There was much excitement when NieR Automata and The Evil Within arrived on GamePass with bespoke ports reported to address some of the outstanding issues wi...
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The video we've all been waiting for.
Dictator I find that it's challenging to get
id Tech 5 games running properly smooth without G-Sync - and that they often require modding or specific configurations even for G-Sync to work well.
It should be noted that the Steam version of
The Evil Within does not support full-screen exclusive mode and thus, does not work correctly with G-Sync (windowed-mode G-Sync is generally awful).
Using
Kaldaien's SpecialK tool in global injection mode can force the game to use flip-mode presentation, which runs nearly flawlessly.
I would generally expect flip-mode presentation to perform better than borderless on a fixed-refresh rate display as well. Still, I recall getting it running smoothly on my old 2500K/GTX 960 system without that.
Apologies for the terrible video quality (thanks, YouTube), but here's an example I recorded for the
TEW Game Pass thread:
I find videos like these can often highlight issues with achieving smooth web-based video playback, though - if you do see any bad stutters in that video.
The lower-right stats are from SpecialK, which is also limiting the game to 60 FPS.
The upper-right stats are my G-Sync monitor's refresh rate.
I don't know what presentation mode the Game Pass version uses. The price increase to $10/mo makes it too expensive to satisfy my curiosity when I don't make money off the comparison.
I'm not sure whether the Game Pass version fixes the anti-aliasing options, either. MLAA/SMAA hardly does anything in the Steam version.
As for the other
id Tech 5 games:
Mods exist to unlock the frame rate in Rage and Wolfenstein TNO/TOB.
If I recall correctly, those games support full-screen exclusive mode and work perfectly with G-Sync after using these mods to unlock the frame rate. I think Rage should still be limited to 60, though.
Dishonored 2 has frame presentation issues if the frame rate is not a multiple of 60 and controlled by the game's internal limiter.
V-Sync must be forced on in the NVIDIA Control Panel and disabled in the game, as disabling the in-game V-Sync option enables the frame rate limiter - which can be set to 60 or 120 FPS.
Resolution scaling should be enabled because any drops below the 60 FPS (or 120 FPS) target will result in stuttering - even with G-Sync.
If I recall correctly, the borderless mode is upgraded to flip-mode via Windows 10 full-screen optimizations, but I have not revisited the game recently - and have not tried using SpecialK with it yet.
The Evil Within 2 is a mess and seems entirely unsalvageable, or perhaps only playable on the latest CPUs.
I have not been able to find a way to make that game run smoothly at all on my Ryzen 1700X / 3060 Ti system.
I hope all future Bethesda products will have been moved off this terrible engine.
