Baldur’s Gate 3 is a game of the year contender - but how does its PC release stack up in terms of visuals and performa…
(Thankfully, you can use the launch command --skip-launcher to boot straight into the DX11 version of the game, or use --skip-launcher --vulkan to boot straight into Vulkan.)
And
In terms of overall recommendations then, I’d suggest DirectX 11 is a better choice than Vulkan for most users with Nvidia and AMD graphics cards, especially those with relatively modern CPUs that meet BG3’s recommended specifications. While Vulkan did run better in static scenes when CPU-limited, its poorer performance than DX11 in NPC-rich areas is problematic, making DirectX 11 a better choice overall.
Looks like these guys say DirectX 11 is usually the better pick. I’ve been running Vulkan and the only negative I’ve seen is there is a large block that will flicker slightly on the right side of the screen in cinematics. I’ve going to try DirectX 11 and see if I get the same FPS and quality today. Vulkan with DLSS on quality I get around 100+ FPS. I have a Nvidia 3080TI and intel i7 12700KF.
Edit: I’m running the game on a 4k TV with 120hz. Looks great.
This is so funny because it’s the opposite recommendation I’ve seen basically everywhere else. All other notes I’ve seen have recommended Vulcan for newer hardware. I’ve been running vulkan as well and have had no issues at all. 6800xt here.
Digital Foundry did their own testing and found that DX11 is better most of the time, but in some CPU-limited situations you can get higher framerates with Vulkan. Performance differed a bit across hardware manufacturers. YMMV
I have a 5900x and a 2080S with 32G of ram. Vulcan triple buffering didn’t work and it crashed on me in my brief time trying it. DX11 has been fine mostly. No crashes, but after playing for a while I’ll occasionally just have my fps tank and start stuttering and have to quit the game and relaunch and it’ll be fine. Running basically ultra 4k dlss on balanced or performance. Tried both, both give me 60fps.
Wut, i have a 3080 and a i5 10600k. I get stable 100 fps without dlss on and everything else cranked up to max on 2k res. Why have dlss on at that point? If you run 4k i’ll understand.
I tried both and there is one particular late game fight with lots of NPCs that just murders my setup (5700X3D and 1070 Ti) on DX11 (30-60 fps) while the fight ran fine on Vulkan (60-70 fps) . Since it’s quite late into the game, the reviewer probably didn’t come across this issue. Or my setup is just weird.
Wife and I are loving it but it needs some tunning for sure. Performance struggles and crashes are pretty common, and my wife clipped through a door just after the tutorial section. Didn’t do anything crazy, just walked right on through a locked door.
Agreed on the tuning needed, but I’m surprised to hear how many have had crashes. I haven’t had a single crash in like 50 hours of playing and another 50hours with it idling while I take breaks.
I haven’t had any crashes, but I’ve had loads of other issues. Laezel constantly breaks requiring a reload, scripts sometimes don’t fire correctly so you don’t get an important buff or item necessary to progress, my characters constantly end up naked after going to camp because it wants to hide their armor automatically and doesn’t unhide it when you leave, my proficiencies are often not applied to rolls, etc.
Crazy, haven’t experienced anything like that. Do you meet the minimum specs, and are you running it on an HDD or an SSD?
I3 12100f, gtx 1060 3gb, and ssd on Linux. We since switched to steam deck where we have only had 1 crash. I should be hitting a bit over the minimum specs but my bet is I was running out of vram in cutscenes where the detail is higher.
4GB of VRAM is in the minimum requirements, seeing as you have a 12th gen Intel you really might want to look at getting a GPU upgrade. You can find used 6600/XT’s or 6700’s for pretty cheap and that would roughly double (or more) your performance in pretty much every game.
Any game that
spoiler
___has an owl bear and a dog become friends and playfully chase each other around gets an A+ in my book
AAA Executive 1: What could they have done to be so successful?! No fun micro transactions? No wacky costume packs? What was it?
AAA Executive 2: My second wife’s kid said something about a bear owl and cat playing tag was his favorite part.
AAA Executive 1: That’s it! Lets start pumping out bear cat tag DLCs and events for all our games!
I’m loving the game don’t get me wrong but I wouldn’t say that polished is the word that I would describe it with.
The game is definitely buggy (I believe that playing split screen only makes this more apparent). That being said I don’t know how AAA games are usually shipped because I basically never buy them at launch (except CP2077 which I promptly refunded because that was a complete mess) so if they are usually much worse that is more that the whole industry standard has dropped down massively.
EA definitely helped but I wonder if Larian made the right choice by releasing it ahead of schedule. Maybe not, they are being praised massively for BG3, which is 100% an amazing game but imo it very much needs a patch or two still.
Folks aren’t ready to accept it but it’s true. I’m loving the game, I really am, and I even recommend it, but it really needs more polish. I guess the bar really is just that low for people. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills seeing everyone saying it’s perfect. A game can be great but still need polish.
Agreed, it’s a great game to the point that I’m willing to look past the jankiness, but there are some huge gaps right now. For examples, I have Asterion equipped with a finesse longsword and it seems like the sneak attack animation is missing, the game just hangs for 5 seconds and then computes damage every time.
Yeah I’m kind of baffled that I keep hearing about how polished it is - don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing game and my wife and I have been playing practically every night - but I don’t think a single night has passed yet where we haven’t run into a fairly major bug, and usually a whole shit load of minor ones
Just last night I went to withers to change my class, when halfway through the dialogue, Li’zael popped up with some random, unprompted dialogue, canceling my class change without refunding my 100g
