Victoria 3 Performance Benchmark

Haresus · May 30, 2023

There's been a lot of discussing Victoria 3's performance. Some people say it runs perfectly smooth the whole way through, others say it's unplayable after X number of years. Presumably the truth is somewhere in the middle. I decided to try and make a quick and easy "benchmark test" that anyone can run with a minimum of fuss to see how the game runs for them, and then share that result here. If there's enough interest, I'll try to update this thread as new patches drop.

Let's go through the process:
1. Download the attached saves (1840 and 1900 as Great Britain, from an observer game), unzip them in your documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 3/save games folder
2. Disable all Victoria 3 mods
3. Disable vsync, set the "maximum FPS" to Off.
4. Set graphics quality preset to Medium.
5. Turn autosaves off.
6. Restart the game in debug mode (in the Vicky3 launcher there's a "launch the game in debug mode" button that you can press).
7. Load the 1840 save, zoom out all the way, set speed to 5, check the time and unpause for a year. Ignore any events or popups, pause when you reach 1841, check the time to see how long it took for a year to pass. Note down that time. It might be boring, but preferably don't alt-tab or start up anything in the background while running this test (use your phone if you need a distraction).
8. Look at the debug deer to the bottom right of the screen. Hover over "Slow ticks". Screenshot the "Slow Tick Operations" popup.
9. Repeat steps 6 and 7 with the 1900 save.
10. Check your GPU, CPU, RAM, and whether or not the game is installed on an SSD. There are a bunch of ways to check this, you can press the Windows key and type "dxdiag", which should provide most of the information. Steam also has most of the information if you go Help -> System Information. There are third party programs that provide the same info as well. Feel free to report with more or less information if it makes things easier for you.

Here's an example of how to report your results:

GPU: GTX 1080
CPU: i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz
RAM: 16GB
SSD: Yes
1840 time: 3 minutes
1840 Slow Tick Operations:

1900 time: 7 minutes 50 seconds
1900 Slow Tick Operations:

GPU:
CPU:
RAM:
SSD:
1840 time:
1840 Slow Tick Operations:
1900 time:
1900 Slow Tick Operations:

And just for reference, here are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Victoria 3 on Steam:

Edit2: While I'm not against discussion of specific results and the test itself here, I don't want the thread to be derailed by all kinds of performance discussions. If you're in any way worried about derailing this thread, use this discussion thread instead:

Game @ 1.3+ performance issues discussion

Just started my first game in 1.3. Haven't purchased the DLC. Quit after 5 minutes. Why? Because the game is slower than it was before 1.3 with barely any noticeable improvements. I do really like the new UI in the politics screen... but none of...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Edit3: Uploaded 1.3.4 beta saves (the "134" saves). 1.3.5 is now out and the 1.3.4 saves should work just fine on 1.3.5.

Edit4: 1.4.0 saves are now up.

Edit5: 1.4.2 saves are now up.

Edit6: 1.5.7 saves are now up.

Edit7: 1.6.0 saves are now up.

Edit8: 1.7.0 saves are now up, on dropbox because the forums are not working well for me right now:

Victoria 3 Performance Benchmark

Things are often as they seem...

Second Lieutenant

Things are often as they seem...

Attachments

Second Lieutenant

Second Lieutenant

Colonel

Gian Galeazzo Visconti #1 Fanboy.

Second Lieutenant

Colonel

First Lieutenant

Colonel

Apprentice of the Converters

Captain

Recruit

First Lieutenant

Attachments

Colonel

Colonel

Major

Second Lieutenant

Major