Dying Light Video Card Performance Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Dying Light Video Card Performance Review - Dying Light is out on the PC and we are liking it. Today we evaluate performance on many video cards to find out what kind of gameplay experience to expect. We will also compare graphical settings and find out which ones are the most demanding and what level of video card you need for this game.
 
Have there been any Gameworks/TWIMTBP games lately that aren't riddled with issues at launch, sheesh!
Dying Light, FC4 and AC Unity :|
 
Let's please stay on topic. This is a Dying Light article, so let's discuss Dying Light, and any issues pertaining to it.
 
Every time I even start thinking about multi GPU setup - article like this is published and it works as cold shower :D
 
All I heard about was how buggy this game was at launch but to their credit Techland has been busy patching it. It's sad that SLI and crossfire are still broken this far past launch. I do have one question for Kyle or Brent: Why was the GTX 970 and 290 included in both the high end and midrange comparisons ?
 
At this point I've just written off games that use gameworks. They barely seem to work weeks after launch and are just not optimized, especially for AMD hardware.

I will be skipping results for gameworks games for the foreseeable future.
 
It amazes me that multi-GPU support is still a struggle in this day and age. I was ready to buy this game until I saw that it is basically not working... Hopefully the next-gen APIs will change that. It is nice to see that the game is keeping everything in the fast section of the GTX 970's memory, though.
 
So another Nvidia only game... which is probably not encouraging AMD to work its persistently, if not endemically, awful driver support.

I do like how, as previously suspected, Nvidia drivers stay away from using that last block of memory on the 970.
 
With the game already being VRAM limited, I question just how much you could gain from SLI/Crossfire compatibility. Not trying to defend nVidia, and (especially) AMD here, but if the game engine is already utilizing as much VRAM as it could, I really don't see how a multi-GPU setup would improve things.
 
Just started playing the game the past 2 nights.. it's really awesome! Was happy with the frame rate with everything at maximum settings at 1440 and did not know sli was not working hehe. I see the frame rate reach 100+ at times.. mostly inside buildings.

Anyways.. Great game so far and best single player experiance I've had in decades... really since the first resident evil on the Playstation haha

Buy it!
 
GuruX said:
With the game already being VRAM limited, I question just how much you could gain from SLI/Crossfire compatibility. Not trying to defend nVidia, and (especially) AMD here, but if the game engine is already utilizing as much VRAM as it could, I really don't see how a multi-GPU setup would improve things.
Click to expand...


Yep, a pretty big deal there. Textures are going to be an issue at higher resolutions on 980s. Maybe the Titan crowd will get a leg up here if they get SLI scaling right. And from what we see, SLI is "working" across both cards, but not scaling.
 
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.
 
Just out of curiosity, are the reference r9 290 / 290x cards still being used? Or are aftermarket cooled cards being used?

Either way, game looks great!
 
Teenyman45 said:
So another Nvidia only game... which is probably not encouraging AMD to work its persistently, if not endemically, awful driver support.

I do like how, as previously suspected, Nvidia drivers stay away from using that last block of memory on the 970.
Click to expand...

It's sad to me.
AMD said they would release driver updates for their big packages as new games came on line.
I haven't seen a driver release,hotfix or any such since December....really sad.

I'd like to see an SLi fix before I bought this game.

Both sides are behind the curve but AMD way more than NVidia.

This game looks like it might be fun.:D
 
Prob amd is more "all hands on deck" working on drivers for there new card release. prob figure why release more drivers for there older cards to fix game issues when they want you to buy there newest card when it hits.
 
magoo said:
It's sad to me.
AMD said they would release driver updates for their big packages as new games came on line.
I haven't seen a driver release,hotfix or any such since December....really sad.

I'd like to see an SLi fix before I bought this game.

Both sides are behind the curve but AMD way more than NVidia.

This game looks like it might be fun.:D
Click to expand...

If ur gaming at 1080/1440 the water is just fine with 980! No need sli if it's not runing right now.. performance is great for me.. though g-sync might be helping.. though I have not seen frame rates below 70.
 
I'm just going to ask the obvious question here. Why is AA on w/ the 4k tests? You are definitely going to blow out your vram doing that. Are the frame rates noticeably better @ 4k w/o AA? AA loses it's benefits as the resolution goes up IMO.
 
Grrreat! review [H] and thanks for including the vram Info/coverage.. means a lot:) now i can add 970 back on my to get list.
 
Must be talking about a totally different game.

Just last night I was thinking that they had to be using live actors in ball suits to track the animation of rhe charaters as they moved so well. Hair also never looked more believable.
 
Ashbringer said:
Lets do.

#1 Game crashed every 10 minutes at first. Eventually until patch 1.4 that issue was fixed, along with horrible stuttering issues that made the game unplayable.

#2 Nvidia mentioned features in games menu. Really hate this trend in PC gaming lately. Neither Nvidia or AMD should be involved to the point where I get to see their logo in the game.

#3 Horrible grain effect that patch 1.4 allows you to remove but doesn't really remove it 100%. It's a cheap trick to hide how horrible the graphics really are in this game.

#4 BTW, for those wondering the game does look bad graphically. People in the game animate worse than Half Life 2. Textures don't look very detailed. You can almost count the polygons in some cases. It just looks so badly done.

But it is better than Dead Island for a Zombie sand box type game. That really doesn't say much. But at least the quests aren't boring and are rewarding, most of the time.

Also
Khan!
Click to expand...

Huh? pretty sure if there were any major problems [H] would've said so:confused:
 
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SLI works for me in Dying Light on my dual GTX 970's (version 1.4 of the game, 347.52 drivers, SLI rendering mode set to "nVidia recommended"), so I'm surprised to read in this article that SLI wasn't working. I just double checked it to be sure. I walked around the same area within the game, once with SLI enabled and once with it disabled. My framerates: 50's - 60's with SLI disabled, 90's - 100's with SLI enabled.
 
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.
Click to expand...

It's funny you mention 750ti and a 580. They are roughly equivalent. If you have a four year old card you just have to know where it stands.

<1% might be an underestimate. More than 1 million 970s were sold less than three months after launch. We're probably approaching 2 million by now.

Nice review. I don't have Dying Light yet, maybe I'll grab it when it drops in price but the kids are afraid of zombies... These reviews are great though, saves a lot of tweaking time.
 
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HenryBravo said:
SLI works for me in Dying Light on my dual GTX 970's (version 1.4 of the game, 347.52 drivers, SLI rendering mode set to "nVidia recommended"), so I'm surprised to read in this article that SLI wasn't working. I just double checked it to be sure. I walked around the same area within the game, once with SLI enabled and once with it disabled. My framerates: 50's - 60's with SLI disabled, 90's - 100's with SLI enabled.
Click to expand...

Same with SLI GTX 980. :confused:

Maybe I'm missing something. I'll check it out tonight and make sure I'm not off base here.
 
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Hmm SLI is working here, 3 x 980s and getting about ~ 50-60 % usage on all cards @ 1550/8200. Frame capped at 4k @ 60hz.

The vram issue is definately there at 4k and unfortunately may be a reason i move on early on with the 980s . 4k is borderline for ultra settings in nearly any game i've tried at 4gb vram with these 980s .

Getting bad stutter/video lag whenever there is a video clip to play or some times when you get into a new area. I'll try reducing shadow map to see if that helps, view distance does not.
 
SLI works great on my GTX 780s. The game performs beautifully, but I have to tune texture quality down to medium (which actually doesn't decrease the texture resolution, just tunes down the amount of texture caching that goes in VRAM... every now and then you'll see a low res texture before it loads in fully)

Thought this was funny re AMD Crossfire:
Kyle Bennett said:
The lack of driver and CrossFire profile updates over the past several months is disgusting.
Click to expand...
 
geforce man said:
Just out of curiosity, are the reference r9 290 / 290x cards still being used? Or are aftermarket cooled cards being used?

Either way, game looks great!
Click to expand...

For the 290X I use an XFX DD 290X so that it maintains 1GHz, no throttling.

For the 290 it is a stock AMD reference card, and in my testing, also does not throttle.
 
Dawill said:
I'm just going to ask the obvious question here. Why is AA on w/ the 4k tests? You are definitely going to blow out your vram doing that. Are the frame rates noticeably better @ 4k w/o AA? AA loses it's benefits as the resolution goes up IMO.
Click to expand...

AA in the game is shader based AA, not MSAA, therefore not VRAM dependent but rather shader dependent.

This game suffers from quite a bit of aliasing due to the high detail of objects in the world, even at 4K turning on AA helps a lot visually.
 
Simmonz said:
All I heard about was how buggy this game was at launch but to their credit Techland has been busy patching it. It's sad that SLI and crossfire are still broken this far past launch. I do have one question for Kyle or Brent: Why was the GTX 970 and 290 included in both the high end and midrange comparisons ?
Click to expand...

To provide comparisons for the GTX 780.
 
Yakk said:
At this point I've just written off games that use gameworks. They barely seem to work weeks after launch and are just not optimized, especially for AMD hardware.

I will be skipping results for gameworks games for the foreseeable future.
Click to expand...

I personally do not think GameWorks is the cause of that. GameWorks is just a set of technologies implemented into the game by the developer, and those technologies do run on AMD and NV GPUs and are standard DX11 effects. It is up to the Game Developer and AMD and NV respectively to optimize performance. AMD has slacked off recently on driver updates for new games. In many recent games, publishers have pushed these games out prematurely, they need more time to cook.
 
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.
Click to expand...

We include current GPUs as a guide upgrade path for the game. If you have an older GPU, you can look at GPU performance with current GPUs and decide what may be the best upgrade for you. I included the GTX 780 since it is a popular card from the previous generation, but yes, the main focus is on current GPUs. There is no way I can include every past generation video card, and even older than that? Not gonna happen, where do you draw the line. I cannot spend a month just doing one review.
 
Ashbringer said:
Lets do.

#1 Game crashed every 10 minutes at first. Eventually until patch 1.4 that issue was fixed, along with horrible stuttering issues that made the game unplayable.

#2 Nvidia mentioned features in games menu. Really hate this trend in PC gaming lately. Neither Nvidia or AMD should be involved to the point where I get to see their logo in the game.

#3 Horrible grain effect that patch 1.4 allows you to remove but doesn't really remove it 100%. It's a cheap trick to hide how horrible the graphics really are in this game.

#4 BTW, for those wondering the game does look bad graphically. People in the game animate worse than Half Life 2. Textures don't look very detailed. You can almost count the polygons in some cases. It just looks so badly done.

But it is better than Dead Island for a Zombie sand box type game. That really doesn't say much. But at least the quests aren't boring and are rewarding, most of the time.

Also
Khan!
Click to expand...

Not seeing the issues you've indicated, thanks for the feedback though.
 
Nice review, and good to see a solid card-testing game come out. Alas, my GTX660 is looking long in the tooth. The 660Ti 3gb in my main rig, however might have some legs yet...(@1080p).
 
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this game is great fun with a couple of friends in coop , we killed it in a week or so .
think were going to revisit it again from the beginning , i think they added a hard mode :D
 
welp 1.5 just dropped lol.. redo review? xD jk

Features:

* Hard Mode added
* National outfits added
* 4 outfits as a reward for finishing the story campaign added
* Over 50 new weapons added
* New weapon rarity level – extremely rare Gold weapons added

Gameplay:

* Various balance tweaks of weapons, loot chests, shops and crafting
* Various improvements to game quests
* Improvements in natural movement flow

Technical:

* Resolved various stability issues including co-op
* Improved overall game performance

Visuals:

* Various improvements in world and character art

Be the Zombie:

* New option to enable zombie invasions with co-op disabled added
Click to expand...
 
I'm always afraid something like that will happen.

When SLI/CrossFire are properly working in this game, I will consider a follow-up update to compare SLI and CF performance.
 
Why are some people reporting their sli is working? Is it just one of those, works for some, broken for others bug?
 
Geforcepat said:
Huh? pretty sure if there were any major problems [H] would've said so:confused:
Click to expand...

The issues are well reported if you Google. There was even a mod on nexusmods to remove the grain effect, but most of everything was fixed in patch 1.4.0 Most likely [H] tested it with patch 1.4.0 when everything was fixed. Still a terrible thing to buy the game to see that it's not even playable.

But seriously the game isn't impressive in terms of graphics. Especially for a game with such high system requirements. As far as gameplay goes it's a lot better than Dead Island, though nothing memorable.
 
Ashbringer said:
The issues are well reported if you Google. There was even a mod on nexusmods to remove the grain effect, but most of everything was fixed in patch 1.4.0 Most likely [H] tested it with patch 1.4.0 when everything was fixed. Still a terrible thing to buy the game to see that it's not even playable.

But seriously the game isn't impressive in terms of graphics. Especially for a game with such high system requirements. As far as gameplay goes it's a lot better than Dead Island, though nothing memorable.
Click to expand...


If you actually read the article before asking a bunch of questions you might be a bit more informed.
 
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