Dark Souls 3 - One of the best games ever with bad optimisation?

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ObsidianLegion

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Apr 26, 2016
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So here's my problem. After much searching around on optimising Dark Souls 3 for the best experience, I'm still having crazy stuttering issues whilst one, having a pc that's more than up to it, and two, having a steady 60fps whilst the game isn't autosaving.

My specs are:
Intel core i3 4170 3.7GHz
ASUS Strix GTX 960
8GB DDR3 RAM
7200RPM SATA 3 1TB HDD

I'm so, SO eager to play this game but the stuttering is making it nigh impossible to dodge and attact effectively. Sometimes the game runs at 60fps ultra, even in big fights and boss fights and other times it stutters like nobody's business. After some searching I've seen it may be due to Nvidia's drivers or the game constantly creating log files in game. I have updated my drivers to the latest, moved the game to a different folder, pretty much everything I can yet the stutter persists. Does anyone have any clues as to what's going on?

EDIT: As further info, I can play Skyrim fully modded with 2K textures, godrays, enhanced particles, enhanced blood and Fallout 4 on ultra at 60fps for both, why does this game hate me?
 
Solution
TheDarkOne198
I think I may have solved it. I was playing Dragon Age Inquisition and was setting things up again (lost setting when doing a clean install of windows) and noticed that Mantle could not be used,saying that my hardware was not compatible and also Crossfire was not working on D3D11. This threw up red flags because...well,AMD hardware haha. I went into Radeon Settings and noticed that the Mantle API version said "none" or something like that. I downloaded and installed the latest AMD drivers and things are better now. Dark Souls 3 does still seem to work better on a single GPU. I spent a few hours farming vertabra shackles and it dropped to zero frames only 3 times. Once during a loading screen,once before a loading screen and the third...
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James Mason

James Mason

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Jan 2, 2014
13,553
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If you have graphics or driver issues, one of the most common fixes is a clean uninstall and removal of your graphics drivers.

To uninstall your drivers, first download and run Display Driver Uninstaller, and follow it's recommendations of booting into safe mode and ect.
(This is a direct download link so you don't grab the wrong version)
http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/display-driver-uninstaller-download,20.html

You'll download a compressed file called "[Guru3D.com]-DDU.zip"
Right click and choose extract.
Go into the folder and run the DDU v##.##.exe
This will extract more files to this folder.
Run Display Driver Uninstaller.exe
Choose Yes when it asks you to boot into SafeMode.
After you've rebooted into safe mode.
When DDU comes up, if it hasn't selected your GPU manufacturer (Nvidia/AMD/Intel) then choose it from the drop down list
Press the Clean and Restart option
If a window comes up asking to disable the Windows automatic installation of display drivers click yes.

After (or before removing the old drivers, just put the new ones on the desktop or somewhere handy) rebooting back into Windows, manually download the latest drivers from Nvidia or AMD, don't use auto detect, choose you GPU model and OS from the drop down lists.
Nvidia: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
AMD: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download
 
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RCFProd

RCFProd

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Dec 8, 2013
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Is it stuttering at 60fps or are you just dropping in frames? Think the GTX 960 is supposed to hang around 45-50 fps in some parts. Stuttering/low fps doesn't always have to link to bad optimisation. Perhaps certain parts are simply heavy on video memory, you never know.

If you cap the fps to 40-45 you'll never get stuttering and you'll get used to that amount of fps too. You can cap fps best with Nvidia Inspector.

 
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Daniel Hart

Daniel Hart

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Mar 30, 2015
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They just pulled their most recent patch (which addressed cheaters) because it was causing tons of stuttering and framerate issues. I know some were having stuttering issues prior to that patch, but hopefully they can fix a lot of it
 
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ObsidianLegion

Commendable
Apr 26, 2016
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Did that when I changed from my old GPU to this one less than one month ago, I don't think the clusterfuck of overwritting drivers is the problem, thanks for your input though!
 
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ObsidianLegion

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Apr 26, 2016
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Right, I'll take a quick gander at their patch history notes!
 
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RCFProd

RCFProd

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Dec 8, 2013
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''I don't think the clusterfuck of overwritting drivers is the problem''

When you delete your current one using DDU and install a new one they are not overwritten. You have fresh files. Why did you phrase it that way out of everything? Does this mean you install new drivers by overwriting them?

Anyways, as I said, GTX 960 can't hold on to 60 fps. Neither can Fallout 4 even though you said you can, because you will drop to 40 fps as you progress in the game. At the start the GTX 960 can handle it at 60 fps but not further in the game. I will know because I played it with a 960.

 
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ObsidianLegion

Commendable
Apr 26, 2016
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That's what I mean, I've only installed 2 Nvidia drivers after running DDU after I upgraded my card. I could understand if I were having problems with it if i didn't use DDU after putting in my new card but I have, that's what I'm getting at :lol:
 
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RCFProd

RCFProd

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Dec 8, 2013
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So anyways, here's most likely why the GTX 960 is stuttering. It's because Dark Souls 3 is demanding


[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bskn6L8cBi4"][/video]
 
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ObsidianLegion

Commendable
Apr 26, 2016
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I could cope with that drop to 45 fps but it's the fact that my game is suttering, I'm talking drops to 10fps every other second for some reason
 
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TheDarkOne198

TheDarkOne198

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Jan 9, 2012
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I am having nearly the same issue. I have similar specs: A10 7850K @4.4 GHz,R9 380+R9 285 crossfire (crossfire actually WORSENS game performance),16GB DDR3 and I have the game on an SSD. I sometimes have drops down to as little as 1 FPS,virtual freezing of the game,where I sometimes worry my whole computer has locked up. It always pulls out of it but its still annoying. Other times,it runs relatively fine but changing settings doesnt help any. I have dropped it to 720p on low settings and still have the issue. I cant imagine my system cannot meet this games specs. I can do Witcher 3 at max setting,high PP and have even hairworks turned on on relatively high settings (in xfire,ofc) and have consistent FPS of about 60FPS. Dark Souls 3 is still just horribly optimized and I have noticed on the drops,there is always very heavy activity on the HDD light,pretty much being on solid. IDK if your situation has changed,as it has been some months,but I came across this thread searching for answers online. Sorry if anyone sees this as a necropost.
 
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BattleSpice

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Jun 10, 2016
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It's alright. I found that after upgrading to Windows 10, the game ran really smooth. I now play it on Ultra/60fps
 
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TheDarkOne198

TheDarkOne198

Distinguished
Jan 9, 2012
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I think I may have solved it. I was playing Dragon Age Inquisition and was setting things up again (lost setting when doing a clean install of windows) and noticed that Mantle could not be used,saying that my hardware was not compatible and also Crossfire was not working on D3D11. This threw up red flags because...well,AMD hardware haha. I went into Radeon Settings and noticed that the Mantle API version said "none" or something like that. I downloaded and installed the latest AMD drivers and things are better now. Dark Souls 3 does still seem to work better on a single GPU. I spent a few hours farming vertabra shackles and it dropped to zero frames only 3 times. Once during a loading screen,once before a loading screen and the third time was going back to it after ALT+ESCing out of the game,which was probably the game complaining I did that,as most games do. As for the combo of my GPU and CPU,I guess it is strange but it works well enough,most of the time. The drop to 0FPS always coincides with heavy HDD light activity.
 
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