sporadic stuttering although high FPS

[OCHse]

sporadic stuttering although high FPS

Hi Community,

sorry for my bad english, i will give my best.

My specs:
i5-4690k (not overclocked)
6GB MSI GeForce GTX 1060 Gaming X 6G
16 GB RAM

I have a strange stutter problem with Witcher 3. The FPS ist mostly higher than 60 FPS, but sometimes the graphic begins to stutter. It look like in this video (on 2:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SshA_KeN5_I. The stuttering is also in scenes with not much graphic stress (in a cave or outside on a field while looking to the sky) where the fps go to 80 or 90 and just as often in villages or in Novigrad.

It does not matter if Vsync on or off, FPS limit 30, 60 or off. I have tried the "fast" Vsync in Nvidia Control panel, nothing helps. I'm using MSI Afterburner to show CPU and GPU utilization, but there is no anomaly.
There are many threads with the same stutter problem at computerbase.de or forums.geforce.com but without a solution.
can anyone please help?

PS: its the steam version.

EDIT:
Nvidia driver 297.31, but same problems with previous version
Geforce Experience is not installed
yesterday i have uninstall nvidia driver with display driver uninstaller (in windows save mode), then reinstall latest driver, it doesnt helps

 

[SigilFey]

Unfortunately, the source of the "stuttering" or "hitching" is a result of specific system configurations. This is also one of those times when I can say that I experience this issue! I used to be able to run the game at a smooth 50-60 FPS without issue. Following one of the 1.2x updates, the overall FPS took a bit of a hit and I started getting random stuttering (no particular area, but it would happen very regularly). My solution was as follows:

1.) In-Game Settings:
Fullscreen
1080p (1920x1080 for me)
Vsync On
(all Graphical settings at Ultra, Hairworks Off)

2.) Nvidia Control Panel Settings:
Anisotropic Filtering (AF) = 16x (great tweak with no performance hit)
Vsync = Controlled by the 3D application
Maximum frames to render ahead = 1 (not to be confused with maximum VR frames)
Texture Filtering - Quality = High Quality

In user.settings, manually edit FPSLimit=48. You should also try 50, 52, 54 and 58. One of those values usually cleans up any jitter, hitching, or chopping in games. For me, TW3 loves 48. I get 100% steady framerates everywhere in the game at 48. That's on an i7-4790K, 980 ti, and 16 GB RAM. Hairworks will definitely have an impact on FPS in certain areas no matter what, so keep that in mind when deciding if it's working for you.

 

[PloughEnthusiast]

So your solution is to just settle for a sub-60FPS framerate? Not bashing you here, I'm just curious as to whether TW3 just can't be played at 60FPS or above without stutter.

 

[SigilFey]

Many players are able to maintain smooth FPS at 60. It's a matter of the specific hardware working together with the OS, drivers, and game itself. This is the only reliable thing I've found so far. The situation exists on my big gaming rig pretty much everywhere I've tested. On my old gaming laptop, I get very smooth gameplay in the countryside (but performance tanks to unplayable near either Oxenfurt or Novigrad). In both cases, managing settings as suggested above smooths things out. (On my laptop, the game gets really choppy, but remains at least playable.)

As for "sub-60" it's not actually an issue. 48 is very fluid. The 5 or 6 friends that have seen my game running in thick woods and swamps have all asked a version of, "How do you get it to run so well!?" The only downside to 48 is that very distant features can "chop" across the scene if I pan quickly around. Aside from that, it simply means rock-steady FPS no matter how complex the scene is. No FPS fluctuations anywhere. That's what creates the feeling of "smooth" gameplay, not high FPS.

All of that being said, there are a few people that claim they just can't deal with it. I strongly believe it's mostly placebo, but that doesn't mean some people won't be bothered by it anyway. The only other options are to roll-back drivers, manage the deeper aspects of Windows, check / flash BIOS settings, etc. I do that to my rigs when I build them, and I can safely say that the "unavoidable" stutter has nothing to do with CPU / GPU throttling, Windows security features, any particular driver version, power settings, or any individual piece of hardware itself. It certainly seems to be something about a system's frame-timing. Give it enough overhead, and viola!

 

[TheBhaal]

There seem to be two kind of stutter.
First one is the game hitching when your FPS get to high for your CPU to handle.
Getting a CPU with more then 4 cores or at least HT/SMT helps a lot...otherwise use high settings to reduce FPS or use a framelimiter.
Sadly the ingame one is just 30 or 60 FPS. But for some CPUs 60 might be already too much and 30 is just bad....it should get an option like 50 or 45.
You can use the driver or rivatuner or other options to limit the FPS, but often times they come with other problems that can introduce stutter.

The second kind of stutter happens when the game loads data and it can make the game pause for a moment.
Having the game on a SSD helps....having a new graphics driver, that will learn the game(shadercache) is Key....play a szene for a while and this kind of stutter will be reduced to rare occasions.
But every driver update or some system updates will destroy this progress. I bought the game on GoG, but it might help having the game on Steam, cause I belive they provide you with Shadercache data?? Not sure how and if this works with the Witcher 3.

 

[PloughEnthusiast]

So you're telling me my i7 4790K is bottlenecking my 1080Ti?!

I mean if that's the case, fair enough, but I didn't think that CPU would already be out of date so badly that it bottlenecks my GPU.

 

[TheBhaal]

The i7 has HT and should be all right. at least with ddr3 1600 or more.

99% of the time the game should run in a GPU bottleneck.
But getting near the center of villages or going to towns like Novigrad will increase your CPU usage...high FPS increase the usage too and if both combines it can cause stutter or low FPS in general if your GPU is not at 99% usage anymore.

But I would assume, that an i7 4790K should be enough because of HT.

At first I tried to run the game with an i5 3570K stock, 16GB 1600 DDR3 and an GTX 680 on Windows 7. I needed low settings to get the 680 to 60-70 FPS and in areas with higher NPC counts I had continuous stutter. A lot of medium stutter and very bad stutter too.
Overclocking to 4.4GHz and 1866 CL11 helped with the medium stutter but not with the bad ones(40 ms and up to 90+).

In march 2017 I got an 1800X and the stutter was nearly gone.
So I did some digging and found the i5 to be okay if I use Windows 10, so I thought it was Windows 7s fault, got a new windows 7 install and got bad stutter again....looked like it was Windows 7 but there was more to it.

So windows 10 helps to utilize more of the CPU , but the big improvement was getting a newer driver, that learned the szene and got rid of the bad Frametimepeaks/stutter....#shader cache

Because it will stutter too with the 1800X if I get a new driver and it will get better over time. The I bought a Vega64 and it was the same just with FPS around 100.

First it stutters, then it gets better and a driverupdate sets me back.

But there are hundreds of hardwae and software combinations, that can cause trouble too.

MSI Afterburner+rivatuner are nice to monitor your GPU usage....but some versions did add stutter too.
Background tasks may use your CPU or drive and cause stutter.
Some broken driver or keyboard/mouse software....countless options and getting reliable results is hard to do.

Monitoring your GPU usage and Frametimes gives you good hints....and havin a second monitor, where you can use the perfmon to check what files are read will tell you if this causes your stutter.

 

[1mikey1]

Odd FPS limiter bug

Hey. I experience microstutter on this road leading to the Nilfgaardian Garrison in White Orchard: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WzBvUBNFXi8/maxresdefault.jpg When traveling on this road the game microstutters if I use VSync + 60 FPS cap, if I use VSync + unlimited FPS it doesn't microstutter but in the latter combination the game has much more noticeable input lag. As soon as I reach the wooden stairs leading to the garrison/outpost the microstutter stops, and when going the other way (leaving the place) the microstutter stops just past the swamp. I have no idea why this happens, it is a very odd bug that has something to do with the FPS limiter. If I change the FPS limit to 61 in the usersettings file in My Documents it also stops, but reintroduces the input lag. Can anyone please try and verify this?

 

[SigilFey]

This is getting into the crux of it now. Exactly what I mean when I say it's up to the millions of possible combinations that result in your specific system config.

Also, just FYI, the in-game Frame Limit is either Unlimited, 30, or 60. However, you may edit user.settings and change FPSLimit=XX to any value. (It will display as "Unlimited" in-game, but it will operate on whatever value you set.)

 

[SigilFey]

Welcome to the Forums, 1mikey1!

Merging you into another discussion about this stuff. (Regardless of when it appears, it almost always seems to be drivers or frame-timing.)

 

[1mikey1]

Welcome to the Forums, 1mikey1!

Merging you into another discussion about this stuff. (Regardless of when it appears, it almost always seems to be drivers or frame-timing.)

You are right, it's frame timing caused by the sh*tty in-game FPS limiter. If I use RivaTuner or NVidia Inspector, I get solid 60 FPS with constant 16.6ms frametime. Why is CDPR too lazy to fix this?

 

[SigilFey]

You are right, it's frame timing caused by the sh*tty in-game FPS limiter. If I use RivaTuner or NVidia Inspector, I get solid 60 FPS with constant 16.6ms frametime. Why is CDPR too lazy to fix this?

It's not a matter of them choosing not to fix it. There's nothing to fix. The game works perfectly fine. Users simply need too put their systems into a configuration that works with the engine. There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this:

• 60 FPS is "mandatory" or something is "wrong". Untrue.
• Better, newer hardware means all games will run better. Untrue.
• It's a developer's responsibility to ensure that games will run on every single hardware configuration. Untrue. (Impossible, actually.)

This is one of the primary joys of PC gaming -- constantly fiddling with system config to get things working for one title or another. The graphics engine is in the best shape it has ever been. It's does fall to each player to get the settings and their system working together, though. (Joys! )

Just try fiddling with the settings above and play around with different Frame Limits through user.settings. For me, 48 is the sweet spot -- flawless performance.