At the PC Gaming Conference from last year's E3 Expo, Microsoft announced that they were looking to bring more first-party titles to Windows. They used to be one of the better PC gaming publishers, back in the Mechwarrior 4 and earlier Flight Simulator days, but they got distracted as Xbox 360 rose and Windows Vista fell.
Again, part of that is because they attempted to push users to Windows Vista and Games for Windows Live, holding back troubled titles like Halo 2: Vista and technologies like DirectX 10 from Windows XP, which drove users to Valve's then-small Steam platform. Epic Games was also a canary in the coalmine at that time, warning users that Microsoft was considering certification for Games for Windows Live, which threatened mod support “because Microsoft's afraid of what you might put into it”.
It's sometimes easy to conform history to fit a specific viewpoint, but it does sound… familiar.
Anyway, we're glad that Microsoft is bringing first-party content to the PC, and they are perfectly within their rights to structure it however they please. We are also within our rights to point out its flaws and ask for them to be corrected. Turns out that Quantum Break, like Gears of War before it, has some severe performance issues. Let's be clear, these will likely be fixed, and I'm glad that Microsoft didn't artificially delay the PC version to give the console an exclusive window. Also, had they delayed the PC version until it was fixed, we wouldn't have known whether it needed the time.
Still, the game apparently has issues with a 50 FPS top-end cap, on top of pacing-based stutters. One concern that I have is, because DigitalFoundry is a European publication, perhaps the 50Hz issue might be caused by their port being based on a PAL version of the game??? Despite suggesting it, I would be shocked if that were the case, but I'm just trying to figure out why anyone would create a ceiling at that specific interval. They are also seeing NVIDIA's graphics drivers frequently crash, which probably means that some areas of their DirectX 12 support are not quite what the game expects. Again, that is solvable by drivers.
It's been a shaky start for both DirectX 12 and the Windows 10 UWP platform. We'll need to keep waiting and see what happens going forward. I hope this doesn't discourage Microsoft too much, but also that they robustly fix the problems we're discussing.
Waiting for an update in
Waiting for an update in hopes that performance will be fixed soon, myself. I’m a huge fan of Remedy and was extremely excited when they announced Quantum Break coming to PC, as I wouldn’t buy an XBone to play it. Just a shame it doesn’t run well.
Not supporting SLI is a bummer. The biggest issue for me is that it for some reason performance decreases the longer the game runs. I can get a smooth framerate at 1080p when i first start the game but slowly after an hour I can’t even get a smooth experience at low settings or 720p. I have to close and restart the game every 20 minutes. Strangley, GPUShark shows gpu utilization getting as low as 25%, and Quantum Break is the only thing this happens on. Can run any other game or benchmark and get 99% utilization so something weird is happening.
Yeah, I’m interested in the
Yeah, I'm interested in the game too. I'll probably wait until after my GPU upgrade, whenever that is, though.
Is it using up system memory
Is it using up system memory or GPU memory? Some kind of memory leak is often resposible for application performance degrading in that manner.
I have noticed that my vram
I have noticed that my vram usage is completely pegged, goes to max almost instantly even when at the lowest resolution and settings.
*edit*
just double checked and it seems my issue is definitely with a memory leak. at 1080p my vram usage maxes out in about 30 seconds at which point I see the system memory that QB uses go from under 3GB before vram maxing and then would fluctuate in the 4200-4800MB range after. Also tried turning down resolution to 720p which would see a drop to about 2GB of vram usage before it would jump back up to the max of 3GB in just a few seconds.
That may not be an actual
That may not be an actual memory leak. This may just be indicative of bad memory management. Some memory management schemes fill up the VRAM, but isn’t necessarily using all of it for each frame. I suspect that the engine was designed more with the Xbox One’s 8 GB unified memory space in mind. Porting that back to the PC architecture may not be that smooth.
It sounds like it has issues
It sounds like it has issues loading areas as you move through them. They should start loading the area before it is needed, but that may run into memory capacity issues. Are you running with it on an SSD? How much system memory do you have? I wouldn’t be surprised if area sizes are based on having 8 GB of memory due to the Xbox One.
I am running on a Samsung
I am running on a Samsung 500GB SSD, and 16GB of RAM. I have been playign the game a bit more and got through Act 2. One really weird things is that even the movies stutter for me so not sure what is going on there, vram usage stays maxed out.
I liked what I saw of the
I liked what I saw of the game early on but given the news that all of the live video is going to be streamed I lost interest. That forces the game to be online only even though it’s single player, and it uses up bandwidth which is a problem for people like myself that have an ISP (Comcast) with a monthly bandwidth limit. From what I’ve heard the live video takes up about 70GB which could end up being much larger if you replay segments of the videos.
I’ve heard there is an option
I’ve heard there is an option to download all the videos, but it’s some 70 plus GBs.
Why everyone does not
Why everyone does not actually read full article?!
The 50fps cap was addressed, in that it’s about 90% of your screen refresh, on say 120hz display it would be around 100fps. Point was that it’s impossible to get the game running smoothly. Remember that double buffered vsync is always on. So if you can’t lock at you screen refresh or a multiple of it, you’ll get horrible stutter. And the 30 fps lock has framepacing problems, so stutters as all hell too…
As for pal games, there’s no such thing for like past 10 years, everything is 60hz.
Why would you ever, seemingly
Why would you ever, seemingly deliberately, run at 5/6 of the screen refresh rate? So it is clear that it isn’t limited to 50 Hz, but why is it limited at all? I don’t think that has been addressed unless I am missing something.
Digital foundry did not test
Digital foundry did not test on a high refresh rate monitor (they said this either in article or video). They just assumed that as it was capping at 50Hz on a 60Hz that the same ratio would be applied to other refresh rates. However, someone in the youtube comments who has a 144Hz screen said that that was not happening to them.
I think that the PAL explanation may well be a good one. I even replied in the youtube comments to the person with the 144Hz screen suggesting this, it really is a very bad bug if true.
It’s a real shame as the game
It’s a real shame as the game was a blast (just got free PC code) I’ll replay in PC when UWP is not borked. Darn M$.
Poor Remedy, sold their soul
Poor Remedy, sold their soul to the devil all those years ago.
The game does look
The game does look interesting, but it has way too many issues for me to get right now. Probably in a couple of years I’ll come across some kind of bargain bin deal or humblebundle and get it for a $1, maybe by then most of the issues will be fixed.
Glad I missed all the drama.
Glad I missed all the drama. I never liked the actor playing the protagonist, hence no play the game.
All 3 of MS’s 1st party dx12
All 3 of MS’s 1st party dx12 titles have game breaking issues and none of them support multi-gpu setups. If these games were meant to serve an example of what dx12 is capable of, and how “easy it is to program for,” they totally screwed the pooch.
“Luckily” gears came out first and “only cost me $30.” I tend to let companies fool me once, but i have no intention of buying killer instinct or quantum broken. MS really needs to do more to entice its pc gaming audience. Shitty ports aren’t going to cut it.
killer instinct is free, no?
killer instinct is free, no?
Just installed this on my
Just installed this on my 1440p 144hz set up, 780ti+4790k@ 4.7ghz seems to run fine, its completely broken with Gsync but thats a UWP issue. Game seems to be running around 50-60fps at a mix of medium/high/ultra @ 1440p (yes I know its not true 1440p due to weird rending thing they do). Anyway seems stable enough. Also im running it off my D drive after changing where windows 10 apps install (on a 3TB mechanical drive). I read that it ran ass when not on an SSD but ive had no issues.
*Update* – Random parts of game will note load, walking through into building would not load next section. 🙁 Seem to be stuck. Not sure if its the game or Nvidia Drivers.
Sometimes I have to wonder if
Sometimes I have to wonder if MS is intentionally trying to destroy the PC as a gaming platform because it competes with the Xbone.
No, that doesn’t make sense, but neither does releasing f’ed-up crappy ports of Xbone games on your shiny new UWP platform.
Meanwhile, I can do things like stream XCOM 2 (poorly optimized though it is) to my tablet using Steam’s fantastic In-Home Streaming with nary a hitch in sight.
I’m betting that Steam is around a long time after all this UWP and “Xbox for Win 10” nonsense gets shelved. GFWL 2.0, anyone?
frustrating, at least the
frustrating, at least the game itself isn’t very good. Gets kinda boring. I knew the fps was low, but I couldn’t get it to feel….smooth, it just feels heavy, and jerky.