Star Wars Jedi Survivor Tested – Huge performance gains with PC Patch 3.5

Patch 3.5 delivered huge improvements, but most of the games core issues remain

We are gearing up to release an article about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and then patch 3.5 arrived, throwing a spanner into the works and forcing a lot of additional testing. While it is unfortunate to have a lot of work invalidated by an update, we are glad to see that update 3.5 has delivered some major performance improvements to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and that we could still use our pre-patch data for some performance comparisons.

While Patch 3.5 has greatly mitigated the CPU related performance issues that Jedi: Survivor processes, most of the core issues that we have found with the game remain. Shader compilation stutters remain common, CPU performance requires additional improvements, and the game’s asset loading related stutters are a huge problem. All of these issues prevent smooth framerates, and those issues don’t even go into the graphical bugs that many players are facing. 

With regards to FidelityFX Super Resolution 2, we will say that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s implementation is poor, as is the game’s implementation of temporal anti-aliasing. Both are blurry, and both have noticeable ghosting, and the game’s CPU-related performance issues make technologies like DLSS 3 Frame Generation very desirable. It is a shame that DLSS and XeSS are not present within Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, but the game’s current TAA and FSR 2 implementations are problems that need to be addressed.

Even with the improvements that are provided by patch 3.5, CPU performance remains a huge limiting factor in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. While we are not seeing framerates below 60 FPS on an Intel i9-13900K anymore at 1080p low settings, 76 FPS remains a low number for one of the highest-end CPUs on the market. Yes, patch 3.5 delivers a 49% performance gain in this area, but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a low framerate for the visuals that the game offered. Further CPU-related performance improvements are required to make Jedi: Survivor more playable on a broader range of PC hardware configurations, and major changes are needed to improve this game’s CPU performance when ray tracing is enabled.

Like many other modern games, Star Wars Jedi Survivor highlights the fact that PC gamers should invest in fast DRAM, our benchmarks highlighting major performance gains moving from DDR5-4800 speeds to DDR5-6000 speeds in our Koboh test area. 10+% increases in 1st percentile and 5th percentile framerates are nothing to sniff at, proving that DRAM selection is a major decision for PC builders.

Stutters, stutters, and more stutters

The most egregious flaws with Stars Wars jedi: Survivor at its frequent stutters, large framerate/frametime spikes that ruin immersion when new level assets are loaded or when new shaders are compiled within the game. While the game does appear to have a shader compilation step that completed every time the game starts, it does not appear to do much to prevent these stutters in-game. It is clear that EA and Respawn need to rethink how they are handing this performance issue, as these stutters are something that should not be present within a modern PC game.

The other problem that causes stutters in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is how the game loads in assets. Fallen Order suffered from the same performance issue on PC, and Respawn has failed to address this issue with the release of Jedi: Survivor. Simply put, when players pass into new areas in Jedi Survivor, new data is loaded and this loading of data results in a a sudden framerate/frametime spike. This breaks up Jedi: Survivor’s framerate consistency and appears to players as a noticeable stutter/judder. At this time, it is unclear if respawn can address this issue without a major overhaul of how Jedi: Survivor’s assets are loaded, but we hope that they can address this performance issue to increase their game’s overall performance/stability. 

If you want better performance in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, our first piece of advice is that you should probably disable ray tracing. Ray tracing has a huge impact on game performance in both CPU and GPU terms, and turning off ray tracing will significantly increase your system’s CPU overhead and make the game feel a lot smoother. Aside from that, there isn’t much you can do to increase your CPU performance. GPU-wise, FSR 2 upscaling is available, as are a variety of graphical settings, but our bet is that more PC gamers are suffering from CPU performance issues than GPU performance issues.

Miscellaneous issues

Outside of performance issues, there are a few other things that we would love to see fixed in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Currently, mouse/keyboard support in menus in in a poor state, as clicking on buttons often does not do anything, requiring PC gamers to hit enter on their keyboard or some other key. Improved mouse-based navigation would be a huge improvement for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, as would improved descriptions within Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s graphical options menu. For example, there is a setting called “Ray Tracing” that doesn’t even detail how ray tracing is used in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and the game’s overall graphical options menu is incredibly barebones. Adding detail to these settings would be a huge improvement for any PC gamer that wants to tinker with the game’s graphical settings.

More patches are needed

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor needs more updates before we can recommend the game on PC, which is a shame because the game can be a lot of fun. For starters, CPU performance needs to improve (especially when ray tracing is enabled), and something needs to be done to prevent shader compilation stutters and to reduce the impact of asset loading related stutters. Beyond that, improvements to TAA and FSR would be welcome, as this would increase the game’s overall clarity and make the game look at lot better on all platforms.

We plan to report on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor again when new updates arrive.

You can join the discussion on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s PC version on the OC3D Forums.