Payday 2 Performance Tweaks
Giovanna Qiu
Hi guys, this is a thing that (hopefully) will help you boost up your FPS. I've seen many threads asking for tips and tricks to raise performance, so I thought "Hey, why not just put it all together so it's easy to read and understandable even for complete newbies?" So I did this instead and I'll try to keep it as far from being a complete clusterfuck as possible. I also have a really shitty laptop (Celeron 1000m, this shit's graphics card is named just "Intel HD Graphics family"), so I'll be able to test this guide and maybe post some results. With that said, let's get started!
So, there are many things that you can do to increase your overall performance outside PAYDAY. First, you should run an antimalware scan (I recommend Malwarebytes, it also has a realtime protection option in premium, you should always have an active antimalware which has nothing to do with Microsoft ;)) and set your graphics card to maximum performance (Nvidia guide, on Intel you have to go into Intel's control panel -> 3D and there check the "Performance" option. Not sure if there's an AMD equivament of those, at least not one that I'm aware of.) Also, make sure your drivers are up to date. On laptops, you can set the power management plan to performance - right-click your battery icon on the tray, select the "power options", and click on "performance". You can also use all the "game booster" programs, but I've never felt like they gave me any additional performance.
Alright, so you scanned your system, updated the drivers, set your card to max performance, or did none of that because you did it before or simply don't care. Next step is making your game look like complete shit. Launch the game, go to options and then do as follows:
make sure all boxes except flush gpu are unchecked (while it affects performance greatly,if you leave that unchecked it may, and probably will, cause mouse lag, which, in my case, made the game pretty much unplayable. Best to try it out for yourself)
set everything you can (expect animation, I didn't notice any difference between settings) to either "very low" or "off" (the texture quality doesn't matter THAT much, but shadows will kill your performance even on low)
I've been playing Payday 2 since 2016, but I've been continuing to put off the prospect of either upgrading my current PC to get higher FPS out of the game and thus better personal performance, or replace it entirely with a more up-to-date tower. I've been saving money lately, though, so it's matter I might approach in a couple months. I'm looking for feedback about where I could improve my hardware or outright replace the PC entirely, whichever would be more cost-efficient.
Maximizing your CPU usage for better performance If you're game is running at 20%-50% CPU usage feel free to boost it by simply going to Task Manager>Details>payday2_win32_release>right click>Set Priority>High.Do NOT set it to realtime.
We tested these graphics settings on the Payday 3 open beta towards to start of September, though we anticipate that the launch title will have slightly different optimisations. However, with an RTX 2070 Super and Ryzen 3600X, we experienced fairly solid and consistent frame rates with our performance settings.
Going for Full-Screen is almost always a no-brainer for me in most games. It allows for a no-distraction gaming session with minimum input latency and the best performance. This is simply because Full-Screen is an Exclusive Mode that places the game at a higher priority.
Resolution is one of those settings that hit both your performance and the visuals. Thankfully, however, the game already comes with NVIDIA DLSS. So, we will be using that to modify the render resolution.
With my personally tested settings and the DX12 tweak, I am pretty hopeful that you will be able to gain a significant chunk of performance to make your heisting experience just a tad bit better. While the game is slightly messy right now, hopefully, it will get patched soon enough.
So in this menu we will be specifically looking at the big buttons on the left. These adjust how far trees and misc objects will render in. So higher the settings the farther away you will see trees and lower the setting the closer trees will disappear. In testing I noted the best visuals and performance gains with balance. I prefer to play on high for the longer render distances of trees as it makes the landscape look more believable. But selecting balanced does have benefits such as 10+ fps gain and enhanced spotting of both air and ground units. These particular settings cannot be edited outside of the game menu as far as I know.
these are approximate distances and all settings will render planes out to 9.99km.
Low - trees render in a circle 1.6km wide and buildings out to 3.4km. Avg fps 100.
Balanced - trees render in a circle 2km wide and buildings out to 5km. Avg fps 95.
High - trees render in a circle 3km wide and buildings out to 6km. Avg fps 85.
Ultra - trees render in a circle 4km wide and buildings between 6km and 6.5km. Avg fps 71.
I conducted over twenty game restarts after long observations changing between the settings to verify these results. All flights were at 1000m and without using zoom in F2 view. This was two hours worth of testing alone to provide accurate data between all the settings...
Gamma
Lately I prefer 1.1 gamma on my screen for better spotting. (pics show older gamma selection) However 0.8 is often the recommended gamma settings because it darkens black and planes over 2km away will always render in black. Play around with these values to see which you prefer. Adjusting gamma is the only way to darken color shades or brighten the world without a performance impact. Using the config file below, it will be possible to set gamma to 1.3 or 0.7 or beyond as these values are outside of what the game will allow from in the menu. As of 2020 I now use 0.8 brightness to align with the latest color changes brought to the game in 2019. This section of the guide is all written for 1.1 brightness. So be aware that the game may look incorrect now at 1.1 compared to the time I originally wrote the guide.
Also note that the higher the gamma the more grey and washed out the screen will look. Which makes spotting difficult as all the colors will be a similar shade of grey. Which is why some prefer the darkest gamma settings to bring out a color contrast of black shades. Just know it will be a disadvantage having low gamma during evening and night time periods.
Sharpen
Using sharpen is a must for long distance spotting. This is the only way to counter the depth of field blur filter used in the game that we cannot turn off. There is a small performance impact for selecting it. (devs please let us turn off the depth of field blur as it takes away from the beauty and visual clarity of the game)
HDR
Makes the game super bright and has a massive performance impact. Not worth using in my opinion.
SSAO
Blurs the edges of an already blurry game. Turning this on is a big performance impact and it makes the black silhouettes of planes "smaller" because it condenses or blurs the edge of pixels. Planes past 7km will look nearly invisible due to this issue. With SSAO off the planes will be a distant black line. Totally not worth using or turning on.
Landscape Filter
Either setting will have minimal performance loss if any.
-Blur only causes difficulty seeing past 7km and it is an additional process running at all times. However blur will reduce ground flickering caused by jagged lines on the ground in the distance. Which results in less visual movement at distance.
Shadow quality
After testing this over a long period of time. I have noticed that high shadow settings use more processing power because it casts sharpened shadows from plane silhouettes on the ground and from the bars in the cockpit. While medium will still cast the same shadows only with a lighter and blurrier tone for less of a performance impact. No visuals lost by reducing from high to medium shadow settings. Worth the additional FPS gain by selecting medium or less.
Mirrors
Same story as shadows. Really no difference between complex and simple other than better performance with the simple setting. Simple has the same reflections on the water, wings, and glass though it is less intense and defined. Selecting simple will gain better FPS and still retain all the advantages of the complex setting. This is a mild performance impact.
Turning mirrors off completely is not recommended as it will reduce possible spotting capabilities.
Vsync
I keep this off because that will generate the most frames as soon as they are processed without waiting on the refresh rate. My monitor is only 60hz so this may affect users with higher refresh rates in another manner. Generally in all games vsync off typically will provide the best and smoothest performance as the computer will do all it can to process the game as fast as possible.
The menu of iL-2 seems to be locked at 60 fps. Even with vsync disabled the frames will still be locked at 60 fps. While flying in the open world of the sim, frames will exceed this unchangeable vsync limitation.
Target FPS
If a user has more frames than they need then enable this. Otherwise keep it off. Target fps has to enabled to use dynamic resolution.
Clouds
Keep this on high as this will provide the best visuals for planes in the clouds as the clouds will be more transparent. There is also a problem of clouds flickering at lower settings. Worth the performance impact.
Landscape detail
Really no obvious visual changes other than smaller details on the ground. I keep it on the lowest setting of normal as this is a large performance impact for really no meaningful benefit.
Horizon Draw Distance
Pick whichever suits you. 100km seems more than enough distance for me. This is a setting for high altitude flyers so they can see the layout of the ground or mountains in the distance. This setting is only the 2d texture on the ground after objects are no longer rendered. Little to no performance change until after 100km.
Anti-Aliasing
Worth using, as this will better define clean lines over distance and assist in identifying targets. Also for re-shade users 4x is required to prevent the game from crashing. Large performance impact.
Grass Quality