Hello everyone.

I am interested in buying the new Tomb Raider game on PC, but given the recent string of less than stellar PC ports I hold my expectations until after release and didn't preorder.

To those that already have played the game, I ask you, how is the performance of Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC (by the way, I am above the recommended requirements)?

Not sure you are going to get an answer to this yet. The game doesn't come out for another two days.

Ups... I don't know why I had it listed as the 26th.

Anyway, I will just leave this open for a couple of days...

@hermes: there were some streamers playing it yesterday, but they were sponsored by Square so I doubt they would have been able to bring up any issues.

This plus streamers tend to overpower their systems. (partly because streaming and playing on the same PC is more demanding on the GPU)

One thing i've noticed since getting my new GPU is that you can brute force through badly optimized games (like say, Arkham Knight) with sheer horsepower, so the best bet is to wait for people with more reasonable builds to play, to see how it scales down, though I expect it will be fine.

Also worth noting that Steam Refunds were designed with this in mind - if you buy a game, and it runs awful after an hour, don't feel bad refunding it.

The future me has traveled back in time to say that it performs great when you turn off hairworx.

@humanity: *tressfx

@oursin_360: **Pretty lady FX

TitanXPoorJustificationFX

Why would I even get the game then?

@baronsamedi: its not like its dynamic beard or something so you will be fine without it.

@rethla: You make a very valid point. Lara without her dynamic beard would definitely be an instant refund and 0/10 review on metacritic .

@baronsamedi: It makes Lara dynamically clean her face whenever it gets dirty.

What's this string of less than stellar pc ports? There was arkham knight and...?

Pretty sure it will be fine.

@corvak said:

Tell that to the 20fps I got with a GTX970, not even at max settings. That game is just busted on all fronts, not the poster child for bad optimisation.

Plus Nixxes is working on the port. They have worked on a lot of Square Enix ports, including Tomb Raider, Hitman: Absolution, and Deux Ex: Human Revolution, which were all fantastic ports. I wouldn't be surprised if Nixxes has been working with Crystal Dynamics during the entire development considering the quick turn around with the PC release.

@brandondryrock said:

Nixxes were responsible for the 360 version, so they've definitely had access to the code for quite some time.

Digital Foundry have posted an article today on pc performance.

From PC gamer's review:

Graphics options: Lots, including a range of AA and anisotropic filter settings, as well as customisable texture quality, shadow quality, ambient occlusion, depth of field, tessellation, screen space reflections, dynamic foliage, bloom, motion blur, lends flair, and, most importantly, PureHair.

Remappable controls: Yes

Gamepad support: Yes

Despite arriving months after the Xbox One version, the PC release of Rise of the Tomb Raider is a quality product—Square Enix's ongoing relationship with Nixxes again paying dividends. The graphics options are plentiful, with a variety of ways to tweak and customise the experience. While my 970 GTX couldn't keep up with the demands of running every option at maximum—dropping to a stutter during cutscenes and set pieces—a few sensible reductions had it running smoothly and consistently at 60 frames per second.

970 very close to maxing, that seems about right.

@omgfather: good to know that some companies still put effort into this stuff.

I pre-loaded the game on Steam this morning, and the download was less than 18 GB. I know Sqaure-Enix isn't the most popular publisher, but compared to some other publishers (WB), it makes it easy for me to support their games on PC. They consistently put out quality PC ports, and they should be recognized for it.

From the different benchmarks on the internet the game seems to run just as bad/good as Witcher 3.

Nvidia 970/AMD fury will be fine for maxing the game at 1080p and 980ti to max at 1440p. Ofc. if you want more than 60fps or 4k you need more than one graphics card.

Destructoid's port report is somewhat negative, with severe FPS drops and memory issues. This is the only negative one I've seen though.

Hmm.. slightly worried now.

@vierastalo: Interesting, I'm running a quite similar PC to theirs and haven't had any of those issues yet. Then again, I'm only about an hour in so far.

Interesting. Running out of memory was the mainproblem for Arkham knight on PC and the minimum is set to 6Gb.

Seems like games are finally starting to use that generous amount of memory the new consoles are equipped with. Sadly its at the expense of old computers from a time when RAM and vidoememory was an absolute non issue. 32bit computers aint even able to run these games.

RAM is the cheapest part of a PC but if you are low on videomemory the only way to increase it is by buying a new videocard which in turn is the most expensive part of a PC.

Can we talk about how stupid it is that the release date is on a Thursday?

Hmm, sounds like Destructoid found a bad memory leak there (16GB system RAM, 4GB VRAM = this was not a case of the game wanting more RAM from normal operation - I am a programmer) or something else odd (symptoms could easily be something else going wrong but it doesn't sound like the executable working "normally", whatever caused it to break). It's certainly not universal as DF did their tests on a few different rigs and didn't walk into similar issues.

The inconsistent FPS issues and being settings-agnostic does unfortunately remind me of Just Cause 3. That game worked find for some people, and terribly for other (with basically no consistent way to guess which camp you're in other than run it and see - at least from my pool of friends and range of hardware/configurations). A game which got reclassified by nVidia from their first comment on recommended specs to the final ones they advised post-release, and was shown in radically better state (at events) pre-release. So here's the conspiracy theory: the beta version nVidia tested and was at shows didn't have the final DRM (Denuvo). No intrusive hooks to protect the encrypted binary existed in those versions.

A quick note of clarification: Denuvo is the anti-tamper system. It works on top of DRM (the thing that makes sure you have the rights to run the software). Basically traditional DRM (like the options available to any Steam-powered game) is wrapping the actual game with more code that firsts checks you have a token that allows you to run the game, then run (the token can be generated at install time, so you have to be online to install a game, or at run-time, so you have to be online to play a game - the latter is what many publishers moved away from). Cracking is making it so that check is skipped by modifying the executable (and basically removing that check). What Denuvo does is ensure that tampered executables don't work. So it is more than a check you run and then forget, it has to be constantly there, making sure this doesn't leak the unencrypted binary. I suspect it messes with program execution to do so and make it so hard to crack.

So this Tomb Raider also has Denuvo. And is also showing this incredibly inconsistent performance (which doesn't appear to be related to GPU load) or specific areas. When I looked at Just Cause 3 it actually looked like the GPU side was basically soft-crashing and being recovered (the GPU stalled and the VRAM load was completely flushed and reloaded when the fps cratered and then returned but lower than before the stall).

What if something in the Denuvo layer isn't well tested (note that it will be a different version every game to make cracking harder and they probably don't submit it to GPU makers) and on some machine configurations causes a memory leak and/or a GPU driver soft-crash? We'll never see this software working without the Denuvo, unless crackers do finally manage to extract an unencrypted binary (which they will strip the DRM from to enable piracy). Makes me interested in seeing that crack, if it does get completed (own JC3 on Steam, linked to my profile, 50+ hours played and completed, definitely not a pirate pretending to want cracks under the mask of a "valid" reason). Way sooner than the "in 10 years" discussed on the most recent Bombcast.

Edit: Why hasn't this busted all Denuvo encrypted games to not work with drivers/PC properly? Maybe something in the mastering tools used by Squidix or the specific branch/version of it they purchased/are using is breaking. I guess we'll know more in 24 hours if the same group who found JC3 broken find this one is busted too in the same way (but that Destructoid report is outlining basically exactly how JC3 shipped broken).

I do have to say the DF port report does sound good (I've got my order in and pre-loaded on Steam so 22 hours until I play it myself). Real-time settings changes (also enjoyed this in The Crew - show me how it looks different the moment I activate a setting and I've got a much better idea of if I care about high vs very high), removal of the input lag from the XBOne version, plenty of options and textures picked to basically allow you to set it to where your VRAM limit is (GTA V is still amazing for actually showing you the VRAM load as you change settings so you can see exactly how anything affects potential VRAM eviction slowdown).

I really liked the engine last time round. Tomb Raider in 2013 was last-gen but the sort of last-gen I can get behind. Lots of style, plenty of headroom for cranking things to "nice", but a game that was something where even a medium-enthusiast rig could push towards 4K rendering (to get rid of jaggies) or 144Hz (depending on which extreme you care most about and monitor hardware to support it). This time it sounds like I'll be going down to 1080p and poking a few settings to keep things constantly above 30Hz but I'm also a lot closer to the end of the life-cycle of my mid-range GPU (just waiting of the new cards to start coming out that move to FinFET and possible HBM2 - not sure how expensive/high-end the cut-off will be for stacked DRAM memory vs GDDR5).

As someone that has for the time being moved out of the US for a few years, this nightmare is my everyday life.

I wish the US did more releases towards the end of the week. During the winter I work until noon on Fridays, and during the summer I have Fridays off. It would be awesome to get new games on Fridays.

It's all fine and well when everyone does it. When I see all my friends are already playing hotly anticipated releases on Tuesday and I have to wait till thursday after work to pick my copy up it can be a bit of a nightmare. Fortunately more and more often games have simultaneous worldwide releases. When digital only games have split release dates that is the stupidest thing ever.

Does it look much better than the 2013 Tomb Raider? That was a great looking game. This is a lot more demanding so it better look much better.

I upgraded to a 270X for TR 2013 and a 280X for Dragon Age Inquisition. I am not upgrading again anytime soon. Got a 3570K at 4100mhz and 16GB RAM. I easily play TR2013 on ultra but seems you need a 970 or 390X at the very least to play the new game on ultra.

Seems badily optimized to me since a 280X has twice the shaders of a PS4 GPU and 2.6 times the shaders of a XONE GPU. Also my CPU is much more powerful than the laptop grade CPU in the consoles running at just 1.6 to 1.7ghz for PS4 and XONE.

When you get the game can anyone tell what settings in the new game is equivalent to ultra settings in TR2013 in terms of how it looks?

@dagas: Digital Foundry already went through the settings and the Xbox one is high in most areas medium in some. The PC gets a few extra settings like soft shadows, dynamic foliage reaction and better tessellation support too.

The dumbest thing I've seen so far is a video spruiking 16X AF as some amazing technological marvel for the PC version. It's fucking anisotropic filtering, it's been virtually free to do for over a decade.

Yea you gotta take what DF says with a grain of salt but use their comparison videos to form your own conclusions. It's amazing how people who do these comparisons don't know what different types of AA or AO are. It's also not like you can't google it and find out the answers within a few seconds either.

The trailer I'm referring to was put out on the games youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=yXtHO4DGL3I

Oh wow I hadn't seen that, that's pretty bad. Anything to add more to that bullet point list eh?

Talking about taking things with a grain of salt, while this stuff is obvious to us people that have been playing PC games for a while, for some folks that might have just made the switch this is all news. When you do these sort of videos you do kind of have to spell everything out - you'd be surprised how many people have no idea about any of it.

I've been PC gaming for like 6 years, but I've always had a budget gaming rig, so I'd just set things on high or medium and not worry about many graphical settings. Now that I have a 980, I'm really getting into the graphical settings of PC games. Like I learned a few months ago what ambient occlusion is...

@brandondryrock: I'm still not sure what it does exactly apart from casting soft edge shadows.. and I never feel like looking it up. It's one of the things I usually turn off if my framerate is dipping too much.

You're right, I do forget that these terms probably seem like random words that don't mean shit to people outside of or just coming into PC gaming. Anisotropic Filtering is just such an old feature it's kind've jarring to see it headlined. It's also baffling to me that it's still not used to full effect on console games as it has little to no performance impact at all.

I just read the huge guide that Nvidia put up for the game, and it sounds like if you have a GTX 970 or 980, you should be good running at 1080p60 with the high preset. The very high textures is recommended for GPUs with 6GB of VRAM. That's why the Destructoid guy was running into a lot of problems. He was running the game on the very high preset with a single GTX 980. I was a bit worried after reading the Destructoid port report since I have a similar rig to him, but after reading the Nvidia guide, I'm not worried.

I dont know what the Destructoid guy was smoking becouse i have a hard time beliving stuff like "3x longer loadtimes with the new nVidia drivers" and so on but whatever. In his writing at least he claims the graphic settings made no difference at all. Also with a budget gamingrig you really need to optimize the settings to get the good side of gaming, with a powerfull PC you just tick everything and then go ;)

Even putting the game on the lowest possible graphics quality settings didn't help, which makes me think this probably will affect everyone regardless of the strength of their rig.

Destructoid

@rethla: That's odd, considering the lowest possible graphics setting is essentially the Xbox 360 version.

Just saw that Nixxes, the guys that ported Tomb Raider, released an extended recommendation and performance guide on steam. Theres alot of explanations of exactly what the settings do and what they think about them. Really nicely done of them. The full read is here. http://steamcommunity.com/app/391220/discussions/0/451852225134000777/

First of all, please keep in mind our targets with minimum and recommended specs. At minimum spec, which is a GTX 650 2GB, paired with an i3-2100, we aim to give you an average of 30 fps, at 1280*720 resolution, but this is at the lowest quality preset. At recommended spec, which is a GTX 970 4GB, paired with an i7-3770K, our target is to offer you 60fps average at 1080p, but at the High quality preset. The High quality preset gives you graphics quality well above what can be seen on other platforms, featuring improved SSAO, displacement mapped tessellation throughout the game, and plenty of anisotropic filtering.

We also offer a Very High preset aimed at users well above recommended spec or those who wish to trade framerate for image quality. When at or close to recommended spec, even if you cannot use the Very High preset entirely, please experiment with individual settings at their highest quality, and see what settings work best for you!

The game's just unlocked for me so I've not had long with it, and I'm running a 980ti, so take my experience with a grain of salt:

At 1080p with everything maxed out I've yet to drop below 60. Nvidia released drivers for it yesterday for anyone wanting to update.

@dave_tacitus: Its smooth sailing at 1440p aswell with 980ti (slightly overclocked). Around 65-80fps and sofar not a dip below 60. The only thing i have turned off is AA becouse i dont feel its needed at this resolution.

The game is constantly using 100% of the availible 6110Mb videomemory so they didnt lie about needing alot of memory.

It looks stunning though so the high requirements are more than justifyed.

@rethla: Yeah, I should have mentioned that everything had maxed out apart from AA, which defaulted to FXAA and I've not bothered changing it yet.

@baronsamedi said:

AF only has a small performance impact in environments with a lot of memory bandwidth, like PCs with discrete graphics cards. On consoles, where memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, higher degrees of anisotropy can become much more expensive depending on the complexity of the scene, so it's often scaled back.