I have basically the best system you can currently build and squeezing out a stable 157 FPS at 1080p (4k with DLSS Performance) seems impossible. Regardless of settings the game is so unstable that running with DLSS Framegen is the only way to make it remotely tolerable. This helps by capping the actual FPS much lower (around 80 fps) thus avoiding most of the 1% and .1% lows, but of course it doesn’t feel nearly as smooth as native rendering and comes with input lag.
My performance experience in Darktide is so completely detached from other titles that I have begun to believe that this is simply how this game works. It just blows my mind that this title is so unstable as compared to others like Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Battlefield, Call of Duty that reach equal if not superior graphical heights in much larger rendered areas (albeit without the hordes and packs of specials). Is this really the best we can expect after over two years?
DLSS Performance on average uses 66% of my GPU and 33% of my CPU, but there are constant spikes that will max a CPU thread or briefly approach max load on the GPU. It’s so bizarre to have so much headroom, but still end up with FPS that feels like molasses. Other games feel buttery smooth after a Darktide play session and it’s so frustrating to have no real idea of what is causing this.
Attempted Solutions (Optional):
All the community “fixes” like worker threads, full screen optimization, C states, caches etc.
Multiple resets of drivers with DDU
A clean Windows 11 install
3080ti to 4090 to 5090
9900k to 12900k to 9800X3D
Platform (Required):
PC - Steam
[PC] PC Specifications (Optional):
9800X3D
RTX 5090
64 GB CL30 6000mhz DDR5
All NVME storage
4k165z G Sync Monitor
From my experience it’s the grenade explosions, especially the ogryn’s box, that cause the frame-time issues. There just isn’t a CPU out there that can do the calculations needed in a reasonable amount of time.
Somewhere I have some video caps of all settings on low, and all settings on high, showing the frame-time spikes when an ogryn grenade goes off. Clear as day it’s the issue regardless of settings.
EDIT: Never heard of CapFrameX before, that looks really cool.
Yeah the boxes are absurd, but it’s pretty much constant regardless of whether or not an Ogryn is present. I mostly play Psyker and I will notice it when I start to mulch hordes in melee or with a staff, pretty much anything where you start to get particles and physics.
The only way to stabilize is to go for a sub 100 FPS cap or utilize Framegen (which is doing that as well), but this just leaves tons of power headroom on the table with a high end system and results in sluggish feeling game without the smooth responsiveness present in much more demanding titles. It just feels like it is getting consistently worse as the years have passed and I have upgraded my system.
I’ve tried to give concrete examples to help them track it down. If you have any other examples that could be helpful. I think it’s particle related, so increasing graphics could make it worse after an upgrade.
After spending a week trying just about everything to fix this I have gotten some major stability improvements. Still getting some worse drops in Havoc and Auric action, but it’s much more stable.
Here is what worked for me:
Experimenting with different EXPO profiles for my RAM (the largest impact)
Disabling ASUS PBO and using AMD PBO only (one of the more frustrating BIOS design choices I have ever seen)
Undervolting my CPU. I just did a basic “Advanced” PBO with a negative core offset of 30. (big temp improvements of course)
Disabling C States (AMD power consumption optimization)
8 Worker Threads (most likely to be a placebo in my mind)
What didn’t work:
All the settings file placebo tweaks
Neutering particles with mods
Changing any settings in game
What I was dealing with was so aberrant and detached from the actual load on my system or what it is capable of that I knew something had to be wrong on my end. There are absolutely optimizations Fatshark could make and I’m sure there are also issues with the current 5000 series drivers, but fundamentally this was so bad because of how touchy the 9800X3D can be with RAM.
You want to reduce the ‘Max tiles out per frame’ in the feedback buffer settings from my testing.
This applies to my AMD GPU and AMD CPU, but I would assume that it translates the same.
If the 'max tiles out per frame is at 64 at 60fps and you set it to 32 or 16, it will result in the same tiles out over time at 120fps, but with less aggressive spikes when loading assets, hence reducing the ‘Dips’.
From my post here, try and change just the max_tiles_out_per_frame and max_streaming_tiles_per_frame values form 64 to 16 and let me know how it goes.
You could also try and mess with buffer sizes under the feedback streamer, though I can’t confirm if this works on NVIDIA like it does on AMD (completely fixed my performance).
You can also try my texture streaming config fixes here which I know has helped NVIDIA users with 12gb of VRAM or more.
Interesting, i’m not sure how this goes for NVIDIA because well…. I’m not on NVIDIA, but for me these fixes are amazing and my framerate while not super high, is at least stable.
Only other thing I can think of is attempting to mess around with NVIDIA profile inspector and enable re-sizable bar for Darktide. Though with default configs, this definitely hurts the games performance.
Its all trial and error over 3 months for me.
Sorry I dont have an NVIDIA card to test with, let alone a 5000 series as I know the drivers are ROUGH for that gen.
Wanted to drop you some feed back. And major thanks for all your testing.
I have tried a little bit of everything at this point, but your guides have been very helpful. Darktide is now my most tinkered with game for performance by far, and I had/have issues getting consistent performance.
But, yesterday, I finally tried your suggestion for the feedback streamer tweaks after avoiding them with your previous caveats, and, after one night’s gaming session, they seemed to deliver the most consistent performance.
This is along with variations of your other tweaks, performance mods, nvidia settings, etc. But even with improvements from those, it was never as consistently smooth as after trying the feedback streamer stuff.
Still not getting frames I think I should be with my specs, but it finally didn’t micro-stutter or frame drop as much, even on ogryn nades (still did but not as bad). Unless I got lucky with super clean servers all night, I attribute that to those latest changes I tried.
I only came back recently and definitely feel the same way. The performance isn’t what I feel it should be for my tier of GPU, but the feedback streamer keeps it consistent and stops the stutters.
Its good to know that the tweaks work for NVIDIA GPUs as well because I haven’t had the luck of having anyone available to test as performance for NVIDIA is good enough for most people it seems.
Only thing I can say is that 5600mhz for the RAM is very slow, especially for an Intel CPU.
