Dishonored 2 Performance / Settings Suggestions?

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Hey all,

So I have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for good single player story based FPS games for the last couple of years. Since I have finished most of the newer ones, I have been looking at older ones I missed the first time around.

I just finished Dishonored (2012). It was quite fun to play it at 8k DSR on my 4k screen with all the settings maxed. Not a bad game. I enjoyed it. Since the 2016 sequel was on sale on Steam last night, I decided to go for it.


Has anyone played this lately and can speak to settings that worked for them?


I understand Dishonored 2 had a really rough launch on the PC, but that most of its problems should be solved by now. That may not be entirely accurate though.

I played around with settings, and no matter what I did I got extremely choppy gameplay, but with very low CPU and GPU utilization, indicating that I was neither GPU nor CPU limited. I dropped the resolution to 4k (it is a newer title after all) and still had no luck. At 4k with TSAA on, the framerates were in the high 50's / low 60's, but the motion felt like I was getting 10-15 fps.

Finally I found the advanced settings tab which I had somehow missed before, and disabled "dynamic resolution", and enabled Triple Buffering. Now the game is pretty damn smooth. Only problem? It now seems to either be capping framerate or vsyncing at 60 fps for some reason.

The target framerate settings seem to only be relevant when dynamic resolution is enabled, but even so, I enabled dynamic resolution (to make the target framerate slider not greyed out) slid it up to 90fps, and then disabled dynamic resolution again, and still nothing. Framerate is an exact flat line at 60fps with GPU utilization anywhere from upper 60's to lower 80's%.

I mean, 4k resolution with TSAA on and turned up at 60fps is still pretty respectable, but my utilization numbers make me feel I could somehow be doing better.

Any suggestions? Or is this game still just broken, and the 60fps I've found is the sweet spot I'm going to get?

Appreciate any suggestions!
 
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It's been a while since I had it installed but I remember the game doesn't like running at framerates that aren't multiples of 60 (or 30). There's some kind of bad frame pacing issue if it's not at 30, 60 or 120. It's like the game's player movement, physics, etc are hard coded to tick at a certain rate and if your frame rate isn't 30/60/120 the fluidity is completely destroyed

In other words, assuming you are running 4k @ 60hz refresh rate, either run with Vsync on (capped to 60fps which the game likes anyway) or turn off Vsync but cap framerate to 120 and ensure the game STAYS at 120. 90 fps might work but I can't remember.
 
Aireoth said:
quick googles says the vsync is likely to blame, turn it off and see what you get. The engine is hard capped at 120fps.
Click to expand...

Turning vsync off in game settings didn't work (I had already tried that) , but forcing it off in drivers did, and framerate went up, but now it's choppy again, lol.

Colonel Sanders said:
It's been a while since I had it installed but I remember the game doesn't like running at framerates that aren't multiples of 60 (or 30). There's some kind of bad frame pacing issue if it's not at 30, 60 or 120. It's like the game's player movement, physics, etc are hard coded to tick at a certain rate and if your frame rate isn't 30/60/120 the fluidity is completely destroyed

In other words, assuming you are running 4k @ 60hz refresh rate, either run with Vsync on (capped to 60fps which the game likes anyway) or turn off Vsync but cap framerate to 120 and ensure the game STAYS at 120. 90 fps might work but I can't remember.
Click to expand...

Well that explains my experiences above, thanks for that.

I was playing in the 80's to 90's last night, and it was really choppy and weird. I guess I'll have to cap it at 60.

I have an Asus ROG Strix XG438, 43" which does up to 120hz with FreeSync2 / G-Sync Compatible, but I do not have the GPU horsepower to run it pinned at 120fps, or even 90fps, so I guess capping it at 60fps will be the best option, as I don't want to drop settings down, or lower resolution.

Thank you for the suggestions!
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Hey all,

So I have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for good single player story based FPS games for the last couple of years.

Since I have finished most of the newer ones, I have been looking at older ones I missed the first time around.

I just finished Dishonored (2012). it was quite fun to play it at 8k DSR on my 4k screen with all the settings maxed. Not a bad game. I enjoyed it.

Since the 2016 sequel was on sale on Steam last night, I decided to go for it.


Has anyone played this lately and can speak to settings that worked for them?


I understand Dishonored 2 had a really rough launch on the PC, but that most of its problems should be solved by now.

That may not be entirely accurate though.

I played around with settings, and no matter what I did I got extremely choppy gameplay, but with very low CPU and GPU utilization, indicating that I was neither GPU nor CPU limited.

I dropped the resolution to 4k (it is a newer title after all) and still had no luck. At 4k with TSAA on, the framerates were in the high 50's / low 60's, but the motion felt like I was getting 10-15 fps.

Finally I found the advanced settings tab which I had somehow missed before, and disabled "dynamic resolution", and enabled Triple Buffering. Now the game is pretty damn smooth. Only problem? It now seems to either be capping framerate or vsyncing at 60 fps for some reason.

The target framerate settings seem to only be relevant when dynamic resolution is enabled, but even so, I enabled dynamic resolution (to make the target framerate slider not greyed out) slid it up to 90fps, and then disabled dynamic resolution again, and still nothing. Framerate is an exact flat line at 60fps with GPU utilization anywhere from upper 60's to lower 80's%.

I mean, 4k resolution with TSAA on and turned up at 60fps is still pretty respectable, but my utilization numbers make me feel I could somehow be doing better.

Any suggestions? Or is this game still just broken, and the 60fps I've found is the sweet spot I'm going to get?

Appreciate any suggestions!
Click to expand...
Turn triple buffering off. With it turned on the game is probably still trying to use V-Sync. V-Sync and triple buffering should be turned off. Turn dynamic resolution and method to off. If you're trying to run the game in one of the windowed modes, try full screen instead.
 
No problems on 1070, 2070 Super, or 3060.

Also, it’s a good game. ;)

I’ve played it at 1080, 1440, and Ultrawide.
 
Coming back to this, the game is very playable capped at 60hz. It really was the "not even multiples of 60" issue that was resulting in my choppiness, and I only accidentally solved it by enabling triple buffering, and thus vsync.

Its a shame it doesn't work well with G-Sync, but I'm happy with 60hz.
 
I remember having lots of issues with getting that game to run smoothly. It was one of those games where vsync and smoke/fog = slideshow even on primo hardware at launch. I think a hardware upgrade ended up being the "fix" in spite of me having a top tier card when the game came out.

Neat game, though. I had a lot of fun with both Dishonored games. Hopefully that's a franchise they'll revisit after Deathloop.
 
Domingo said:
I remember having lots of issues with getting that game to run smoothly. It was one of those games where vsync and smoke/fog = slideshow even on primo hardware at launch. I think a hardware upgrade ended up being the "fix" in spite of me having a top tier card when the game came out.

Neat game, though. I had a lot of fun with both Dishonored games. Hopefully that's a franchise they'll revisit after Deathloop.
Click to expand...

I finished it already. Liked it. Got my moneys worth, 35 hours to get through as Corvo, which is better than the first, which only got me 22 hours.

I wonder if it is any different if I play as Emily, or if it is essentially just the same game again but with a different voiceover and different grunt soundeffects.
 
Same game story-wise but Emily has unique powers, some of which are alternate versions of Corvo's like her Far Reach (rather than teleport you like Blink you travel as you move to the marker and if the marker is placed on an enemy they're pulled toward you instead).

Personally I liked Emily's powers though in NG+ you get both hers and Corvo's combined so it doesn't matter who you play as.
 
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