Hi Robert, Hi Dave,
Pleased to meet you. I was actually to write my own post, but didn’t wanted to bother anyone else with this, as I was reading many articles and posts (especially from you Dave - many thanks for all your hard work trying to find solutions for us).
So, thanks for posting this first Robert. To answer your question - yes I have the same issue and I presume everyone else has this. My system is build around the Threadripper platform (multicores, constant 4GHz on all of them with WC, 64GB of RAM, M2 drives, RTX 3080Ti etc.). I need all of this for my professional work in film editing and photography and for casually playing some games and of course train on an indoor trainer.
I couldn’t understand why Zwift framerates were so low on my system neither, until I read plenty of forum posts (thanks again for all the explanations Dave!) and articles, and matched this with other games I play - especially ■■■■ Let Loose. This game was developed by a small team of passionate People who spent a lot of time on polishing the game over the past years to create something really unique and each time better in terms of graphical performance. I play on 4K and getting very good results on the RTX 3080Ti, always above 60fps and mostly above 80fps in a very graphically intense game, with 100 players on a large map. I can get these results as I can tweak the in-game settings (like in many other PC games).
Unfortunately this is where Zwift falls short in this regard. This can be understandable, as this platform was build firstly for cyclists and not for gamers. What bothers me however, is the fact that Zwift as a company makes a substantial amount of profits (not only from the membership fees) and yet, they still operate on a graphical engine that is completely not capable of utilising modern PC hardware.
I appreciate all your great work you are doing here on the forums Dave, but we need some stand on this from Zwift developers as a game in late 2021 should not be operating on a platform which is not utilising equipment we put so much hard earned money in and still pay a monthly subscription for. I have found a YouTube World of Zwift: Episode 37 where the Developers talk about their creative processes of building the Zwift worlds. In fairness the moderator of their YT channel is replying to comments and promises “to pass them on to the Team”, but I really do not believe that anything will be done about this, as it will require an effort “from the Team” way beyond their comfort / salary zones.
I do not think that this issue has anything to do with CPU bottlenecking only, this is much deeper than this as is based on the way the graphical engine implemented and incorporated with the game code which is very poorly optimised with today’s hardware. Someone should be responsible for this, but seems that no one at Zwift cares about it, as long as their pockets and belly’s are full.
I am still using Zwift for finishing my off season training plan, but will be cancelling my membership and moving to RGT, where developers with way less resources are trying to build something of a good quality and a better value.
Cheers, Bart