5 years ago
ME1 Citadel FPS Drops
Hi, I started ME1 earlier and was having a blast...until I got to the Citadel. Now I'm just frustrated. Essentially, the game has been running pretty much perfectly at 144 FPS. However, if I walk o...
Well, the original game was designed so long ago that running on newer systems never had any lag. Since the update, this is no longer the case. Better graphics means more lag. It now has the same problems with lag as any other current game.
You'll just have to adjust the settings in the game to give better performance.
For me, turning off the advanced lighting, film grain, motion blur and that crap helped immensely. Also turning off vsync and locking it to 60fps helps a TON.
The game (at least ME1 LE) doesn't lag because of better graphics compared to the originals. It's runs fine @ 120 + and then suddenly drops while nothing has changed on screen. Even more if the character or the mako are slightly moved or the camera is turned. Overall poor performance would be an explanation. But it's not overall poor performance.
It's also happening to high end systems that can run CP2077 on ultra with Raytracing enabled at 4k resolution, and remaster or not, nothing visible on screen justifies a bad performance in ME1 LE.
Btw, there is no advanced lighting option in my copy of the game. Motion Blur and Film Grain are already disabled because I don't like these effects. V-Sync is broken in this game, so I had to force it via driver in order to cap the frames at 60. This doesn't really help, it is only an unacceptable workaround to mask the underlying problem until this issues are finally fixed.
If my hardware was being utilised anywhere close to 100% then I'd agree with you, but it's not even touching 50% for either GPU or CPU, so I have plenty of overhead. I've already tried turning off literally everything and nothing resolves the drastic FPS drops when looking in certain directions.
Also while I agree this version does have more bells and whistles than the original, there's absolutely nothing here that should warrant buying top of the range hardware just to brute force it. I have an RTX 3080...you can't get much better than that at this stage, and my CPU isn't that old either. 🤐
Sure, I can lock it at 60 to prevent most of the drops, but then why is my expensive, powerful PC getting bopped by an Xbox Series X running at 1440p/120FPS? Also, 60 FPS feels horrible in this game for some reason...very jittery.
It's sad to say, but in my case at least, Cyberpunk 2077 with everything turned on is running smoother than this and that game has terrible optimization. ☹️
For players having issues, try this... it completely removed all performance and lag issues for me. The solution is for ME1 but it works for ME2 as well.
This was pointed out to me by @EA_David So, if it fixes it, send him some thanks.
Thanks for the heads up, but sadly it didn't help. The framedrops on planets that happens after swiftly turning the camera around, probably mouse related, are still there.
I can run around with Shepard in front of the base on Xawin after exiting it, while facing south- southest, and no framedrops if I only use keys. As soon as I grab the mouse and pan around, game starts stuttering again, and keeps stuttering even though I'm running around in the same spot facing the exact direction. The more line of sight, the worse it gets. Dropping from 100+ to less than 40 in some instances while at the same spot facing the same direction isn't something that can be fixed by such tweaks, I' afraid.