Dragon’s Dogma 2 Update Tested – Huge CPU Framerate Gains

Dragon’s Dogma 2 now runs much smoother on PC

The new June update for Dragon’s Dogma 2 promised to deliver some much-needed CPU-based performance improvements to the game on PC and consoles. Specifically, the update would reduce Dragon’s Dogma 2’s CPU overhead in areas with large NPC counts. This should make the game suffer from fewer performance dips when in cities, towns, and other built up areas.

Since this performance issue was our major complaint in our Dragon’s Dogma 2 in our PC Performance Review, we thought that we would test the game’s performance with this new update. We downloaded the update and retested the game’s demanding Vernworth City area. This is one of the most demanding scenes within Dragon’s Dogma 2. Once again, we tested the game with our standard games test system. This system features an i9-13900K CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti graphics card.

Framerate stabilised!

When moving through the city, it was immediately apparent that the game felt smoother. Framerate spikes were much less apparent and the game finally felt playable. While the game remains CPU-limited in this demanding area, frametimes are more consistent and the game feels much better to play.

Looking at Dragon’s Dogma 2’s day-1 performance, it is clear that the game runs very differently today on PC. Even so, a consistent 60+ FPS remains impossible on our i9-13900K based test system in cities.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 could still use some CPU improvements on PC

While Dragon’s Dogma 2’s latest update has allowed the game to run at higher and much more consistent framerates in demanding areas, overall performance remains poor. Simply put, Dragon’s Dogma 2’s city areas are not impressive enough to justify these huge performance costs. While we are glad to see these performance improvements, we wouldn’t say that the game’s performance woes have been fixed in their entirety.

Thankfully, Capcom has promised “further framerate improvements” with future game updates. That said, it is unknown when this planned update will arrive or how much of an impact it will have.

The good news is that Dragon’s Dogma 2 now plays much better on PC. Even so, this game is a CPU hog, and still doesn’t run well in demanding areas. Sure, the game is a lot more playable than it was on day-1, but there is still room for improvement.