Latest Apex Legends update smooths out stutter on Ryzen X3D CPUs — physics algos apparently struggled at high frame rates unlocked by V-Cache

Developers at Respawn Entertainment have fixed a potential performance issue in its popular free-to-play battle-royale game Apex Legends. According to the latest patch notes for the upcoming Season 29 'Overclocked' update, players can expect improved performance with reduced stuttering at high frame rates on some PCs. Somewhat counterintuitively, the patch notes specifically call out the high performance of AMD's V-Cache-equipped Ryzen X3D chips as a reason for the stutter.

Fast-paced shooters running on older engines, like the modified Source engine that powers Apex Legends, aren’t always optimized for high frame rates. In these cases, physics calculations can potentially become a bottleneck. Since physics updates must be completed before each frame is passed off to the GPU to be rendered, complex scenarios like explosions, ragdolls, or multiple object interactions can stall the main thread and lead to inconsistencies.

Respawn specifically calls out stutter at frame rates above 240 FPS, which is something of a special case with Apex Legends because the title has a 144 FPS cap by default. An alternate 300 FPS cap can be applied with a launch option for those with more powerful systems.

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With the 300 FPS cap applied, at such high frame rates, the entire render loop has to be completed in under four milliseconds at best, and any time the CPU spends holding up the GPU due to inefficient physics calculations is likely to appear as a stutter or frame rate drop.

Because Ryzen X3D processors allow the latest GPUs to approach that 300 FPS cap in Apex Legends, any such flaws in the algorithms the game uses for physics are more likely to be seen.

In a similar case reported last year, a professional Counter-Strike 2 player highlighted performance issues on high-end hardware, complaining that the game struggled to maintain stable FPS on AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Ryzen 9 9950X3D with frame rates dipping below 200 FPS.

• Improved occlusion data structures that were used by Olympus in the last midseason update are now used for all maps, slightly improving CPU performance.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to an occasional framerate dip when running at very high FPS on PC (e.g., 240+).
• Cleaner Ambient Occlusion, which includes new specular occlusion. This will also be faster than the previous Ambient Occlusion in most cases, except at High or Ultra settings at high resolutions (4K on PC).
• Improved accuracy of cubemap reflection intensity, especially in shadowed outdoor areas.
• Improved accuracy of sky ambient lighting.
• Improved baked lighting accuracy for many props in maps.

The latest season of Apex Legends is out now and introduces a brand-new legend (character) called Axle. The new update also brings changes to existing legends including Vantage, Conduit, Alter and Ash. One of the biggest changes is the brand new deathbox respawn system, alongside a new mythic universal melee, and the usual changes to weapons and map rotation. You can read the entire set of patch notes here.

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