Terrible Optimization: Cities Skylines 2 GPU Benchmarks & Graphics Optimization Guide

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This benchmark tests GPU performance in Cities: Skylines 2 by Colosssal Order. Cities Skylines 2 is easily the most GPU-intensive city builder we’ve ever seen, even adjusted for the era. Despite highly intensive simulation happening on the CPU, the GPU ultimately bears disproportionate weight right now. Playing above 1080p is difficult on most cards, with even the RTX 4090 struggling in this game. The testing looks at AMD vs. NVIDIA GPUs (we had crashing problems with Intel) for framerate performance in Cities Skylines 2 at Very Low, Low, Medium, and High settings. We also tested graphics quality and provide some graphics optimize advice for better GPU performance in Skylines 2. The graphics guide includes some comparisons at different settings, quality levels, and discussion of texture loading bugs (even on RTX 4090 levels of VRAM!). This will help you figure out the best GPUs for Cities Skylines 2 at different price and performance targets.

The graphics settings tests will look at Depth of Field, Volumetric lighting effects, Global Illumination, Ambient Occlusion, clouds, anti-aliasing, and more.

Find City Planner Plays here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8WAaaW2FnctRI9coYJoUdA

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NVIDIA RTX 4090 on Newegg: https://geni.us/Rq1XN
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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – A Rough Launch
01:56 – Benchmarking GPUs for Cities Skylines 2
03:48 – Population Size GPU Benchmarks
05:04 – Patch Benchmarks & Improvements
07:42 – 1080p Medium GPU Benchmarks
09:05 – Crazy Frametime Pacing
09:52 – 1080p Low Video Card Benchmarks in Skylines 2
12:01 – 1080p Very Low Benchmarks
13:26 – Graphics Setting Methodology
14:40 – Graphics Optimization Benchmarks
16:28 – Impact from the Patch
17:54 – Graphics Comparisons: Shadows
19:19 – Graphics Preset Comparisons (Very Low, Low, Medium, High)
25:16 – Bad Defaults & Bugs

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Writing, Testing, Host: Steve Burke
Writing, Research: Patrick Lathan
Video: Vitalii Makhnovets