[Solved] Stutter and FPS drops when loading new locations (Linux)

[Drako Frost]

I started playing Bioshock Infinite on Linux, overall the performance is pretty good, I didn't experienced any glitches, but everytime I enter in a new area, and the game loads the data, it lags and stutters really bad, it only lasts 2 or 3 seconds, but it's annoying, especially if there's enemies nearby.

I hope this can be fixed.

P.S.: Thanks for the port, I hope the first two games are also ported.

[dubigrasu]

Try:
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?222666-Possible-solutions-for-known-issues

[himmatsj]

This is sadly normal and a side effect of the streaming issues in UE3. I had it as well when I played the game.

May I ask, how much VRAM do you have? To reduce its prominence, select lower texture resolution.

There are some workarounds too but they never did help me.

[dubigrasu]

Increasing PoolSize (while not solving the issue entirely) does reduce the stutter though.
Well, no guarantees, but it did for me and for at least one person I know.

[Drako Frost]

Originally posted by dubigrasu:

Try:
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?222666-Possible-solutions-for-known-issues

I will try it later, thanks for the tip.

[Drako Frost]

Originally posted by himmatsj:

This is sadly normal and a side effect of the streaming issues in UE3. I had it as well when I played the game.

May I ask, how much VRAM do you have? To reduce its prominence, select lower texture resolution.

There are some workarounds too but they never did help me.

GeForce GTX 760 with 2GB of RAM.

[Drako Frost]

I played for two hours with "-ReadTexturePoolFromIni" in the launch settings, and the sutter was gone. But it creates another problem, the textures takes longer to load, if you run the scenario looks bad, and some textures seems to flicker between good looking and bad looking.

I will try playing with "-DisableTexturePool" next time.

[Drako Frost]

So, I tested the game with "-DisableTexturePool" in the launch settings, it reduced the stutter for about 90% and didn't cause the issue with the textures. Sometimes it stutters a bit during loadings, but it's minimal, the game is definetly much more playable now.

If you are playing Bioshock Infinite on Linux I recommend adding "-DisableTexturePool" in the game launch settings, for a better experience.

[Xion]

I tried the -ReadTexturePoolFromIni fix, and with just the default pool size of 400, I saw a significant improvement. After increasing the pool size in the ini file to 1.5GB, the issue was completely gone. This leads me to believe that when it tries to auto detect the pool size, it's using the default minimum of 256MB.

It would probably have worked with a pool smaller than 1.5GB, but I just left it since it worked. I have 4GB of VRAM, so there was probably plenty of room.

[dubigrasu]

I played over and over the very same level testing PoolSize values while watching on a different monitor the VRAM usage:

PoolSize 1200 = VRAM usage = 1800
PoolSize 1400 = VRAM usage = 2000
PoolSize 1600 = VRAM usage = 2200
PoolSize 1800 = VRAM usage = 2400
PoolSize 2000 = VRAM usage = 2600 *
PoolSize 2200 = VRAM usage = 1400

As you can see for my 3000Mb card the maximum VRAM usage was at around 2000 PoolSize.
Increasing the PoolSize more than 2000 actually did worse in my case, but I can assume that for a card with more VRAM it can be safely increased.

[Doctor X]

Originally posted by dubigrasu:

I played over and over the very same level testing PoolSize values while watching on a different monitor the VRAM usage:

PoolSize 1200 = VRAM usage = 1800
PoolSize 1400 = VRAM usage = 2000
PoolSize 1600 = VRAM usage = 2200
PoolSize 1800 = VRAM usage = 2400
PoolSize 2000 = VRAM usage = 2600 *
PoolSize 2200 = VRAM usage = 1400

As you can see for my 3000Mb card the maximum VRAM usage was at around 2000 PoolSize.
Increasing the PoolSize more than 2000 actually did worse in my case, but I can assume that for a card with more VRAM it can be safely increased.

I can attest this fixes it for me too. I have 6GB of vram... i set it to 2000 though and noticed a huge difference. Thanks for the tip!