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Cities Skylines 2 reportedly runs with 7-12fps on an Intel Core i9 13900KS with AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX at 4K/High Settings (www.dsogaming.com)

submitted 1 year ago by fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] MudMan@kbin.social 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I said this on Masto, but this tells me nothing as written. You can get the first game to run like that, too.

The thing is, if it runs that way on an empty map and degrades the same way the first one did, I can't see it not crashing on a full endgame map. So... how does it run on endgame? Or is this endgame and it runs fine at first? Guessing no, since the devs themselves said this was a problem. And, well, I've seen footage from streamers and it certainly chugs on small maps, too.

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Might be good to have a watch of City Planner Play's Benchmarking video

To answer your main Q from this, apparently the biggest performance dropoff is going from no pop to 10k, scaling up to 100k isn't nearly the same dropoff.

Even with a beefy setup on high settings, CPP suggests turning off many of the post-processing effects and definitely disable VSync. Lastly 4K is out of the question for most cards, barely playable for top end enthusiast cards, Most will be limited to 1080p for a usable experience.

The good news from this video is that for anything above a 970 it is possible to get to late game, as long as you stick to 1080p low-med settings on any card with less than 8GB VRAM.

[-] MudMan@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago

Hm. So it scales with VRAM and GPU, not CPU? Interesting.

That's less concerning than people had made it out to be, at least for a game of this genre. It still doesn't sound particularly pleasant to play, but hey, less of a dealbreaker.

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago

So it scales with VRAM and GPU not, CPU?

Precisely. Not to sound too much like a shill because full disclosure I bought and I'm very excited for C:S2, but I find some of the concern is overblown. Yes the performance is a MAJOR problem, but the game is feature complete and optimization is ongoing, with significant improvements to arrive by console release.

[-] MudMan@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, it seems weird because you'd think all the simulation load would be in the background and they could scale the visuals. Since it seems like there's a high base cost for them I assume it's possible to make that run at least a bit better at some point.

The console release target is a bit of a question mark, though. You'd think they have just weaker GPUs and they'll need to optimize to fit, but they can also target lower resolutions and do other stuff there. Plus if there's an I/O issue in there, there's a reliable spec for SSDs on those, so who knows.

[-] MudMan@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Alright, so I got the game and it a) actually has a fantastic options menu with a ton of granularity, and b) it has some really dumb, wasteful settings flagged as "high" with no "ultra" preset.

I went from launching into a default in the 30s for the default map to toning down their nuts global illumination, volumetric clouds and transparent reflections for a neat 100+ fps. And then I cranked it back up a bit to be hovering around 90. I'm sure I'll have to tweak more when I get deeper into the game, but yeah, no, this is gonna be playable.

For the record, I think setting up decent defaults and settings should be a thing in PC games. Tuning the game shouldn't be the first thing you have to do. But whether it's thanks to last minute patches or people overreacting to the announcements I think this was a bit overblown. I'll report back if that proves not to be the case as I get deeper in.

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[-] thesprongler@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago

Perma-photo mode!

[-] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

"Just tell them they may need to upgrade their PC" -outside consultant Todd Howard

[-] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago

Not that I don't believe them, but it's odd that none of the videos from YouTubers with early access have shown that kind of performance. It makes me wonder if they are trying to set lower expectations for some reason.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 year ago

I suspect 4K is the biggest killer. Most YouTubers aren't playing at that resolution.

[-] MrNesser@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

Yeah ill be waiting for optimization before buying.

This is going to hurt them short term especially during launch.

[-] Lesrid@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I was waiting for bikes, now I'll be waiting for this as well.

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[-] Jumi@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Same goes for me. I was really excited but this really is a big damper.

[-] Wav_function@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Double digits, let's fucking go!

[-] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

09 FPS 👌

[-] Jumi@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Again such a idgaf-management-decision. Fucking greed ruining things yet again.

[-] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

So it might actually be worse than KSP2 then. I was so disappointed by that.

[-] arudesalad@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

It's not going to be worse than KSP2. KSP2 launched with game breaking bugs and all of the new features missing (and some of the old ones) as well as bad performance on ALL graphic settings no matter the specs. CS2 has features that differ it from the first game and the performance issues (allegedly) can be fixed by turning settings down (unlike KSP2). Both games launched (or will launch) without modding support which is really bad for both games.

[-] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I meant specifically the frame rate, not necessarily the game as a whole. I should have been more specific. I do agree with the points on KSP2 though

[-] ours@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Bad time for beloved indie sims getting sequels.

[-] Bread@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

KSP2 still makes me sad. I still have the hope they can pull a no man's sky. The dream of KSP2 is all I ever wanted out of a space game.

[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

I've watched a few people play on YouTube and it doesn't seem bad for most of them

[-] cheerjoy@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Because they're playing with volumetrics disabled. That's the main choke point according to the devs and play testers.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 8 points 1 year ago

Shhhh you gotta jump on the hate train! You can't just be happy a game is coming out here!

[-] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 1 year ago

Probably not playing on High Settings?

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[+] kadu@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 points 1 year ago

I have never in my 20 years of gaming not had to make some sacrifices even with new hardware. The only time I can max out all sliders is when a game is already 5 or more years old.

[-] orbitz@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Yup even if you get top of the line everything PC games usually aren't meant to be maxed out settings at launch. A high resolution really takes a toll on the hardware too. Of course not every game is like this but for the most part they don't want the games to look outdated after two years. It's always fun revisiting games after a PC upgrade because of this. Though since even the devs or publisher said that they didn't hit performance targets this is noticably worse performance, least from all the articles I've seen. I enjoyed the first city skylines except the traffic so am looking forward to buying when it gets optimized.

[-] TanakaAsuka@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

The original cities skylines had atrocious performance after a certain city size as well, especially on hardware available at launch. Hopefully they can deliver on better performance over the next few months, I expect it to improve before they do their console release.

[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 points 1 year ago

This is a good take. If I can play, maybe high settings, on my 1440p monitor I'll be happy. I don't need ultra day one. I'm excited for a refreshed city builder, I have hundreds of hours in the first one and I'm excited to see the improvements.

[-] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I've always had hardware that's a step or two below top of the line for its generation. I had to go through two upgrade cycles before I could max out Far Cry. I had to buy more RAM to turn up the draw distance in Mafia. Hell, I remember my computer chugging when I built too many units in C&C Tiberian Sun...

[-] Miclux@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago

You should read the source article. And why shouldnt it be a problem when they ship a game with "improved" graphics when you can't run them?!

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[-] Not_mikey@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

If you can't actually play it with the new graphics what's it's advantage over original cities skylines?

[-] Caitlynn@feddit.de 29 points 1 year ago

There is actually a LOT more little things, that make the game very different. Besides who in the right mind would buy a 70 buck sequel with Just better grafics?

[-] Jayemecee@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 1 year ago

Everyone that bought fifa for the last 10 years..

[-] SirQuackTheDuck@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

You missed an important bit:

who in the right mind

[-] shrippen@feddit.de 27 points 1 year ago

Just have a look at the dev diaries. For me personally its the overhaul of pretty much all simulation engines (traffic, weather, water, wind, people etc.) and that they solved (apparently) the single thread problem of their traffic simulation. For me CS1 was bottlenecked when the cities became to big and the traffic could only be simulated on one core. There is a limit to that. But my cpu was otherwise idle. I have hope that this is now solved. Plus there is apparently no agent limit anymore. So a town of 500000 could in theory simulate all people individually, CS1 couldn't.

[-] PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com 13 points 1 year ago

How many people are playing on 4k?

[-] samus12345@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I'm a 1080p guy and I just assumed that everyone else in the world was running 4k from how much I hear about it.

[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I feel like most people above 1920x1080 actually rock a 1440p setup cause it's a serious step above traditional HD but without the needs of a 4k capable GPU.

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[-] filcuk@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 year ago

4k is overboard for most people. 2k is a great and affordable middle ground.

[-] SRo@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

Everyone with a 4k monitor

[-] caut_R@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I hope Digital Foundry does a review. I wanna see CPU utilization so badly, Paradox needs to learn to invest into CPU optimizations for their CPU heavy games

[-] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 year ago

They do invest a lot in cpu optimization. The problem here seems to be unoptimized GPU performance.

In addition, you will always struggle with CPU performance in complex simulation games with many interlocking systems. There's only so much you can do without limiting the gameplay.

[-] arudesalad@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

What would the fps be on a (similar) released game with the same specs and settings?

[-] Paradox 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Considering skylines is basically the only surviving city sim franchise, not much. But city sims have always had difficulty with performance. Sim city 4 was notorious for how badly it performed in hardware, even to this day