ME1 Citadel FPS Drops

I'm having this exact problem. I came here looking to see if anyone else is talking about it and got on youtube as well, but no one else seems to be mentioning the absolutely terrible optimization of this game. I got to the citadel, was having so much fun with the game and performance was mostly uniform and acceptable sitting between 90-100fps with max settings and even some nvidia ctrl panel enhancements, and just as you stated, as soon as I'm at the presidium, looking around, my fps takes a massive dump to around 50-60fps and is extremely choppy and laggy. Meanwhile, my cpu is sitting around 10-15% usage and my gpu is around 30-40% usage.

Specs:

Ryzen 1700 @3.9ghz

GTX 1080FTW @2060MHz

16GB 3200MHz RAM

Yeah this is happening to me, too. It was worst inside the Normandy but awful in the Citadel too. I get about 4K 120-150 FPS normally but the minute I pan my camera I get huge FPS drops and horrendous stuttering. It makes the game unplayable with a mouse and keyboard. I actually tried the game with an xbox one controller and it runs perfectly smoothly when I pan the camera. I wondered if it's linked to all the PC mouse acceleration stuff people have been talking about but none of the fixes anyone else suggested has worked for me.

Running: ME-LE via Steam

CPU: Intel 9600K

GPU: RTX 3080

Hey @SageBalance @PilotGW @Crookedpinkies Can you add a Dxdiag so we can see what hardware and drivers you have? 

You can also try to do a clean boot to see if there any programs messing with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and turn off any overlay programs for example Discord or Nvidia experience.

/Atic 

Hi @EA_Atic

Thank you for your reply!

Dxdiag attached, as well as pictures of what I'm seeing.

I tried the clean boot process, but it didn't make a difference unfortunately. I also made sure to disable all overlays that I'm aware of, including Xbox Game Bar, Origin, NVIDIA and RTSS, and although because of this I couldn't see the exact FPS figure, there is definately still a big drop when looking in certain directions.

I played a little more this morning and while other areas of the Citadel are better, I'm still getting drops when panning the camera or looking in certain directions (it's usually worse when looking out towards the majority of a given map).

It just feels very jittery overall. I could be wrong, but I don't remember the original being this bad, and I had vastly inferior hardware back when I last played it.

Hi @PilotGW @EA_Atic @SageBalance @Crookedpinkies 

I'm facing the exact same problem. First I thought it was because of my older Hardware (I7 2600k and GTX 970), but now I'm finding more and more reports of people with much better hardware facing the exact same problem.

Suspected V-Sync which is lacking Triple Buffering, but the same result happens with V-Sync off: As soon I exit the embassy and face towards Avina, the performance drops from 120 down to around 45 - 50. Worst point is between Avina and the embassy Fast Travel location while facing towards Citadel Tower. Similar results in the wards, coming from the Med Clinic and walking towards Flux/Markets.

Before that, the performance was great, 120 FPS with V-Sync on my 120 hz Monitor (almost) all the time during Eden Prime. No overlays activated, no controlers etc. plugged in.

Okay, I powered through the Citadel and just got to Edolus and...oh dear. It's dreadful.

Driving around in the Mako is causing a constant stream of stutters caused by the FPS bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, exacerbated by rotating the camera in certain directions.

Sat on a hilltop to the southeast of the map looking west I'm getting a sustained 53 FPS! For a game that's nearly 14 years old at it's core, running on my particular hardware, that's relatively unimpressive to say the least.

😠

I'm at the exact same spot on Edolus right now, just came here to report that the game is nearly unplayable this way. LE was announced with improved performance, this is the exact opposite. There is nothing wrong at the users end imo, this clearly seems to be an issue within the game. CPU and GPU are barely used in this situation, far away from being stressed.

Though looking nice, there is nothing to look at that would even remotely justify the poor performance. RDR2 and W3 are far better looking games that perform satisfactory on my system, W3 nearly at ultra and RDR2 a mixture between medium and high settings.

Tthis shouldn't have been released in this condition, and imo there is no way that QA wasn't aware of this.

@PilotGW 

If you restart PC and load to a save on Edolus, is the performance still as bad?

@holger1405 

Unfortunately, yes! ☹️

I actually did a clean reinstall of my graphics drivers after first getting to Edolus, which obviously involved a PC restart. I'm still getting hefty FPS drops and stutters when looking in certain directions.

I also tried going up a mountain to the north west of the map, and looked out to the east this time. It dropped into the low 40s! It seems to occur when looking out over large distances (i.e., standing at one end of the map and looking across to the other side).

This never happened in the original as far as I can recall.

@holger1405 

I can confirm what @PilotGW reported, after restarting my pc and loading a safe on Edolus, the stuttering issue still persists. I can also confirm

that distance seems to play an important part in these instances.

But in my case, framerate drops can also occur in every situation on Edolus. I can drive around for several seconds in the middle of the map

with good performance, and then with no apparent reason, framerate takes a dive again.