Cyberpunk 2077 performance

[daroon]

Hi,

I have recently bought Acer BiFrost A770 16GB. I must say that performance in Cyberpunk is way below my expectations and looks to me like something is not right. The game performed much better on my old AMD 5600XT 6GB, which is embarrasing to be honest. Settings/resolution don't matter much, although obviously there is a difference between 3440x1440 versus 1024x768 and l;ow/ultra, but not as much as one could expect. I have also noticed that although GPU clock stays on max boost (on default/non OC 2400MHZ, which I think would indicate light workload?) and GPU Activity is 100% according to Intel Telemetry overlay, the temperature stays very low with low fan, which is very different from other games I have tested that perform as expected (Rise of the Tomb Raider). I have also noticed that GPU Core Power never reaches the limit as in other games and in general stay low (130-160W, lowering resolutions/settings can bring it to 100W, despite default limit of 210W on this card).

To sum up:
- low performance, neither settings/resolution having a big impact

- low GPU core power usage (way lower than in other games, 130-160W on 3440x1440 that would indicate GPU is not being stressed)

- low GPU temperature (way lower than in other games, indicating the GPU is not being stressed)

- high GPU activity (100% no matter the settings/resolution)

- GPU Clock max boost all the time (2400MHZ. indicating the card is having a light workload which in case of the game should not be the case, in other games on default GPU settings (no OC) the clock often is max boost, but not all the time)

I have tried all driver versions (used DDU to uninstall), different OC profiles from PredatorBiFrost app, manual OC, cleaning DirectX shader cache, reinstalling the game. None of which had any impact on the game performance. ReBAR is on according to Intel Arc Control Panel. Turning it off produces even worse performance and also noticable performance drop in other games as expected so I am sure it's working.

I have hoped that it will eventually be fixed with drivers, but it's been some time already when A770 was released and yet Cyberpunk still runs very poorly with odd GPU behaviour, not sure how Intel could claim Cyberpunk to have Tier 1 performance in this game. Although I love the idea of the card and powerfull hardware I am seriously considering returning the card, as not much improvements seem to be made. Can't believe this is target performance as on 1024x768 my mobile phone or steam deck would have better performance.

Questions	Answers (N/A if not applicable)
Does your system meet the game’s minimum system requirements?	Yes
Did you already installed the Intel Graphics Driver latest release found at Intel® Graphics – Windows* DCH Drivers?	Yes
Please provide your system information by attaching the following file: 1.      Download the System Support Utility tool to the system where the issue occurred. 2.      Run SSU.exe. Select "Everything". Then click Scan. 3.      Save the data to the text file and attach it to this report.	Attached
Please describe your issue as accurately as possible.	Description in the post
What distribution service did you get the game from? (example: Steam / Origin / Epic / XboxGamePass / UbisoftConnect)	Epic
Please provide the game's graphic/video settings when the issue occurs.	Graphic Quality (Low, Medium, High, Ultra): Tried all, not much difference Resolution (1920x1080, 3840x2160): Tried all, not much difference Vsync (On/Off): Tried both, no difference Display (Fullscreen / Windowed/ Borderless Windowed): Tried all, no difference
Please let us know which game API was been used when the issue occurred (examples: Vulkan, DX11, DX12, OpenGL, etc...)	DX12
Is the power cable plugged in or not? (running on AC power or Battery?)	Yes. 2x6+2 pin attached to GFX
Please provide steps to replicate the issue. These steps are very crucial to finding the root cause and fix. A screenshot to illustrate the issue is a huge plus. A video of the failure is even better! Attach to the post or provide the YouTube link.	Detailed description in the post. Screenshots with Low/1024x768 + Ultra/3440x1440 attached For Ultra test I had to switch FSR to off because despite saying it's on Quality, it was swithcing itself to auto during test.

[daroon]

Attaching screenshots from Intel Telemetry for 3440x1440 Ultra and 1024x768 Low. GPU Activity 100% (like GPU bottleneck) even on the lowest possible settings, with other games activity drops when it's already CPU bottleneck which should be the case on the lowest possible settings/resolution in Cyberpunk as I presume. Also notice that even though the frames are low on 3440x1440 Ultra (around 30fps), the GPU Core Power is just 160W, as if the card was not utilizating it's potential. I don't expect the game to run 60fps solid on Ultra 3440, but even dropping to lowest settings does not bring much improvement (maybe 5-10 more frames) in FPS and GPU Core Power drops even more. With other games it is 190-210W on Ultra settings and 3440 resolution. I have confirmed that manually lowering the max GPU Core Power to 160W via Intel Arc Control Panel does not bring any performance degradation as well, so the GFX is trully not using more power.

[daroon]

Another indication that something is very wrong with how the driver handles this game is that I can crank up GPU performance boost to 40-50 and it is stable for hours on constant clock 2521 or more (up to a bit below 2600) depending on the actual value of performance boost set. The GPU Core power is actually higher (around 170W versus 160W on the same scene), performance kind of the same (5% more). This configuration in any other game (that's using full GPU Core power as expected, hovering around max depending on the scene) causes crash almost immediately. To me it is another indication that somehow Cyberpunk workload is "low" from the card perspective, hence the high clock can be kept without much current and not causing a crash.

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello WojciechD

Thank you for posting on Intel® ARC™ Graphics Communites. I am sorry you are experiencing performance issues when playing CyberPunk 2077 on your Intel® Arc™ A770 Graphics. I really appreciate all the information and findings that you have shared on this thread.

There is at the moment a known issue regarding low performance on CyberPunk 2077 when enabling RayTracing on the game settings. Please try disabling RayTracing and let us know if the same issue persists, so we can make sure if this might be a different issue from what we currently have reported.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[daroon]

Hey Hugo,

Ray Tracing is disabled, so I think this is a different issue. To me it looks like some aspect of graphics of Cyberpunk is being handled very poorly. I know this is not the best optimized game out there, but there are cards that handle it decently well and as I have said, the previous card I had was similar performance (worse in 3440x1440 due to slower memory bus and just 6GB of memory, so just was too much to handle).

Some additional observations:
- There are scenes (mostly indoors, but rarely outdoors as well) that have quite good performance, even 60fps on 3440x1440 on High and GPUCorePower 180W or more range
- Other scenes (especially outdoors in the city centre) perform poorly with low GPUCorePower (130-140W) on the same settings.
- Lowering settings improves performance just a bit, but also GPUCorePower consumption drops, as if some aspect of the Cyberpunk graphics (shadows, shaders or something else) was holding the card back and not allowing it to render faster using full power

- FSR brings almost no performance improvement (few FPS, 5%-10%), same goes for dropping the resolution. My CPU (Ryzen 3900x) can't be the bottleneck as I have seen paired with other cards easily can run up to 150-200 FPS or more before becoming a bottleneck and there is negligible difference between 3900X and fastest CPU as of 2023, because the game is very GPU dependant. What is more, while the average and high FPS is a bit better with FSR quality or balanced mode, the lows are pretty much the same, and it's the lows that are the problem. Turning settings down may improve the average FPS from 38 to 45 on the benchmark, but lows will still be 28-30, especially while driving through the city centre., making it not too enjoyable. When you stop, the FPS go up a bit to 35 for example, despite the fact it's the same place/scene where during driving it was 28 FPS (like the card was not able to keep up with streaming).
- Cascaded Shadows range murder performance on this card which is suprising, because on the other one I had it had 0 impact and could be kept on high. On A770, bringing cascaded shadows down from high to low brings 10FPS improvement (30%, from 30FPS to 40FPS)

- Volumetric Clouds has 0 impact, whereas on most GPUs the impact is big which is positive

- Ray Tracing is not playable at any settings but I was not expecting anything else (mostly because of those lows).

The biggest problems as I see it:
- low base performance, as if some aspect of the graphics murders performance for no reason. Not much difference between lowest and Ultra settings (without RT) - 3440x1440 native on Ultra in a demanding scene - 28 FPS, native on Low - 38FPS. When lowering graphics settings, the GPUCorePower drops instead of rendering more frames. The only way to get the card to utilize full power (190-210W) is to turn everything on including RT, but then it's 20 avg FPS or less. When settings are dropped to playable level, GPUCorePower is 140W-160W and performance is not great (30-38FPS) on 3440x1440 native medium/high

- when FPS go down so does the GPUCorePower, so when the FPS are lowest (theoretically biggest strain on the card) the GPUCorePower goes down, which is against the logic.

Please let me know if you need any additional details to be able to look into this.

Thanks,

Wojciech

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello WojciechD

Thank you for all the valuable information that you have shared with us. We will continue checking this issue internally, I will get back to you once I have an update or in case that I need more information from you.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[daroon]

Attaching another screenshot, 1024x768 native Low preset. 40fps in city centre, GPUCorePower 97W, 98% GPU activity. I have tried tinkering with all engine options, disabling different stuff but even if everything that can be disabled via engine options is disabled (cascaded shadows, global illumination, distant shadows, fog etc.) it does not bring much improvement, especially in the lows department (despite game looking like potato). On lowest resolution/settings I would expect 200FPS range, not 40.

My system is running well and I am getting the same Cyberpunk benchmark results as in various tests/reviews, so it must be some fundamental problem in the driver.

 

[daroon]

Attaching 3dmark timespy results, which show my system performs above average.

Additional observations:

- enabling ReBAR improves GPU score by ~800, but lowers CPU score by ~1300.

- in Cyberpunk the difference between ReBAR off and on is 1FPS (33FPS avg on 3440x1440 vs 34FPS)

Maybe ReBAR is not handled properly in this game by the driver? In other games the difference is much bigger (20-40%)

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello daroon 

Appreciate that you shared this new information with us. We continue to investigate this issue, I let you know once I have more information to share.  

Best Regards 

Hugo O. 

Intel Customer Support Technician. 

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello daroon

Thank you for your patience. I have checked this issue internally with our team, allow me to tell you that we are closely working with the game developer to improve the performance of CyberPunk 2077 on Intel® Arc™ Graphics, and as you have noticed there is still plenty of work to do.

The latest news is that we are working on a performance issue that was introduced in the game's patch 1.6 and a fix should be deployed on the next patch so please stay tuned, there is no estimated time that we can provide at the moment since the release of the patch will depend on the developer.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[addelucas123]

I am pending about the problem of DX12 red dead redemption 2 and cyberpunk 2077 and finally I crashed GTA V using DX11

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello daroon

Since there are no further questions we will be closing this thread, as mentioned in my previous post a performance update should come on the next game patch, if you happen to continue experiencing low-performance issues, feel free to open a new thread and you can reference this one. Thank you for your understating.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[Saveno]

Performance still feels meh.

Need to have Intel Xe on Performance settings and Raytracing on medium to get 60 FPS on 1080p.

The new Path Tracing option drops the FPS below 20 FPS and is unusable on the A770FE but i guess its meant for High End Systems anyway.

[daroon]

I must say that on the latest Cyberpunk patch 1.62 the game finally runs as it should be, not sure how much and if there is still room for improvement but finally it runs as expected and not terribly. 3440x1440 without scaling on high/medium settings mostly 60 fps, not dropping below 45 in most demanding scenes. With Xe scalling even faster and looks much better than FSR. (not much noticable difference between native vs quality mode and +20fps on avg). Ray Tracing still not running playable on a decent resolution but I was not expecting that given most cards struggle.

The performance pretty much trippled on this patch and finally card is using all the power.

Thanks to everyone involved in sorting this out.

[LorDVictIM]

Ray tracing is still broken. Regardless which option you choose. Game crashes all the time.

Driver 31.0.101.4826 (9/13/2023)