Any fix to bad performance with a PC that exceeds recommended specs?

[Sundash]

In case anyone else is still struggling with this... for me, running this on Steam, the answer was to disable Steam Input in the game properties:

Right-click on SR4 in Steam Library or click Gear icon, select Properties
Controller => Disable Steam Input

Runs perfectly at 4K on Ultra now (with Xbox One controller).

7800X3D + 7900XTX

Did it really fix the performance issue?

 

[Unapologetic Miscreant]

I haven't seen it mentioned, but you might try opening your task manager right after starting your game, right clicking on the SR3 executable and setting it to the highest priority.

 

[reina3]

I haven't seen it mentioned, but you might try opening your task manager right after starting your game, right clicking on the SR3 executable and setting it to the highest priority.

This is a good tip, but only High should be selected, never Realtime.
This is because for Realtime in Windows, if the game happens to ask for all available system resources, it will cause the mouse and keyboard inputs like Alt+Tabbing out of the game way more difficult than it needs to be

 

[Unapologetic Miscreant]

Thank you for the tip. It's been quite a while since I've had to use that trick and I didn't realize that setting it to realtime would mess things up.

 

[Wandershock]

Hey, sorry for the late reply, but here goes:

Yes, I've made sure it's using my GPU and not the integrated graphics. Same with every other game I own.

I tried that, but it sadly didn't fix anything. I'm guessing it just has to do with the way it despawns unneccesary objects in interiors, as the same thing happens when I enter a crib. Angel's Gym, for example, gives me around 210 FPS when I'm inside, but as soon as I leave it drops to 107 FPS.

See, that's the problem. The game has a whopping 1,2% CPU usage acording to Task Manager; it's barely using the CPU at all! I set its affinity for all processors, then 4, then 8, tried giving the game a higher priority but nothing changed. And even worse, I couldn't find any fix on the Internet so I'm stuck with it being like this. Great.
But you know what? None of that matters because I finally know what's the problem. It's the fucking water. See, here's a screenshot of me standing a little far away from a body of water at max settings, 105 FPS, pretty good, you know?

View attachment 37599
But get a load of this. There's a little bit of water in the bottom left corner, but I'm already down to 40 FPS, 60 FPS less than when I wasn't near it!

View attachment 37600
And this is me standing in front of that cursed water; there's plenty of it on the screen, as you can see. And I have the same performance as when there was barely any on screen.

View attachment 37601
So fuck it, I guess I'll just stay away from any bodies of water, including the pool at the Saints HQ. Fucking brilliant.

I have the same problem. I haven't found a solution yet. Well, except for one thing. The frames increase when I enable video recording or Remote Play streaming. That's it. However, I had previously played this game on the same PC, and it worked perfectly. So, what could be the issue?

 

[reina3]

I have the same problem. I haven't found a solution yet. Well, except for one thing. The frames increase when I enable video recording or Remote Play streaming. That's it. However, I had previously played this game on the same PC, and it worked perfectly. So, what could be the issue?

Oh, good info. From what I learnt since last posting here, DXVK helps SR2 since it's DirectX9 and I'm thinking it might help SR3 as well (can't currently try it).

If you've never used it, I'm recommending it because older DirectX versions don't utilize GPU as well as DX12 currently does. (Otherwise it's primarily used for Linux.)
Download it from https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases (the tar.gz, not steamsnipe),

Then extract to game folder with .exe based on the following:

For SR3, I assume you would extract d3d9.dll; d3d10core.dll; d3d11.dll; dxgi.dll.

I'm not sure if DirectX has a "cache" you could "try clearing", so I'm assuming the poor performance is due to some people's newer drivers/Windows versions.

Edit: you might also wanna check DoctorObvious' reply about disabling Steam Input if you haven't already, and blocking the community server connection as outlined in PCGamingWiki.