The Last of Us Part 1 Patch 1.0.2.0 Tested – Does the game run better now?

Conclusion – The Last of Us Part 1 has improved, but we want to see more

When we first looked at The Last of Us Part 1’s PC version (read here) we had four main criticisms of the game. For starters, the game featured a lot of bugs, and the good news is that patches 1.0.1.5, 1.0.1.6, and 1.0.2.0 have addressed a lot of bug. Second, The Last of Us Part 1 was hugely CPU-limited, delivering poor performance in many areas with the game’s recommended hardware. Third, this game’s VRAM usage was too high, causing issues for PC gamers with too little VRAM, and finally, the game’s shader compilation step was incredibly lengthy. 

Looking at this game’s VRAM and shader compilation issues, gamers can easily power through these problems with modern high-end GPUs with large VRAM allotments and high-end CPUs with a huge number of cores and threads, but it should be remembered that this game is designed to run on PS5, not a multi-thousand pound PC. The good news for gamers is that Naughty Dog’s PSO cache adjustments have greatly lowered this game’s VRAM utilisation, greatly improving the game for 8GB GPU users, though shader compilation still takes an incredibly long time.

As for CPU performance, The Last of Us Part 1’s patch 1.0.2.0 promised lower CPU utilisation, it didn’t say that it would increase the game’s performance. Naturally, we needed to put this to the test, and we found that update 1.0.2.0 has notably increased The Last of Us Part 1’s CPU performance, though the gains at Ultra settings are marginal. At high and lower graphical presets, we did see more notable performance gains, with the game seeing a 6% performance gain at 1080p high settings. These performance gains are welcome, but they are not enough to change our overall thoughts on The Last of Us Part 1’s PC performance.

Overall, I think that The Last of Us Part 1’s PC version has been greatly improved since launch. New drivers from AMD and Nvidia has optimised the game and fixed some bugs, and the game’s first three updates have addressed a lot of the problems that gamers have faced. That said, the game still has CPU performance issues, and we expect further game patches to improve The Last of Us Part 1’s PC version.

Honestly, I hope that Naughty Dog can further improve The Last of Us Part 1 with additional patches, shortening this game’s shader compilation time and increasing the game’s overall performance. The good news is that the game’s existing patches have already greatly improved the game, and out hope is that this trend continues. 

Moving forward, we plan to continue testing The Last of Us Part 1 when major patches release.  

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