The Last of Us Part I Performance Complaints Debunked

[Frag Maniac]

I just started playing The Last of Us Part I a few days ago. Now before anyone assumes I'm an idiot for buying it so early with all the talk of horrible performance, read further. I've done about a playthrough and a half, am playing on an 8700K, GTX 1080, and 16GB RAM, with stock clocks, at 1080p on ALL High settings, including all Textures, with AF bumped up to 16x, and FSR 2 on Quality mode. I'm talking about gameplay experiences with update 1.0.6.0 btw, as I've not had a chance yet to play with the latest 1.0.7.0 patch.

The Graphics menu auto set me to 4x AF, Default Scaling, most everything at High, with all Textures on Med. It also had Motion Blur and Depth of Field On, both of which I turned Off. I also play with in game Vsync and Frame Limiter disabled, using NCP to set Vsync to On, with a 60 FPS frame rate limiter. This is because if I use the in game VS/FL settings, I get a bit of screen tear. Through most of the game I am now getting at or near 60 FPS. I've had only TWO instances so far where my FPS dropped to 38 for a second, which caused a very slight hitch.

Neither of those very slight hitches affected gameplay at all, as it runs quite well when engaged with enemies. They both occurred during casual exploration, one at the dam when walking near the turbine they'd just turned on, the other at the university when seeing the monkeys outdoors for the first time. Some claim dense forest scenes can have quite an impact, but while in them I stayed at pretty much 60 FPS mostly, whether on foot or horseback, regardless of speed.

I am currently uploading a 28 min video to verify this, and word is, Valve have given an unlimited refund time on this game, due to all the complaints, which I feel is an unnecessary freebie. You MUST however let shaders compile completely in the main menu before playing, or you WILL get stutters in game. On update 1.0.6.0, the shaders compiled in roughly 15 min or so on my CPU. The shaders need be compiled just once, though updating your GPU driver will require it be done again. Game updates however do not affect compile status.

As soon as I can I will post the aforementioned gameplay video that shows onscreen FPS, Frame Time, RAM/VRAM usage, and CPU and GPU usage and temps. It's got a little over an hour to finish uploading according to YT, but processing to 1440p could take a fair bit of time. Hopefully I can get it posted by today sometime.

[EDITED]
And here's that video I was referring to. I should first say this game uses a lot of RAM and CPU. I've always used a tool to disable all telemetry in W10, which frees up at least 1GB RAM, and I highly recommend that for this game. I use O&O ShutUp10, and it can be done with one click. If you prefer to have some apps accessible vs all of them off, it's just as easily reversed as well. I'm sure the same can be done in W11 if you happen to be using it instead.

The frame drop I referred to happens at 8:33. There is also a hitch at 14:13, but that one is a ShadowPlay capture glitch, it didn't occur in game. You can either choose to believe me or not on that one, but you can clearly see the FPS does not drop.

 

[Deleted member 2731765]

You MUST however let shaders compile completely in the main menu before playing, or you WILL get stutters in game. On update 1.0.6.0, the shaders compiled in roughly 15 min or so on my CPU. The shaders need be compiled just once, though updating your GPU driver will require it be done again. Game updates however do not affect compile status.

Yeah. That's true ! As a matter of fact if we SKIP the shader compilation process, then the game also eats up a lot of system RAM as well. Some systems don't exhibit this behavior though.

There have been several reports claiming that this game requires a LOT of system RAM/memory. Some users have reported 15GB+ RAM usage while running this game. Even 24GB memory usage if you SKIP the shader compilation process, and launch the game without completing the shader compilation procedure.

You are lucky if the shader compilation only took 15 minutes, because the most weird part regarding the "Shader Compilation" process is that it can even take almost an hour, 1 hour minimum, to complete on some PCs with lower hardware.

I guess the game is badly optimized, but there was surely a memory leak somewhere, because the devs have already patched the game recently. But again, some systems never had this kind of behavior to begin with.

As you might be aware, the new latest patch/hotfix decreased the PSO cache size to reduce memory requirements and minimize Out of Memory crashes. These Out of Memory crashes were related to the RAM and not VRAM.

Also, since the game has already been cracked, coders/hackers were already aware of the culprit file, which turns out to be oo2core_9_win64.dll, which was the said reason for the memory leak in the first place.

And turns out the new update indeed has made some changes to the above DLL file. The file size has also decreased as well. I'm now trying to verify whether this game file is indeed the culprit or not. Have the game on STEAM though.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah. That's true ! As a matter of fact if we SKIP the shader compilation process, then the game also eats up a lot of system RAM as well. Some systems don't exhibit this behavior though.

There have been several reports claiming that this game requires a LOT of system RAM/memory. Some users have reported 15GB+ RAM usage while running this game. Even 24GB memory usage if you SKIP the shader compilation process, and launch the game without completing the shader compilation procedure.

You are lucky if the shader compilation only took 15 minutes, because the most weird part regarding the "Shader Compilation" process is that it can even take almost an hour, 1 hour minimum, to complete on some PCs with lower hardware.

I guess the game is badly optimized, but there was surely a memory leak somewhere, because the devs have already patched the game recently. But again, some systems never had this kind of behavior to begin with.

As you might be aware, the new latest patch/hotfix decreased the PSO cache size to reduce memory requirements and minimize Out of Memory crashes. These Out of Memory crashes were related to the RAM and not VRAM.

Also, since the game has already been cracked, coders/hackers were already aware of the culprit file, which turns out to be oo2core_9_win64.dll, which was the said reason for the memory leak in the first place.

And turns out the new update indeed has made some changes to the above DLL file. The file size has also decreased as well. I'm now trying to verify whether this game file is indeed the culprit or not. Have the game on STEAM though.

Well, the common verbiage people use is poorly optimized, but I played the game back on patch 1,0.1.0 as well, and though it was dipping more often than it does now in FPS, as low as 40, I never had the constant stutter or crash problems many claim. I will say though that the latest patches HAVE sped up running, aiming, and such animations, which CAN help during combat.

 

[PsychoPsyops]

The graphical differences between ps5 and pc are so slight now that there's really no reason for playing pc ports for the most part, let alone spending time analyzing it and writing lengthy posts disregarding the fact that optimization issues affect a large amount of different hardware builds.

 

[Frag Maniac]

The graphical differences between ps5 and pc are so slight now that there's really no reason for playing pc ports for the most part, let alone spending time analyzing it and writing lengthy posts disregarding the fact that optimization issues affect a large amount of different hardware builds.

Seriously, you're only going to factor in performance? One of the MAIN reasons a lot of die hard PC gamers avoid consoles like the plague is they only work well with gamepads, and gamepads to those kind of players aren't NEARLY as intuitive feeling as a mouse. Not to mention the fact that keyboards have WAY more binding options.

Trust me, I've read up a ton on how the ZIM Apex keyboard adapter worked for PS4, and the reality always was, it came down to how the game was coded. There are a TON of made for PC games that work well with gamepads, but there are scant few made for console games that work well with mouse.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I just started playing The Last of Us Part I a few days ago. Now before anyone assumes I'm an idiot for buying it so early with all the talk of horrible performance, read further.

All the complaints are why I purchased CP2077 on launch day but have never played it. After upgrading my PC this week I plan to give CP2077 a go this weekend.

I also want to check this game out as well... but will probably wait a bit due to similar complaints... but not as long as I've waited to play CP2077.

 

[Frag Maniac]

All the complaints are why I purchased CP2077 on launch day but have never played it. After upgrading my PC this week I plan to give CP2077 a go this weekend.

I also want to check this game out as well... but will probably wait a bit due to similar complaints... but not as long as I've waited to play CP2077.

The complaints were justified with the CP 2077 release. TLoU Part I's complaints though are quite misleading, and largely due to reviews of pre-release versions of the game that never should have been sent out, and many players being too impatient to let shaders compile before playing.

I mean you can choose to jump on the idiot bandwagon and listen to only nonsense, and ignore the testimonials from those like myself whom have stated (and proven) otherwise, but with the no limit refund window Valve is offering, there's no reason not to at least try it and see for yourself.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

The complaints were justified with the CP 2077 release. TLoU Part I's complaints though are quite misleading, and largely due to reviews of pre-release versions of the game that never should have been sent out, and many players being too impatient to let shaders compile before playing.

I mean you can choose to jump on the idiot bandwagon and listen to only nonsense, and ignore the testimonials from those like myself whom have stated (and proven) otherwise, but with the no limit refund window Valve is offering, there's no reason not to at least try it and see for yourself.

I plan to. It's in my Steam wishlist and I'll probably make the purchase soon. Just started Hogwart's Legacy and gonna play that a bit first.

Not worried about having issues though. I'd suspect a lot of the complaints are hardware related... of which I have no issues. No offense taken with the "idiot bandwagon" comment either.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I plan to. It's in my Steam wishlist and I'll probably make the purchase soon. Just started Hogwart's Legacy and gonna play that a bit first.

Not worried about having issues though. I'd suspect a lot of the complaints are hardware related... of which I have no issues. No offense taken with the "idiot bandwagon" comment either.

Yeah I just looked at your spec and realized there's literally no game it can't easily play. You'll just have to let the complainers hate both the game and players like you for having spec they can't afford. LOL

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

Yeah I just looked at your spec and realized there's literally no game it can't easily play. You'll just have to let the complainers hate both the game and players like you for having spec they can't afford. LOL

Here's an update... I got impatient and decided to go ahead and purchase the game last night.

Shaders took 30 mins to build... no big deal. CPU was 80-90C during that process. Normal it seems. Rebooted the game after that and all the settings were auto set to Ultra. I played for about 90 mins and had no issues at all. The graphics were astonishingly good... a steady 60 FPS in 4K Ultra.

VRAM usage was around 14/24GB... 4090 temps maxxed around 60C and 50% load... CPU was less.

Solid performance IMO. If I have any issues I'll post back but so far there have been none.