Need a more powerful CPU

I doubt it has anything to do with your cpu perforamnce so much. Even if it were, you might be looking at a ~10% or less fps difference i reckon. I'd just give it some time and see if a new graphics driver might just fix your problem - or a game patch.

Running a 980M on my laptop, and the fps floats from 60 all the way down to mid 30s in certain areas for me (it's supposedly only 25% worse than the desktop version, which may put it closer to a 970 desktop).

Perhaps you should rule out any programs running in the background that could be causing problems?

You're also looking at only one upgrade route that may help. Upgrading to a 980 may give you more of a performance bump in fps. I'd check the benchmarks to rule out.

Nvidia might be releasing a new series some time (can't remember when the release is). May want to hold off until then.

i have same problem and hardware (but i have a gtx 980).
I just turn Shadow distance to medium and always +50 fps .
Anything else ultra

The FX-8350 is (regrettably) quite outdated, I'd look into bumping up the core speed to about 5.2, if you can manage, but I used to have the same setup as you, roughly, and the 8350 really isn't a gaming chip. Look to get an i5 or i7, if you want to upgrade, or try to overclock to the best of your ability, otherwise, tune back shadows as Null_Code suggests, it'll help a bunch.

Well with this info, the cpu upgrade option may just be the thing to do, or suffer with teeny bit less in regards to shadow distance

Thank you very much.

I'm going to over clock my CPU tonight, but first I'm going to try the ini/windowed fix again. I usually rig F4 to be high priority on my CPU as well.

I can live without shadow distance, but the god rays have to stay. I do see a massive immersive difference just between Ultra and High.

If the time comes, not only will I have to replace my 8350, but my mobo as well as it is an am3 chipset. (I think) and those don't support i5/i7, if I'm correct.

I'm looking at about 600 - 700 dollars. Which svcks because I just replaced my gpu, psu, ram and hdd into an ssd. Bhahaa... good lord the cost of effective visuals.

Try putting your draw distance to high, I read a thread that if its on ultra it draws things at infinite distance. See if that helps. Should be no determinable effect on quality. You can check your ini file for the parameter with the value 9999 try around 6-7k.

According to HardOCP, the difference between Ultra and High God Rays can be as much as a 40% difference in performance at 1440p, especially in complex scenes (lots of obstructions of sky lighting like lots of foliage, buildings, complex skeletal towers, etc).

The one thing that helped me a ton at pegging 60 FPS and preventing dips to the near 30's and 40's was simply disabling AA.

I run everything on its highest settings. I'm using an EVGA Superclocked 980Ti, i7-5820K OC'd to 4.5 GHz, 16 GB of Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4 2133MHz memory, and, if there is any streaming from the hard drive that's affecting the frame rate, I'm running 3 850 EVOs in a 768 GB volume.

I'm running the game at 1440p resolution and everything else completely maxed out.

That's quite a rig you should be easily at 120fps, if that doesn't show there's something wrong with game optimization nothing does.

Not quite.

I have the 8350 overclocked to 4.3 and it is not good enough to run ultra at 60fps.

Drop shadows and godrays to medium or lower and you should see improvement. Also drop down the distance sliders to maybe 50%. If you're getting 60 after that, increase until you don't.

You have to cap the game at 60 FPS for it to work anyway. I get much more than 60 FPS.

Its the Shadow Distance that messing up your fps in cities. Turn it down and you will see a major boost to your fps.

Hi!!

Have same problem!

-AMD FX Series FX-9590 4.7Ghz 8X - Procesador + Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT - Cooler

-MSI Geforce GTX 980 GAMING 4G TwinFrozr V 4GDD5 OC

-MSI 990FXA-GD80 AM3+ AMD 990FX 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

-HyperX FURY DDR3 Memory 2x8GB

-Corsair RM850 850W 80 Plus Gold Modular

I play beetwen 54 - 60 fps with all graphics on ultra, but in city my fps drop wildly to 24 fps.

What do you think about? I think some people with nice pc's have same problem...can be?

Thanks for your time.

Still early. GIve it some time. Be happy you have Nvidia and not an AMD GPU. There are places that drop for me regardless of the settings, resolution, or tesselation in drivers.

need some patch

thx cya

Shadows and lighting effects tend to stress the CPU.

Dropping Godrays to Medium (ironically seemed to make them more obvious and impressive) and Shadow Distance to Medium means I often have 120 fps and am almost always over 60. Certain angles in the city still cause brief momentary dips under 50. Object Detail Fade High. Everything else Ultra. Nvidia's Geforce Experience was actually pretty useful here

Tested it without fps cap and it's about the limit of my rig. 100+ fps looking buttery smooth and amazing as always on my 144 hz capable monitor. i5 3570k 4 ghz / 970 1380 MHz / 8 GB 1600 MHz DD3 RAM. If OP familiar with CPUs you may recall that model as the big competitor to the 8350