Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Technical & Gameplay Problems Should I ask for a refund?

Hi, I bought the game yesterday (VAT ID: NL824237171B01), but it looks like the game is unplayable.
No matter the graphical settings, I barely get over 30 fps. It's just about 24 fps on high settings.

This is my PC:
32 GB RAM
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G
RTX 3080

Can you explain what is going on, how is this possible? Is there any way to fix this, some obvious trick that I'm missing??
I pretty much explored all options and optimization guides there are...

Is there a solution to this problem, why would the frame rate be so low on any setting??

Sound like a FLEX.

1st off the framerate doesn't matter because combat is paused and this isn't clone of battlefield
2nd asking for refunds depends on which store you got it from... you get 30 days with Gog no questions asked if that helps

as for your stats is a good gaming rig on Windows 10 or average on Windows 11 but this game is really still in EA as far as performance goes with each patch breaking things that used to work in order to change some part of the story that Larian forgets to tell anyone about i.e, its not your computer caused the slow running

Incredible, the difference between the lowest preset vs ultra is 38 vs 20 fps respectively.
I have never seen anything like it. Can't remember the last time I launched a game at highest settings and it wasn't above 80fps at least.

What am I supposed to do now?
It's a pretty expensive game for giving me zero value.
I clocked four hours in it just spending it on experimenting with settings and running in background as I try to find a solution.

Also, it's completely irrelevant what kind of combat it is. I'm allergic to sluggishness in games. Literally stopped playing all games until I got a beefy PC.

Well then get a refund I guess ? I really dont know you and can only base my statements on what you are saying. And, logically, it concludes from your statements that you should get the refund and get the game again later, whenever you have a faster computer.

Personally I'm not bothered. Sure the game has lag right now. More than just 30 fps for me, which for the record is still very, very fast. I doubt I can even see the difference between 30 and 60 fps.

But because the game is turn based, I can play it. I could play it even with 5 fps or even 1 fps or even less.

Everything you said here is immensely stupid.

It sounds like you tried the game out and didn't like it. Just get a refund.

I am not well versed in AMD CPUs, but based on looking at a few CPU benchmarks, it looks bad.
To me it looks like your CPU is the problem.

To put it into perspective...
I play the game on Gtx 980, which i believe is just one inch above the MINIMUM Gtx 970 !!!
Luckily, 1080p is enough for me.
Of course, i have to use mostly Medium to Low settings to get nearly stable 60 FPS (with occasional drops to 50+ in some really effect-heavy parts of the map).
(and i use the Dx11 binary, as i get occasional crashes with Vulkan)

- Animation LOD is High
- AMD FSR2.2 is Ultra Quality (looks and runs way better than any of the Anti-Aliasing options i have available)
- Texture Filtering is Aniso x16
- Fog/Clouds/Shadows are Low
- God Rays, Bloom, and SsScat are OFF
- Slow HDD is OFF
- the rest is Medium or ON.

My GPU is crap, but the game still looks pretty good (i'd say very good, considering how much of a limiting factor is that GPU).

But to my point:
What saves me here, is a still relatively decent Intel Core i7-13700KF (which is even slightly undervolted).
(for the record, i also have 64GB RAM, but i don't think that makes any difference over 32GB in this case)

From what i saw on some benchmarks i hastily googled up, the i7-13700 looks approx. 3x faster than your CPU.
Your GPU is way WAY more powerful than mine, and by itself shouldn't have problems with High settings, but your CPU is probably not fast enough to feed your GPU with all the data it needs on High settings.
So, i think... unless you can upgrade the CPU, you won't be able to enjoy the game at High settings or high resolutions.

It is a bit strange that the game would still run like crap even with all settings on Low, i wouldn't think your CPU is that bad, but as i mentioned, i am not well versed in things AMD.
If your system OS is overall in a good shape, and your HW too (ie. the CPU is not overheating and throttling down for some reason), then i wouldn't expect it to be THAT bad.
It may help to have the game installed on fast SSD, otherwise try enabling the "Slow HDD" option (i have the game on a fast NVMe SSD, but i don't know how much differnce that makes, if any).
If you only tried running the Vulkan version of the game, try the Dx11, or vice versa - depending on your HW and the state/version of your GPU drivers, it could make a difference.

Almost certainly a CPU issue.

What resolution are you playing the game in? Also, verify that your monitor is indeed connected to your RTX 3080 and not to the mainboard output of the processor's vega7 internal graphics.
I get ~ 25-30 FPS in full HD (low quality settings) on a Ryzen 5 5560U using only the iGPU.

if you got it from Gog just goto your account orders and press the refund buttion but it if you got it from Steam you are fucked

The CPU should be exceeding the minimum system requirements (an FX 8350) by quite a bit, however it's slightly below the recommended CPU (an R5 3600) in benchmarks (by around 5%).

It's worth noting that your listed CPU of an R5 4650G is an APU, meaning it has integrated graphics (this is what the G means); this can increase heat/power use and limit the CPU's ability to effectively turbo-boost, as well as eat into your RAM (as a chunk will be allocated for integrated graphics, even if you're not using it). If you can, you might look for a guide to tell you how to turn off integrated graphics on your motherboard's BIOS (it's different for each motherboard brand) as this may free up some CPU headroom and RAM, and let it perform better as a CPU only.

But really it's a CPU that isn't quite meeting the recommended specs; I'm running on an R5 5500 and the game runs very smoothly outside of Act 3 (the city) and certain menus that are weirdly demanding (inventory/trade/shop and levelling), which all seem to be much more about my GPU (a Radeon RX 6650 XT).

Given that you've already got a good GPU, I'd highly recommend grabbing a 5500 since it uses the same AM4 socket you're using, but you'll want to double check your motherboard supports it, though most AM4 boards will support it with a firmware update. This should make a big difference to BG3's performance, but also any other game that's demanding on CPU.

That said, for a game like BG3 24-30 fps is far from unplayable; it's not a twitch shooter, and the combat is turn-based, there are also a bunch of settings that you can use to greatly tweak performance. Using FSR 2.2 will make the biggest difference, set that to Balanced or Performance and you should see a major boost regardless of other settings, though you'll also want to take a look at how much VRAM you're using, if it's filling up then dropping texture detail will help.

Sorry for a slightly OT rant:
Your post is very sound, a very good advice, i just wish people would stop telling others that 24-30 FPS is fine, just because the game isn't some damn twitch shooter like Counter-Strike.
The good/bad number of FPS is a highly subjective thing.

Besides, the game is not static, there is movement all the time - when fighting, when running around, looking around, animated cutscenes, even simple dialogues are animated cutscenes (and i do like that).
For me, this game would be UNPLAYABLE at 30 FPS, because i would get a headache after watching that for 5 minutes.
At 24 FPS i wouldn't be able to look at the screen for longer than 2 minutes without getting a headache and feeling like throwing up.
So, do not tell people that 30 FPS is fine - maybe for you it is, but for countless others it is not.
Even OP complains about having 24-30 FPS - so it clearly is an issue, and it puzzles me why anybody would think that maybe OP just needs to be told that 24 FPS is just fine.

Again, your advice is great, but only up to the point of saying that 24 FPS is ok.