Hi everyvody!

 

I hvae dell latitude e5530 i7, 16 GB ram, 500 GB SSD paltop. But during songs, when note is struck, the game seems to...slow down. Always when note and sliding note is hit. Is this a feature or is my config a bit off? I don't need ANY graphical eye candy, so minimum graphic settings for no lag at sound and with gameplay is my goal.

 

heres my current config, should I change something?

[Audio]EnableMicrophone=0ExclusiveMode=1LatencyBuffer=1ForceDefaultPlaybackDevice=ForceWDM=0ForceDirectXSink=0Win32UltraLowLatencyMode=0DumpAudioLog=1MaxOutputBufferSize=512[Renderer.Win32]ShowGamepadUI=0ScreenWidth=1920ScreenHeight=1080Fullscreen=2VisualQuality=3RenderingWidth=0RenderingHeight=0EnablePostEffects=0EnableShadows=1EnableHighResScope=0EnableDepthOfField=0EnablePerPixelLighting=1MsaaSamples=1DisableBrowser=0[Net]UseProxy=1

From what I can tell, turning off ALL of the visual effects in Rocksmith has a minimal impact on the way the game actually looks, but definitely helps performance.

 

I run RS2014 on an almost two-year-old laptop with an AMD processor and graphics chip, with no issues running RS2014, other than the laptop getting insanely hot (I use a cooler pad). But it seems to me Rocksmith doesn't like certain graphic cards. And it only runs on the onboard sound chip.

One thing you need to understand is that sound and graphic are handle separately by different component (audio card and graphic card or their onboard equivalent).

 

A lag on specific hit note is due to graphic card limitation (since it's the animation that the game has to show that make him lag) and looking at the Lattitude graphic card, it's an onboard intel HD4000 which is a poor onboard card for game.

 

Know that the biggest factor on graphic card are post processes (FXAA/MSAA) and resolution. You can also diminish overall visual quality but depending and how it's implemented, it might have only limited effect.

It can be tough to run RS2014 on some laptop computers. Looking at your ini file, I think the first two areas I would play around with would be your video resolution screen width & height and your audio buffer settings also look high. Just adjust one setting at a time and see if it helps. I'm not sure whether you are having audio or video bottlenecks.

 

From the RocksmithConfiguration PDF file:

The default video setting for the game is 1280x720. Faster computers with more capable video cards will be able to run smoothly at higher resolutions. If your computer is not running smoothly at the resolution currently selected, you can drop the screen resolution down to improve performance.

 

VisualQuality [default: 1] – Set this value to reflect the visual quality setting you’d like to use. The values correspond like this: 0 – Low Quality, 1 – Medium Quality, 2 – High Quality, 3 – Custom

 

MaxOutputBufferSize [default: 0] - A few audio devices have been found to have very large output buffers. In this case, the game does its best to choose a reliable audio buffer size. However, you might find that setting this variable will help to resolve audio issues. In its default setting of 0, it leaves the configuration of this value up to Rocksmith. Most audio cards end up using an audio buffer size of 1024. Fast PCs can usually run with this at 512. If you have disabled ExclusiveMode, you may need to use a higher setting for this. We haven’t run into any specific issues caused by the choice of values for MaxOutputBufferSize, but you may have better luck using multiples of 8 or 32.

 

LatencyBuffer [default: 4] - This value allows you to adjust the number of audio buffers used in one area of the Rocksmith 2014 audio engine. A smaller value will use fewer buffers. Fewer buffers mean lower latency, but increase the demands on your PC to avoid audio crackling. Most recent high performance PCs can handle a setting of 2. The fastest PCs might be able to run reliably at 1. This value only supports whole numbers.

 

You can always rename or delete your Rocksmith.INI file and the next time you launch Rocksmith 2014, a new one will be created with the default settings.

You can find additional setup info in the  RocksmithConfiguration.pdf  file located in your RS2014 folder.

 

There are also web sites you can go to, to see if you computer is powerful enough to run certain games at the minimum and recommended requirements.

http://www.game-debate.com/can-I-run/?ubisoft&game_id=8090

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri

Sigh. This is purely system dependent. I have a 7 year old quad core overclocked to 3.8 ghz with a whopping 8 gb of ddr 2 ram running at 1066. My graphics card is an amd 7870 and my soundcard is an ancient creative fatality. I run everything MAXED and have no issues. And no, Rocksmith does not HAVE to use the onboard sound, seeing as how mine is disabled. ( kind of tired of hearing that untruth ) . Now, as far as laptops go, RS 2014 is mildly graphics heavy but not insanely, laptops get hot, that could be the major issue.

Yes, Rocksmith definitely takes a performance hit when my laptop gets hot (sometimes I forget to turn up the cooler pad). And this thing gets HOT! To the point where you can smell the baking plastic.

 

I bought a cooler pad with adjustable fans so I can position them directly below the graphics chip.

 

@@Attitude That's interesting about the sound chip. Yours is a sound card? Seems to me it's people running breakout boxes that have the most problems.

@@MVega not sure what a breakout box is. Yes I was specifically referring to a sound card vs onboard audio. I have not tried RS2014 on my laptop, but the performance questions have me curious. Laptops are not very good at gaming, unless you have one of those insanely priced ones. But they should be able to run Rocksmith. I will experiment on my days off with load percentages using my desktop to give an idea of what you really need to be able to play Rocksmith, I'm sure that just like every other game, graphics card is the big one.

The Intel HD4000 graphics is not a proper graphic card but an integrated chip in the CPU, so it's pretty poor for gaming or for almost anything demanding some graphics power.

 

And yeah RS use the onboard sound chip and doesn't use any sound card that you have in your PC. And the problem is probably coming from the graphic card or the CPU, probably the GC in this case since the GPU seems powerfull enough. If it was the sound part causing the issue, it wouldn't had any effect on the graphic part of the game.

@@Attitude By a breakout box, I mean an external sound card. Seems like Rocksmith doesn't like those at all.

 

Like I said, RS2014 works just fine on my laptop, with the visual effects turned off  ---it has an AMD Radeon 6520G chipset, built into an AMD A6 processor.

 

I imagine it'd run even better if I turned off the crowd effects. But I really enjoy playing to a bunch of ghosts while they're facing the wrong way, cheering me on everytime I hit the wrong note.