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[DF] Horizon Zero Dawn PC: An Amazing Game Gets A Disappointing Port

VFXVeteran

Banned
Guys it doesn't seem like the game works well with in-between frames. What I mean by that is it stutters to hell if I go over 30FPS. Any setting except 60FPS yields a lot of frame-pacing issues. It's much much smoother at 30FPS or 60FPS if you can get it to lock. I wouldn't bother with 40,50FPS.
 
Guys it doesn't seem like the game works well with in-between frames. What I mean by that is it stutters to hell if I go over 30FPS. Any setting except 60FPS yields a lot of frame-pacing issues. It's much much smoother at 30FPS or 60FPS if you can get it to lock. I wouldn't bother with 40,50FPS.
Yeah the game skips a lot on the benchmark for me at least. In-game it’s fine with only the cutscenes being affected when the camera switches. Otherwise it runs without any frame-pacing issues so far but I’ve heard as soon as Aloy is grown and you set out, it stutters like hell.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Yeah the game skips a lot on the benchmark for me at least. In-game it’s fine with only the cutscenes being affected when the camera switches. Otherwise it runs without any frame-pacing issues so far but I’ve heard as soon as Aloy is grown and you set out, it stutters like hell.

I'm where she is grown. 30FPS is still smooth.
 

AeneaGames

Member
Yup. We knew it was developed on PC and for the PC, after all all Sony exclusives are using DX12 internally, everybody knows that!
But something went terribly wrong!

kGToRL1BrmHNwzY5Exwh3ET8tdIo93zZWLmiK6SuWS7Qpz1PLc9NLAHZGeZMDGzm_qF2E80FFus04x2DG2EIIcn0eejx2p0uMsAUF_xoCezzSqkCwlmg-m3CulRDbMwRLSLO_FWLZfWngCiDQwaJV8qytzz0JsYdHWw
 

idrago01

Banned
I was right the keyboard and mouse and increased FPS made this game so much better, I'm playing on a 3080x1080 super ultrawide and getting an erratic 80-100 frames on ultra settings, hopefully they fix the frame variance but fortunately with gsync it's still smooth as butter, the game has always been ultra-woke (matriarchal society lol) and aloy's face still looks like a chubby boy (hopefully mods fix this and bring it more in line with her IRL face model), but the gameplay and hunting is undeniably very fun to play.

20200807151826-1.jpg
 

nowhat

Member
the game has always been ultra-woke (matriarchal society lol)
I never understood this argument. Sure, the Nora are a matriarchal society - I don't think this is impossible, but more importantly, they're only one of the four tribes present in the game (more are implied to exist), and are seen as backwards hillbillies by others. They're not like the pinnacle of society within the game world.
 

idrago01

Banned
I never understood this argument. Sure, the Nora are a matriarchal society - I don't think this is impossible, but more importantly, they're only one of the four tribes present in the game (more are implied to exist), and are seen as backwards hillbillies by others. They're not like the pinnacle of society within the game world.
i don't want to belabor the point, but if you know a little bit about feminism and intersectionality it's not hard to see all the subtle or not so subtle stuff they throw at you, of course i'll still play or enjoy the game i just have to laugh whenever it comes up
 
So it looks like I ran into the same problem as Alex from DF. My card has been installed in my PCIEx16_2 slot since forever and always ran at x16 3.0. I even checked yesterday while watching the video to make sure I wasn't running at x8.

I did a second benchmark for HZD and my fps plummeted from 46 to 39, a whopping 15% drop. So I checked GPU-Z exactly as I did yesterday and lo and behold, my 2080 Ti was running at x8.

I swapped it to the first slot and ran the benchmark again and this is what I got.



TAxrQzt.png

Compared to my first run which is this:


LctK1X3.png


B benno Make sure your card is running the full PCIe at x16 and not x8.

Now my card is OC'd to 2100MHz but I shouldn't have 54 compared to your 43. That's 25% better performance.
 
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benno

Member
yeah, good shout. All my system is stock so your OC should account for the extra 2fps. What gets me is your max frames is like 30fps more than mine, that's weird.

Running matching yours I got 46 with VSync off, then 48 with HDR off and changed x16 gen1.1 to x16 gen3


UBgZsSl.jpg
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
i don't want to belabor the point, but if you know a little bit about feminism and intersectionality it's not hard to see all the subtle or not so subtle stuff they throw at you, of course i'll still play or enjoy the game i just have to laugh whenever it comes up

There have been matriarchal societies but they've always been very uncommon. But it worked fine in the H:ZD story since it fits the Mother Gaia concept. What I found ridiculous was that there were so many ethnically diverse characters part of the same, very small tribe. I'd expect to see tribes with only ethnically mixed people instead of clearly white, Asian and black characters.
 

Nemesisuuu

Member
Finally we can have battle of 1st party ports. War never changes, it just moved to one new battlefront. So - we have masterwork ports like Horizon ZD, Forza Motorsport 7 etc.

Give me that feisty high frame rates with beautiful stutters, memory leaks etc.

Experience like no other.
 

psorcerer

Banned
I swapped it to the first slot and ran the benchmark again and this is what I got.

Actually kinda worse performance.
Lows are lower, highs are higher. 99% on CPU is worse.
I would suspect that texture streaming on DX12 is fucked. Which we kinda know.
Will be fun to watch how MSFT is gonna fix it with DirectStorage (if they succeed).
 

nowhat

Member
(this is quite impossible to discuss without spoilers - if you are still planning to play the game without being spoiled, don't click below unless you've pretty much completed the main story)

There have been matriarchal societies but they've always been very uncommon. But it worked fine in the H:ZD story since it fits the Mother Gaia concept. What I found ridiculous was that there were so many ethnically diverse characters part of the same, very small tribe. I'd expect to see tribes with only ethnically mixed people instead of clearly white, Asian and black characters.

I think the whole "Mother Gaia"-aspect can be ignored - sure, Gaia the name of the terraforming AI, but the humans in the game world are basically overgrown kindergarteners who lived a very sheltered life within a very closed space. Who then were released unprepared into a vast world filled with robotic beasts and hints of something that was ages ago, trying to make sense of it all (with, again, about the knowledge of about a five year old). As such, developing uncommon beliefs/societal systems, including matriarchal ones, doesn't seem that strange. It's pointless trying to compare the society of HZD to that of ours, because ours never existed in their world.

But agreed on the ethnical diversity. It would make sense, from a "let's keep humans from going extinct" POV, to have as much genetic diversity as possible in the "first batch" to make it out of the bunker. But Aloy is born, what, 800 years after that event? Several centuries at least. By that time, one would think at least individual tribes would look pretty similar, if not humanity as a whole.
 

CitizenX

Banned
I was right the keyboard and mouse and increased FPS made this game so much better, I'm playing on a 3080x1080 super ultrawide and getting an erratic 80-100 frames on ultra settings, hopefully they fix the frame variance but fortunately with gsync it's still smooth as butter, the game has always been ultra-woke (matriarchal society lol) and aloy's face still looks like a chubby boy (hopefully mods fix this and bring it more in line with her IRL face model), but the gameplay and hunting is undeniably very fun to play.

20200807151826-1.jpg

Ultra wide or nothing, the real true way to play anything.
 
Actually kinda worse performance.
Lows are lower, highs are higher. 99% on CPU is worse.
I would suspect that texture streaming on DX12 is fucked. Which we kinda know.
Will be fun to watch how MSFT is gonna fix it with DirectStorage (if they succeed).
The lowest frames are because of the loading at the beginning of the bench. It always records extremely low frame rates when it starts. Have too look at 1% low, not lowest frame rate.
 
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ACESHIGH

Banned
There's something odd regarding aspect ratios. I have set up some custom 2:35:1 resolution like 1920x810 to make the game more "cinematic" but it doesn't work properly.
But so far so good I got to the first quest with adult Aloy and I am playing at at 1800p 30 FPS Original settings with Ultra textures just like I expected on my RX 580. 30 FPS (33.3ms with Rivatuner) feels really smooth in this game which is not always the case on PC. I want to get to a village because the framerate typically goes down there.

I am noticing hitching in cutscenes and when I pick up items, but it's one of the things Guerilla is adressing. What striked me is that even at a high resolution there's something odd about the IQ. The Ultra textures don't look so detail and the game has some shimmering, feels like an Ubisoft game which never were great when it came to IQ.
 
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Im unsure if DF are too picky or if something is wrong, but even after watching their video I dont get how this is a disappointing port...it seems to run fine on the majority of systems, at least I dont know anyone who's had issues.

The few glitches it seems to have, like the camera and other smaller things seem to be easily fixed with a patch, it hasnt had a rocky launch, so why is it disappointing? Its barely out and most of these little bugs will get patched.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
I found a render bug on alot of the fur on various characters. They gotta double check their render passes. One of them fails and the texture lookups are jacked.

Other than that, I forced 16x anisotropic filtering and the textures look much much better. I don't see any reason to increase the texture resolution for the next game. It's pretty good how they got it and I like how they blur the objects as they get close to camera to hide the magnification MIPmapping. Game has superb foliage rendering with very nice tricks for self-shadowing without the true cost. I wish the TOD wouldn't be so fast. That planet must be rotating extremely fast! LOL!

The lighting is very "artsy" but I give them props for it being procedurally based from the sky lighting. Very similar to RDR2 although their lighting system seems more advanced. Both struggle approximating good dynamic GI.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
Im unsure if DF are too picky or if something is wrong, but even after watching their video I dont get how this is a disappointing port...it seems to run fine on the majority of systems, at least I dont know anyone who's had issues.

Me too. The port is great with some small exceptions of a few rendering pass glitches.
 

nkarafo

Member
This is how the game runs on a 750ti card:



Remember how the base PS4 GPU matches the 750 ti and would perform similarly? Remember those older benchmarks? Well, look how badly that game runs on that card now. And that's on a CPU that wipes the floor with the PS4 one.

Does this show how bad of a port this is or not?

This also got me thinking... If the PS5 is a match for a RTX 2070 Super then could that card run as bad with later PS5 games?
 
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Rikkori

Member
Let's see FPS numbers during storm scenes and without panning up at the sky in order to inflate the numbers before we talk about "pickiness".

Sadly the more I play HZD on PC the more obvious it becomes how both technologically backwards Sony is, but also how creatively bankrupt. This really is mostly an off-brand Ubisoft game, which themselves are sorta aspiring to be Witcher 3. Perhaps if I hadn't messed around with Odyssey so much, which feels so much better in terms of combat and handling and just the overall world, and then Watch Dogs 2, which on a rendering level is perhaps going to still be above even HFW with how good it looks and how many advanced techniques it crams...

I dunno, I'm glad it costed me nothing but it's strange, I didn't feel quite so negatively when I played it on the Pro. I guess it's just how it is once you can actually tweak the settings & compare. Sony is really lucky it only has to deal with its own hardware & therefore suffers fewer comparisons. I think in the end this release of HZD will backfire on them, it's not going to make people feel like they're missing out on some mind-blowing exclusives as much as it showcases just another open-world game.

Besides the excellent art direction, there's really nothing else great about this game. Meh. Guess it's back to waiting for CP 2077 now.

This is what I mean when I say I'm unsure if even HFW will top a WD2 (let alone Legion), just compare and contrast the detail, the advance shadow techniques, the assets quality; heck even Odyssey does so many things better:

31503414111_2b4314e524_o.jpg

31586295168_d0f8bd86ec_o.jpg
 

DeaDPo0L84

Member
So I've been at work wll day trying to keep up with all the performance talk. If I have a 2070 super, and an i7-9700k, and I play @ 1440p, is there a general list of settings I should go by?

I saw DF mention medium texture which seems odd.
 

Siri

Banned
So far, so good - 4K on an RTX 2080Ti - GSYNC - 9900k.

I’m early in the game, where Aloy is about to go to the proving thing. No frame-time issues to speak of yet. I’m playing on High settings.

I was expecting this game to run like crap - but it’s one of the better open-world ports I’ve played in a long time. Maybe things will go to hell soon. But right now I’m surprised. If I hadn’t read any of the pre-release criticisms of the port I never would’ve guessed people were having problems.
 

Stuart360

Member
Bit the bullet as i managed to find the game cheap. Yeah the port isnt great, and i'm getting that gpu usage problem Alex from DF was getting, where gpu usage seems to tap out around 85-90%. I'm playing at 50hz for 50fps because vsync seems to be completely botched in this, and locks at 57fps at 60hz, even when gpu usage is 60%. 50hz runs at a flawless 50fps thank god though. So i'm playing at 1080p/50hz at high settings. I should be getting better on my PC (Ryzen 7 2700X, 32gb Ram, GTX 980ti) but still i'm getting better framerate and settings than PS4 so i shouldnt complain i suppose.
 
Im unsure if DF are too picky or if something is wrong, but even after watching their video I dont get how this is a disappointing port...it seems to run fine on the majority of systems, at least I dont know anyone who's had issues.

The few glitches it seems to have, like the camera and other smaller things seem to be easily fixed with a patch, it hasnt had a rocky launch, so why is it disappointing? Its barely out and most of these little bugs will get patched.
43% positive on Steam so most people have a lot of bad things to say about it.

On my end, stutters and broken AF.
 

TriSuit666

Banned
Did a little experiment with vsync. Turning it off I get 50-55fps with judders.
Limiting frame rate to 50fps the judders remain.
Lowering the refresh rate of the screen to 50hz and I get ultra-sharp halos.
Limiting frame rate to 40fps and I might as well load up the playstation version.

I'll wait for a patch or new drivers.

Exactly the situation I had with AC: Odyssey.
 

MrFunSocks

Banned
This makes that whole outrage over someone giving it a 7/10 when they gave the console version 10/10 look a bit silly now doesn’t it.

I’m considering buying it for PC but will wait til it’s on sale as I don’t like single player games but want to see how it looks on a decent PC.
 
This makes that whole outrage over someone giving it a 7/10 when they gave the console version 10/10 look a bit silly now doesn’t it.

I’m considering buying it for PC but will wait til it’s on sale as I don’t like single player games but want to see how it looks on a decent PC.
? You do know that ps4 can't even keep a pathetic 30 fps in combat.
 
That doesn’t really have anything to do with me possibly playing it on PC though? Or the review scores being different? Sorry not sure what you mean.
You can get at least double framerate of ps4 pro on pc if you have hardware and yet same game is rated 3 points lower than ps4 version. Why review same game twice in the first place though? Have they updated ps4 score after their second review? Let me guess - no.
 
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Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Finally we can have battle of 1st party ports. War never changes, it just moved to one new battlefront. So - we have masterwork ports like Horizon ZD, Forza Motorsport 7 etc.

Give me that feisty high frame rates with beautiful stutters, memory leaks etc.

Experience like no other.

99% of Xbox first party games run great if you have modern PC hardware. Sony have released two games recently, one of them is one of the best ports even and is now the definitive edition. Horizon can easily be patched to improve performance at 4k and to fix some bugs.

Sure beats playing big console AAA games at 30fps in 2020...
 

Rikkori

Member
Attention! The render scale is borked, don't use it. You'll get worse IQ than setting the resolution itself to whatever the equivalent would be. eg 50% of 4K looks worse than 1080p etc
 

Kenpachii

Member
Why is DF testing its GPU in x8 mode like at all lol.

Anyway, port seems trash would refund it if u preordered it no point in even supporting this shit.
 
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Siri

Banned
I’m at the start of the game in an area called Mother’s Heart - can I judge the performance based on that area?

Because, no hyperbole here, this game (if I can judge by what I’ve seen so far) is one the best ports I’ve played in years. No frame time issues whatsoever. Bang on at 60 FPS at max settings at 4K (re-sized to 21:9 in Nvidia control panel).

RTX 2080 TI - GSYNC - 9900K (My GPU is running at 95% and above and my cpu seems to hover around 35%)

Games like Far Cry 5 and AC Odyssey had terrible stutter when I bought them day one. Both games were eventually fixed through patches... but originally I was pulling my hair out. Honestly, my experience with Horizon is nothing like what the DF guy experienced.

Also... I should probably add... I’m susceptible to stutter of any kind and can detect frame-pacing issues without seeing on-screen metrics.
 
I can probably get a very steady 60fps if I tweak some settings at 4K. I play at 3440x1440 so don't really care but it's still fun to play around with my config to get the most out of this.

Last run and best by far.



NKrfLmr.png


Not sure what just happened but most of my stuttering issues are now gone. Still hitches every once in a while but pretty infrequently. AF is still busted though and forcing it through the NVIDIA control panel introduces flickering and artifacts.
 
I’m at the start of the game in an area called Mother’s Heart - can I judge the performance based on that area?

Because, no hyperbole here, this game (if I can judge by what I’ve seen so far) is one the best ports I’ve played in years. No frame time issues whatsoever. Bang on at 60 FPS at max settings at 4K (re-sized to 21:9 in Nvidia control panel).

RTX 2080 TI - GSYNC - 9900K (My GPU is running at 95% and above and my cpu seems to hover around 35%)

Games like Far Cry 5 and AC Odyssey had terrible stutter when I bought them day one. Both games were eventually fixed through patches... but originally I was pulling my hair out. Honestly, my experience with Horizon is nothing like what the DF guy experienced.

Also... I should probably add... I’m susceptible to stutter of any kind and can detect frame-pacing issues without seeing on-screen metrics.
What do you mean "resized to 21:9"?

At 4K in this area with an OC'd water-cooled 2080 Ti at 2100MHz I hover around the mid 50's at max settings. With OG settings it's 60-70 with an average of 64-66 I'd say.
 
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Stuart360

Member
Is it just me or does motion blur not work like at all?. I know most will be happy with that, but i like a bit of motion blur.
Also i have been using Rivatuner to test the settings etc, and anyone else noticed a lot of the cutscenes are pre-rendered?, i wonder how many people knew that. I bet a lot of what we saw of Horizon 2, like the underwater bit, was pre-rendered.
 
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cryogenic7

Member
Man Alex must have been using a potato PC. I have butter smooth above 60fps at ultra 1080p on an intel 9900k and GTX1080. No frame pacing, not stuttering, at all. I also have a PS4 pro. The PC version smokes it in every single way. It’s fantastic.
 
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Man Alex must have been using a potato PC. I have butter smooth above 60fps at ultra 1080p on an intel 9900k and GTX1080. No frame pacing, not stuttering, at all. I also have a PS4 pro. The PC version smokes it in every single way. It’s fantastic.
It’s all over the place.

At first it was problematic for me but now it’s damn near perfect now. Steam reviews were at 41% positive at after 3 hours but have now increased to 53%.
 
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cryogenic7

Member
It’s all over the place.

At first it was problematic for me but now it’s damn near perfect now. Steam reviews were at 41% positive at after 3 hours but have now increased to 53%.
Maybe there are issues with certain configs, but man, it is beautiful on my setup. I am so happy. So silky smooth. This is how I wished it would play when I played through on PS4.
 
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