Destiny 2 PC performance thread

[GrrImAFridge]

(Click for general game info.)

🖥️ System requirements:

🧰 Latest drivers: (as at 24/02/2022)
AMD: 22.2.2
Nvidia: 511.79

📊 Benchmarks:
ComputerBase (German; launch build)
GameGPU (Russian; beta build)
GameGPU (Russian; launch build)
GamersNexus (English; beta build)
GamersNexus (English; launch build)
Guru3D (English; launch build)
Hardware Unboxed (English; beta build)
Overclock3D (English; launch build)
PC Games Hardware (German; beta build)
PC Games Hardware (German; launch build)
TechPowerUp (English; beta build)
Techspot (English; beta build)

📊 Performance guides:
Nvidia (English; launch build)

🎩 Tips and tricks:
List of vital information and known issues: See this forum post. (Credit to Bungie itself.)
Cap the frame rate (1)/potentially improve frame times: Download RivaTuner Statistics Server (if you use MSI Afterburner, then you already have it installed), input your desired framerate limit in the "Framerate limit" box, and hit Enter . Alternatively, those with an Nvidia GPU can either cap the frame rate at the driver level via the Nvidia Control Panel (requires the 441.87+ drivers) or use Nvidia Inspector to force a vsync internal lower than one-half (click the small tool icon to open the game profile section).
Note: Useful if your system can't maintain, say, 60fps and you're sensitive to the wild fluctuations, or you're experiencing uneven frame times. The greater window the engine has to render a given frame, if you're imposing a lower frame rate than the game can otherwise provide, may also help in alleviating stuttering related to data streaming.
Cap the framerate (2): Open C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Bungie\DestinyPC\prefs\cvars.xml and change the value of framerate_cap to your desired limit. (Credit to vegtro.)
Fix native resolution not showing as a selectable display resolution (1): Ensure you're not mistaking window mode (Borderless Windowed) for borderless fullscreen mode (Fullscreen Windowed). (Credit to EchoSmoker @ NeoGAF.)
Fix native resolution not showing as a selectable display resolution (2): Disconnect any additional displays. (Credit to Deepo @ NeoGAF.)

When posting your own tip/trick or something else you'd like to see here in the OP, be sure to tag my username (@GrrImAFridge), as this way I'll receive a notification. I may miss your suggestion otherwise.

⚙️ Graphics settings:

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Window mode: Windowed; Fullscreen; Borderless Windowed; Windowed Fullscreen
Resolution: Self-explanatory
Vsync: Off; 60fps; 30fps
Field of view: 55 -> 105 in increments of 1
Screen bounds: Self-explanatory
Brightness: Self-explanatory
Graphics quality (preset): Custom; Low; Medium; High; Highest
Anti-aliasing: Off; FXAA; SMAA
Screen-space ambient occlusion: Off; HDAO; 3D
Texture anisotropy: Off; 2x; 4x; 8x; 16x
Texture quality: Lowest; Low; Medium; High; Highest
Shadow quality: Lowest; Low; Medium; High; Highest

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Depth of field: Off; Low; High; Highest
Environmental detail distance: Low; Medium; High
Character detail distance: Low; Medium; High
Foliage detail distance: Low; Medium; High
Foliage shadows distance: Medium; High; Highest
Light shafts: Medium; High
Motion blur: Off/On
Wind impulse: Off/On
Render resolution: 75% -> 200% in increments of 1%
HDR: Off/On
Chromatic aberration: Off/On
Film grain: Off/On

 

[Josecitox]

It's such a shame they haven't fixed SMT support for AMD Ryzen, the game needs it so bad to get the most out of that platform.

 

[Quesa]

I have the highest setting of anti-aliasing turned on, but it doesn't seem to look super AA'd. Is there a trick to it?

 

[Robin]

Sofar the game has had mostly great performance, but every once in awhile it'll really start to chug. I've been keeping it Alt-Tabbed for long periods of time though and think that might have something to do with it.

 

[Chili]

I have the highest setting of anti-aliasing turned on, but it doesn't seem to look super AA'd. Is there a trick to it?

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Upping the Render Resolution might help too. I have it at 125% on 2560 x 1440 which seems a lot better.

 

[Arkanius]

Funny how they removed the MSAA support.
Anyway, still very anxious of them due the third party tools banning. Waiting for the dust to settle before commiting to the PC version.

 

[Deleted member 1852]

The MSAA support was busted in beta wasn't it? That's probably why they removed it.

 

[Chief Malik]

The MSAA support was busted in beta wasn't it? That's probably why they removed it.

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Deferred rendering and MSAA normally don't play well

 

[catboy]

Thanks for posting this!

Anyone else with an HDR set able to confirm that Destiny 2 just looks super washed out with that enabled? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or need to be using latest drivers etc. The TV definitely recognised it as an HDR signal but it just looked... off.

 

[theJwac]

My game starts out great at >110 frames but after 90 minutes or so, it starts with the stutter issue I've seen others describe. Thankfully a game restart seems to clear things up, but it's annoying, nonetheless.

 

[vegtro]

Frames can also be limited through the Destiny 2 config file and fix (in my case) the offset of borderless window.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Bungie\DestinyPC\prefs

in cvars.xml, change the "0" to whatever value you want to limit to:

<cvar name="framerate_cap" value="0" />

 

[Rats]

Thanks for posting this!

Anyone else with an HDR set able to confirm that Destiny 2 just looks super washed out with that enabled? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or need to be using latest drivers etc. The TV definitely recognised it as an HDR signal but it just looked... off.

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I only played the beta but it looked great on my set. No issues that I could see.

 

[Tiny Hawk]

Running the game on a FX-6300 and a 1050 Ti. I've been playing on default high settings @ 1080p. I've been getting a smooth 60fps for the most part. Dips to 50 during parts with lots of enemies, but never goes below.

Crazy good optimization compared to the beta!

 

[sprinkles]

The game defaulted to High settings for me (3570k, 970), but I had stuttering and framedrops even on Medium. The game would run at 70-120 FPS but randomly freeze for a split second in fire fights or in the open world. What helped with that was putting the refresh rate on my secondary display (TV) to 59Hz. I have no idea why this works, but it did help. The game runs now flawlessly on High Settings.

 

[catboy]

I only played the beta but it looked great on my set. No issues that I could see.

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Hmmmm

What settings were you using? Also the brightness setting doesn't appear to do anything with HDR enabled

 

[Rats]

Hmmmm

What settings were you using? Also the brightness setting doesn't appear to do anything with HDR enabled

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I haven't really done anything special with the settings as far as I can recall. Game mode, warm color temperature. My set does let me change brightness, though. I have a Sony.

 

[jony]

Game is running great in ultrawide, but I wish there was a way to uncap the in-engine cutscenes.

 

[Deleted member 420]

Is there an option to turn off the screen vignetting?

 

[Lnkn52]

I'm amazed that I can run this on my Late 2015 iMac 5k.

Few dips but overall made PC my choice for playing Destiny 2.

 

[datamage]

Thanks for posting this!

Anyone else with an HDR set able to confirm that Destiny 2 just looks super washed out with that enabled? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong or need to be using latest drivers etc. The TV definitely recognised it as an HDR signal but it just looked... off.

Click to shrink...

HDR is working great on my end. (OLED55C6P)

Which GPU and drivers are you using?

Side note: This game actually toggles HDR on for me without having to manually turn it on in Windows.

 

[MetalicSand]

Game runs amazingly well besides borderless window being completely broken.

 

[low-G]

PROTIP: turn depth of field from highest to high for a massive performance boost.

With everything else maxed, I was able to go from 1080p - 100% oversampling to 140% oversampling with the same framerate with that one tweak.

 

[Pixieking]

Haven't even got it downloaded yet, but thanks for the thread JaseC. :) Can I ask what the third-party ban situation is like? Possible to just have Discord running in the background for voice-chat with clan? Or is Batttlenet's voice chat system good enough to not bother with Discord?

 

[CrusoeCMYK]

Is anyone having any issues with BT devices? During the beta and now final release it just mutes my speakers upon launch.

 

[ImperatorPat]

Anyone running this on a Radeon R9 Fury or R9 Fury Nano? What settings are you using? I suddenly started getting major slowdown in the EDZ after playing for 2 hours (weirdly frame counter in game still claimed 50-70 FPS but it was more like 5 FPS) but I gather that might just be a bug with the game.

Haven't even got it downloaded yet, but thanks for the thread JaseC. :) Can I ask what the third-party ban situation is like? Possible to just have Discord running in the background for voice-chat with clan? Or is Batttlenet's voice chat system good enough to not bother with Discord?

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Bungie denies that Discord will cause a ban. Many people have said they have it running fine without issues.

400 people were banned out of probably 100,000s playing destiny PC the first day so I think we are all pretty safe even if bungie's code is just busted and banning at random. Just gotta count on RNG like so many things in this game...

Edit.. whoah didn't notice that but the page now says "Update: As part of our ban review process, we have identified a group of players who were banned in error. Those players have been unbanned. The bans were not related to the third-party applications listed above. We will continue to review the process we use to ensure a fun and fair game."

Well, I guess they weren't lying after all.

 

[lexible]

Was getting crazy drops to ~50 fps in the rain area of the opening story stuff. Otherwise solid 120fps at 2560x1440

I'm yet to decide if I actually like the game yet though.

 

[Pixieking]

Bungie denies that Discord will cause a ban. Many people have said they have it running fine without issues.

400 people were banned out of probably 100,000s playing destiny PC the first day so I think we are all pretty safe even if bungie's code is just busted and banning at random. Just gotta count on RNG like so many things in this game...

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Ah, fair enough. :)

 

[GrrImAFridge]

Haven't even got it downloaded yet, but thanks for the thread JaseC. :) Can I ask what the third-party ban situation is like? Possible to just have Discord running in the background for voice-chat with clan? Or is Batttlenet's voice chat system good enough to not bother with Discord?

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Bungie's adamant that the only people being banned are those trying to cheat. I'm not familiar with voice chat on Battle.net, so someone else will have to answer that, sorry.

Edit: Beaten.

 

[CrusoeCMYK]

Haven't even got it downloaded yet, but thanks for the thread JaseC. :) Can I ask what the third-party ban situation is like? Possible to just have Discord running in the background for voice-chat with clan? Or is Batttlenet's voice chat system good enough to not bother with Discord?

Click to shrink...

At the very least I can confirm that no ban has been issued to neither my friend and I. We've been using Discord for communication as the in-game option doesn't work well for us. Also thanks again for the performance thread, Jace. Bless

 

[Dhruv_Hanom]

Smooth as butter, I have no problems reaching 150+ fps on an UW 1440p screen with a 7700k and a TitanxP (I mean it'd be sad if I didn't)

 

[galv]

I've been having an issue (along with others) where the fireteam mic audio is really low. Any fixes? Increasing the volume in the Sound menu to max doesn't seem to be enough.

 

[Deleted member 1852]

PROTIP: turn depth of field from highest to high for a massive performance boost.

With everything else maxed, I was able to go from 1080p - 100% oversampling to 140% oversampling with the same framerate with that one tweak.

Click to shrink...

Ah, I was hoping someone would remind me of this tip from the beta now. Thanks!

Looks and runs great at 60hz in 4K on my setup. 1080 Ti, all settings maxed, SMAA, but DoF set to High and not Highest.

 

[Nokterian]

I capped the framerate at 141fp as was said here in the xml file, way better now so my G-sync will not drop out when going above 144fps.

I have render resolution on 125% and still having above 100fps the whole time.

Can crank it up but for now it looks and plays great.

 

[Zellia]

Runs pretty smooth for me on an i5-4660 (no K) and AMD R9 380. It does dip a bit in heavy firefights with lots of players but overall I'm very impressed.

 

[Chainshada]

Performance is all over the place on my i5-3570k and RX580. Running around on earth inside the chapel, fighting nothing I'm getting 55-65fps, step outside and start fighting 80-90. Fighting a lot of enemies I stay pretty stable 90+ near the walker/servitor event, but seems as soon as another 2 or more players are nearby it drops down to 45-50. Thought this could be the issue people are having with FPS drops over time? I did go to the Servitor event 1st, then in a mission in tunnels (110-130fps while fighting medium size groups), then to the chapel area. Updated drivers, new one says RX 580 50% increase in 1440, but playing in 1080p.

Dropping settings doesn't seem to do a while lot.

 

[lovelyperson]

My game starts out great at >110 frames but after 90 minutes or so, it starts with the stutter issue I've seen others describe. Thankfully a game restart seems to clear things up, but it's annoying, nonetheless.

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This is basically what I've been dealing with and I cannot figure out what's causing it. I'll be playing at 60-80FPS and then at some point - it always seems to be after a certain amount of time - the game just starts to chug and it's awful.
Restarting it fixes the issue, but it's seriously annoying to deal with.
The FPS counter doesn't even show proper numbers after that happens so I don't even know what I'm actually running at that point.

 

[Samaritan]

My game starts out great at >110 frames but after 90 minutes or so, it starts with the stutter issue I've seen others describe. Thankfully a game restart seems to clear things up, but it's annoying, nonetheless.

Click to shrink...

This is basically what I've been dealing with and I cannot figure out what's causing it. I'll be playing at 60-80FPS and then at some point - it always seems to be after a certain amount of time - the game just starts to chug and it's awful.
Restarting it fixes the issue, but it's seriously annoying to deal with.
The FPS counter doesn't even show proper numbers after that happens so I don't even know what I'm actually running at that point.

Click to shrink...

Also running into this. The FPS counter doesn't change though, but I can tell there's a difference, as it starts feeling really juddery and choppy, but because the framerate indicator is still giving me the same number, I start to doubt myself. Let's post our specs and see if we can find any overlap.

Specs:

CPU: Intel - Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-Z170XP-SLI ATX LGA1151
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5"
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB AORUS
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit
Monitor: Acer - XB240H ABPR 24.0" 1920x1080 144Hz

Click to shrink...

 

[cid85]

I capped the framerate at 141fp as was said here in the xml file, way better now so my G-sync will not drop out when going above 144fps.

I have render resolution on 125% and still having above 100fps the whole time.

Can crank it up but for now it looks and plays great.

Click to shrink...

You have AA off or maxed as well ?

 

[Mudo]

Hey I was just asked by someone in discord chat to post this for you all so here you go, add to OP if needed:

Enjoy!

 

[Nokterian]

You have AA off or maxed as well ?

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AA is maxed, i'm running with Ryzen 1700X, GTX1080, G-skill 3200mhz 16gb memory. Game is running on my samsung ssd, so far so good.

 

[Deleted member 1852]

I'm also getting the stuttering after a period of extended play. Oh well. Since it always happens after awhile it might be a memory leak or something. Hopefully they fix it. For now quitting and relaunching solves it.

 

[Zatoichi]

Having issues where the game runs beautifully and then will suddenly freeze completely for a few seconds and then start up again.

On Win 10 Pro, game installed on 960 nvme, [email protected], gtx 1080, 16gb ddr4.

Display is gsync 1440p @ 144hz.

Any ideas, becoming unplayable?

 

[cid85]

AA is maxed, i'm running with Ryzen 1700X, GTX1080, G-skill 3200mhz 16gb memory. Game is running on my samsung ssd, so far so good.

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Nice will play it tomorrow, i got a 1080ti with 5930k, so I should be sweet to get that kind of fps lol

 

[Chili]

Having issues where the game runs beautifully and then will suddenly freeze completely for a few seconds and then start up again.

On Win 10 Pro, game installed on 960 nvme, [email protected], gtx 1080, 16gb ddr4.

Display is gsync 1440p @ 144hz.

Any ideas, becoming unplayable?

Click to shrink...

I've been having the same problem (and in the beta), almost the same specs and display but a 1080Ti and 950 nvme instead. I reformatted my computer and the problem seems to have gone away for now.

 

[Nokterian]

Having issues where the game runs beautifully and then will suddenly freeze completely for a few seconds and then start up again.

On Win 10 Pro, game installed on 960 nvme, [email protected], gtx 1080, 16gb ddr4.

Display is gsync 1440p @ 144hz.

Any ideas, becoming unplayable?

Click to shrink...

You need to go to in the XML file as said above to cap the fps for us G-Sync users it needs to be capped at 141fps going above 144fps it will stop G-sync and goes into v-sync.

 

[Maxi]

Hey I was just asked by someone in discord chat to post this for you all so here you go, add to OP if needed:

Enjoy!

Click to shrink...

Thanks for this! I haven't tried it yet but I did notice some odd stutter when entering caves in IO last night which could well be this.

OVerall performance has been very impressive for me on high setting with DOF and motion blur off. I've had to turn down shadow effects a bit as my 1070 struggles with 21:9 a bit and the 105 FOV. I'm rather impressed though at how good the game looks and how well it runs. It is no technical masterpiece and has some very low res textures/geometry in places but the scale and art style is just gorgeous.

 

[Mudo]

Thanks for this! I haven't tried it yet but I did notice some odd stutter when entering caves in IO last night which could well be this.

OVerall performance has been very impressive for me on high setting with DOF and motion blur off. I've had to turn down shadow effects a bit as my 1070 struggles with 21:9 a bit and the 105 FOV. I'm rather impressed though at how good the game looks and how well it runs. It is no technical masterpiece and has some very low res textures/geometry in places but the scale and art style is just gorgeous.

Click to shrink...

No problem =) I have it on PS4 Pro and currently deciding whether to double dip on PC or not. I guess with this thread I can get it running well.

 

[Barrow Roll]

The built-in framerate counter in the beta was all sorts of busted, did they fix that for the final code? I've been using the Geforce Experience overlay for my framerate counter for now.

 

[Zatoichi]

I've been having the same problem (and in the beta), almost the same specs and display but a 1080Ti and 950 nvme instead. I reformatted my computer and the problem seems to have gone away for now.

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Reformat? As in reinstall windows?

 

[Nokterian]

Frames can also be limited through the Destiny 2 config file and fix (in my case) the offset of borderless window.

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Bungie\DestinyPC\prefs

in cvars.xml, change the "0" to whatever value you want to limit to:

<cvar name="framerate_cap" value="0" />

Click to shrink...

People with G-sync go to this and put in 141, same with RTSS..limit those fps to that after that no more worries.