http://www.pcgamer.com/durantes-dark-souls-3-port-analysis/

Durante does an in-depth look at the PC version of Dark Souls 3, and it's looking pretty good. It looks like From finally fixed things like weapon degradation and roll distance being tied to frame rate, so that's good news. Durante doesn't go into the mouse & keyboard controls, but I imagine most people are going to be using a controller anyway.

Overall it looks like a decent port, although it does sound like a pretty high end or at least overclocked CPU is going to be required to maintain a consistent 60 FPS.

I recommend taking a look at the full article over on PC Gamer, but here is Durante's conclusion:

Conclusion

Dark Souls 3’s day-and-date PC release is a very competent version of the game. It loads lightning fast, allows for arbitrary resolutions and runs at variable framerates up to 60 FPS, without any framerate-dependent gameplay effects I could identify. While it demands more in terms of CPU and GPU than its predecessor, this increase in requirements is commensurate with the increase in overall graphical fidelity—in most areas of the game at least, a few clearly suffer from performance issues. Generally, asset quality and detail is significantly improved, and the in-game AA and SSAO are of a quality which obviates the need for external injection.

The Dark Souls franchise has certainly come a long way on PC. It all started with a late port of the original which barely covered the essentials and only happened as the result of a petition, and yet attained unexpected popularity. And while the second game was far more competently ported, it was still late to release, somewhat overshadowed by a downgrade controversy, and not entirely ready to run at variable framerates.

With Dark Souls 3, of all these past issues, only embers remain. But as ash eternally seeketh embers, I still beseech From Software to try and support truly arbitrary framerates for their next masterpiece, and maybe not to include a low-performance area—even though it almost seems like a series tradition at this point.

Awesome to know. But my god, that last paragraph made me cringe.

All right! Good to hear, I was afraid for this after the GBeast stream. But, yeah, that last paragraph...

@tru3_blu3: I cringed so hard I think I sprained something behind my right ear.

Those Durante articles on PCgamer are always so informative. Just a 100% technical report without any desire to talk about the quality of the game itself. That's pretty nice to have around.

It will be very interesting to see what performance is like once the game releases. I trust Durante, but I still want to wait to make sure the performance is good all around.

Read this earlier, I've learned a couple things from his articles which when it comes to video game articles and PC Gamer that's a super rare thing. Glad to hear the Souls 3 port is solid and some of the 1440p Screens I've seen from people with early builds are looking real sharp.

Good to know as I seeketh a stable frame rate.

Read this earlier, it excites me greatly. Looks like after a bit of trial and error From Software have got a pretty good handle on porting to PC. Hope they share some of this knowledge with other Japanese developers after the recent influx of bad PC ports as the demand for them has increased. Maybe Square Enix should give them a visit and I won't need to waste money on a PS4 for just a couple of games.

So the issue that the GBeast team had with crashing is fixed?

My first Souls game on PC, hope it's going to be a good experience. I really liked Bloodborne but those load times really took destroyed the flow of the game.

@oursin_360: would seem so, that was a pre-release build after all.

It requires a beefier PC than I expected, especially on the CPU front. My olde 2011 rig is in trouble.

Even though I'm playing this on PS4, I'm happy to hear that this high profile release has a solid PC Port. Dark Souls II seemed to be really well optimised for PC (aside the weapon degradation problem).

Was planning on getting this one PS4 but I'm gonna go ahead and grab the PC version instead. A solid framerate goes a long way.

Huh, I was getting a little excited that my PC at first glance seemed to meet the minimum requirements for the game, but hearing it needs a powerful CPU probably means my 7 year old triple core Phenom II - which was a budget level CPU even back in 2009 - doesn't cut it. A little sad to see the era of games practically not needing any CPU power whatsoever thanks to the last gen consoles seems to be over.

Cant. Wait.

Just a few more days...I wasn't expecting a stable 60 with what I got, but it sounds like I'll hover between 30 and 60 and I'm ok with that for now.

@fisk0: Time for PC upgrade, for Dark souls 3. That sounded weird.

Nice to hear it's decently optimized! I cannot wait to play this game and I was happy to see that it unlocks at 6 PM tonight in my region.

PS Based on that article it sounds like an overclocked 4690k should handle this no problem?

It's safe to say a 4690k can run anything out there right now, and will for a long time.

That's what I took from it. The PC I'm going to be playing Dark Souls III on has a 4690k at 4.4ghz and a pair of GTX 980s.

By the way, the most recent GeForce driver is the Game Ready version for Dark Souls III, complete with an SLI profile. So if you're running an Nvidia card you may want to grab that at some point today if you haven't already!

Pre-ordered for 48$ today, preloading now! I just started 2 yesterday though so it'll probably be a week or 2 before i get started so HOPEFULLY any bugs or issues that happen will be patched by then lol. I guess i'll probably have to play this at 1080p with a single 980, played DS1 at 4k and DS2 at 1440p.

@mike: Assuming it doesn't cause endless boot loops, among other nightmarish issues, then I most certainly will ;)

Side note, if anyone's interested, Valve has another great deal on Steam Controllers if you preordered Dark Souls 3. I picked up my second Steam Controller. Love that controller, screw all the haters <3

@big_denim: There is an official configuration for Steam controllers up right now. I probably won't use it though, I've had one of them since day one and usually find that my normal 360 controller or a keyboard is a better fit for almost everything. I may try it just to see how it does with Dark Souls 3, though. Having the paddles bound may reduce some hand fatigue in the long run. I'm going to try mouse & keyboard first though, being able to spin the camera around fast and accurately could be pretty good.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1206812

Tons of problems already... ouch. Glad I got the PS4 version, and getting the PC version later.

"the game just boots into a black screen for me"

"well im on the latest version, latest nvidia drivers installed on an ssd

and i would get random frame drops when nothing was happening. when I got to that ice enemy and it did its little spray attack thing my frames drop for probably a second or two to like 38 fps.

its kinda annoying."

"Wired 360 Controller doesn't work,

Off to a great start. Fucking bullshit."

"Two crashes in 10 minutes, not promising. 364.47, 780ti. Gonna update drivers and cross fingers, otherwise I guess it's a downgrade."

"Terrible framerate performance; 5-10 frames on Low settings I5-3450 3.10gz8gb ramGTX 660 Game just kicked me out to the main menu with a frame rate error message."

Ran it for a few minutes at 1440p and the starting area was about 56fps or so. The character creator is garbage, couldnt get a dark brown skin tone for nothing and the sliders took forever, and not a single set of black hair again (2 had the samurai dreads which i liked a lot). When i quit out my virus scan gave a warning about the exe and i had to manually shut it down in task manager. Well im back to ds 2 for now hopefully any real issues get fixed before i start.

Beat the boss in my first try! That was fun. Loved how smooth the game feels because of the performance, which besides a crash when just starting the game has been good.

I have the beta problem where it crashes at the first bonfire, runs great besides that.

@asilentprotagonist: But..Durante said it was good!

This is pretty typical for a From Software PC release. No idea why we all thought this time might be any different. After all they don't care enough to fix persistent issues with their games, why bother with anything else. I would be shocked if backstabs on stairs actually worked or if the camera didn't completely spaz out during boss battles in enclosed spaces.

Whelp crashed at Firelink tho haha.

Game crashes constantly after 1st bonfire. I hope people don't give this a pass just because it's Dark Souls, it's still bullshit.

Runs at 60 and stable so far with a 970 at least.

Only thing I don't like is a lack of Borderless Windowed so I had to third party that or else face some rough screen tearing in Fullscreen.

Well I played for an hour, it has crashed about 25 times I think.

The thread on crashing at the steam forums is already up to 400 responses, this might be a disaster.

Wish more people in that crash thread would post potentially useful information. Would probably see a pattern with that many people.

Im starting to think ill feel better running most of my games at 1080p on my r9 290 so i can get higher framerates and better fidelity at the cost of a few extra pixels. I could upgrade to get 60fps at 1440 maybe, just don't think i should be spending $800+ to attain it. Oh poor me...

@atwa: stuff is always crazy day one and steam forums are typically, i mean, always ruthless (wouldnt trust them as far as i can throw them either). Give it a day or so before brandishing the pitchfork and screaming "game's fucking broken!"

@ripelivejam said: @atwa: stuff is always crazy day one and steam forums are typically, i mean, always ruthless (wouldnt trust them as far as i can throw them either). Give it a day or so before brandishing the pitchfork and screaming "game's fucking broken!"

Did you miss "might"? possibly?

Also the game is in fact, at this moment, fucking broken.

The discussion on Neogaf, Twitter, Steam forums and gamefags is almost nothing but people complaining about crashing, Austin has had the crashing issues for 3 weeks and talked with Namco about it

Three crashes so far in one hour. Maybe my settings are too high (max)?

Salt and Sanctuary, may be back to you sooner than I thought.

@atwa: Running with a 700 card? Seems to be a pretty common link.

@atwa: well i'll try it in a bit and make my own assessment. But personally as the internet mostly operates in two modes, either enraged bloodthirsty mob or fanboy supplicants, i've learned never to trust that stuff.

about 15 crashes so far in 1 hour

Good thing I still haven't finished Dark Souls 2's DLC yet - something to quell the tide while I wait until this PC version of DS3 to improve.

I have not crashed once in the 3 hours I've played it. It's on an SSD and I have a GTX 970 that isn't overclocked and an AMD FX-8350. I have no idea what the crashing is or what's doing it.

I can't get my DS4 controller to work (tried both inputmapper and DS4Windows) and I crash at the first bonfire. I think I'll refund it and get the PS4 version if there's no patch by the weekend. This is pretty bullshit considering the game came out in japan a month ago.

No crashes or problems here. 1440p at 60 FPS with everything as high as it will go.

• 4690k at 4.6
• 32 GB RAM
• 2x GTX 980s (SLI is working)
• Win 10, GeForce 364.72

managed to fix the bonfire crash by turning lighting to low and pulling my HDMI for my PS3 out,I've got 780

I really don't like games that don't let you quit straight to the desktop.

Finally held for a couple of hours. I wonder if the beginning area posed the problem.

I'm working with an old-ass i7 950 (3.07), 12 gigs memory and a titan black. Everything possible at max except SSOA (medium),1080p. FRAPS holding at 60.

Played for about 10 minutes on a Warrior just to see if it would crash on the initial bonfire, and 45 minutes as a Knight up through Firelink Shrine. It hasn't crashed yet; I'm mostly getting 60fps, though it seems to occasionally stutter for half a second when it autosaves. I'm running it on a gaming laptop with a i7-4720HQ 2.60 Ghz, a 980m WITHOUT the latest drivers installed, and I have the game installed on an SSD. Crossing my fingers that it stays stable.