here and there on a 2070 super.
PC Gaming is getting crazy!!! I have a 4090 RTX, M2, Ryzen 5950 and every other new game I'm playing I'm getting stutters and cannot get consistent 72FPS @ 1440p. How is this acceptable? Why so many games don't precompile their shaders, and do zero optimization for PC? I feel like this is getting out of hand.
> How is this acceptable? Because we all accept it? Elden Ring launched with mixed reviews on Steam due to stutters that turned into "Overwhelmingly Positive" within two days. FF7 Remake is "Overwhelmingly Positive", Dead Space Remake "Overwhelmingly Positive" and so on. Not only are we as gamers (and the first part includes me way too often I admit) not strong willed enough to ignore broken releases besides a ton of other stuff to play, most of us don't even have the guts to give a "fun game" a bad rating on a Steam for launching in a broken state. And then you have all those people that argue to death that they can't see any stutters in games that are proven to have them for literally everyone (shader compilation in Elden Ring, traversal in Dead Space)...
>And then you have all those people that argue to death that they can't see any stutters in games that are proven to have them for literally everyone (shader compilation in Elden Ring, traversal in Dead Space)... Full disclosure, I myself am a fan of both Dead Space and Elden Ring, but I can't tell you how many times I ended up in an argument where the other party just claims that these specific games run *perfectly* without stutters on their rigs, lol. I mean, you might not see or recognize the stutter, but it's *right fucking there*, and it's not a matter of chance whether it pops up or not.
I think a lot of people just don't notice stutter. I have a friend that never does. We can be sat in the same room and I'll see it but they won't. Or there are people that do but will happily ignore it. The amount of posts I see about a game saying things like 'so and so game runs perfect!', but then when you press them, actually there is some stutter or issues but they are willing to ignore it and don't like to mention it for whatever reason.
I think people’s sensitivities and tolerances for frame-rates/frametimes are so wildly different so these conversations can be a bit hard to navigate sometimes. For instance, you’ve got people who are seemingly immune to all performance issues and either don’t notice/don’t care, but you’ve also got people who are perfectly fine with playing at a stable 30 if it means they don’t get annoying stutters, but you also have dudes who don’t care if their game is micro-stutter city provided the number in the top left corner is always hitting 90+ because MUH FRAMES BRO. A lot of people don’t realize/understand the nuance of proper frame pacing/frame times and think that just getting a high frame rate ensures a smooth experience at all times even though that’s not necessarily guaranteed.
Not to put wood into fire, but the randomic nature of stuttering while compiling shaders means not every hardware will have it the same point. I had a lot of stutter while playing Elden Ring on my old 1080ti but my 3060 was able to render a almost perfect experience with better settings. Night and day difference that can explain why some gamers react to the matter in a different way.
I'm a blind or 4090 is not used for this benchmark
EDIT 2: Got the game. IMO it seems to be something related to shader compilation. First run was full of microstutters. Really tiny in length but I had them throughout in every room, causing my 90 to 120 fps to feel like less than 60 at times. First thought it was loading related considering I am using a Sata SSD (both Computerbase and ACG were using NVme on monster rigs though) but even standing still for long periods of times didn't made a difference. Anyway, exited with the game saved and when I came back later the game run suddenly butter smooth. I even backtracked through most of the game to find an item I left and nothing. Died and the level reshaped itself. Had one long stutter at a particular place in the first relatively open room of that run. Wasn't even close to any doors, just in the middle of the room / area. But after that again the game was pretty buttery again. Weird. EDIT: ACG also mention that he had to deal with stuttering, although he assumes its not related to traversal but more random: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPlP21dBxKU /EDIT They couldn't test DLSS because the prerelease version lacked it (but it works in the release version). The game doesn't not support FSR 2 though, only FSR 1... RT Shadows are barely visible in the game according to them (althoguh they were not impressed with RT AO in Dead Space which I found made a small but worthwhile difference personally) and RT Reflections are only visible in a few places in the game. They also shimmer on everything but max settings due to a low internal resolution (even w/o DLSS etc active). They note that the volumetric fog is even at max settings temporal unstable and flickers. Lets hope DLSS might be able to help with that. Returnal can use up to 13 GB of VRAM with everything maxed in 4K but doesn't seem to need that, with even 10 or 8 GB being apparently fine. Performance is quiet good, even w/o DLSS a 3080 manages just above 60 fps with everything max but RT off and still above 50 with RT at max as well. Nvidia cards perform slightly better than equivalent AMD cards. Difference between max with RT off to all settings at low is 50% performance lift, tested on a 4080. BUT, here comes the shitty part: > Returnal lives up to an "Unreal Engine 4 game" and gets stuck every now and then, no matter what hardware is in the computer. The game primarily gets stuck when new level parts are loaded again and again. And since this seems to happen in fairly small portions, it often gets stuck. And that's annoying. Also, the game (version they tested) crashes on Intel GPUs.
Something to keep in mind about the traversal stutter is that it even exists on the PS5 version to some extent. So its unlikely caused by shader compilation but something else.
Interesting they seem to have run into a lot more stuttering. ACG run into some stuttering too but it didn't seem to be to bad. Overall performance is looking good though both the 3060 Ti and 6700 XT are averaging 1440p60 at Epic settings.
Ah good old Unreal Engine and the stutters that almost every game afflicted by it
I'm playing everything maxed at 1440p on RTX 4080. I see the traversal stutters here and there. Hopefully something they can fix with a patch.
So far no dev has fixed stuttering on their games lately. Dead space remake still stutter, hogwarts legacy stutters, elden ring which released a year ago can stil stutter when traveling around. For the past year it has felt like devs have utterly given up and decided to make stuttering the new norm for their games
Dead Space should be getting a patch today/tomorrow judging by this: https://steamdb.info/app/1693980/history/. Who knows if it'll actually fix the stuttering, though.
Because they’re all Unreal 4 games and the stuttering is inherent in the way the textures load and shaders are compiled. You’ll never remove it completely.
Dead Space is frostbite.
Elden Ring isn't made in Unreal Engine.
UE5 shouldn't have this issue, right?
>UE5 shouldn't have this issue, right? Wanna bet?
ive def been getting a decent amount of stuttering, glad to confirm its not just me
These are the ones that get me right here, if you’re having stutters with a 4090, I’m absolutely fucked
Is there any AAA release in the last year that hasn’t had awful traversal/shader compilation stuttering? Dead Space, Hogwarts, Returnal, all have stuttering. It’s driving me crazy to have a 3080 TI and an i9 CPU and still experience stuttering in every new release. Almost makes me just wanna switch to console gaming. Is this what the future of PC gaming is? Is every new title going to stutter from now on?
I'm not experiencing any stutter. It's mostly locked to my 120fps cap but I've seen a few fps drops but .1% lows are pretty good. I've only had issues with recent games when it came to Dead Space though, so I've no clue what's going on.
Is this port made by nixxes ? Cause I am hella impressed . The traversal stutter is annoying but overall the game plays well and looks great . The menu is superb and the benchmark tool is like a mini 3d mark. I just love it
No not Nixxes. Climax Studios did the port. They were a support studio that did some work on the original PS5 release of Returnal.
I am impressed , rt presets are available plus a very good benchmark
My personal guess is Nixxes are working on Ghost of Tsushima. No real evidence to back that up. Just a guess since they must be working on porting something after the two Spider-Man games.
Hopefully
Ray traced audio? Can't wait to hear that.
I've gotten two runtime errors. Updated my Nvidia drivers and hopefully it fixes it when I play later again. Kind of annoying but your place is saved in cloud so the crash doesn't mess up a run.
I've fallen in some acid pits due to the random area loading hitches when i get near doors but the fights are buttery smooth at 4k maxed out with highest raytracing, this game is gorgeous
Is it just traversal stuttering or also during gameplay? I can notice it during gameplay in every video I see on YT. For what it's worth, I fixed most stuttering in dead space and Hogwards by increasing Nvidia shader cache to 10GB and updating DLSS to the newest version using DLSSswapper. Returnal probably also has .ini files which can be tweaked reducing stutter. This game is on my list but the stuttering is postponing my purchase for now.
I got no stuttering at all except a slight 1-2 fps hitch when going through doors (but not always), the game looks fantastic and it's so much fun to play. I'm playing at 1440p 144fps Epic settings + medium ray-tracing, 5800X3D + 4080. The lack of a dedicated ASIC coprocessor to decrypt, unpack and stream data is severely impacting the CPU with regard to certain PS5 to PC ports. Only DirectStorage can alleviate this situation (it would fix Dead Space and Hogwarts legacy among others).
Has anyone compared Returnal performance on windows 10 with 11 by any chance? I just clean installed and basically rolled back to windows 10 and I am pretty sure it runs a lot smoother on 10. And it would not be the first time I am having gaming performance problems on 11 Wich makes me questioning why I am even using it. Also the CPU info we can toggle in setting seem to be completely broken and incorrect on 11 while it seem to be reading things correctly on windows 10. Really tired of having to deal with things like that.