Well Neokyo looks absolutely great but takes poor performance to the next level. This time it seems to be wholly CPU limited; my system is barely managing 50fps with an RTX 2060 Super which is labouring at less than 50% utilisation. It’s not trying, because it can’t. Even disconnected from the internet (to eliminate the usual issues caused by tons of other riders nearby), the frame rate barely breaks 60fps and GPU utilisation is still down at 60%.
In this situation, a stronger graphics card would make no difference whatsoever, nor does dropping the resolution (two common misconceptions). It’s because the CPU bottleneck on Neokyo is absurd, and this is with a Ryzen 5 3600XT. A friend has an overclocked i5-10600K at 4.8GHz and that can’t hold 60fps either. Presumably a £600 i9-12900K would do? On every other world, an i3-4130 costing £8 allows the GPU to max out in a solo ride. Slight difference there.
Something is seriously amiss with Makuri; the way it performs is remarkably different to the rest of the game. At least the dense foliage on Yumezi makes sense, even though the hardware demands to maintain 60fps there are also crazily high.
As mentioned before, I completely accept the majority of people on Zwift don’t give a toss about frame rates. I do.