The Last of Us Part I Performance Complaints Debunked

[Frag Maniac]

I just started playing The Last of Us Part I a few days ago. Now before anyone assumes I'm an idiot for buying it so early with all the talk of horrible performance, read further. I've done about a playthrough and a half, am playing on an 8700K, GTX 1080, and 16GB RAM, with stock clocks, at 1080p on ALL High settings, including all Textures, with AF bumped up to 16x, and FSR 2 on Quality mode. I'm talking about gameplay experiences with update 1.0.6.0 btw, as I've not had a chance yet to play with the latest 1.0.7.0 patch.

The Graphics menu auto set me to 4x AF, Default Scaling, most everything at High, with all Textures on Med. It also had Motion Blur and Depth of Field On, both of which I turned Off. I also play with in game Vsync and Frame Limiter disabled, using NCP to set Vsync to On, with a 60 FPS frame rate limiter. This is because if I use the in game VS/FL settings, I get a bit of screen tear. Through most of the game I am now getting at or near 60 FPS. I've had only TWO instances so far where my FPS dropped to 38 for a second, which caused a very slight hitch.

Neither of those very slight hitches affected gameplay at all, as it runs quite well when engaged with enemies. They both occurred during casual exploration, one at the dam when walking near the turbine they'd just turned on, the other at the university when seeing the monkeys outdoors for the first time. Some claim dense forest scenes can have quite an impact, but while in them I stayed at pretty much 60 FPS mostly, whether on foot or horseback, regardless of speed.

I am currently uploading a 28 min video to verify this, and word is, Valve have given an unlimited refund time on this game, due to all the complaints, which I feel is an unnecessary freebie. You MUST however let shaders compile completely in the main menu before playing, or you WILL get stutters in game. On update 1.0.6.0, the shaders compiled in roughly 15 min or so on my CPU. The shaders need be compiled just once, though updating your GPU driver will require it be done again. Game updates however do not affect compile status.

As soon as I can I will post the aforementioned gameplay video that shows onscreen FPS, Frame Time, RAM/VRAM usage, and CPU and GPU usage and temps. It's got a little over an hour to finish uploading according to YT, but processing to 1440p could take a fair bit of time. Hopefully I can get it posted by today sometime.

[EDITED]
And here's that video I was referring to. I should first say this game uses a lot of RAM and CPU. I've always used a tool to disable all telemetry in W10, which frees up at least 1GB RAM, and I highly recommend that for this game. I use O&O ShutUp10, and it can be done with one click. If you prefer to have some apps accessible vs all of them off, it's just as easily reversed as well. I'm sure the same can be done in W11 if you happen to be using it instead.

The frame drop I referred to happens at 8:33. There is also a hitch at 14:13, but that one is a ShadowPlay capture glitch, it didn't occur in game. You can either choose to believe me or not on that one, but you can clearly see the FPS does not drop.

 

[Slasken]

Your good experience doesn't mean that many people aren't having trouble.

I remember Dishonored 2. People were having issues there as well, on better HW than I had at the time.

I have a 3080 now, and I can't play Farming Simulator 2 because of poor performance.

 

[Frag Maniac]

A TON of experience with these kind of scenarios tells me people complaining of poor performance usually have hardware below spec, or are doing or not doing something with their PC or game settings that causes it. Another reason to be skeptical about their claims is despite Valve lifting the 2 hr window policy on this game, making it literally FREE to play all the way through and still get a full refund, is many are clinging to the neg reviews, taking them as gospel truth, and boycotting because of it, vs trying it for themselves.

I also had no trouble playing Dishonored 2, and my spec wasn't exactly top of the line. As far as Simulator games go, the fact that you talk about Farming Simulator 2, a SIM type game, which typically are very CPU demanding, as if you only need a good GPU, tells me you are probably not paying as much attention to system requirements as you should be.

I'm not saying the game didn't launch with need for performance improvements, but it's also clear to me their patches have polished performance dramatically. I used to often dip to 45 FPS or less even on FSR 2 Performance mode with Med Textures on patch 1.0.1.0. I now stay mostly at or near 60 FPS on FSR 2 Quality mode with High Textures on patch 1.0.6.0. It NEVER had constant stutter or crashing like many are claiming even on patch 1.0.1.0 though, which tells me people got anxious and didn't wait for shaders to compile.

I've even seen Digital Foundry, a site I used to think was very thorough and professional, show blurry screenshots of brick walls on Med textures, and they didn't even say what patch build they were playing on. I double checked brick walls when I was playing on Med Textures at patch 1.0.1.0, and never saw anything as blurry as they showed, and on 1.0.6.0 on High Textures, something many claim I'm not supposed to be able to play on, I clearly have proven the game looks and runs fantastic.

Like I said above, you can choose to believe it or not, but there's ZERO reason not to try it for yourself and see. I've played Iron Galaxy ports that indeed DID have performance issues, like Arkham Knight and Uncharted LoTC, but those were also ports that pretty much EVERYONE had issues with. TLoU Part I has had plenty of people that aren't on top of the line spec point out that it plays fine for them as long as they let shaders compile completely first, but it falls on deaf ears.

If we expect to get a PC port of TLoU Part II any time within a few years, people are going to have to stop the bashing and try this game. Otherwise you only have yourselves to blame for them catering mostly to consoles. Were you even aware that many that were initially bashing the game were not even on the official Nvidia driver for it yet, and are now saying with that driver on patch 1.0.7.0 it's running fine? If you don't believe me, check the Steam forums.

Just the fact that the 531.41 Nvidia driver for the game released 3/23/23, a whole FIVE DAYS prior to the launch of the game, yet many are just now trying it and reporting no more crashes, tells me most complaining of performance on this title are idiots that don't have a CLUE what it takes to get good results gaming on a PC.

 

[ZedClampet]

A TON of experience with these kind of scenarios tells me people complaining of poor performance usually have hardware below spec, or are doing or not doing something with their PC or game settings that causes it. Another reason to be skeptical about their claims is despite Valve lifting the 2 hr window policy on this game, making it literally FREE to play all the way through and still get a full refund, is many are clinging to the neg reviews, taking them as gospel truth, and boycotting because of it, vs trying it for themselves.

I also had no trouble playing Dishonored 2, and my spec wasn't exactly top of the line. As far as Simulator games go, the fact that you talk about Farming Simulator 2, a SIM type game, which typically are very CPU demanding, as if you only need a good GPU, tells me you are probably not paying as much attention to system requirements as you should be.

I'm not saying the game didn't launch with need for performance improvements, but it's also clear to me their patches have polished performance dramatically. I used to often dip to 45 FPS or less even on FSR 2 Performance mode with Med Textures on patch 1.0.1.0. I now stay mostly at or near 60 FPS on FSR 2 Quality mode with High Textures on patch 1.0.6.0. It NEVER had constant stutter or crashing like many are claiming even on patch 1.0.1.0 though, which tells me people got anxious and didn't wait for shaders to compile.

I've even seen Digital Foundry, a site I used to think was very thorough and professional, show blurry screenshots of brick walls on Med textures, and they didn't even say what patch build they were playing on. I double checked brick walls when I was playing on Med Textures at patch 1.0.1.0, and never saw anything as blurry as they showed, and on 1.0.6.0 on High Textures, something many claim I'm not supposed to be able to play on, I clearly have proven the game looks and runs fantastic.

Like I said above, you can choose to believe it or not, but there's ZERO reason not to try it for yourself and see. I've played Iron Galaxy ports that indeed DID have performance issues, like Arkham Knight and Uncharted LoTC, but those were also ports that pretty much EVERYONE had issues with. TLoU Part I has had plenty of people that aren't on top of the line spec point out that it plays fine for them as long as they let shaders compile completely first, but it falls on deaf ears.

If we expect to get a PC port of TLoU Part II any time within a few years, people are going to have to stop the bashing and try this game. Otherwise you only have yourselves to blame for them catering mostly to consoles. Were you even aware that many that were initially bashing the game were not even on the official Nvidia driver for it yet, and are now saying with that driver on patch 1.0.7.0 it's running fine? If you don't believe me, check the Steam forums.

Just the fact that the 531.41 Nvidia driver for the game released 3/23/23, a whole FIVE DAYS prior to the launch of the game, yet many are just now trying it and reporting no more crashes, tells me most complaining of performance on this title are idiots that don't have a CLUE what it takes to get good results gaming on a PC.

Read the PC Gamer review and the biggest problem seems to be that the shader cache takes 40 plus minutes to load, and if you don't let it load, it runs like a slideshow. Maybe that's what's happening. People aren't waiting for the shaders to load.

 

[Slasken]

I also had no trouble playing Dishonored 2, and my spec wasn't exactly top of the line. As far as Simulator games go, the fact that you talk about Farming Simulator 2, a SIM type game, which typically are very CPU demanding, as if you only need a good GPU, tells me you are probably not paying as much attention to system requirements as you should be.

That's correct, I have an i9 10900X, 32GB of Ram to go with the RTX 3080 (12GB). I am not much paying attention to requirements, because I generally don't need to.

While Farming Simulator 22 is a sim game, it's very much in 3D, and the problem is present from the beginning, even during the tutorial. Something tells me, you haven't played it.

My setup should have no problems running the game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Read the PC Gamer review and the biggest problem seems to be that the shader cache takes 40 plus minutes to load, and if you don't let it load, it runs like a slideshow. Maybe that's what's happening. People aren't waiting for the shaders to load.

Well, that tells me you probably didn't read my first post above (apologies if you did and were only thinking others claims were the facts). Even on patch 1.0.1.0, the shaders compiled in about 25 min for me, pretty much the same amount of time the Uncharted LoTC shaders compiled. That's on a mere stock clock 8700K btw. On patch 1.0.6.0, I purposely deleted the shader cache folder to do it again to see how long it took. It was much faster at roughly 15 min I'd say.

The fact is, there are a ton of false claims out there that the game runs and looks like crap, likely based on build 1.0.1.0, or even a pre release unpatched version. How do I know this, because for one, even on patch 1.0.1.0, I never got any stutter even when frames dipped to 40 FPS. I've also had only ONE crash in nearly two play throughs, and it was most likely caused by my having minimized the game at length while doing something else, and it has not crashed since and I'm at a point well past where it crashed before.

I also know that brick walls don't look as blurry as what Digital Foundry showed in their assessment video of the game, which was horribly done because they didn't even say what build version it was. I went through and looked at a lot of brick walls on 1.0.1.0 when I was playing on the same Med Textures they were making that assessment with, and I never saw ANY brick walls that blurry, so it was undoubtedly an unpatched version.

The truth, as I see it from having played the game a fair bit on various patches with various settings, is that it never released in as horrible condition as people claim. As you said, most were probably getting anxious thinking they could jump right into the game while shaders were still compiling. There are also a lot of people claiming it uses too much CPU, too much RAM, and too much VRAM. Nonsense, what it does is make max use out of your hardware, without going dangerously close to their limits, while providing an adequate framerate most of the time, and doesn't even stutter when dipping to 40 FPS. Even at a 38 FPS dip, you can see in that video above that you can barely even detect a slight hitch.

That said, I feel if Iron Galaxy did release unpatched versions to pro test sites, that was a really bad move, and only caused more people to believe it ran horribly, and no doubt caused a lot of lost sales. I also feel they really SHOULD have made the shader compiling while in the main menu un-skippable, ie have to wait for it to finish.

 

[ZedClampet]

Well, that tells me you probably didn't read my first post above (apologies if you did and were only thinking others claims were the facts).

Jiminy Crickets. Don't get offended. I read your post and believed both you and the writer for PC Gamer. Different systems handle things differently. There are certainly people who aren't having problems, but there are also people who are. Not everyone who has a problem doesn't know what they are doing or has a potato. That's what's challenging about developing for PC, everyone's component configurations are different.

As for the CPU, if you are nearing 100 percent, that actually is a problem. Not a problem at all for the GPU, but for the CPU, yes.

I'm sure everyone is overblowing the problems. There is a mob mentality as it relates to gaming. At the same time, there's too much smoke not to be a little fire.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Jiminy Crickets. Don't get offended. I read your post and believed both you and the writer for PC Gamer. Different systems handle things differently. There are certainly people who aren't having problems, but there are also people who are. Not everyone who has a problem doesn't know what they are doing or has a potato. That's what's challenging about developing for PC, everyone's component configurations are different.

As for the CPU, if you are nearing 100 percent, that actually is a problem. Not a problem at all for the GPU, but for the CPU, yes.

I'm sure everyone is overblowing the problems. There is a mob mentality as it relates to gaming. At the same time, there's too much smoke not to be a little fire.

The thing is though, I can pretty much tell that writer was on a pre release, unpatched copy of the game, because it is very unlikely someone doing such a review would have potato spec, and it would also make PC GMR look pretty bad. People shouldn't even be given copies of or post public opinions of prerelease copies. It would be like judging a game's visual quality on alpha footage.

The CPU usage only gets near to being as high as GPU usage is when a game makes thorough use of it. My CPU never gets more than about 70c, even when under the biggest load the game puts on it, and that's on what is now considered to be an outdated air cooler.

Bottom line, there's just too much BS chat out there about this game. Sorry if I made you feel like I thought you said something unacceptable to me. It's more that I just don't see reviews on pre release copies of games as credible.

 

[Frag Maniac]

That's correct, I have an i9 10900X, 32GB of Ram to go with the RTX 3080 (12GB). I am not much paying attention to requirements, because I generally don't need to.

While Farming Simulator 22 is a sim game, it's very much in 3D, and the problem is present from the beginning, even during the tutorial. Something tells me, you haven't played it.

My setup should have no problems running the game.

No, I don[t play SIM type games of any type, not my thing, but I DO know the builder type ones or real world type SIms vs racing Sims CAN be heavy on the CPU.

 

[ZedClampet]

The thing is though, I can pretty much tell that writer was on a pre release, unpatched copy of the game....

He said he had two post release patches.

The CPU usage only gets near to being as high as GPU usage is when a game makes thorough use of it.

And if you are in the very large group of gamers who don't have as good a CPU as an i7-8700k running at 4.7 ghz? The game doesn't scale to your CPU. Look at the Steam hardware survey (the March survey is incorrect). There are 36% of Steam users with fewer than 6 cores, and of those with 6 or more, there's no telling how many of those are mobile versions given the popularity of gaming laptops.

That's correct, I have an i9 10900X, 32GB of Ram to go with the RTX 3080 (12GB). I am not much paying attention to requirements, because I generally don't need to.

While Farming Simulator 22 is a sim game, it's very much in 3D, and the problem is present from the beginning, even during the tutorial. Something tells me, you haven't played it.

My setup should have no problems running the game.

See, this makes my point about the oddities of systems. I have hundreds of hours in Farming Simulator 22 across 1 desktop and 3 gaming laptops, all with different specs, all with worse specs than you, and I currently have 600 mods (estimate). None of my PCs have ever had a problem with the game. I've never seen it fall below 60 fps, which is where I have it capped.

It is useless to talk about how a game runs on a single set-up, even though I do it frequently.

Edit: I do have one problem with FS22. It doesn't recognize my controllers. No one else seems to have that problem.

 

[Slasken]

See, this makes my point about the oddities of systems. I have hundreds of hours in Farming Simulator 22 across 1 desktop and 3 gaming laptops, all with different specs, all with worse specs than you, and I currently have 600 mods (estimate). None of my PCs have ever had a problem with the game. I've never seen it fall below 60 fps, which is where I have it capped.

It is useless to talk about how a game runs on a single set-up, even though I do it frequently.

Edit: I do have one problem with FS22. It doesn't recognize my controllers. No one else seems to have that problem.

Maybe I should try capping it at 60 hz. It's pretty much unplayable the way it is. Stutters all over the place.

controllers do work, but they are Series X Controllers.

No, I don[t play SIM type games of any type, not my thing, but I DO know the builder type ones or real world type SIms vs racing Sims CAN be heavy on the CPU.

Minimum CPU for FS22 is basically a potato.

 

[Frag Maniac]

He said he had two post release patches.

You see, this is the kind of stuff that just doesn't make sense. There's no way the 2nd patch would produce those results, because even the first wasn't that bad.

 

[DXCHASE]

Meanwhile the remake of Resident Evil 4 has been really stable and glitch free, we even got free DLC yesterday!

 

[Frag Maniac]

Meanwhile the remake of Resident Evil 4 has been really stable and glitch free, we even got free DLC yesterday!

The only "glitch" I've experienced in TLoU Part I is s single spot in the game where the interactive icon of a power cord disappearing as you get near it keeps you from plugging it into a generator to let Ellie and the horse through a gate at the university. It's easily bypassed by the game's Skip Puzzle feature, and you only miss like 5 sec worth of actually plugging the cord in. The main part of that little diversion where Joel leaves Ellie to find a way through is dealing with a bunch of infected when he finds his way to the generator.

I really don't think that's enough to label TLoU Part I as a buggy game. It's pretty much glitch and stutter free, and in fact plays on settings higher than the auto detect would lead you to believe you can.