Action RPG

Having spent many hours testing Avowed I’ve found these three top tips are the best way to boost the game’s performance

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Over the past two weeks, testing Avowed has kept me quite busy. I’ve spent countless hours conducting various benchmarks using the code they supplied from Obsidian Entertainment. The findings suggest that Avowed’s PC performance can be excellent at times, mediocre at others, and occasionally peculiar. Now, after a week of being open to early access buyers, I’m checking back in to see if any updates have addressed these issues.

They haven’t significantly improved, at least not noticeably to me. But I’ve noticed some quirks with Avowed when it comes to achieving optimal performance. Here are a couple of suggestions if your frames per second aren’t as high as expected.

Enable RT, restart, disable RT, restart again

Hey there fellow gamer! You know what’s been a bit tricky with Avowed? Sometimes it doesn’t run smoothly when I boot it up, even if I’ve played it before. However, I found a workaround that seems to do the trick for me. Here’s what I do: launch the game, activate ray tracing, then restart. Once I’m back in, I disable ray tracing and restart again. Hope this helps!

On three distinct computer systems, this method has proven effective, suggesting a high likelihood of success for you as well. However, the specifics of why and how it works remain unclear. I speculate that the issue might lie in the shader compilation stage during the game’s loading process, which may not be functioning optimally.

It appears that toggling between ray tracing and traditional rendering may completely restart the compiling process, regardless of prior instances, which could be why it’s effective.

Use windowed mode instead of windowed fullscreen

This suggestion isn’t essential; it could potentially benefit your gaming computer. By default, Avowed operates in a fullscreen mode that’s windowed, which means the game runs at the same resolution as your Windows desktop. If you wish to reduce the resolution for better performance, you can either switch to windowed mode (which will provide resolution adjustment options within the game) or alter your desktop settings.

In contrast, if you adjust your desktop resolution to 1080p on a 1440p monitor, the graphics card’s output will remain 1440p, with the monitor scaling it down if necessary. Occasionally, the game or your graphics card driver may become mixed up, causing the game to run at the higher resolution instead.

One possible alternative is utilizing the full-screen mode instead, which may occasionally cause the Windows taskbar to obstruct the game. I’ve discovered that exiting and re-entering the game by using ‘Alt + Tab’ often resolves this issue, or you could adjust settings so the taskbar automatically hides (Windows Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar Options).

Reduce the Global Illumination setting

In Avowed, various graphics settings influence the game’s performance, and one that has a less noticeable visual impact but can boost performance based on your GPU is worth adjusting – the Global Illumination (GI). You’ll find this setting towards the bottom of the options menu.

The data presented here was gathered on a gaming PC equipped with a Core i5 13600K processor, 32 GB of DDR5-6400 RAM, and an Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card. The display resolution was set at 1440p, while all other graphics settings were adjusted using the Epic preset; only Global Illumination (GI) was customized.

It’s clear that opting for Medium GI significantly enhances the average frame rate by 24% over what is achieved using epic settings, and even the 1% lows are improved by 16%. Although this improvement might not seem substantial, when you examine the visual differences between the two modes side-by-side as shown below, it’s evident that the trade-off in graphic quality for a smoother gaming experience is definitely worthwhile.

When you adjust these settings (Draw distance and shadow quality), it affects the graphics in your game. Lowering Draw distance means that closer objects look detailed, but farther ones might become less sharp or even disappear as you decrease the setting. Shadow quality affects how shadows appear in the game; lowering it can make them less defined.

If you change these two settings from ‘Epic’ to ‘High’, use ‘Medium GI’, and keep everything else at ‘Epic’, you’ll get an average of 72 frames per second (fps) and a 1% low of 40 fps. This means that most of the time, the game runs smoothly at 72 fps, but in the worst-case scenario (like when many things are happening on the screen at once), it might drop to 40 fps.

The overall visual quality appears quite comparable to using the Epic preset fully, but performance significantly improves – averaging 48 frames per second and maintaining 34 fps even during peak loads, compared to 48 fps on average with the full Epic preset. However, it’s only when you reduce Global Illumination (GI) to its lowest setting that the difference becomes noticeably apparent.

Try to keep the adjustments in scenery moderate. Overly drastic changes can affect the game’s performance. The larger the disparity between the typical frame and the lowest 1% frames, the more noticeable it becomes; also, the game may seem less smooth if the average frame rate significantly exceeds 60 frames per second.

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2025-02-18 18:03

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