@zurv: Yeah, msaa defaults off for me. I've tried down to high shadows when at the high setting but not by itself yet, Iv'e tried turning off the hard shadow thing, Depth of field and motion blur did almost nothing maybe 4fps, Volumetric etc. I'll probably get in and tweak some more, also anisotropic filtering at 16 vs 4 made little to no performance difference for me so i turn it up. High looks alright and ultra at 1080p looks alright, but a bit underwhelming compared to ultra at 1440p and above.

@darkaileron: if you are playing at 1080p, definitely get it on PC.

Runs fine on my PS4. I'm sure you guys just need to upgrade your drivers or something.

same here. Got a 970 and have it set to very high with one or two things turned down and it looks and runs fine for me.

This comment isn't helping anyone. Come on.

Gave the benchmark a spin myself just then. Using the default "Ultra" settings and got min 40 with 61 (odd vsync?) with 53-54 average. Less than I like it but not bad considering some recent releases. I have a 980 Ti at 1080p so I am surprised to get less than 60 on most anything lately but I wonder if this is just a case of a demanding game rather than unoptimised or port issues. I'd love to hear from more people with AMD cards also. See if it's a result of it being a Gaming Evolved title.

Can any savvy people weigh in on whether this looks like demanding or broken? Either way I've got loads to play still so I'll wait for drivers or a patch if it's totally broken and if not I might have to, gulp, lower my settings.

Edit: Is there an option for MSAA in-game or is the one inside the Options menu on the launcher the only spot?

Oh and a medal for anyone that knows how to skip those start-up logos.

@aktivity: I keep seeing people say this and I'm not sure how that's possible. I have a 980, and run this game on Ultra with no issues or stuttering or anything. I had the same thing with No Mans Sky. Ran smoothly from day one for me. Maybe it's something else to do with my PC that I don't understand.

My only issue with the game has been it's controller right stick sensitivity. It does the awful thing that FarCry: Instincts did where you push the right stick 50% out and you're barely turning at all, then the last 50% you are looking at lightening speed. It makes aiming precisely impossible.

Well maybe that's because what people consider "fine" or "smooth" are pretty subjective. Are you saying you are getting a solid 60 fps on a 980 on Ultra? Do you mean Ultra with shadows turned down or Ultra with all settings on Ultra. There are a lot of factors.

Yeah...I don't think he meant 60 FPS either. If he is able to run this on Ultra everything on a single 980 and maintain 60 FPS, it must be some kind of magical unicorn 980 that is about twice as powerful than any 980 that has been used to benchmark the game so far, or he turned some settings down.

Alright i got pretty decent 50-60 at 1440p now, i think the setting i missed was the screen reflections thing, i turned that, volumetric, and shadow hardening to "on" and turned depth of field all the way off (i love DOF but it was keeping me in the 40's). I also dropped shadows to "High". So far i've finally started the game and haven't noticed any drops yet although i'm in a warehouse. Game doesn't look quite as good as the benchmark made it out to be but i guess there aren't many light sources etc in the area. Graphics card stays at about 94% usage, and the boost clock is where it should be at over 1900mhz

Some other wierd things i've noticed is whenever i go into the menus the entire menu ui randomly get's "squished" doesn't really bother anything but it's odd. Also cutscenes aren't in widescreen and have black bars on the side, not sure if it's just not scaling them to the game res or what. I have a similar issue in GTAV. So far gameplay seems fine, they have a multitude of gamepad layouts to chose from, "breach" seemed like the best one so far. If the dx12 update boosts performance any i kinda wish they would have just waited a couple weeks. Game makes me feel like i'm still using my 980 lol.

@mike: Yes, the highest settings possible, except for MSAA is off and only double buffering on VSync. And yes, solid 60 FPS consistently. For no mans sky I would get some stuttering in the start menu, but then it would work fine while playing. Though I haven't played NMS since a couple weeks ago.

Just put in 2 hours. Used the GeForce Exp and those settings work great so far. Things I have issues with is the menus are fucked when I scroll, it constantly bounces to the middle so I have to scroll half the list each time I want to move down the list 1 slot (if that makes sense). And the game seems a little weird with a gamepad (using a DS4), hate that I can't find a list of the controls for the controller, running around with my gun pointing at everyone is weird and then the touchpad (for whatever reason) fires that gun. I'm used to the touchpad being select but several times I've accidentally shot someone because of that habit.

EDIT: Biggest bummer so far is that Sarif, figured he would return, doesn't have the southern cal, surfer dialect anymore. Was in the so bad so good terriotry for me that made me actually remember him, unlike most other characters.

Is the driver causing people issues? I don't have the game, I'm just curious if the driver is a problem after hearing BSOD issues relating to it (mostly from TotalBiscuit).

I just followed the advice I read pre-release.

Don't go to Ultra textures, don't use Contact Shadows, just use MSAA. Everything else on High or higher. 75fps most of the time on a GTX970. Already taking an embarrasing amount of screenshots.

I was gonna say this exactly. Newcomers to PC being butthurt. Buy better hardware, and the game will run fine.

@guardianknux: on a 980? Forgive me if this is rude but that's slightly unbelievable to me. Could you post your benchmark report or something?

My computer has done really well with keeping the framerate above 30 with most of the settings at very high or max. The game looks great with those settings. However I have been getting the repeatable crash to desktop during the first cutscene in Prague. I have even tried the workarounds suggested by SquareEnix and still no dice. This port has some real bad wonkiness to it, I am fine with workaround or justifiable lowering of settings to try and "bruteforce" past a resource heavy scene. However the consistency of this crash I have been getting, no matter what the settings, makes this game just broken for me until a patch is released.

Well this is all a bummer. I decided to get this on PC because I somehow figured it would run smooth after I read initial reports that system requirements weren't going to be that insane. Seems like it's hard to win these days. I got Grow Up on PS4 because I thought a simple looking game like that would be fine on console and there was a pre-order discount - turned out to run pretty damn poorly. Now I'm reading up and down the Internet how you need to fiddle with this PC release for a while before its stable, not to mention some weird control issues and such.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

I had this crash 3 times. In the end Windowed mode (unchecked full screen on graphics options) was all I needed to change to get me through.

Its a bit sloppy to have a crash-to-desktop bug during the game's first major in-game cutscene! Hopefully this particular problem will be patched soon. Otherwise I've had no problems with performance on my I5-6600, 16GB, GTX 970.

Got a pretty solid 60 on Very High with GTX 980 SLI, at 1440p. Occasional FPS drops in certain spots (Koller's lab and TF29 holding cells for some reason).

Ran a couple of laps around Prague on Ultra just now, FPS as was up and down between 35 and 55.

All of these were with MSAA off, of course. I started the game up yesterday with everything maxed and got 10 FPS in the main menu, so MSAA is never getting turned on again.

I could probably bump up some settings from Very High and take only a minor hit to FPS, but I like it where it is.

Fired it up for a few minutes, seems about where it should be if you ask me. 3440x1440 with a GTX 1080 and it doesn't go below 50 from what I can tell with everything turned up minus MSAA and Contact Hardening Shadows (two things that always cost a bunch of grunt).

I wouldn't go on record on calling this game a "bad port". In fact, the game seems to tax most machines because of the technology at work here. There are some very hoggy graphics settings in this game, one of which is Contact Shadows. This pretty much makes some shadows in the game blur and disappear at an off point with certain objects. This is a replication of what happens in real life when objects distance themselves from surfaces, making their shadow blur gradually the further it is from the surface. It's awesome tech I want to see more in games, but the majority of us don't have the hardware for it. Turn that fucker off.

Volumetric lighting is a big one. Turn that off or run it on "on", not "ultra".

Turn shadows down too. That's a big hitter.

I got a GTX 970 and I have textures on high, shadows on high, contract shadows off, volumetric particles set to "on", and I'm getting pretty good frame rates. If you got anything lower end, then I'm sorry to say it but you gotta deal with lower settings and/or bad frame rates. The devs here made a game with settings that are meant for future computers, and I'm totally down with that. We need more games that do that kinda stuff.

I remember the last Dues Ex game running well on PC at launch and being a good port with decent options. Am I remembering wrong or was that the case and now they've made a balls of it?

I can only speak to my own experience but it was smooth sailing from day 1 for me.

As a console player looking in, this seems like one of two things:

1. The game being a shaky port that needs patching / current GPU drivers are messing something up and the manufacturers need to issue their own updates.

Or

2. People are going in, turning everything to Ultra and then being surprised when they sometimes dip to 50. I always wonder if people would complain as hard if they didn't have a frame counter telling them that something has dipped below the golden 60.

I'm guessing it's mostly number 1. But I do wonder if we're at a point where people with 970s and above just expect every modern game to run perfectly on maxxed out settings.

For me, it's the MSAA. I have MSAA off (along with motion blur and chromatic aberrations as I find them distracting), and stay above 60 FPS @ 1920x1200 with no major dips on my 980 TI, even with everything else cranked up to Ultra (or as high as it'll go). Contact hardening shadows on ultra, volumetric lighting on ultra, subsurface scattering, the works.

I also skipped the Game Ready drivers, as there had been some reports of crashing and general instability.

I updated the first post to clarify that it's not a broken or bad port, since I wasn't trying to say that as some people in here have insinuated. The fidelity of the graphics do not warrant the poor performance, though several posts have indicated why that might be the case. Luckily there are some settings that can be changed to gain performance but other games released this year look better and run better at the same time.

@guanophobic said:

Don't you think that's an incredible dismissive and ignorant point of view? Have you tried talking to anyone having issues instead of generalising and insulting? I can't speak for everyone in here but I'm not new to PC, and I have one of the best GPUs on the market. Remarks pertaining to the poor performance are relative to other games that both look and run better than this game. It's not broken, it just doesn't run as well as well.

I havent even managed to get mine to start so far on my PC. Unfortunately I seem to be one of those people who is getting the crash at startup problem. Was looking forward to trying the game last night as well :(

No, others comments confirms mine. Second, I'm tired of hearing people whine when a new release doesn't run flawlessly on maxed out settings in a brand new PC release. I want the medium to constantly evolve, fast. Just like it has for a very long time. And not just halt, cause there's an influx of new PC gamers, expecting their mid range graphics cards to hold out as long as the consoles have in the past.

@alistercat: What games would that be?

@rethla: Doom, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Dark Souls 3, and I ran those on my 970 better than this runs on a 1070. Even if I turn off every option in the game it still doesn't run higher than 50fps.

@guanophobic: I can't run the game higher than 45fps on medium (medium being the lowest for some of the settings) with a 1070, it's not unreasonable to expect better performance than that. This isn't Crysis in 2007, when nobody was expected to be able to run it well because it looked so good. Complaints don't halt progress, and people having performance issues on more than capable hardware aren't holding anyone back. I also don't know why you're concerned with people complaining being new, what is your evidence? You're assuming complaints are coming from a lack of experience and knowledge.

@alistercat: Those games are easier on hardware sure but they dont look better.

The Rise of the Tomb raider port is done by the same people as Deus ex and you will find a thread similair to this here on GB from when that game launched.

Patch is up

http://forums.eu.square-enix.com/showthread.php?t=190872

addresses early game crashes and some performance issues - apparently (haven't tested it yet)

Tomb Raider definitely looked better. Don't take me wrong Deus Ex looks nice, but it hasn't wow me at any point like Tomb Raider or Witcher 3 did.
The faces alone still look off to me in DE.

@extintor:

No huge changes for me in the benchmark but that's to be expected with a hotfix. Have they commented on any further plans?

This feels like a metro last light situation where if you turn that thing up it will shew threw everything. I dont think it's broke they just put in some demanding stuff in it and people with expensive cards turn up everything all the time. So that might be your problem ?

@soulcake: A few people have expressed this sentiment without actually reading. I have personally tested all combinations of settings and the benchmarks I linked to in the first post tested dozens of GPUs on all the preset levels. Don't just assume people are being stupid and not understanding their graphics settings.

I haven't had a patch download yet, but weirdly that build is in the beta tab in steam. Downloading it from there now. Edit: Ignore that, I mistook the beta build for the new version but it is infact the old version.

@alistercat: Well it isnt adressing any performance so unless your game crash its an non important patch for you.

@alistercat: Ok Guess i am lucky then ?

@soulcake: Any problematic release has people who have no problem. The catastrophic Arkham Knight release had people reporting that the game was running perfectly fine. Same with No Man's Sky. Even among people with performance problems the causes will be different and fixes won't be universal. I've been lucky once or twice to not have problems when other people have, but it doesn't make the problems go away for the people who do have them. Again, I said in the very first post this is not a broken port, just performance issues.

@rethla: I have had some crashes so I'm holding off on playing for a few days.

I just want them to fix the 'Hold t to Unmark All' prompt sticking on the screen. It's interfering with my screenshots, and I really don't want to dump Praxis points into the tracking augment to make it go away.

Thanks for the heads up, looks like I dodged a bullet not getting this.

my game has been solid as a rock performance-wise (i5-6600,16gb,gtx970) on high, but it crashed multiple times at the train station. No frame chugging or anything... just crash.

It's a shame people are having so much trouble with the game. I have no complaints so far, the game is running absolutely fine for me. I have noticed a few dips in frames here and there but nothing game breaking. I never play games with fps up on the screen at all times, but it feels like a solid 60 most of the time. So I guess the actual number doesn't matter in my case. I have a i7 6700k (stock), 16gb RAM, and a GTX 1070 running on an SSD. MSAA is off, but most other settings are a combination of Very High and Ultra. I did turn off Contact Hardening Shadows though, as well as Subsurface Scattering. So if your using a 1070 like me, try that I guess.

@ripelivejam: Not saying it's an epidemic, just that it's a trend. Even if we ignored Deus Ex's wonky MSAA option, you still have No Man's Sky, and both Marvel Ultimate Alliance PC ports to name a few.

I've not dipped below 60 with these settings, rarely below 70. 980ti/4670k/16GB

On the patch notes in the Steam forums, Squeenix are saying this:

We are seeing people reporting performance issues when playing the game on Very High/Ultra settings with MSAA set to 2x, 4x, or 8x. We would like to emphasize again that these options are very demanding.

We recommend everyone that is running at recommended spec or higher to start with the High Preset and MSAA turned off, and then tweak the options to optimize your experience.

@korwin: hey could you run ths benchmark tool and see what it says? I have the same card and at a similar pixel count res i couldnt get over 45 when i tried. Wont be able to try myself for a while either.

Also to speak on the port for everybidy, i think its mostly fine, its not broken and is playable. My old 980 couldnt max some games at 1080p either but could get some at 1440p you just have to adjust settings. Its a modern pc game that runs fine if you dont try and max everything out. Sometimes i think developers should just call high ultra and cut the extra effects lol.

Something improved overnight. I'm now getting FPS up to 80 now at Very High, almost solid 45 with Ultra. Resolution remains at 1080, because it locks me to 30 if I try 1440. I do not get that.

But with volumetric stepped up to ultra, and shadows very high/contact shadows on, it would be ridiculous to complain. I'm running a titan black coupled with a i7 950, the term ridiculous appropriate there. I am going to build a new computer, but it is actually hard to be in a hurry.