Another micro-stutter topic (only when fighting)

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

Hey all,

Problem:
Micro-stuttering when engaging many mobs at once, but only after playing for a certain length of time. Sometimes within minutes, aggroing large numbers of mobs will cause stuttering until some are dead, other times I can play for 30-40 minutes stutter-free, until suddenly it starts again.

Solutions tried:
Messing with graphical settings, turning AA/Vsync off, turning them on in the NVidia Control Panel, turning off cloud saving.

Specs:
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.130828-1532)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16332MB RAM
Page File: 7076MB used, 15454MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Chip type: GeForce GTX 970
Display Memory: 3726 MB
Dedicated Memory: 4007 MB
Shared Memory: 3814 MB

Any help'd be great. I'm loving the game so far but this is sucking all the fun out of it.

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

No help on this? I'd love to play some more.

[Quiximo]

It's your CPU. Turning down your settings probably helped, but heavy numbers and effects will slow down your rig. If you want proof, download MSI afterburner and monitor your single core performance. I bet your primary is at 100%.

The situation seems random because different locations have varying numbers of enemies with attacks that effect performance differently. Plains of strife is probably the worst.

You can probably play with decent performance in roughly half the game, but I'd suggest keeping settings as low as you can stand for consistency. Kill shadows completely and lower lighting at the very least. Lowering the persistence of corpses in the setting will also see some improvement.

[DeadlyDanDaMan]

Make sure you are using Borderless Windowed Mode, turn off Cloud Saving: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20752, add "/nocommit" to launch properties (without quotes), turn shadows off, set lighting to low, turn off AA, and in options.txt make sure that forceSingleProcessorMode = false.

That's every fix I can possibly think of.

Edit: I also recommend turning off Triple Buffering and turning Corpse Persistence all the way down.

I use all of these settings and get buttery smooth gameplay 95% of the time. Occasional stutters and crashes still happen, but that is just a result of a poorly optimized and very old game engine. There isn't anything you can do about that.

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

Originally posted by Garheardt the Black:

It's your CPU. Turning down your settings probably helped, but heavy numbers and effects will slow down your rig. If you want proof, download MSI afterburner and monitor your single core performance. I bet your primary is at 100%.

The situation seems random because different locations have varying numbers of enemies with attacks that effect performance differently. Plains of strife is probably the worst.

You can probably play with decent performance in roughly half the game, but I'd suggest keeping settings as low as you can stand for consistency. Kill shadows completely and lower lighting at the very least. Lowering the persistence of corpses in the setting will also see some improvement.

It's not affected by settings at all. I've turned them all to low and it still semi-randomly happens when engaging enemies. I'm still in the first town, and have unlocked like 2 rift gates - like I said, it's fine at the beginning of my play sessions, then ramps up as I play more.

Not when I change location, though - once it starts lagging every encounter, even if I go back and fight groups in areas where it didn't previously stutter, it'll start. It's like something is leaking as I continue to play - surely if it was purely CPU based it would happen as soon as I start playing?

Originally posted by DeadlyDanDaMan:

Make sure you are using Borderless Windowed Mode, turn off Cloud Saving: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20752, add "/nocommit" to launch properties (without quotes), turn shadows off, set lighting to low, turn off AA, and in options.txt make sure that forceSingleProcessorMode = false.

That's every fix I can possibly think of.

Edit: I also recommend turning off Triple Buffering and turning Corpse Persistence all the way down.

I use all of these settings and get buttery smooth gameplay 95% of the time. Occasional stutters and crashes still happen, but that is just a result of a poorly optimized and very old game engine. There isn't anything you can do about that.

I hadn't heard about the forceSingleProcessorMode setting. I will try that one, thanks!

[Quiximo]

If one of your cores is maxing out, your system is overtaxed. Better CPU's than yours max out on this game, and I'd bet yours is too.

If the problem get's worse the longer you play, you may also have an overheating issue. Monitor your cpu and gpu temperatures.

Long story short, pick a monitoring program like MSI afterburner and start monitoring your individual CPU and GPU activity levels as well temperatures. That information will tell you far more than we can here.

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

Originally posted by Garheardt the Black:

If one of your cores is maxing out, your system is overtaxed. Better CPU's than yours max out on this game, and I'd bet yours is too.

If the problem get's worse the longer you play, you may also have an overheating issue. Monitor your cpu and gpu temperatures.

Long story short, pick a monitoring program like MSI afterburner and start monitoring your individual CPU and GPU activity levels as well temperatures. That information will tell you far more than we can here.

I'm guessing there'll never be a fix for it? Kinda lame that I can play much newer games, but this one that I actually want to play literally causes my PC to bottleneck.

I downloaded Afterburner and next time I play I'll take a look at those stats.

[powbam]

Originally posted by a badly pixelated nicolas cage:

Kinda lame that I can play much newer games

No surprise there.. Those newer games are made with your newer/newish hardware in mind. GD uses a (modified) 10+ year old engine.

Who's to say if there will be a fix unless they decide to go all in and totally revamp/rewrite the engine.

Unfortunately it's a product of its time and they were lucky to get this engine back in 2009. We wouldn't have GD if it wasn't for the TQ engine. Performance qualms aside, it was a good choice.

The best thing you can do currently is to turn Lighting to low to mitigate heavy action scenarios and tweak other possible related settings at your discretion. Shadows, Particles, and AA being the most prominent choices after Lighting.

[Quiximo]

The game is on an old engine purchased by an independent company that got it's start on kickstarter. The company interacts with the community constantly, and continues to evolve the game in response to what the fans want. Crate has limited resources and busts their ends to make ends meet all while squeezing every bit of quality they can out of an outdated program.
They accomplished all of this without a publisher, a practical impossibility a decade ago. They have their challenges ahead, but if you were here for the start, you'd see just how far they've come. These guys are great, and they deserve to succeed. Cut them a little slack.

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

Originally posted by Garheardt the Black:

Cut them a little slack.

Whoah, I wasn't badmouthing the company at all - it's a great game, and like I said, I really want to play it. Just lame that I can't, and there's nothing that I can do about it. As I've said, I've tried turning settings down but it hasn't really helped much, and stutter during combat = can't really play the game at all.

Since they're constantly in contact with the community, hopefully they'll one day figure out some way to help those stricken with all the horrid stuttering - I've seen so many people suffering from so many different similar problems with so many half-solutions to 'em.

[dentorium]

The only solution worked for me is ; install RamDisk, move save games to ramdisk drive. Create symlink between the save folder in Ramdisk drive and the original location.
Worked like a charm for me. I have tried all other things but none of those wroked. Hope it works for you too.

[Utildayael]

Curious on this too as I had the same issue today pretty bad between Fort Ikon and Necropolis.

i7 6700K @ 4.2ghz
Geforce 1080
16GB RAM

Seems to get real pissy with lots of mobs on the screen at once *and* lots of lighting effects as there were a ton of spells and particles being thrown around from both the mobs and myself spamming elemental storm and other procs as I cut through the horde.

What's the gain on borderless window mode anyway? Seems odd that would run better than fullscreen no? Also cloud save I'm guessing the issue has to do with it continually updating the characters or something?

[mayonnaise on an escalator]

Originally posted by utildayael:

What's the gain on borderless window mode anyway? Seems odd that would run better than fullscreen no? Also cloud save I'm guessing the issue has to do with it continually updating the characters or something?

Some programs/setups don't react well to exclusive fullscreen programs, so it makes sense that borderless would increase performance. At the very least it makes alt-tabbing much faster.

As for cloud saving, the reason that helps so many people is the game saves each time you pick up loot - so for people stuttering when picking up loot, the problem is often that it is saving so often (to the cloud) that it's bogging the system down.

I haven't tried since installing RAMDisk earlier today, so when I get around to trying it, if that works I will let people know.

[Utildayael]

That makes sense. I'll have to give both a try. I did end up turning off corpse persistence completely and that helped a little bit.

The alt tab is a bit slow I agree tho par for the course. I end up opening the build guide, etc I'm using or steam guides for say.. devotion locations.. in the steam overlay to avoid alt tab as much as possible. Downside is I have to re-set up my tabs each time I open GD and Steam Browser doesnt seem to support bookmarks.

Curious on the ramdisk thing. I mean honestly all that should be doing is giving you stupid amounts of disk IO. I'm running off a m2 SSD so I'll have to try the cloud disable thing. Seems like Crate is going overkill on cloud sync and should maybe add in a slider or something or just sync to cloud when you exit back to main screen [or quit game]. Oddly tho I've noticed when I quit I can see Steam uploading stuff so thought it only was sync'ing cloud then...