Stuttering on a i9 13th Gen + 4070 laptop?

[TechManMax]

Can’t make head or tail of this…constant 116fps (the VSync cap for my 120hz display). And yet during explosions (such as those from incandescent) the game sort of freezes up completely for a split second. My hardware is enough to run destiny 2 three times over lol. Any suggestions? P.S. FPS does NOT drop when it stutters. I can’t figure out what’s going on lol

[trukr]

Stuttering is normally caused be overrunning your CPU, when the GPU has to wait on the CPU you get stuttering. Your FPS counter is not going to register it because as soon as it can things are back to normal. Try lowering your frame rate cap.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by trukr:

Stuttering is normally caused be overrunning your CPU, when the GPU has to wait on the CPU you get stuttering. Your FPS counter is not going to register it because as soon as it can things are back to normal. Try lowering your frame rate cap.

What cap would you recommend? My CPU is an i9 13900h and my GPU is RTX 4070 (laptop version) so they are both very good and “shouldn’t” be struggling in this game. I’ve played far more intensive modern AAA titles recently including Avatar, etc. Current fps cap is 116.

[trukr]

A more demanding game is less likely to stutter, the GPU would not be waiting on the CPU, it would be working it's tail off. Laptop variants are not the same as desktop, having a lot of cores is not a lot of help in software that will not use them all. I would just experiment, lower a bit at a time. What resolution and graphics setting are you using?

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by trukr:

A more demanding game is less likely to stutter, the GPU would not be waiting on the CPU, it would be working it's tail off. Laptop variants are not the same as desktop, having a lot of cores is not a lot of help in software that will not use them all. I would just experiment, lower a bit at a time. What resolution and graphics setting are you using?

I’m using 1080p with the highest settings and connecting the laptop to my LG C2 TV. In all reality I could probably run this game at a higher resolution it’s just I prefer the higher frames. I’ve just lowered the fps cap from 116 to 100 will see how that works. But basically my PC is “too” powerful? Lol

[trukr]

1080p on that? No, your PC is not too powerful, but your GPU may spike FPS and end up waiting on the CPU. Odd thing is, with the frame rate capped even at 116, that should not be too much, it shouldn't be able to get crazy numbers. Also, your GPU I think should still do very well at 1440p maybe 4K.

[trukr]

Also, wish you luck getting it sorted, it's kind of odd.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by trukr:

1080p on that? No, your PC is not too powerful, but your GPU may spike FPS and end up waiting on the CPU. Odd thing is, with the frame rate capped even at 116, that should not be too much, it shouldn't be able to get crazy numbers. Also, your GPU I think should still do very well at 1440p maybe 4K.

On this game yes it’s advertised as a “good” 1080p card for modern titles. So for this game I probably could do decent at 4K. I would just rather have the high framerate but I’ve tried capping it at 100 (down from 116) to see if that helps. About to load into a playlist activity and find out…

[Verios44]

The next time you play, keep an eye on thermals. The Intel 13th gen are very hot running CPU's and since its in a laptop, makes cooling even less efficient.

At least worth a rule out.

[TechManMax]

Originally posted by Verios44:

The next time you play, keep an eye on thermals. The Intel 13th gen are very hot running CPU's and since its in a laptop, makes cooling even less efficient.

At least worth a rule out.

Temps are fine, I always run cooler boost mode anyway. But even without the temps are fine. I capped the FPS to 100 as I stated above and just completed a playlist activity which had lots of explosions in and not a single stutter (also the fps never dropped below 100). So maybe what trukr said above about the GPU being “too” quick is true. Not sure, will test some more. The days of hardware being too good for the game to keep up? Lol

[Verios44]

Originally posted by TechManMax:

Originally posted by Verios44:

The next time you play, keep an eye on thermals. The Intel 13th gen are very hot running CPU's and since its in a laptop, makes cooling even less efficient.

At least worth a rule out.

Temps are fine, I always run cooler boost mode anyway. But even without the temps are fine. I capped the FPS to 100 as I stated above and just completed a playlist activity which had lots of explosions in and not a single stutter (also the fps never dropped below 100). So maybe what trukr said above about the GPU being “too” quick is true. Not sure, will test some more. The days of hardware being too good for the game to keep up? Lol

Well, keep in mond your playing a game designed for consoles first.

That said try to fps limit to 60. Destiny's engine ties quite a few things like damage taken to frame rate. Very stupid setup. Also if you raid and run Ron, that will help you not die to the launchers goofing up.

But if 100 works for you, keep at it :)

[DCR]

Since this is a laptop, just underclock gpu and cpu, dont need that much power to run 120 or 240 even. 1650ti in laptop here worked just fine for 200 fps. smooth as butter. Tweaked out windows install but nothing fancy. The easiest thing is to just set gpu TDP cap as low as it can go and start from there.

[Bob]

I've read through the posts here and haven't seen the typical troubleshooting suggestions; Do you have the latest drivers available for your gpu? If you do, you can try 1 - 3 prior releases and see which works better. Your cpu/gpu are more than capable for this game so it's likely a program in the background, be it antivirus or malware protection, if not a driver issues.
For comparison, I'm on a first gen i7 platform(X58 chipset) with a RTX 3070 that I built back in like 2010. Your cpu, even with thermal throttling(which you said temps are fine) would outperform my cpu.
I'm not sure if this game uses shader caching but you could look into that and try clearing it to regenerate. I have had issues with shader cache in The Division 2 which causes crashes, it's likely game specific for what issues it could cause.
You can also try disabling "Low latency Mode" in nvidia control panel, also known as Nivida reflex.

[TechManMax]

This is so weird the other day when I capped the fps at 100 everything was smooth as butter afterwards. Today? EXACT SAME SETTINGS as the other day…back to stuttering in the menu and during explosions. What is going on here??

[The MidgetCrusader69]

thats what you get for gaming on a laptop. Get a desktop. 12900K and 3090 TI here the game runs FLAWLESS

[TechManMax]

No thats not true because I have had a far lower specced laptop perform flawlessly on this game before. The issue is NOT with a laptop. This laptop can handle modern AAA titles lmfao. The issue is somewhere else but idk where, it's starting to annoy me though because for a £1200 PC I find myself constantly having to "work things out" when everything just works...flawlessly...on a £479 console.

EDIT: Uninstalled Norton 360 for gamers which came bundled with the laptop. Uncapped the fps just to see how many fps I should be getting and it’s over 200. Recapped it to 116 (in line with vSync for 120Hz LG C2) and it performed flawlessly. Only thought to try this because the stupid thing popped up mid game with an “offer” and when I tried to make it go away the game started stuttering again. However I’ve had that thing on the laptop since I got it and I can’t be sure that was the cause of the stutter. Right now the game is performing flawlessly again but only an hour ago it was stuttering using the same settings I tried to make it stop stuttering the other day. I can’t make sense of it because it’s not the hardware, it’s not the thermals, when it works without stuttering it works brilliantly. Anybody have/had similar issues?