Inconsistent, significant FPS drops with ray tracing during zone transitions of certain areas of certain maps

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Performance Feedback
1

Issue Description (Required):

I have noticed major frame rate drops when entering certain areas of certain missions, occurring inconsistently. The most reliably I have been able to reproduce this is on Relay Station TRS-150. When crossing a certain invisible line (which I assume is a zone transition), my frame rate will drop from 70’s-100’s down to 30’s-40’s and remain there until exiting that zone, or sometimes for multiple subsequent zones. Stepping back over the invisible line will cause my frames to rise back to normal.

I have noticed a few invisible lines in the above map where this MAY occur when crossing over them, but not 100% of the time. These include entering the long hallway before the elevator with open windows and blowing sand at the very beginning of the mission, stepping into the room where you need to press the button to open the door to the first enemies of the mission, and entering the first larger outdoor area right after the first medicae station.

I have noticed the same issue with certain zone transitions in other missions, such as entering the first sandy outdoor area in Excise Vault Spireside-13, but these are harder to test or reproduce as the missions are not always available to select. Relay station is always available via special operations menu.

I estimate that this occurs maybe half of the time, at least on Relay station TRS-150. I have tested this many times, and I cannot figure out why it occurs some times but not others. I will load the map with the same settings and same conditions, and it will occur about half of the time. It does not seem to be affected by enemy presence, occurring whether there are a lot of enemies or no enemies.

I have also noticed that this issue only occurs if ray tracing is enabled. If I disable ray tracing in the menu while the bug is occurring, my frame rate will rise back up to 130’s-150’s. Turning ray tracing back on after that will cause it to drop back to 30’s-40’s. But I must stress that my frame rate is usually 70’s-100’s even with ray tracing on high in other areas, other maps, or even in the same areas when this bug does not trigger. I just don’t know why it occurs so inconsistently.

Game settings:
-all graphics settings on high, lighting on extreme
-Frame generation disabled
-Ray tracing reflections and GI on high
-NVIDIA DLSS Quality
-NVIDIA reflex low latency enabled
-1440p resolution
-Vsync disabled

-Worker threads set to 8

It is hard for me to say when this really started, but I started noticing it after coming back to Darktide more regularly after the Skitarii update. I was not playing Darktide for a few months prior to the Skitarii update, but I’m pretty sure this was not happening when I was playing in January-March of this year. I was using the same settings and ray tracing back then as well.

I have not been noticing similar issues in other games.

Is there any reason to be concerned about a new hardware issue with this problem? Or is this just a problem with Darktide’s ray tracing? Has anyone else experienced issues like this lately?

Attempted Solutions (Optional):

-Clearing the shader cache twice
-Verifying game files
-Reinstalling Darktide
-Reinstalling my NVIDIA GPU driver

-experimented with changing worker threads between 6-10

None helpful.

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

[PC] PC Specifications (Optional):

My PC specs:
-AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3d
-NVIDIA 5070 ti, 16gb vram
-32gb system ram
-game is installed on internal 2TB SSD which is mostly empty
-Windows 11 OS
-CPU and GPU temps are usually 60-62 C while playing, including when this bug occurs
-there were no changes to my PC hardware or software that preceded this issue
-I am not using any mods and never have

2

Not to jump on a conclussion, but it seems you are running out of VRAM!

Remember,

However, even 16GB cards can experience VRAM exhaustion if Ray Tracing and ultra-fog settings are enabled

3

VRAM is always listed as not particularly close to full usage (something like 9-11 GB out of 16 per my recollection) whenever this occurs.

4

I tried lowering the volumetric fog setting to medium, keeping everything else the same including ray tracing remaining on high, to test the theory that this could be due to some interaction between the ray tracing and volumetric fog settings.

I ran about 8 trials of starting a game on Relay Station TRS-150 on uprising difficulty, just for a few minutes each time to cross over those first few zone transitions.

I was able to trigger the bug 2 times out of those. Both times, my FPS abruptly dropped to 40’s-50 upon crossing the invisible line leading into the first open outdoor area right after the first medicae station. I note that taking just a few steps backwards, back across that invisible line, caused my FPS to immediately jump back up to normal. The other times where the bug did not trigger, the FPS didn’t change at all and remained in the 70’s-90’s throughout the zone transitions.

Of the 2 times it triggered, my VRAM usage was at 8.9GB and 9GB respectively, so definitely not maxed out.

5

I’m curious if this is an asset loading issue or something to do with directstorage? No idea why it would be so inconsistent, but the 5000 series has a fairly narrow memory bus from what I remember. Not coping with the level loading and the workload at the same time?

6

I have no idea how I would test this. Would this be an issue with Darktide or some fault with my hardware? I have already tried reinstalling Darktide and deleting the shader cache a few times, to no avail.

7

I’m afraid I have no idea how to test it either and I should say it’s pure speculation on my part. Darktide can be weird with loading/streaming in general in my experience, but I think it’s interesting RT is the thing that pushes it over the line in a way that’s connected with a threshold. Again - my observation, can’t really offer much concrete help. Probably need someone with a bit more experience to say if it’s likely or not.

8

As an update, I downloaded Cyberpunk 2077 to test ray tracing in a relatively well-optimized game that makes heavy use of ray tracing. All settings to high/ultra including ray tracing. No path tracing or frame generation. I just drove or walked around different areas of the city for about an hour and a half, indoor and outdoor, both day and night. There I was getting a steady 80-100 FPS without any significant drops or stutters.

I guess this makes it more likely that this is an issue with Darktide’s ray tracing specifically, but I still can’t for the life of me figure out why it occurs so inconsistently. It’s also weird that I don’t recall this happening at all earlier this year with the same PC and same settings.