The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Performance Boost Thread (2024)

PERFORMANCE BOOST
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom​

SYS-CLK

HANDHELD + CHARGING​

DOCKED​

This configuration provides general improvement on game's performance stability while playing in handheld mode with the charger connected.​

Hi,
I just want to open this thread to collect together some informations, guides, tutorials, patches for getting better performance in Zelda: TOTK.

Do you have any suggestion to boost game’s performance, based on BOTW experience?

PEVOx said:

Do you have any suggestion to boost game’s performance, based on BOTW experience?

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Wait for day 1 patch.

Memory OC helped a lot with BotW.

[Truth] said:

Wait for day 1 patch.

Memory OC helped a lot with BotW.

Click to expand...

AFAIK is not expected a relevant patch on D1

PEVOx said:

AFAIK is not expected a relevant patch on D1

Click to expand...

What's your source for that?

Try disabling some SYSMODULEs if you have many loaded. I had terrible performance when panning the camera which went away after disabling SaltyNX amongst others.

I also found texture streaming improved from nand but this could be placebo, I dont have a slow SD card.

Has any tried dumping the ROMFS and placing it unmodified as a layeredFS mod? Links Awakening had horrible stutter between play areas until I dumped the romFS and loaded the games assets from layeredfs - removing crypto from the equation. Different Engine though, so who knows.

If I remember right, BotW is punctually bottlenecked by the CPU (that's why the game runs a bit better on Portable mode, that only downclocks GPU and RAM). In some areas the bottleneck is the GPU, but that's rarely a issue for performance since the game compensates it by lowering dynamic resolution.

I assume TotK will be similar (maybe a little better if Nintendo optimized the engine, or worse if the Switch-exclusive sequel pushes the hardware harder than the originally WiiU game).

I bet the game will need a bit of CPU overclock for slowdowns, RAM overclock in portable (never hurts to have faster system/video memory) and to improve resolution and Kollok Forest-like areas, GPU OC... although I won't know for sure until I study the game with System Monitor + nx-FPS

Desconocido90 said:

... although I won't know for sure until I study the game with System Monitor + nx-FPS

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Just remember the performance impact such overlays may have when operating at the limit of the switches capabilities. Id expect +/- a few frames.

To be fair, since disabling some sysmodules and overlclocking the ram Ive removed most frame issues as you had summised. Id also bumped the CPU up to 15XX, leaving some headroom and keeping the temps lower.

When I did load up an overlay to check I was locked to 30 most of the time. This dropped during certain animations and ability usuage - Dont want to spoil anything here! BoTW had similar issues with certain abilities that were fixed within a couple of patches.

I imagine reverseNX would iron all the kinks out, but ive no interest of playing at 720P on a bigger display. The current 900P feels rough at times. The five years between both titles hasnt helped. In 2018 this was great for a handheld and passable docked but the texture resolution took some getting used to in 2023.

I usually only play Mario titles on the Switch hardware, so Im used to a sharper looking 60FPS when using it. Yuzu has also spoilt me.

Doneo said:

See Also

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Review - Building Excellence

Just remember the performance impact such overlays may have when operating at the limit of the switches capabilities. Id expect +/- a few frames.
...

Click to expand...

I'll keep it in mind.

I never disabled SaltyNX since I assumed it hadn't a big impact when I'm not using Tesla Overlay, but now I'll disable it before running games with performance issues

In any case, System Monitor is still useful for profiling games and determining the right amount of OC in the right areas to run it well.

Regarding resolution, I found pleasure in using Dock mode in Handheld for certain games with sub-720p resolution in handheld, as long as I have the console with a charger to use Dock-level Clocks or higher.

It is that or using a resolution mod... although those normally require SaltyNX, don't they?

After some testing I've updated the first post

I have a question: boosting GPU clocks can improve dynamic resolution in handheld mode to push the game more often to 720p?

in my case:

SYS-CLK
DOCKED (Switch V1 launch model)

• CPU: 1581 MHz
• GPU: 920 MHz
• MEM: 1600 MHz

900p30 on tv consistently, short split second dip when activating binoculars and otherwise maybe one dip every 30 mins, been monitoring it with a framerate graph overlay during gameplay for several hours in different regions, highest temp has usually been steady between 60 and 63 degrees.

Huge improvement over base clocks imo, no more constant framedrops and the res is alot less "dynamic", the game looks alot better than I expected.

Ajukad said:

in my case:

SYS-CLK
DOCKED

• CPU: 1581 MHz
• GPU: 920 MHz
• MEM: 1600 MHz

900p30 on tv consistently, short split second dip when activating binoculars and otherwise maybe one dip every 30 mins, been monitoring it with a framerate graph overlay during gameplay for several hours in different regions, highest temp has usually been steady between 60 and 63 degrees.

Huge improvement over base clocks imo, no more constant framedrops and the res is alot less "dynamic", the game looks alot better than I expected.

Click to expand...

I will add this to the first post as a suggestion for the docked mode

Ajukad said:

in my case:

SYS-CLK
DOCKED

• CPU: 1581 MHz
• GPU: 920 MHz
• MEM: 1600 MHz

900p30 on tv consistently, short split second dip when activating binoculars and otherwise maybe one dip every 30 mins, been monitoring it with a framerate graph overlay during gameplay for several hours in different regions, highest temp has usually been steady between 60 and 63 degrees.

Huge improvement over base clocks imo, no more constant framedrops and the res is alot less "dynamic", the game looks alot better than I expected.

Click to expand...

Please add info what Switch model you have.
On Erista models this kind of OC could already exceed the 18W board power.

[Truth] said:

Please add info what Switch model you have.
On Erista models this kind of OC could already exceed the 18W board power.

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its a launch model, I added it.

im confused now. i always thought that sys clk wont allow unsave clocks. what are considered save clocks for the erista model?

​

umanno said:

did you manage to get 60fps without it slowing to a crawl with these settings?

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Game is locked on 30 FPS