Dying Light Video Card Performance Review @ [H]

Well, as a 4K gamer, this vindicates my decision to not buy the 4 GB cards.
 
I started playing the game personally on the initial 1.2.1 patch, on my own machine, when the game was released, the only issue I had was an SLI issue, once disabling SLI, I didn't have any problems personally. I've been playing the game since the end of January.
 
So it sounds like SLI might be working, it just does not scale because of the VRAM being maxed out. I have no idea how this would play on my 680s in SLI running at 1600p.

(Kyle - are you leaving 1600p behind and moving all the reviews over to 1440p?)
 
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So is [H] going to include Dying Light into its suite of games?

You're missing ACU and that's the lot of them, GameWorks NV games that are utterly broken even after many patches.

I use to come here for non-bias reviews but with such a small line up of games to bench hardware, and now most of them are NV-sponsored with the blackbox GameWorks.. the conclusions are set before the article is even finished. Why even bother? NV hardware rapes AMD hardware in GameWorks titles. It's obvious.
 
Bahanime said:
So is [H] going to include Dying Light into its suite of games?

You're missing ACU and that's the lot of them, GameWorks NV games that are utterly broken even after many patches.

I use to come here for non-bias reviews but with such a small line up of games to bench hardware, and now most of them are NV-sponsored with the blackbox GameWorks.. the conclusions are set before the article is even finished. Why even bother? NV hardware rapes AMD hardware in GameWorks titles. It's obvious.
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You weren't complaining when we used Tomb Raider, sporting TressFX AMD technology for 2 years in our gaming suite which ran much better on AMD hardware. Or Crysis 3 an AMD Evolved game, which we are still using now. Or other games in our past.

We don't chose games based on who got their hands on it to inject technologies. We are open minded to any game that is worth it. We look at many factors, including popularity, GPU performance demand, forward looking and graphically intense 3D effects, special features or effects and many other things.

GameWorks is a set of technologies, just as AMD has a set of technologies it has its hand in in some games. GameWorks uses standard DX11 calls, and AMD has the ability to optimize games via drivers. Perhaps you should be more upset at the fact that AMD hasn't released drivers in 3 months for new games.

If the majority of good games out right now have one IHV's set of technologies over the other, maybe you should be complaining to the competition to involve itself more in games. We just take it as we see it, and evaluate games as they are.

There are many more games coming out this year we are looking forward to adding. Grand Theft Auto V is high on my list, as is The Witcher 3. Dying Light, for the record, is not a broken game.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I started playing the game personally on the initial 1.2.1 patch, on my own machine, when the game was released, the only issue I had was an SLI issue, once disabling SLI, I didn't have any problems personally. I've been playing the game since the end of January.
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My system is a AMD FX 8350 with yes AMD Radeon HD 7850. Lots of people telling me this game hates AMD a lot. That and poorly optimized.
 
Ashbringer said:
My system is a AMD FX 8350 with yes AMD Radeon HD 7850. Lots of people telling me this game hates AMD a lot. That and poorly optimized.
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AMD hasn't released a driver that addresses this game in anyway for optimizations, that is surely needed.
 
SLI is working for me also, just double checked it, on 2x980s around 50-60 FPS on single, and around 100 on SLI.
 
crusty_juggler said:
I wanted to bring up the Nvida DoF feature in this game.

The article stated that one can use the Nvidia DoF with little to no performance hit. However, I and some other [H] users have found that our framerates tank when being grappled by a biter with Nvdia DoF enabled. At all other points in the game our frames remain stable. Turning off NV DoF fixes the problem.

My question is, during the DoF benchmark comparison, did the player grapple with a zombie?Damn, told.
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Yes, and I attributed the grabbing stutter to running out of VRAM, in situations where I lessened the burden on VRAM by lowering settings (but always having DoF enabled) the stutter or pause/freezing when being grabbed stopped.

So I was able to stop that stutter/pausing/freezing whatever you want to call it by other means, and leaving Depth of Field ON. I never had to turn DoF off for any reason performance wise.
 
Unfortunately Gameworks titles in the recent past ( AC Unity, Farcry 4 and Dying Light) have proven that these games are released in a condition not suitable for final release. Techland released patch 1.5 which improved performance in a huge way on AMD GPUs. Something similar happened with AC unity and patch 1.3. In both cases the patches arrived well after a month from game launch. Its also not surprising that all these 3 games do not support CF, especially FC4 and AC Unity which are 4 months past launch

http://www.reddit.com/r/dyinglight/comments/2ykphp/patch_15_hard_mode_is_live/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/239140/discussions/0/610574394240231374/?insideModal=1

AMD's Gaming Evolved games on the contrary such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Alien Isolation and Civilization Beyond Earth launched with good CF and SLI support and in a much more polished and optimized state. Reviews for all these games were good with even hardocp praising Alien Isolation's polish.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/06/alien_isolation_video_card_performance_review#.VP_mJPyUfSg

Its clear that Gameworks licensees are doing a poor job with releasing their games in a polished and well optimized manner. In all these games patches continued to make huge improvements to performance 4 - 6 weeks after game launch. Its also clear that the licensees just don't care about CF support. Thats not acceptable.This is a very unhealthy trend. It makes one suspect whether Nvidia is involved in making sure the Gameworks licensees / developers drag their feet when it comes to performance on AMD GPUs and CF support.

Why would gamers pay money to get major improvements months later. Gamers are now being made guinea pigs and its literally like paying to play a pre-beta or alpha version of the game. The situation is worse for AMD GPU owners as they are getting an even worse deal than Nvidia GPU owners.

This trend needs to be highlighted by the tech press. hardocp has been vocal in their criticism on game performance issues, multi GPU support in these titles. I hope other sites take the clue and do similar honest and critical reviews. :)

btw Brent make sure patch 1.5 is used in your upcoming Titan-X review.
 
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Just done some more testing in 4k on Tri SLI 980s to try and reduce the vram required so it doesnt stutter / lag now and then with high textures , unfortunately the only thing i found to make it stutter free is to reduce textures to medium as thats the only thing that frees up significant amounts of vram. Tried reducing view distance and shadow map , they have a small effect on vram but it won't eliminate the stutter due to the 4gb limit.

Its worth noting if you have a 3gb card in 4k i doubt you can even run medium textures in this game without stuttering due to vram, vram usage was hitting 3.5gb in 4k with only medium textures (everything else ultra mind you).

Medium textures are fine from a distance but missing i'd say from looking at it close up half or more the detail of the high textures.

Now the trade off is 4k with medium textures or 1440p with high textures ... as i have both size monitors here ...
 
Orthello said:
Just done some more testing in 4k on Tri SLI 980s to try and reduce the vram required so it doesnt stutter / lag now and then with high textures , unfortunately the only thing i found to make it stutter free is to reduce textures to medium as thats the only thing that frees up significant amounts of vram. Tried reducing view distance and shadow map , they have a small effect on vram but it won't eliminate the stutter due to the 4gb limit.

Its worth noting if you have a 3gb card in 4k i doubt you can even run medium textures in this game without stuttering due to vram, vram usage was hitting 3.5gb in 4k with only medium textures (everything else ultra mind you).

Medium textures are fine from a distance but missing i'd say from looking at it close up half or more the detail of the high textures.

Now the trade off is 4k with medium textures or 1440p with high textures ... as i have both size monitors here ...
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If it's really choking on the vram shortage, I'm expecting an updated review with SLI titan-x :).


nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_alleged_performance.png
 
gamerk2 said:
You know, I've basically stopped reading performance reviews, because no one bothers to review a decent selection of HW anymore. The 700 series card you review is the 750 TI? REALLY? And how about 580 holdons, can they still play?

*crickets*

Yes, I know this takes time. Fine. But seriously, <1% of us own 900s series cards, we don't need all three models reviewed in lieu of everything else on the market we actually do own.
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So you missed the 780 in there i see.
 
SLI was working for me as well, when I still had 970 SLI (though it was a stuttery mess when using max textures because of hitting the 512MB VRAM wall) the framerate was considerably higher. Not sure why it isn't working for [H].
 
Man I have been asking every damn review website to post vramm usage in 4k since 4k has been used for benchmarking, THANK H for finally doing it.
 
I'm surprised at how hard of a time this game gives my GTX 760. Great game but geez.
 
SpongeBob said:
I'm surprised at how hard of a time this game gives my GTX 760. Great game but geez.
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I'm still surprised at how well my GTX670 4GB is handling games at 1080p. With every option turned on/maxxed (including view distance) it averaged 44fps with around 34fps minimum. My friend with a 2GB 670 said he had to turn a lot of stuff down to medium (he was playing at release and I started on 1.2 though).
 
This game doesn't look that great, im disturbed that games like this are that poorly optimized. If my heavily overclocked 980s in sli cant get decent framerates im going to pass no matter what it is.
 
Marcdaddy said:
This game doesn't look that great, im disturbed that games like this are that poorly optimized. If my heavily overclocked 980s in sli cant get decent framerates im going to pass no matter what it is.
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100+ with ur setup no prob all maxed out! We have simular setups.
 
CrossFire performance is working better, and faster, with patch 1.5.0. I still have to enable the option to enable CF profile on games where no profile is provided, but it is working more steadily now, and performance is up.

It allows me to play the game at 4K now with "Best Quality" settings with Shadows on "Medium" on an AMD Radeon R9 295X2 (dual 290X)

Yay for 1.5.0 patch
 
Brent_Justice said:
CrossFire performance is working better, and faster, with patch 1.5.0. I still have to enable the option to enable CF profile on games where no profile is provided, but it is working more steadily now, and performance is up.

It allows me to play the game at 4K now with "Best Quality" settings with Shadows on "Medium" on an AMD Radeon R9 295X2 (dual 290X)

Yay for 1.5.0 patch
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So brent wouldn't it be the developer who is to blame for such mistakes. Roughly 6 weeks after the game launched, Techland releases a patch which improves GPU performance in a big way both in single and multi GPU and finally enables CF scaling. So blaming AMD in your article is missing the point. Gameworks licensees have been dropping the ball in game quality, performance and polish when releasing the game. This is an undeniable trend. Ubisoft with their trinity of failed games - Watchdogs, AC unity and Farcry 4 and now Dying Light. Evolve too is a gameworks title with no support yet for CF. See how this is a pattern. Without any new driver from AMD we are seeing all of these performance improvements from just game patches. So it points to how unoptimized these games are at launch. If you have to blame its the developers who are to be criticized for rushing an unoptimized game to market. Gamers are now essentially paying full game price for beta testing. sad but true.
 
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I will have to do some further testing. I turned on SLI indicators last night and it sure looked like SLI was working and scaling. I'll do some benchmarking to make sure.

347.52, game version 1.5.0

DoF really tanks my framerate when being grappled too. I wonder if that's SLI weirdness? I had to turn DoF off which shouldn't be required at all based on your testing.

-- update --

All settings at maximum, except film grain - that's off. 10 minute run to fishing village, end of bridge, back to fishing village, then to radio tower on top of hill near fishing village, and back to the tower entrance. I am doing all this on a game where the day/night cycle hasn't been enabled yet, so the time of day remained constant throughout testing.

SLI Enabled
2015-03-12 23:33:43 - DyingLightGame
Frames: 53717 - Time: 600000ms - Avg: 89.528 - Min: 46 - Max: 143

SLI Disabled
2015-03-12 23:48:48 - DyingLightGame
Frames: 38017 - Time: 600000ms - Avg: 63.362 - Min: 43 - Max: 108
 
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Prior to 1.4.0, Dying Light would crash to desktop, use more than 3.8GB of VRAM and constantly microstutter. Any volatiles grabbing/attacking would completely lock up my system. After apply 1.4, no more microstuttering and VRAM usage hovers around 3.6-3.7GB of VRAM. Still see small lock up for the acid spitting volatiles. Haven't had a chance to apply the 1.5 update but looking forward to performance increases. Playing on 970 at 5760x1080 and everything set to high.
 
This game has made me realise that 4gb is not going to cut it for me - i'll replace my 980s as soon as i can.

My experiences lately :
SOM , frame lags badly at 1440p with ultra textures with 4gb in some action packed scenes.
Dying light , frame lags badly at times in 4k with high textures with 4gb.
Far Cry 4 , had to turn AA off in 4k to reduce vram usage to help with stutter, i say help as this game has stuttering as a hardcoded graphical feature it seems ;-)
So far only 2 games run fine with ultra textures :
LOTF and Ryse.
So 40% hit rate in playing games to their maximum graphical settings in games i've played lately.
Not what you would expect from Tri SLI (all of these games worked fine in Tri SLI too .. scaling not the issue .. vram 100% the issue - well theres the ubisoft factor too).

Further to this i'm not comfortable with 6gb for 4k .. i want 8gb to give me some headroom. I think 6gb will have the current 4gb problems in 6 months time.
 
Orthello said:
This game has made me realise that 4gb is not going to cut it for me - i'll replace my 980s as soon as i can.

My experiences lately :
SOM , frame lags badly at 1440p with ultra textures with 4gb in some action packed scenes.
Dying light , frame lags badly at times in 4k with high textures with 4gb.
Far Cry 4 , had to turn AA off in 4k to reduce vram usage to help with stutter, i say help as this game has stuttering as a hardcoded graphical feature it seems ;-)
So far only 2 games run fine with ultra textures :
LOTF and Ryse.
So 40% hit rate in playing games to their maximum graphical settings in games i've played lately.
Not what you would expect from Tri SLI (all of these games worked fine in Tri SLI too .. scaling not the issue .. vram 100% the issue - well theres the ubisoft factor too).

Further to this i'm not comfortable with 6gb for 4k .. i want 8gb to give me some headroom. I think 6gb will have the current 4gb problems in 6 months time.
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Reason I never looked at going 4k in gaming at this current time. Wait till its main stream and there will be hardware out that will handle it that will be a lot faster then whats out now.

Sounds like you need to be looking at the new titan x cards with 12GB ram. 2 of those would put a smile on your face for 4k gaming.
 
Wow still no proper crossfire support for this game? To be honest I am not shocked, AMD is always behind crossfire profiles for games.

The real shocker is a gameworks game with horrible SLI support? That one really blows my mind. Nvidia usually is on the ball with proper support for gameworks game (other games no so much).

This is a sad trend if true, although with AMD I am not shocked anymore, but they better nail a home run with the 300 series coming or they are in serious trouble. Nvidia slacking on a Gameworks game is the shocker....wow

Just my 0.02c.
 
eclypse said:
Many have stated that SLI is indeed working and scaling just fine :)
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Did you even read the review?

"NVIDIA is a little bit better, or rather not as bad. NVIDIA is aware of the SLI issues in Dying Light and did come up with a solution to provide a profile through GeForce Experience. However, we still cannot get SLI to work properly in this game. It is understood that a game update patch or further driver/profile updates from NVIDIA will be needed to get it working well. This game has already been out almost six weeks however, and that SLI support is still lacking. Again, more reasons to not buy a second GeForce card..."

Sure its working, but not working properly.
 
DASHlT said:
Did you even read the review?

"NVIDIA is a little bit better, or rather not as bad. NVIDIA is aware of the SLI issues in Dying Light and did come up with a solution to provide a profile through GeForce Experience. However, we still cannot get SLI to work properly in this game. It is understood that a game update patch or further driver/profile updates from NVIDIA will be needed to get it working well. This game has already been out almost six weeks however, and that SLI support is still lacking. Again, more reasons to not buy a second GeForce card..."

Sure its working, but not working properly.
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Um it actually works just fine 50-70% usage with Tri SLI 980s @ 1550/8200 everything ultra (bit of vram hitching) and 60 fps constant most of the time in 4k .

Not sure why the H had issues as others have stated ... it works and has almost the same scaling as i get in quite a few other games. Theres no way 1 card would get 60 fps in this game at 4k with ultra settings .. i'll try it tonight to be sure .. i expect low 20s.
 
Orthello said:
Um it actually works just fine 50-70% usage with Tri SLI 980s @ 1550/8200 everything ultra (bit of vram hitching) and 60 fps constant most of the time in 4k .

Not sure why the H had issues as others have stated ... it works has almost the same scaling as i get in quite a few other games.
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Well I guess you should be doing the [H] reviews then? Because they are stating something totally different.

I do not play this game, nor planned too. I was just commenting on the horrible crossfire/sli support issue.

Just seems lately both are very horrible.
 
Just tested it for you.. First with SLI off and I was getting around 70-85 FPS in the main safe house.. walked outside and I was getting like the same in a big open area.

Turned SLI on and while in the building I was getting 100-130s.. Outside in a big area it was the same. High of 134 fps.

Seems fine to me.

Edit: All that at 2560 x 1440 144hz refresh rate.
 
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