On Sunday, when Richmond was loaded, I noticed some FPS hiccups that were annoying. Many times after the start/finish line, I noticed my FPS jump between 30-60 FPS. The jumps are never “smooth” and result in jerky animation. Then there is the usual “hit” on the Libby Hill KOM segment when you go under the train bridge. There I would get 20 FPS for a good 10 seconds or so before it would return to 30 FPS.
I’m running a GeForce GTX 950, Core i3 3.8 GHz, 8 GB DDR4 RAM, SATA III SSD. Zwift selects the High graphics profile and I use the 1080p (High) in-game resolution from the Settings screen.
Next I tried to set the in-game resolution to 1440p (Ultra) and some interesting things occurred. The framerate remained consistently at 30 FPS through most of the course. Even during the sections in the city where I was getting jerkiness as the framerate bounced between 30-60 FPS often. Somehow running Ultra made this better, go figure.
I then decided to tweak the high.txt graphics profile to see if I could “fix” the 20 FPS section. I set the sres (shadow resolution) from 1024x1024 to 512x512 and also went back to the in-game resolution of 1080p and this seems to have improved my framerate. There were some times the framerate bounced between 30-60 FPS and some jerkiness was noticeable but it was far less than before.
I don’t seem to have the same issues on Watopia, at least as much.
Once the prices of cards like the 980 or 980 Ti come down, I’ll probably upgrade and won’t have to worry about these issues for a while