Chaos Wastes Performance Issues/FPS Drops

The most obvious slowdown that occurs is on the Chaos Wastes Holseher’s Tower (Something like that) Mission.

  • Location: First room of the tower a few minutes into the map. It is full of tables and bookcases; and after you had crossed the bridge and a set of ladders or stairs up to it. It is always this room that destroys my performance the worst out of any location in this update.

  • Specs: RTX 3070, Ryzen 7 3700x, 16 GB. High settings. FPS goes from 90 to 50 in that room when hordes and bosses spawn there. Very large difference. Repeatable. And improves afterwards on taking the next stairs. Before the update on other maps I often had FPS in the 110s steady throughout entire levels.

  • Windows version: Version 10.0.19042 Build 19042

  • I have played through the map on Sienna and otherwise, but I did not notice any significant difference.

  • With or without powerups the FPS seems to be the same. But I’ve had the 20% HP power-up from a guaranteed boss spawn at least one time on the laggy map, and it did not spawn until we reached that room and then there were somehow two of them to deal with.

Hi all.

I had FPS drops since before the chaos wastes update but with this update gets worse and allways is sienna and/or fire involved.

-What sort of FPS are you achieving?
59-60. Drops to around 30-40 when there is a fire rat or sienna fights an orde or uses career skill (unchained and battlewizard).

  • Current game setting: High/medium
    -Your PC’s specifications?
    AMD RX 5700 XT
    AMD ryzen 5 2600 six core 3.4 GHz
    64bit
    RAM 16gb
    -Was Sienna played? Which career?
    Yes, BattleWizard (beamstaff) and unchained ( beamstaff and careerskill)
    -Was there lit lamp oil involved?
    No
    -Screenshot ( FPS top left)

When i instaled the game some months ago i was playing at almost max settings but right now i have several fps drops as you can see in the picture and allways is sienna involved or a firerat.

What sort of FPS are you achieving?
Before the CW update, 60-100 during regular gameplay. Now, 40-60 average both in CW and in normal areas. In certain CW areas, 15-30. I’ve absolutely tanked every performance setting I could and can’t get better FPS than this anymore.

Have you made sure your mods are disabled? This is important!
Have tried 100% unmodded and still had the same problems

Your PC’s specifications?
i7 2600k, Radeon RX 480

Your Windows version? ‘Settings’ → ‘About’ → ‘OS Build’
Windows 10 19042.928

Was Sienna played? Which career?
Usually someone in the party.

Was there lit lamp oil involved?
Not always

Which locations do you notice this the most in? Screenshots of the worst offending areas appreciated!
The worst I’ve experienced involved the area that goes through a replica of Taal’s Horn Keep. The pit in the center (where you would normally talk to Lohner or open chests) absolutely tanked my FPS down to 10.

In general it seems to be far, far worse when combined with the special effects from certain Chaos Gods’ influence.

Did your FPS drop after using power-ups, or right from the start?
FPS in general seems worse overall right from the start everywhere, but drops very harshly in certain areas.

One thing I have noticed is that even when the FPS drops to 15, if I hit escape to open a menu it immediately jumps back up to a smooth 60+ even with the game playing normally in the background.

PC specs:
NVIDIA geforce RTX 2080 super
I9-9770K 8 core processor
64 bit
RAM 64GB

Running on Extreme settings. Consistently get huge 10 second freezes. Game unplayable. Please check it out, thanks.

Now that I’m looking at performance more closely, there’s very strange thing I’m seeing.

When FPS is good (60-100), my task manager reports 50-80% CPU and GPU utilization.

When my FPS goes bad, my utilization also drops like a rock. When an area goes to 30 FPS, I also see my CPU and GPU utilization drop to around 20-30%.

When I’m in an area with awful FPS, and press esc to open the menu, my FPS jumps back up to 60ish and my CPU/GPU utilization also jump back up to normal. When I close the menu my FPS goes right back to awful and my CPU/GPU utilization also go back to 20-30%.

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On further testing and paying attention, I think the issues aren’t really related to the area at all.

It seems like performance in general just keeps dropping over time the more enemies that spawn, which is greatly accelerated the more stuff is going on in terms of particle effects and similar things. For example, a giant beastmen horde with a banner immediately kills FPS. Sienna with fire, or Kerillian with Hagbane similarly does bad things. FPS stays poor even once all the enemies have died, the effects are gone, and regardless of what I’m looking at. Once the area is left, or something seems to happen to reset an area, FPS immediately jumps back to normal.

Also as to the CPU/GPU utilization problem, the top is my system with the game running at ~20 FPS, the bottom is immediately after hitting esc which fixes my FPS and gets it back to 60, even if there’s lots of action still going on. So whatever the menu is doing to the game, have that done all the time. As it is things become predictably unplayable, and I have a friend I’m trying to get into the game and I doubt he’ll be interested with how poorly it performs right now.

  • What sort of FPS are you achieving?
    Below 60, often dropping below 30 in heavy situations. Stuttering is constantly present, and even the rare time that I don’t drop, it never feels smooth due to the stuttering.
  • Have you made sure your mods are disabled? This is important!
    Not all mods. I am still using No Wobble and Numeric UI, and a few other unimportant ones. I’ll try removing all but No Wobble (unplayable for me without No Wobble).
  • Your PC’s specifications?
    i7-7700k
    1070 Ti
    16GB DDR4
  • Your Windows version? ‘Settings’ → ‘About’ → ‘OS Build’
    19042.928
  • Was Sienna played? Which career?
    Sienna wasn’t involved. But all Sienna careers heavily drop my FPS when using their staff.
  • Was there lit lamp oil involved?
    No.
  • Which locations do you notice this the most in? Screenshots of the worst offending areas appreciated!
    Khorne maps are the worst, especially the ones with the blood tornados.
    *Did your FPS drop after using power-ups, or right from the start?
    From the start.

console-2021-04-20-23.21.50-34f4e437-0c77-420a-a9f4-bdb76a0a86f8.log (1.9 MB)

user_settings.config

CPU & GPU usage go DOWN in areas where the FPS drops

I’ve put this at the top as monitoring task manager / resource monitor it was a bizarre thing to notice.

Typical FPS is capped at 60, will sometimes drop as low as 58 but generally very stable.
Problem areas cause FPS to drop as low as 30 and the game is as responsive during those times as if I’m covered in treacle.
This is generally related to a very specific direction, sometimes in the skybox. Unfortunately, sometimes that direction is where the hoard is coming from. Most seem to involve heat shimmers or other “distortion” effects.

OS Build: 19041.928
PC specs:
i5-7600k @ 3.8 GHz
GeForce GTX 970 DDR5 4GB
Corsair 3200 DDR3 16GB
Sabrent Rocket Q m.2 NVMe 1TB

Happens even whithout Sienna and with no lamp oil involved.
FPS drops without powerups being used (they make no major difference for me).
Issues are purely environmental.
I will edit with screen shots, just wanted the rest of the info filled in.


Have you made sure your mods are disabled? This is important!
All disabled from this point. I’ll speed run some zones and report below.

  • Which locations do you notice this the most in? Screenshots of the worst offending areas appreciated!

I wanted a quick test run of previous content, so that I had a base line to compare against with Chaos Waste performance issues.
Speed ran Garden of Morr. FPS didn’t drop below 55 for anything until the exit. At the bottom of the ramp facing the portal (no portal effect at this point), it dropped to 51 fps.

Screenshots from new zones:
Count Mordrek’s Fortress - no influence:

The Forbidden Trail - Nurgle influenced - no observable performance issues at any point.

The Foetid Gorge - no influence - no observable performance issues at any point.

Arena of Determination - Tzeench Influence - no observable performance issues

Problem child was saved for last…

Pinnacle of Nightmares - Slaanesh influenced - very regular FPS drops throughout.
Key locations:

Pinnacle of Nightmare - Tzeench - no FPS issues for the whole zone.

Same location as in the quoted image, yet double the FPS. only difference is Slaanesh causes suffering in the form of FPS issues.

  • What sort of FPS are you achieving?
    60 (capped) - 50

  • Have you made sure your mods are disabled? This is important!
    Yes

  • Your PC’s specifications?
    Intel Core i7 7700k
    Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
    16gb DDR4 RAM
    WIndows 10
    DX12

  • Your Windows version? ‘Settings’ → ‘About’ → ‘OS Build’
    19041.928

  • Was Sienna played? Which career?
    no

  • Was there lit lamp oil involved?
    no

  • Which locations do you notice this the most in? Screenshots of the worst offending areas appreciated!
    literally anywhere that an enemy can be attacked

  • Did your FPS drop after using power-ups, or right from the start?
    no FPS loss, no network lag, CPU and GPU are not being maxed out. when attacking enemies, the game simply slows down, it goes in slow motion. I have tried everything to fix this issue with no results. if I’m being honest, it actually seems to give me an advantage, because I have way more time to block attacks, line up shots, react to the unexpected. the problem is that’s not very exciting and quite a slog. my original thread here, Game running in slow motion

Thinking on this a bit and playing a bit more, my guess is this:

Something related to the enemies in general and having some kind of effects on them is lasting past the point where it should be garbage collected/disabled/whatever you want to call it. It’s continually being processed on a single thread, which causes the lower CPU/GPU utilization over time when everything slows down to the speed of this one CPU task. It not being garbage collected on time means that as time goes on in a single part of the map with more enemies being torched/blown apart/poisoned/etc means the whole game is increasingly slowed down over time by this one CPU task more and more till unplayability. It doesn’t last forever though because crossing past certain map milestones does seem to finally garbage collect whatever was going on properly and instantly restore FPS back to normal. It does however definitely last long past the point where this processing is needed, since even after waves are dead the FPS will still be awful even while just walking around with 4 party members around, at least until you hit one of these magic map progress moments where things go back to normal.

The curious thing is how pressing esc fixes the issue. Whatever this means, it should prove that this is definitely fixable since the game is playing in the background just fine at a normal FPS when the menu is up.

It’s definitely not limited to any one map or any individual area of the map, except that it’s obviously more pronounced the more enemies you are fighting and the more effects on them. Playing later chaos wastes maps with truly constant and endless hordes that have effects on them is the quickest way to scuttle FPS.

I can also confirm that lowering settings seems to do fairly little. Putting your GPU-related settings back to normal won’t be hurting your FPS at all when the game slows down and even the CPU-related settings won’t matter much since ultimately it’s this one issue that ends up taking 75% or more of the CPU time on one core (guessing since it’s reducing my FPS by over 75% at times).

One more finding that may be useful for people playing right now! It’s not just the esc menu that fixes FPS for me. You can also hold the inspect weapon or inventory hotkey in the chaos wastes and FPS fixes itself. What’s more, you can actually play and fight normally like this (albeit with a bunch of HUD elements removed). Absolutely crazy, but I’m now holding inspect weapon constantly during slowdowns to immediately get back to 60 FPS.

I can also say that mods can fix it! Downloading the UI tweaks mod and binding a key to hide the HUD fixes FPS/

I am having Issues with random fps drops to below 1 FPS, alt tabbing seems to fix the problem but it reoccurs within a few seconds on my old graphics settings, I can currently only play on the lowest settings and still the resources used on vermitide on my task manager are super high

its maxing out my CPU on the lowest settings, I only recently have been having these problems within the last day.

FPS: used to be 60+ constantly no problem on max graphics, now on the same settings i drop to 1 even in the keep, have to play on low setting to have it playable.

Mods: never used mods, vanilla

PC Spec: GTX 1660, Intel i5-9400F, 16GB of ram

Windows Version: 19042.867

All Careers, pretty much everywhere, Happened only recently and game is unplayable on anything but lowest quality graphics, plus it is maxing out my CPU which it shouldnt be doing just by sitting in the keep

Gonna add to this Arena of Determination? The arena of the third expedition. Permanent low FPS there, 30-40 fps constantly I think.

When using the new weapons, griffon pistols and sienna’s new staff (normal attack), when the projectiles are shown my FPS take a big hit.

Still some performance issues even after today’s patch.

Normal FPS 70-80

OS Build: 19041.928
PC specs:
i5-7600k @ 3.8 GHz
GeForce GTX 970 DDR5 4GB
Corsair 3200 DDR3 16GB
Sabrent Rocket Q m.2 NVMe 1TB

No Oil
No Sienna
Playing on the official realm, some sanctioned mods are in use. 10+ hours of testing, they don’t appear to have any impact on things for me, tried with and without.

FPS drops as always (for me) are directional, certain directions on some influenced maps = -30 fps modifier. Some appear to have been hot-fixed from my previous post.
This happened today though:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1005068441

Count Mordrek’s Fortress - Tzeench influence = poor FPS

40fps here feels way worse than 40 fps under other circumstances, there also seems to be input lag or desync (despite being host).

EDIT: added log file.
I’ve had the game open a few hours now, although the game is still open and I’m tabbed out, as a friend is putting his daughter to bed so I’m writing this while waiting, log files hasn’t been updated in the text file for over an hour. sorry if its no use, hopefully, it’s not needed.
console-2021-04-29-15.13.06-68a55094-2e1c-4ba5-afdb-789238b07b42.zip (1.5 MB)

EDIT 2: clarified that this was after the patch today. Count Marmalade’s Fortress still has issues.

I noticed a return to usual FPS after todays Hotfix 4.3.0.5
Observed on various CW maps

I found Cinder Peak to be the worst offending area in terms of framerate. I consistantly maintain 60 FPS in the base game content and manage to get between 40-60 in other areas of Chaos Wastes.

Frame Rate 20 lowest 60 highest (capped)

Mods Disabled completely not even VMF Framework

PC Specs

Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 20H2
Installed on ‎3/‎23/‎2021
OS build 19042.928
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0
CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i7-9700 CPU @ 3.00GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (With latest driver)
RAM: 32GB DDR4

Character/Career Saltzpyre Witch Hunter. (Hero and Career have no baring on this section)

I’ve played several hours of CW now, but otherwise haven’t played V2 for months. It seems like, on CW levels, I get sporadic FPS dips that last anywhere from 0.5-3s. During them, my FPS gets really bad. I tried playing a few normal levels and didn’t experience out of the ordinary performance problems. My system is very old so I don’t get great performance even in the best case.

What sort of FPS are you achieving?
Outside of CW levels, I get 60 FPS with nothing going on and maybe down to 45ish with lots of things happening. When playing CW levels, usually performance is the same, except for those sporadic FPS drops that can go down to actual zero. Like, Steam’s FPS counter actually hits 1 FPS and I see no new frames being drawn for a second or more. It’s more common that it’s more like down to 15-30 FPS for those 0.5-3s where I have problems.

The longer, bigger FPS drops certainly do happen in combat, but the problem seems to be able to happen at any point in a level for me, even at the beginning.

Have you made sure your mods are disabled? This is important!
I tried a run with all mods disabled and still experienced the same issues.

Your PC’s specifications?
dxdiag.txt (40.4 KB)

Your Windows version? ‘Settings’ → ‘About’ → ‘OS Build’
Win7 SP1 (7601)

Was Sienna played? Which career?
Yes, I was playing Sienna. Experienced the problem as both BW and unchained, but what I was doing at the time didn’t seem to be important. They would happen with me just walking and not attacking or having attacked recently.

Was there lit lamp oil involved?
No.

Which locations do you notice this the most in? Screenshots of the worst offending areas appreciated!
I don’t see any pattern. It doesn’t seem to happen in the same location every time.

Did your FPS drop after using power-ups, or right from the start?
I’ve definitely had my frame rate crater at the beginning of the first level we played, before we saw any enemies or found any shrines. It might happen less often the earlier it is in a run, but I’m not sure.

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