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

[therealbatata]

For context, I have an AMD RX 6600 and a Ryzen 7 5700G; I should have no problem running this game, I can get up to 120fps on Resident Evil Village at 1920x1080 for crying out loud. But for some reason SRTT just hates my PC; I get terrible performance on certain places even when playing on low settings. I've seen this happen frequently when exiting a store: as soon as I leave the store the framerate just dips. I had one situation where it even fell to 20 fps when exiting Planet Saints, sadly I only got a screencap after it "stabilized" to 40fps.



Is there any fix for this? I wouldn't be bothered to play it below 60fps because I played like that for practically all my life, but having a more powerful system, it feels really underwhelming to have poor performance on such an old game, especially when other games released around the same time work flawlessly (Serious Sam 3, for example) or other, newer open world games run way better (GTA V/GTA Online, even Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered). I tried every solution I could find like disabing the Windows process that handles microphone recognition, disabled voicechat in settings, fumbled with AMD Software Adrenalin Edition, but it was all in vain.

 

[reina3]

I assume you already made sure it's using the RX card instead of the Ryzen for GPU?

You mention specifically when loading a store, it could be a trouble with your storage (unlikely). You can try moving the game to another faster disk (such as SSD) to see if it helps.

You can try checking if the game is using all cores, instead of just one. See Task manager on how the game is utilizing the CPU, GPU, and maybe disk too. If there are some cores not used then that may be the problem.

(not recommended: )
Another fafetched solution is to try installing a less secure "stripped down" version of Windows 10, I use Atlas 0.5.2.
It's very insecure (read: prone to virus attacks) but gets performance boost especially on older games.
I'm enjoying Gat Out of Hell on a Ryzen 5 4500U while using Power Saver powerplan to avoid heat, and somehow it consistently gets over 50+ fps.
But like I said, there's nearly no security features so it's just like using Windows 7 in that regard.

 

[therealbatata]

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

I assume you already made sure it's using the RX card instead of the Ryzen for GPU?

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

You mention specifically when loading a store, it could be a trouble with your storage (unlikely). You can try moving the game to another faster disk (such as SSD) to see if it helps.

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.

You can try checking if the game is using all cores, instead of just one. See Task manager on how the game is utilizing the CPU, GPU, and maybe disk too. If there are some cores not used then that may be the problem.

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?


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!


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.


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

 

[reina3]

Oh dang, that's terrifying. Water has always been a drag in SR3 but this is a whole new level.

It sounds like your graphics card is having trouble rendering the water.
Here are some more advice that may/may not work:
1. Update graphics card drivers
2. Try the intergrated graphics card for the lulz and see if the water shenanigans happen there, too
3. Tweak around in your AMD's settings for this game specifically, such as disabling advanced processing like anti aliasing, setting them to Performance, etc

and I'm guessing you've tried DirectX 9.
If nothing else, thanks for trying!

 

[therealbatata]

and I'm guessing you've tried DirectX 9.

Yup, here's the result. Somehow DirectX 9 ran worse near the water:

Regarding the rest of your suggestions, sadly none of them worked. My drivers are up to date, and the problem remains even relying only on the integrated graphics. Plus the performance tanks absurdly, Resident Evil Village ran at 50-60 FPS without my GPU but this just struggles with everything on Low. Regarding AMD's settings, they mostly apply to DirectX9 executables, so I'm limiting myself greatly by playing around with them & since DirectX9 runs even worse somehow (on lower settings too, mind you!) it's not really worth it. Oh well.
Anyway, thanks so much for lending me a hand... I'm sorry, I hope I didn't waste too much of your time. Once again, thank you.
Edit: decided to experiment and fuck it, this game is ass (sorry Volition). I decided to lower the resolution to 1280x720p to see if it would help, but nope!

I'm honestly speechless; I get that Saints Row is somewhat infamous for having bad PC ports but this just blew my mind. How can you go so wrong?
But wait, I actually did get a performance boost on the lowest resolution (so low it broke the Steam overlay on my monitor, but not on the screenshot): an astonishing... 4 FPS.

 

[NULLYUKI]

What is the current driver version of the GPU driver that you are using?

 

[Wofford16]

I was having this same issue for a while too; bothered me to no end. I capped my FPS to 30 using RivaTuner and that fixed it (as well as the weird 22 fps cap in cutscenes), but I understand that might not be a very attractive option.

Edit: Both OP and I have similar GPUs (they have an RX 6600, I have a 6600 XT) so it may be an AMD thing or even just an issue with the card.

 

[alan1997]

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.

directx 11 version has bugs prone to crashing hahahaha so i use only directx9 it really works to me i don't know about you computer is on