PS5 Game Performance is just awful and unplayable

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Leave dynamic resolution on, it will downscale your resolution to attempt to hit the target framerate. Even if you have a 120hz display + VRR (I do), I recommend setting your refresh rate to 60hz. If you set it to 120hz, no matter what maximum resolution you set, it will scale down to the lowest resolution at all times because the game pretty much never hits 120hz. Even in scenarios where the game is CPU limited it will drop the image quality severely. Also the game -will- drop below 60 fps when things get crazy, so in my opinion a drop from 60 to 30 will perceptually feel less severe and more stable than a drop from 90ish fps to 30. At 60hz I do get screen tearing sometimes, which I do not in 120hz. Regardless I think it's a lesser evil in this case.

While NIS probably looks the best, in my testing NIS and FSR seem to suffer heavily when certain spell effects go off. To mitigate that drop, for now I highly recommend playing the game on -bilinear-. While the framerate of bilinear is not that different in static scenarios, it makes a world of difference in actual combat, particularly with certain skills which tank the framerate. Test it for yourself in combat. Take note that if you set your framerate cap to 120hz and put it on bilinear with dynamic scaling, the game will look like complete garbage because it will drop the resolution to PS1 era in its attempt to hit 120 fps.

As the devs say in the tooltip, global illumination has a fixed cost, it doesn't scale with the amount of activity on the screen. Turn it off and leave it on shadows for a bit more performance and stability, turn it on for a prettier image. Regardless of that setting, sometimes the framerate will just drop a lot no matter what you do, but it may give a little bit more headroom on the GPU for more stability. Up to you.

Dynamic culling seems to simplify a lot of attack and spell effects (but not all yet, it looks like), reducing the amount of particles which should save both CPU and GPU power. In some scenarios during heavy action this can really help the framerate, especially if you're playing with multiple people. Particles are pretty though! Experiment with the setting and see what's worth it for you. When it's serious time and I'm taking on a hard boss or doing an ascension trial, I'm definitely turning dynamic culling on.

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gainkiller#7359 wrote:

I would consider myself quite picky with framerate, so the framerate in some spots is definitely NOT normal or ok. I'm sure the devs are aware and will fix at least some of it in the short term. There are areas where the framerate drops inexplicably, like a little pit area in act 2 (the boss dies and it goes back to normal). Some optimization is definitely needed.

In the meantime, I've experimented a lot using the really detailed ingame metrics to try to get the best settings possible, so here is what I suggest:

Leave dynamic resolution on, it will downscale your resolution to attempt to hit the target framerate. Even if you have a 120hz display + VRR (I do), I recommend setting your refresh rate to 60hz. If you set it to 120hz, no matter what maximum resolution you set, it will scale down to the lowest resolution at all times because the game pretty much never hits 120hz. Even in scenarios where the game is CPU limited it will drop the image quality severely. Also the game -will- drop below 60 fps when things get crazy, so in my opinion a drop from 60 to 30 will perceptually feel less severe and more stable than a drop from 90ish fps to 30. At 60hz I do get screen tearing sometimes, which I do not in 120hz. Regardless I think it's a lesser evil in this case.

While NIS probably looks the best, in my testing NIS and FSR seem to suffer heavily when certain spell effects go off. To mitigate that drop, for now I highly recommend playing the game on -bilinear-. While the framerate of bilinear is not that different in static scenarios, it makes a world of difference in actual combat, particularly with certain skills which tank the framerate. Test it for yourself in combat. Take note that if you set your framerate cap to 120hz and put it on bilinear with dynamic scaling, the game will look like complete garbage because it will drop the resolution to PS1 era in its attempt to hit 120 fps.

As the devs say in the tooltip, global illumination has a fixed cost, it doesn't scale with the amount of activity on the screen. Turn it off and leave it on shadows for a bit more performance and stability, turn it on for a prettier image. Regardless of that setting, sometimes the framerate will just drop a lot no matter what you do, but it may give a little bit more headroom on the GPU for more stability. Up to you.

Dynamic culling seems to simplify a lot of attack and spell effects (but not all yet, it looks like), reducing the amount of particles which should save both CPU and GPU power. In some scenarios during heavy action this can really help the framerate, especially if you're playing with multiple people. Particles are pretty though! Experiment with the setting and see what's worth it for you. When it's serious time and I'm taking on a hard boss or doing an ascension trial, I'm definitely turning dynamic culling on.

That's all there is to do for now as far as the tools we have, the rest is up to the devs. Not saying the situation is good right now, just trying to offer some suggestions that may be helpful for now. The settings are a little bit confusing if you're not tech oriented, and even if you are they need a little bit of testing to understand how they behave and interact with each other. I don't have a ps5 pro so I'm not sure what the best settings are for the pro.