Nvidia apologizes for Tomb Raider PC performance

Nvidia has apologized for the poor performance of Tomb Raider on PC using certain GeForce GPUs, and has said it is working closely with developer Crystal Dynamics to fix the problems.

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If you've attempted to play Tomb Raider on PC using a GeForce card with max settings, you've probably noticed some issues. Those range from performance issues due to the hair rendering tech to outright crashes. Nvidia has now apologized for the "major performance and stability issues," and says it is working with developer Crystal Dynamics to fix the problems.

"We are aware of performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings," Nvidia's Andrew Burnes said on GeForce site (via Joystiq). "Unfortunately, Nvidia didn't receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible."

Burnes went on to point out that the problems can't be resolved by an Nvidia driver alone, so Crystal Dynamics will need to make their own code changes. "As a result, we recommend you do not test Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved," he said. "In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games."

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  • reply
    March 7, 2013 3:30 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Nvidia apologizes for Tomb Raider PC performance.

    Nvidia has apologized for the poor performance of Tomb Raider on PC using certain GeForce GPUs, and has said it is working closely with developer Crystal Dynamics to fix the problems.

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      March 7, 2013 3:40 PM

      [deleted]

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      March 7, 2013 3:42 PM

      I've been playing on my 560TI without too many problems. Got it on Ultra with some stuff tweaked (heard about certain crashes). I get some really random slowdowns when some prompts or cutscenes play. Other than that it runs like butter.

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        March 7, 2013 3:57 PM

        The issue primarily affects 6xx series users. 5xx series users are just missing camera effects. There's comparison shots up if you're curious.

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          March 7, 2013 3:59 PM

          i should have checked the bug list before spamming the below out i guess. bah!

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      March 7, 2013 3:56 PM

      oddly, i haven't had a single problem on my 480gtx, everything maxed except tressfx which is set to normal, ssao is off now although didnt notice too many visual or performance problems with it on. high precision is unchecked. 310.90 drivers. v-sync is off, but no tearing since i think its averaging about 40 fps roughly. my card was getting pretty hot though till i manually maxed my fan speed out when playing it.

      doubt any of that will help anyone but you never know.

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        March 7, 2013 3:59 PM

        My only issue is crashing when tessellation is turned on. I think i'm going to wait a bit before diving into the game fully.

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        March 7, 2013 6:25 PM

        I've been running on a 460GTX, mostly Normal settings except Detail at Ultra, and haven't had any issues. Benchmark says 58fps.

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        March 8, 2013 1:01 PM

        Huh... I have 2 GTX480's in SLI and I get massive slowdowns. During the benchmark I get an average of 20fps with a max of 50. I turned down the graphics to Medium/High and it seems to have helped but I get get slowdowns every now and then.

        Specs:
        Windows Ultimate x64
        8GB DDR3 PC1600
        Intel i7 920 @3.5GHz
        2xGTX480's SLI

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      March 7, 2013 3:58 PM

      Blaming DV1980 :(

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      March 7, 2013 4:02 PM

      Turning off TressFX and tessellation made it run totally fine for me. I'd like to get tessellation back on, because I can see poly's in Lara's buit.

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      March 7, 2013 4:03 PM

      Im using a gtx 580 and Im getting pretty good performance. I only crash when trying to launch the game via big picture mode. Other than that everything is fine.

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      March 7, 2013 4:18 PM

      phew I thought the slowdowns were my machine's fault

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      March 7, 2013 4:38 PM

      Well AMD needs to come out and say something too. It most certainly isn't just Nvidia users having this issue.

      I have a 5850 Extreme Edition and I can run the game max settings except for the hair option and tessellation, hell even with 2XSSAA, and the game will run flawless with 45-60 FPS in one area and a crappy 20-35 FPS in another. The hair option is ridiculous on AMD hardware too don't let em fool you. Losing 30 frames just from pretty hair rendering on one character is absurd, I don't care what the tech is.

      The game also Crashes To Desktop annoyingly often for me as well with my card. I REALLY want to play this game because it's amazing but I think I'll just wait until new drivers/patch is released.

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        March 7, 2013 5:02 PM

        you seem to be under the impression that hair strands are easy to render when they have over 100 strands

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        March 7, 2013 5:07 PM

        It is optimized for directcompute features accelerated by GCN features - Features that aren't present on the HD5000 series, as it is many years old now.... Also, SSAA is by far the most expensive form of AA in existence, i can't even use that shit with GTX 680 sli. No way should you be using it on a 5000 series card, i'm not really sure why you would even try SSAA ever.

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          March 7, 2013 5:44 PM

          I am very well aware of what super sampling is. Believe me I was just as surprised as you when 2XSSAA was more than capable of being on in this game on my card. However I attributed it to being very well optimized. Which I would have to say it is extremely well optimized considering how pretty the game is, it simply just has some very annoying bugs that should be able to be squashed pretty easily.

          I am surprised your 680 SLI cannot handle it, that makes no sense whatsoever to me if mine can and still achieve 40-60 FPS in the majority of areas. Perhaps NVIDIA is more bugged for this game than we may think.

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            March 7, 2013 6:09 PM

            SSAA and TressFX lower my framerate a ton...i'm at 2560x1600 though. The biggest issue is crashes though, I think i'll wait like you to dive into the game. :(

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      March 7, 2013 5:13 PM

      There's also a bug with both fullscreen modes that disables some nice gfx effects http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=133983

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        March 7, 2013 6:00 PM

        dammit i would have never known had i not seen this. doesn't change much tho. runs butter smooth with everything on ultra on my 560Ti (except tressfx of course)

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        March 7, 2013 6:16 PM

        [deleted]

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      March 7, 2013 6:12 PM

      I assumed it was just the hair effects. General gameplay is fine, but when it zooms on Lara for cutscene purposes, it feels like character framerates drop, while the background remains at 60FPS. It's hard to describe how it actually is.

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        March 7, 2013 6:29 PM

        I think ive seen that effect before. Some items (typically water) slow down while the rest of the scene stays smooth. Its really offputting when I see it. Maybe they dynamically change the animation rate to compensate for lack of power

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      March 7, 2013 6:27 PM

      At least it's still playable (unlike some other game...) by turning off tessellation or using the Hitman profile trick: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=49068705#post49068705

      I've already put 7 hours after using the Hitman trick without a crash (GTX 670).

      Tessellation fix for nvidia users.

      Download nvidia inspector
      Open nvidia inspector
      Delete Tomb raider 2013 profile
      Find hitman absolution profile
      Link tombraider.exe
      Change if you want af, aa and so on
      Press apply button

      And now hopefully you have no crash anymore with tessellation on. Have worked for me now an hour with no crash, use to crash before after 1-2 minutes after activating tessellation.

      Thanks goes to a guy on steam for this fix.

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        March 7, 2013 7:08 PM

        Well you must be in the minority because I am hearing from plenty of people that their game is crashing with tessellation off, including me, I have an AMD card however. I had everything at max except for fancyhair and tessellation (which I turned off before I ever started the game for the first time) and my game was still crashing like crazy.

        There also seems to be an annoying issue with graphic settings not being saved correctly. Nearly every time I boot up the game AA will revert back to FXAA instead of Supersampling like I had it set to. There was one other setting that kept resetting itself too, I forget what it was though.

        I've uninstalled the game until a new patch and drivers are released.

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          March 7, 2013 7:12 PM

          Isn't that a 1GB card? Wouldn't be surprised if you were running out of video memory if you're using max settings + SSAA. It's using something like 1.3GB of my card's 2GB without SSAA. Honestly that card probably isn't powerful enough for SSAA anyway, which effectively renders at 2x or 4x the resolution and downsamples (resulting in 4x to 16x more pixels being rendered).

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            March 7, 2013 7:36 PM

            Well you can read my post above. 2X SSAA doesn't affect my framerate nearly as much as some of the other settings. It is a 1GB card but there are plenty of games that I can enable up to 4XSSAA on and I'll never experiences crashes. Dragon Age 1, 2 and Mass Effect 2, and 3 come to mind, as well as Left for Dead 2 and Portal 2. They all run extremely well on my card with 4XSSAA, with no crashes ever experienced.

            Besides if running out of video memory was it I would know it, the game would show signs or something similar. Instead the framerate is generally very smooth depending on the area but it will simply crash given the right trigger. It's crashed a lot from the in-game action of visiting a campfire, it's no coincidence so I know it's not related to video memory.

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              March 7, 2013 7:39 PM

              You might be confusing SSAA with MSAA...

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                March 7, 2013 7:54 PM

                No, No I am not. I have 4X SSAA forced in custom profiles in my CCC in all of those games and I will rarely drop below 40 FPS in all of them. http://imageshack.us/a/img24/7959/victorythroughssaa.jpg

                Some games simply handle it better than others. Some games will lack the graphical fidelity (comparatively) than to Mass Effect 3 or something else, but there is no way in shit I would ever be able to force SSAA in them. Some games are just better optimized for it and that is that.

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          March 8, 2013 3:23 AM

          I've got AMD, same setup (tress off, tess off, everything max except SMAA), and I haven't had a single crash, unlike with a certain other franchise reboot that came out recently.

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      March 7, 2013 6:30 PM

      I have a 580, am I going to have problems with this game? I was planning on picking it up tonight...

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      March 7, 2013 8:05 PM

      You guys see the graphics corruption on the GB quicklook? That shit was hilarious.

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      March 8, 2013 12:19 AM

      do not use dawnsampling (or Super Sampling i assume) with this game... ever.

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        March 8, 2013 12:20 AM

        im talking from 60fps... to 10... in the same scene.

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          March 8, 2013 2:24 AM

          That's what happens when you massively overrender... uh.. anything.

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      March 8, 2013 2:19 AM

      Using an AMD / Ati 7970 without a single issue at max settings.

      And one really important thing, Vertical Sync works correctly. A feature that a lot of companies doesn't care about and poorly implement it in their games.
      Activating it in this game doesn't lag the input and doesn't take a big hit in fps, for example.

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      March 8, 2013 2:20 AM

      I don't much care that I have to lower some settings on my GTX670@680. I WOULD care if I couldn't get the game to run properly on any settings, as has been the case with oh so many games. Of course, it'll be better when I can enable tesselation and all that and still maintain a solid 60 fps, but I'm fine playing without them for now. Shit looks great.

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      March 8, 2013 4:24 AM

      Pretty sure this article is fake because nvidia has the best drivers

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