Star Wars Squadrons is now available, however, it appears that the PC version suffers from some optimization issues. The game currently has 30fps animations during both cut-scenes and gameplay sequences. Furthermore, there is a bug/issue that causes the CPU to be used at 100% for the first 5-10 minutes.
For these initial tests, we used an Intel i9 9900K with 16GB of DDR4 at 3600Mhz. We’ve paired this machine with an NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti, and we also used Windows 10 64-bit as well as the latest version of the GeForce drivers.
For those wondering, we’ve been able to replicate these issues multiple times. This 100% CPU usage could explain the stuttering issues that some PC gamers have reported. These stuttering issues will be more noticeable on CPUs with few CPU cores/threads. For what it’s worth, we didn’t have any stutters during our initial playtesting.
Below you can find some screenshots, showcasing the 100% CPU usage bug. Again, this issue happens during the first 5-10 minutes. If you immediately run the single-player campaign or an MP mode, you will be affected by it. After these 5-10 minutes, CPU usage drops to 70-80%. Still, this is an abnormal behavior that affects the gameplay. We don’t really know what is causing it. So, the only workaround here is to launch the game and wait for 5-10 minutes on the main menu, which is kind of ridiculous. This could be either due to the anti-cheat system, due to Denuvo, or simply due to a bug. Still, EA Motive needs to fix it as soon as possible as it will undoubtedly introduce stability issues in a lot of PC systems.
Regarding the game’s 30fps animations issue, there was no way via which we could fix it. We’ve tried setting our desktop resolution to 1440p/60hz (instead of 1440p/144hz), however, the game still had those 30fps animations. We also tried disabling the “fullscreen optimizations” which – again – did not fix our issue. Due to these 30fps animations, the game feels awful. Naturally, this low framerate also affects your movement and reaction, making the game feel sluggish and unresponsive.
I’d also like to note that both Star Wars Battlefront 2 did not suffer from these issues. So yeah, EA Motive has dropped the ball and should release a PC performance/optimization patch as soon as possible.
UPDATE
After a lot of testing, we were finally able to enable 60fps animations. In order to achieve this, you’ll have to set your refresh rate at 59.95Hz in the Screen Settings. Then, you’ll have to enable V-Sync. By doing these, you’ll force the game’s animation to run at 60fps. However, you’ll lose all the benefits of your high refresh rate monitors. Those with 60hz monitors will not encounter this issue. This is obviously a bug that EA Motive will have to fix via a post-launch update. The 100% CPU usage still occurs every time we restart the game, so there is currently no solution to that issue.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Probably compiling shaders?
Isn’t this done by GPU, not CPU?
Nope
No, CPU does the compiling and GPU uses the compiled cache.
This happens every time we restart the game. It’s not something that happens only once (like say Detroit: Become Human). Even if it’s due to compiling shaders, the game should have a loading screen like Detroit and Horizon have.
Lots of EA games compile shaders during gameplay. Battlefront 2 does it. Battlefield V does it. Jedi Fallen Order does it. Not sure why your article says Battlefront 2 doesn’t do this, because it absolutely does.
Ahem, nope. Both Battlefront 2 and Jedi Fallen Order do not suffer from this issue. You can find screenshots, with MSI Afterburner showing that CPU usage is normal, right after launching the games in our PC Performance Analysis articles.
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/star-wars-battlefront-2-pc-performance-analysis/
https://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-pc-performance-analysis/
Exactly.
Bad port bad
Come on is anyone really that suprised it’s EA.
EA spends more money on game licensing (Star Wars, Madden, Fifa etc) than actually optimising their games. Wow! What a surprise!
It’s a bug… EA confirmed as much yesterday like an hour after the game went live and said it would be fixed quickly.
Of course if anyone bothered to check ea’s forums… Like the author of this article then maybe the correct information on the issue would be written above and not the guess work nonsense.
As for optimization… Most people have no idea what that even means. Game run bad.. no optimized!
This game is properly optimized, it just has a frame pacing bug above 60fps in non vr mode
What if i told you…There are no “bugs”.
Bugs is just the fact that your hardware is not fast enough to handle the task without bugs 😉
No lol you’re wrong. I’m at 21% average CPU use, 12% memory use (32 gigs ddr4) and 87% GPU use on a 2080ti ftw3 and the game is on an nvme ssd.
In VR the game runs flawlessly at 90hZ. No ASW, no studder.
When playing flat (non vr) there is a bug that EA posted about on THEIR FORUMS FOR THE GAME. Frame pacing bug above 90hz.
So… Maybe the “problem” is your inability to read? Your inability to check the games official support forum and not just steam forums?
Sometimes when a developer says there is a bug..it means there is a bug.
Of course if you have the hardware to brute force past 90fps at 4k and an nVidia gpu then you force vsync to fast in the cp and you will likely never notice the issue even though it’s still happening…oh you don’t play at 4k? Then surely you can get well past 90fps.
Enjoy.
The problem is: There exists sofwtare which has ZERO bugs…How do you think they do it?
No hardware-issues means your software will run as expected…Otherwise it will not (= Bugs will appear). Very simple principle…
So what you said (in forums they said blablabla) doesn´t neglect what i said.
EA maybe patched that bug and that costs now performance.
Becuase patching in general costs performance.
ROFL you have zero idea how games are made. Patching costs performance?
Don’t listen to devs on the OFFICIAL SUPPORT FORUM?
There is software with no bugs? No..there isn’t. Show me 1 game, just 1 that has zero bugs. Please, I beg you show me 1.
my game (i am creating right now, will take some years until it´s finished) has zero bugs. It runs with assembler = zero bugs dumby. It also doesn´t require patches nor does it rely on anything which you have to update. No patches, no updates…
that is the reason you use assembler and not dogsh*t like C/c++ or Java or other crap like that.
And yes: The bigger your code gets (typically when you patch a game the code gets much bigger over time) your game runs worse.
Because it has less performance to handle with (bigger code requires more power in order to run with same fps).Why do you think people are constantly downgrading games after a few years?
Why do you think that is? Dude, that is because it would otherwise run much worse. So in order for people not noticing this they downgrade the games so it doesn´t stutter that badly.
I wouldn´t call guys, which compile games with some crappy engine “developers” lmao…See?
No dude. They don´t program anything.
They aren`t programming an OWN ai like i am. They aren´t programming own physics-engine like i am doing.
Neither are they doing programming of real stuff.
No sir. They are just compiling something…that runs somehow…
See?
My game in 2025 (it´s name will be “Total Destruction 2025” you reckon why it`s named it like that? You d´ be surprised!) will feature Nextgen-AI, and better physics and sounds like you today have it.
Just because you never played software with ZERO bugs, doesn`t mean it doesn´t exist btw. I played lots of games with no bugs in them. Mostly games which are programmed in assembler. Those are typically 100% bugfree.
So in short how today´s programming works:
=> Game created => Updated => downgraded 😉
And then repeat it => updated => downgraded again => Updated => downgraded…
See? I can even name examples of these downgrades for special PC-games:
Look at how “Team Fortress 2” runs on Xbox 360. It runs with same fps and graphics it ran at 2009 when it came out for Xbox 360. No downgrades are being made.
Now look at “Team Fortress 2″and how it runs on a modern PC:
it does not look as well as it did on Xbox 360 in 2009, neither does it run as well as it does on Xbox 360.
So what does this mean? They downgraded Team Fortress 2 for PC!
many current ONLINE-games are being downgraded for PC…e.g. stuff like League of Legends, or Elder Scrolls Online or even World of Warcraft…what did you think?
Sorry sir. You FAILED!
Well the star wars updates I understand and they only affect the new consoles.
As for TF I have no idea why they would downgrade it on PC and make it worse than the 360 orange box version…
It’s also the first I’ve heard of a downgrade in that game at all.
One thing I will say is that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on the Xbox series X runs at 4k60 and with higher settings than my PC…
My PC is no slouch although I do admit the cpu needs upgrading to a 5900x when I can find one…
Right now I have a i7 5820k (6 cores @ 4.4ghz), 32 gigs ddr4 in quad channel and a 2080ti ftw3 ultra with +170 core +1000 mem
That said I’ve heard that even people with brand new high end CPU’s and an rtx 3090 can’t even run the game at 4k60 with max settings. They are seeing about 47fps average.
I don’t know if it’s an optimization issue or just the fact that the game…nah it’s an optimization issue lol. The game looks good but not THAT good.
Still I’m glad I bought the xbox series x version and not the pc one, it’s running great and it’s no hassle. Now I kinda wish I bought legion on the series x because on pc it’s unplayable no matter what settings I use.
I know why they did. Because they had to. Xbox 360 didnt´use programmable shaders dude. It used fixed shaders.
Meaning there is not something you have to constantly fix/patch/update etc. as there are no “shaders” to begin” with.
The game is unchanged since it runs like it does. Of course it also means they didn´t add something.
I´m just telling you: The newer your cpu will be (and your GPU) the more problems you´ll get. And the worse your games will run (especially online-games).
I warned you. I´m having no such issues.
My processor can now handle 70 Tbytes/hour. And that is on a single core.
And i´m programming it alone. Nobody helps me.
But: This also means i´m free to do with that what i want.
If i want to kill the internet/google-servers, i can do so.
If i want to create an animation-program to use that power to create my own Pixar-quality animations (it would only take like 10 hours to create a 700 Tbyte-Pixar-Movie like project), i can do so.
See? power…
Amd/Intel (and ARM chips too) will get more and more problems now.
Especially if games are reaching a size of 1 Tbyte soon enough.
your games will get more and more problems with the “garbage collection” since no AMD/Intel cpu can handle a 1 tbyte-game without severely having to downgrading the speed of the gameplay of it (Speed with what you run in your game, e.g. walking-speed, speed of boats/planes or cars running in your game etc).
You see?
My processor can handle 70 Tbytes of traffic/hour, means i can have the fastest possible walking-speed. My “cars” can run at 5000 Miles/hour in a game if i want it to.
POWER, sir.
And yes. My processor also could handle a game with a size of 1 Tbyte without running into garbage-collection issues.
Since my processor can handle 20 Gbytes/second, that means it can load a 1 Tbyte game in max. 50 seconds. But that´s just theory, since in praxis it would only take like 20 Seconds, because many parts of the games are compressed, and my processor is a monster in decompressing stuff.
and it comes even better: Assuming in 5 years the internet will be here no more, i`m planning to create my own network, similar to the internet.
I upload data on my machine, which i share with milions of other users around the globe. With highest possible speed (100 Gbits are planned) and lowest energy-drain.
Well of course that only works if your ISP also gives you 100 Gbits to begin with you know…But it´s possible.
Uhmmm… That’s incorrect. A shader is a program running on a gpu core.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)
The Xenon was the first commercially available unified shader gpu. If you go to the wikipedia page and click shader it will explain what a shader is but to simplify..a shader is essentially a small program run on a gpu core to achieve an effect.
But let’s say you’re right (just follow me for a sec) and the xbox didn’t have pixel or vertex shaders… It wouldn’t have been able to achieve most of the effects in the game but still that’s not my point…
Ok so if switching from a prior non programmable shader era made game to a programmable one it wouldn’t make sense to downgrade. It would only make sense to upgrade the visuals because effects would be significantly easier to achieve but also update and improve..
So a downgrade doesn’t make sense no matter how you look at it.
I just watched some videos of the 360 version and then videos of the pc version from launch until now… And I have to ask..where is the downgrade?
What exactly looks worse to you that I’m not seeing in videos?
I know about the Xbox 360`s shaders. My point was they weren´t fully programmable dude 😉 Like you said: they were pixel/Vertex-shaders only.
You have to watch the NEW version of the game on Youtube (PC)…to see the diffences.
They took out the nice lighting, the game runs much worse on PC now…and it runs better on Xbox 360.
Jesus… You aren’t even getting what I said right. Shaders today are pixel and vertex lol. It was the new unified pipeline in the 360 that made it special.
Every bit as programmable as a modern gpu, the only difference is speed so a modern gpu can do more.
You can´t optimize a game any longer if it has to run on a “PC” dude…because 100% of PCs have the same hardawre. These is nothing special which you can optimize on.
Thanks EA for putting in Denuvo to screw the legitimate buyers of your product. I guess you puppets like extracting every cent from the bleeding peasants. I hope you are acquired and then liquidated as a corporation by Microsoft.
You just a thief.
at this point dose this supprise any one here ?
No because I am not even going to play it.
“Regarding the game’s 30fps animations issue, there was no way via which we could fix it. We’ve tried setting our desktop resolution to 1440p/60hz (instead of 1440p/144hz), however, the game still had those 30fps animations. We also tried disabling the “fullscreen optimizations” which – again – did not fix our issue.”
How can changing refresh rate (for the desktop or the game) or disable FS optimizations can magically unlock the animations framerate LOL ?
Because, as we thought, it was a hz issue that forced 30fps animations (not hard-locked 30fps animations like say Halo: Combat Evolved). We’ve updated our article with a workaround.
So the game has issues with 120/144hz+ monitors…
Why do PC players need to be punished by this crap?
because your hardware sucks? Can your hardware do 70 Tbytes/hour and does render a PIXAR-animation in just hours?
Ehm nope…it cannot. LOL.
Welcome to 2020. My hardware box can do stuff like that.
I guess you decided to make a dumb comment after hitting your head on the bed? Anyways, it looks like your a bot that enjoys repeating the same crap over and over again. lol
Disagreeing with someone = bot…classic trolilng from you?
Zzzzzzzz lol
When you stop repeating the same crap in different comments, then I will change my mind.
What crap you talk about? I´m not even here most of the time, dumb guy. The last comment i made here is allready 19 days ago. You see? Your statement makes absolutely no sense.
And im just stating facts btw. Your hardware is sh*t. Deal with it.
no AMD/Intel cpu (or ARM cpu) will be able to handle StarCitizen with a STABLE framerate…And the more updates it will get the WORSE it will run. Especially on newer machines…
Now you can go cry in a corner that you fell for this overhyped crap-hardware. lol
I didn’t even buy the game, idiot. It is time for you to get blocked. Lol
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0250062bf1b2a240729ba6a83baaa650dec1c28fe8ab849e016a12224cc6dc6.png
Great, now that hack is rewriting the already established races in Star Wars to fit a [current year] view…
BRAVO EA
Ah sh*t, Here we go again
It gets worse…
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab5f6f56bb6c433045dba7531b1b34944cf45fa7b4b7e1bb5dd456961ceb2e36.png
so you telling me that the most generic looking alien who is just a woman with shtty tattoos is an excuse to put the nonbinary loons in the game?
Anyway the cut scenes in this game look nothing like star wars.
Indeed! EA really can’t help themselves or so it seems.
Oh, and the advertised HOTAS compatibility is an utter shambles in execution. A set 50% deadzone on most HOTAS flight sticks which makes the game unplayable. Their QA testing is evidently lacking in the extreme or is simply non-existent.
Holy sh*t
yup, but is the gameplay fun? This is the only thing i want to know
Hmm I was wondering what was up.
I have a 2080 and it was running like crap. I was like it can’t be that graphic intensive of this was made for PSVR.
Trying Vsync also fixed it for me
Super weird ;(
Works great on XBox losers ?.
Define work great? Crap lod, weak gfx setting, crap fps… if that is your definition of working… you need to raise the bar!
The Developers are aware of the stuttering issue according this :
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsSquadrons/comments/j3cr9n/framerate_looks_like_half_of_what_it_actually_is/
Imagine buying a game writen by Mitch Dyer. A former IGN employee, game industry shill with no experience in fiction (not even fan fiction) and no resume. All he did was push feminism on his twitter and atack anyone who was critical of Anita Sarkeesian. That somehow got him hired over QUALIFIED MINORITIES that he claims to champion on twitter all day.
These people are a joke. So is Star Wars. They deserve one another. I pity anyone who still supports a franchise that George Lucas said was hijacked by “white slavers” in his last TV interview. Kathleen Kennedy straight up lied to him and then tried to subvert the entire franchise. You support people who actually hate Star Wars and want to make it all moral grey so that they can push their own personal agendas and politics as “moral” and “good”. It’s a dead franchise. The original was about black and white morality just like Lord of the Rings. It’s idealsim and escapism because the world is full of horrible people like Mitch Dyer. Now it’s just those people in the movies and games.
In before some mentally ill third wave feminist calls me sexist when EA cancelled Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game. The most talented female writer in video game history got her game canned while Mitch freakin Dyer is writing games now.
So fat, ugly women.
they are gatekeeping look at vampire 2, they kicked all the veterans and kept some feminist tumblr moron who wrote a kotaku article that banned hotline miami 2 in australia.
They ruining the industry.
Yeah,i’m more furious about Vampires 2 because Star Wars is dead to me since Ruin Johnson.The first Masquerade still is one of my all time favorites,but this looks and sounds atrocious.
he wrote battlefront 2 as well. Both games have strong black women as the empire and the resistance is mostly aliens, one of them looks like a woman with bad tattooes whose pronouns are they/them.
No thanks, you can keep this game ea.
The fact that Mitch Dyer still has a job in the vg industry really makes me sick. The campaign of EAfront 2 was one of the worst stories ever written.
Now this idiot is on twitter saying that the “pronouns” of some stupid character in this game are They/Them…
You can’t make this sh*t up.
No different than gearbox saying the same about flak in borderlands 3 but at least ea isn’t banning people on their forums over it like gearbox does if you call flak “him, he” etc.
It’s ridiculous in both situations but at least in this game I don’t give 2 sh*ts about story… I just wanna play around space in vr and shoot other ships.
Oh man I was pissed when they killed her game. She is the best female writer AND director in gaming and arguably in the top 5 writers and director’s in all of gaming PERIOD.
George Lucas said was hijacked by “white slavers” in his last TV interview
You’re right about Tolkien. Disney does want to destroy children.
George Lucas:
I want to clarify my interview on the Charlie Rose Show. It was for the Kennedy Center Honors and conducted prior to the premiere of the film. I misspoke and used a very inappropriate analogy and for that I apologize. I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership. Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings, but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks. Most of all I’m blown away with the record-breaking blockbuster success of the new movie and am very proud of JJ and Kathy.
Can’t relate. Games running awesome on my 10750h/2080S omen 17t. Getting about 240fps in game and 2,000+fps during cutscenes if afterburner/riviatuner is to be believed. It was giving me trouble yesterday, but then I updated the GPU drivers.
Denuvo and 100% CPU usage, whooo would have thought. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b2cfda37dfddd2decd3ecb11ae94e088e130e93864088e07d5bd34e68ef8407e.png
What’s funny is, all the steam ‘reviews’ are saying how great of a game it is. When it takes 5-10 minutes for the game to even start up, has a very bad frame rate, and the very first mission is so bugged out that you do nothing but fly in circles, that doesn’t make a good game.
There is a bug that EA already responded about on their support forum for the game. If the frame rate is above 60fps (doesn’t effect VR) then it causes major frame pacing issues.
They said it would be addressed in the first patch. So lock it to 60 and you will be just fine for the week or 2 it will take for the first patch.
I don’t know guys, all this hate from the comments below. Works fine on my old a*s 970. No stuttering in the first 5-10 minutes. Other than the surprising amount of women in the game (muh equality!!1!), I don’t have any other issues.
Lol…pc…What`s that? PC in 2020 sucks…deal with it.
Your pc cannot handle 70 Tbytes/hour of traffic. my cpu can. AMD/Intel and other cpus can only dream of doing stuff like this.
POWER is finally here guys. But clearly not for everybody. Only for those which can program their own stuff like me. LOL
Doesn´t work like that. The more cpu-cores you use the higher your lag (input-lag etc) will be 😉 Especially for online-gaming this will get a huge problem. The more cpu-cores you use there the more stutters there will be as well! Until your game will run at 1 Frame/second in online!