FPS Drops by 10 when Shadows enabled, appears to switch from GPU to CPU

Hi,

I am getting a -10 FPS drop (or more) when enabling shadows inside, for example in the Monastery in Highvale Outskirts. When I enable shadows I notice the utilization on my GPU drops and it increases on my CPU. When I turn shadows off, the load increases on my GPU and decreases on my CPU.

CPU: Intel i5 7600k (Win 10 Pro - game exe set to Win 8 compatability)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 980 (latest driver, v3.12.0.84)
RAM: 16 GB
Game installed to Samsung 840 EVO SSD
Using website launcher, NOT using Steam

With shadows off (all aprox averages over 10 seconds)
FPS = 37
GPU = 35%
CPU = 55% (highest single game exe in process list)

With shadows on (max for this example to exaggerate impact)
FPS = 19
GPU = 29%
CPU = 64% (highest single game exe in process list)

All video settings enabled for consistency while testing. Nvidia control panel options set to drive default. No custom Nvidia configuration for the game exe.

I took some videos and screenshots. I didn't want to post here because of character name, user name, PC name etc all visible. But happy to share with the developers if you let me know how (Dropbox link via private email?).

I took this as a sample because of the possible frame-rate improvements from 49 to 50, I wanted to see if I saw any difference.

Happy to help diagnose however you like.

- milspec

1/23/2018 8:44 PM
Title:
Reproduction Rate:
Blocker?
Details:
Steps to Reproduce:
User Specs:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7600 CPU @ 3.50GHz (4) System RAM: 16343
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU RAM: 4053
SotA.EarlyAccess.LIVE.Win.64.716.Date.12.19.17
Area: Novia_R6_Hills04_01
Area Display Name: Highvale Outskirts
Loc: (55.6, 172.4, -396.2)
Debug: Tm92aWFfUjZfSGlsbHMwNF8wMXx8KDU1LjY0NywgMTcyLjM4NywgLTM5Ni4yMil8KDAsIC0wLjg3NiwgMCwgMC40ODMpfDIzNy43NDJ8MTB8NC44OTQyNjg=