Stuttering on Ryzen 3700X and RTX 2070.

[Jens-Thomas_Steinh]

I am playing The Witcher 3 on a brand new Ryzen 3700X, 16 GB RAM and RTX 2070. The game is installed on a SSD.

With capped and uncapped FPS the the game stutters every now and then. Dropping from 60 FPS (if capped) to 40 FPS for a split second. I`ve tried lowering the details, but its still happening. Is this normal?

 

[SigilFey]

There have been several users that have spoken of this stutter on Ryzen chipsets. I don't think there is any definitive workaround. I have the same type of stutter on my i7-4790K, but I do NOT see the stutter on the i5 or i3 systems I've worked with. So, my belief is that it has something to do with multithreading and chipsets with more than 2 cores.

What I did to completely rectify it on my system is lock FPS to 48. You can edit you user.settings file, and change LimitFPS=48. Also try values of 50, 52, 54, and 58. Normally, one of these will be a "sweet spot" that clears up frame-timing issues in various games. (I've solved almost all such problems I've hit in the past by doing this.)

You'll also want to try each setting with Vsync on/off and Fullscreen vs. Windowed. Forcing settings through Nvidia Control Panel or programs like Nvidia Inspector or RTSS may also yield different results, instead of using the in-game settings.

In short, it's a system-by-system quirk. The good thing is that once you find a combo that works on your system, similar settings will often work for other games.

 

[Jens-Thomas_Steinh]

There have been several users that have spoken of this stutter on Ryzen chipsets. I don't think there is any definitive workaround. I have the same type of stutter on my i7-4790K, but I do NOT see the stutter on the i5 or i3 systems I've worked with. So, my belief is that it has something to do with multithreading and chipsets with more than 2 cores.

What I did to completely rectify it on my system is lock FPS to 48. You can edit you user.settings file, and change LimitFPS=48. Also try values of 50, 52, 54, and 58. Normally, one of these will be a "sweet spot" that clears up frame-timing issues in various games. (I've solved almost all such problems I've hit in the past by doing this.)

You'll also want to try each setting with Vsync on/off and Fullscreen vs. Windowed. Forcing settings through Nvidia Control Panel or programs like Nvidia Inspector or RTSS may also yield different results, instead of using the in-game settings.

In short, it's a system-by-system quirk. The good thing is that once you find a combo that works on your system, similar settings will often work for other games.

I actually just upgraded from an I7 7700K, and the game stuttered there as well. I upgraded becuase the game seemed to hit 100% spikes every time the game stuttered. My new Ryzen 3700X doesnt hit 100% CPU, but the game still stutters.

The game ran smooth using my I7 7700k and GTX 1070 about a year ago. I dont know what happened meanwhile.

 

[SigilFey]

I actually just upgraded from an I7 7700K, and the game stuttered there as well. I upgraded becuase the game seemed to hit 100% spikes every time the game stuttered. My new Ryzen 3700X doesnt hit 100% CPU, but the game still stutters.

The game ran smooth using my I7 7700k and GTX 1070 about a year ago. I dont know what happened meanwhile.

Drivers...OS updates...changes to the APIs...lots of stuff.

In general, anytime we make any sort of change to a system config that's working, we introduce the potential for new issues. Unless there's a specific reason to change or update something, I leave everything exactly the same. I'm still using Windows 7 x64 and Nvidia Reference Drivers 385.69. Everything works just fine. I get excellent performance in both recent or legacy titles.

So, if the issue started now, and the steps above have no effect, try rolling things like drivers back. Games are built for the hardware and software that were around at that point. New hardware and software will not always be backwards-compatible. (Nor are they supported.) Newer and faster are definitely not always better. The real goal is to try to get your system as close as possible to the operating environment that an older game wants -- and that often means reigning in newer hardware instead of trying to take advantage of it.

As I mentioned in the first response, you're not the first person I've seen that has had this type of stutter with Ryzen chips. I'm sorry I've got no definitive answer for you there. It simply seems to be a quirk between the game and the processor.

 

[Jens-Thomas_Steinh]

Drivers...OS updates...changes to the APIs...lots of stuff.

In general, anytime we make any sort of change to a system config that's working, we introduce the potential for new issues. Unless there's a specific reason to change or update something, I leave everything exactly the same. I'm still using Windows 7 x64 and Nvidia Reference Drivers 385.69. Everything works just fine. I get excellent performance in both recent or legacy titles.

So, if the issue started now, and the steps above have no effect, try rolling things like drivers back. Games are built for the hardware and software that were around at that point. New hardware and software will not always be backwards-compatible. (Nor are they supported.) Newer and faster are definitely not always better. The real goal is to try to get your system as close as possible to the operating environment that an older game wants -- and that often means reigning in newer hardware instead of trying to take advantage of it.

As I mentioned in the first response, you're not the first person I've seen that has had this type of stutter with Ryzen chips. I'm sorry I've got no definitive answer for you there. It simply seems to be a quirk between the game and the processor.

Yes, but as mentioned it also ran like shit on my i7 7700k before upgrading to Ryzen. I see some people are solving this by rolling back to an older version of Nvidia GPU drivers, but that might case issues in new games.

 

[SigilFey]

Yes, but as mentioned it also ran like shit on my i7 7700k

Mm-hm. i7 processor. Seems that dual-cores perform best. When we start getting into 4-core+ / logic processors, that's where this particular stuttering comes into play.

I've seen it with a handful of titles now, and have managed to work around all of them but one. Definitely seems to be related to multicore / multithreading.

I see some people are solving this by rolling back to an older version of Nvidia GPU drivers, but that might case issues in new games.

Especially not with the RTX lines. You definitely won't be able to use the drivers I am, as Windows 10 had not been released yet and RTX cards hadn't even been announced. You can, however, walk back the installations (which is the approach I would take). Just be sure your are using Display Driver Uninstaller to remove the later versions before rolling back to an earlier one. I'd also not go too far back, as the earliest drivers are probably buggy as all get-out.

Time-consuming perhaps, but if you can go back 5-6 versions without seeing any improvement, then it's highly likely that the drivers are not the issue.