What exactly makes Standalone so taxing on your system?

[anderswhk 23]

I have been wondering for a while exactly what makes Standalone so demanding. Especially in the cities. Let's be honest here, the game doesn't look THAT good, yet it runs terrible. But at the same time Arma 3 runs a lot better. I thought it was the same engine, what gives?

 

My specs:

 

i7 950

GTX580 1,5 GB

12 gigs of ram

 

Running everything on a mix of medium and low settings @ 1920x1080, shadows off, all kinds of post processing and anti initializing off. Running in the countryside gives around 40-50 FPS, which I am happy about. Going into any of the larger cities reduces my frames to around 15-20. Being in an area that has those big soviet era housing projects completely shatters my FPS, and drops it to a slideshow of about 5-10. Not exactly optimal.

 

I have tried various cfg's, but nothing really helps.

 

What exactly makes the buildings so taxing on my system? I realize the game is a work in process, but I just can't get over how badly optimized it seems, for a game that doesn't look that great. I also realize my graphics card is almost 4 years old at this point. I don't expect to run at high settings.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the game and play it daily. I put up with the low performance, I am just wondering what the reason is for it.

Edited November 3, 2014 by anderswhk

[Death By Crowbar 1213]

It's an un-optimized game in alpha status who's engine is being rebuilt in sections still. That's pretty much why.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

....also, if you were following development news.... you would know a new renderer will be implemented eventually as well.

[budlime 29]

I run DayZ on an i3

GTX 650ti

4gb ram. I run about the same frames as you do. 

 

I found this video on YouTube, helped me out immensely. Went from running around 20-25 frames to 60-70 in the open, roughly 33 in cities. Try it out. Good luck

 

Edited November 3, 2014 by Budlime

[Tatanko 5591]

It's an un-optimized game in alpha status who's engine is being rebuilt in sections still. That's pretty much why.

Basically this. More importantly, the game started out using the bones of Arma 2 (not Arma 3, I don't believe) which itself was pretty old already. The scope of what's going on in DayZ Standalone is a lot more than what that engine was designed for, so naturally there are some issues. As Crowbar said, they are moving to a new engine/renderer and changing most every part of the core game structure over time and that will cause some growing pains as well.

[solodude23 649]

I think a large part of the problem is the engine/renderer which from what I recall renders EVERYTHING within a certain radius despite whether it needs to be rendered or not. (I.e. a water bottle 6 blocks away in a building) This is very taxing on processors.

[PongoZ 127]

What open world game with such big environments are we comparing it to?

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

I think it looks pretty nice, tbh.

[OrLoK 16185]

Hello there

 

Although the engine is showing us lots of lovely stuff its always been demanding of ones rig, even since OFP.

 

After the original System Shock BiS games are the only ones Ive had to upgrade my PC to be able to play them and indeed still am.

 

I put it down to the fact that the "engine" is dealing with a vast amount of info and relaying that all at the same time to the user/s.

 

I would also like a full explanation, but after talking to Mr Hall in the past about such matters I usually find that the conversation is way above my intellectual level. He goes full Geek Programmer/dev on you.

 

It could be down to the pure rendering, the locations and details and conditions of hundreds of items, the weather, the day night cycle with navigable stars, the tides? Bullet and damage calculation, AI behavior etc etc etc all going on at once.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

[Borges (DayZ) 40]

But at the same time Arma 3 runs a lot better.

 

 

....................................................................................................No.

[chompster 171]

Lack of optimization on an engine that's already known for it's poor performance.

[harteman 155]

32bit and not optimized for quad core+ processors.

[solodude23 649]

....................................................................................................No.

Sure it does. I can run Arma 3 on max settings with pretty damn good FPS. DayZ I struggle in cities on low settings. Not criticizing DayZ, just stating facts.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

Disable shadows and Anti Aliasing and then put Object Detail as low as you like but remember the lower it's the closer other players can get to you before you can even see them. Other things I can max without a bigger drop.

Edited November 3, 2014 by St. Jimmy

[anderswhk 23]

I think it looks pretty nice, tbh.

 

The game as a whole looks good. Since this is an open world sandbox type of game with massive draw distances, and not some corridor shooter, the textures aren't anything special. And that is what makes me wonder why my system takes such a massive hit when I look in the general direction of a bunch of buildings. The buildings themselves don't look that good. But I guess it all comes down to the fact that the game is not optimized properly yet. I actually had this problem as well in the mod, on this system as well. Especially in community made maps, like Taviana. Sabina takes a massive dump on my rig, but not as bad as the housing projects surrounding Cherno in Standalone.

[Grimey Rick 3417]

Plays Titanfall at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Battlefield 4 at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Wolfenstein: The New Order at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Tomb Raider at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Insurgency at 150 fps on Ultra.

Plays ARMA 3 at 80 FPS on Ultra.

Plays DayZ at 30 FPS on Low.

Bohemia Interactive titles working as intended.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Grimey Rick

[ChainReactor 922]

And that is what makes me wonder why my system takes such a massive hit when I look in the general direction of a bunch of buildings.

 

Your fault is that you see bad performance and think about how things look. The graphics aren't the bottleneck in DayZ, its CPU ( single core ), network- and client/server performance. Much stuff in DayZ happens server side, and if your connection fails to tell your rig everything in time, your game will lag. Same when your CPU can't keep up with all the calculations.

Edited November 4, 2014 by ChainReactor

[Borges (DayZ) 40]

Sure it does. I can run Arma 3 on max settings with pretty damn good FPS. DayZ I struggle in cities on low settings. Not criticizing DayZ, just stating facts.

 

With my rig Arma 3 runs at 20% cpu usage and 40% GPU usage on multiplayer. Highly unoptimized game engine and runs extremely poorly on high end systems.

 

Atleast the Dayz SA utilizes 100% gpu usage and proper cpu usage. It may not be optimized now but when optimization is done it will run much better than arma 3 ever will.

Edited November 4, 2014 by Borges

[Borges (DayZ) 40]

Plays Titanfall at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Battlefield 4 at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Wolfenstein: The New Order at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Tomb Raider at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Insurgency at 150 fps on Ultra.

Plays ARMA 3 at 80 FPS on Ultra.

Plays DayZ at 30 FPS on Low.

Bohemia Interactive titles working as intended.

 

 

What are your rig specs?

Edited November 4, 2014 by Borges

[hleVqq 139]

With my rig Arma 3 runs at 20% cpu usage and 40% GPU usage on multiplayer. Highly unoptimized game engine and runs extremely poorly on high end systems.

 

Atleast the Dayz SA utilizes 100% gpu usage and proper cpu usage. It may not be optimized now but when optimization is done it will run much better than arma 3 ever will.

DayZ SA only utilizes 100% GPU in fields/forests.

[soulfirez 901]

What are your rig specs?

I cant remember his exact specs but as i recall its an older i7(2700??) clocked to 5.2 ghz and he has 2x sli gtx 780ti's cant remember how much ram or the mobo he uses but what i mentioned are the main features needed for performance.

 

Not sure why he gets such bad performance my specs are almost same as yours ( different gpu though i was dumb and got a titan black lol thinking of swapping it for sli gtx 970's) same cpu but i clocked mine at 5ghz on a custom water loop more ram( which makes no difference as far as dayz goes lol) and my worst spot is novo and i still manage 50 fps there...

[Count_Grishnackh 65]

If you have an SSD and your games on a HDD, you might want to consider creating a "split" steam library. Then move DayZ your SSD... I did this and have noticed the performance is slightly better.

[hotcakes 348]

crap multicore

 

you can seriously turn off some cores and barely notice a thing 

[Mor (DayZ) 57]

....also, if you were following development news.... you would know a new renderer will be implemented eventually as well.

DirectX 11 will help them make the game prettier, and might help profrmance wise to those with strong GPUs, but overall people who struggling right now on low shouldn't except any improvement from this, on the contrary. Edited November 4, 2014 by Mor

[Jex 1104]

Plays Titanfall at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Battlefield 4 at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Wolfenstein: The New Order at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Tomb Raider at 150 FPS on Ultra.

Plays Insurgency at 150 fps on Ultra.

Plays ARMA 3 at 80 FPS on Ultra.

Plays DayZ at 30 FPS on Low.

Bohemia Interactive titles working as intended.

 

None of these games have a draw distance measured in kilometers either, do they?

 

DayZ renders at least 2 km? on an unoptimised engine as well on a game in Alpha. Why are people confused over DayZ running so badly?