Constant frame lag - is it just my computer?

[Trilobyte]

Unfortunately my laptop is poorly-equipped for gaming and I was hoping an Indie game would be less of an issue as they tend to have lower resolution graphics than AAA games. When playing the frame rate I am getting is very low to the point of inhibiting me somewhat. All movement and camera movement lags though I don't know the exact frame rate. I have it set to low so everything looks very last gen.

My computer details:
Lenovo Laptop
Windows 10 64-bit (windows 8.1 upgrade)
Intel i5-4210U CPU @ 1.70GHz 2.40 GHz
RAM: 8GB (7.89 GB usable)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 820M

Computer, especially gaming computers, aren't exactly cheap.
It's a shame though as I like the gameplay though I've just started and having trouble getting a reliable supply of clean water and food besides short-lived biopaste.

The (old-ish) game Assassin's Creed III runs without issues on my computer so could it be related to optimisation? The game Rise of the Tomb Raider also has the same lag issues. :-(

[Maslostroj (Daniel)]

It's definitely the graphic card that's a big bottleneck. Could be the CPU as well, but as I don't really understand notebook specs, I'm not sure about that one.

[Trilobyte]

But here's the strange part. For comparison here's a screenshot from PN compared to Assassin's Creed III (referred to below as AC3). These are the games I have and took screenshots from (Steam). They run smoothly without issues. I had to use Postimage (external image hosting site) as the images exceed the file upload size here:

https://postimg.org/gallery/31hqeh4dc/

What I'm wondering is why PN has issues and the others don't? Optimisation? Sorry to be a pest. I do like the game so far.

[Benjamin (ShadowFlightBA)]

Assassinate Creed has very different requirements then PN does. It has nothing to do with optimization, but every thing to do with your laptop.

AC3.... 512 MB DirectX® 10—compliant with Shader Model 4.0 or higher
PN..... NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti / AMD R7 260x DirectX: Version 11

That's a huge difference. The 820m is a low entry mobile graphics card (not even a gaming card), PN needs a mid level desktop graphics card to run comfortably. Basically in computing power it's 1,209.6 GFLOPS vs 240 GFLOPS.... the lower being yours.

Simply said you have 1/5 of the cpu power needed and you're comparing a modern game with a game that was released 5!!! years ago. PN being an indie game has little to do with it, it still uses an up to date modern game engine. I'd love to run PN on my laptop as well and even though it's a lot more powerful then yours, I know it's not going to happen. The framerate is just too low. Not PN's fault, but mine..... the laptop gpu just isn't powerful enough. Only one thing left to do for me..... save a little money each month and buy a new one in 2 years or so.

My advice, next time really pay attention to the requirements of a game, it saves you disappointment.

[Cylume]

My computer details:
MSI GT70 2PE
Windows 8.1 64-bit
Intel i7-4810MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.80 GHz
RAM: 12GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX880M (Bus Interface: PCIe 3.0 x16, Max Memory Size: 8192 MB, Core Clock(s): 993 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 11 OpenGL 4.5 Max TDP: 130 W)

My laptop runs Witcher3 beautifully on almost maxed out settings, yet plays PN poorly on even the lowest PN settings.

I suspected the problem was that PN is using the Unity engine, an engine notorious for not detecting the correct GPU on multi-GPU laptops, but now I don't know. The MSI Afterburner/RivaTuner Statistics Server shows that I'm only using about 30% of my CPU and 95% of my GPU when looking at the horizon in PN medium settings, with high FPS only when looking up at the sky.

[piddlefoot]

Nothing wrong with Unity, its one of the most powerful engines out there.

The problem is the code is raw and new and completely un-optimised.

LODs missing etc...

Yea the sky has no polygons to draw on...

Laptops never play like there tower counterparts.

Witcher is an apple, PN is an orange dude.