How to fix stutter

[Farsa]

Hello! I've just bought the game, played with some friends without any issues but today I hopped on to single player and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the thing is stuttering like a MF, specially when driving.

Is there a fix to this? I gotta a very beefy rig and for an isometric game like this not being locked at least at 144 fps is kinda of a sin. What's going on?

MB: Asus ROG MAXIMUS IX Formula
CPU: i7-7700k
GPU: RTX 3080
RAM: 64GB (4x 16GB HyperX)
PSU: Corsair HX1200i
Watercooled (Corsair H100x)
144Hz LG Monitor (G-sync compatible)

Storage:
1T SSD (game)
500G SSD
250G SSD
1T HD
2T HD

[Brainslug]

I have stutters and framerate drops (below 50),too. Especially when driving. I think fog and rain make it worse. Pc shouldn't be the issue. Something definitely is off.

[Beard]

Brainslug님이 먼저 게시:

I have stutters and framerate drops (below 50),too. Especially when driving. I think fog and rain make it worse. Pc shouldn't be the issue. Something definitely is off.

I wonder, are you fully zoomed out while driving? Because in that case it would explain the lag as having very high zoom definitely drops the frames (especially in build 40), as for rain and fog you are right that it drops frames.

Nordil(Hun)님이 먼저 게시:

The early worm deserves the bird님이 먼저 게시:

I prefer the manga, though the anime does not look too bad so far.

I originally had profile pictures from the manga, but since I can have a profile picture in all its colored glory I switched to the anime one. The anime is pretty good, I wonder how far they will get.

The early worm deserves the bird님이 먼저 게시:

Beard님이 먼저 게시:

So to make sure, does it play fine in a Multiplayer game but stutters in a singleplayer game? Do you have any mods enabled in the singleplayer game that arent enabled when you played with your friends?
The specs that you have definitely arent the problem as other people already said, which means that there are either mods or something else causing the stutters that need to be looked into.

Just as a heads up I have noticed a stuttering too. This was mod related. However it was a map mod so I'm not sure if that shouldn't have any problems because it's using the same assets. Specifically it was in regards to the Slocan Lake mod. As I got closer and closer to it the game started stuttering heavily.

In addition the YouTube creator Cromulent Archer has also had stuttering in his most recent YouTube video's. I think in the second or third most recent Zomboid video as he was heading out to the mall. To my knowledge he is playing the game on Vanilla settings. No mods. You might want to check that out as it's recorded and might give some insight into the problem.

Edit: also nice Hayase Nagatoro avatar

Thanks, obviously best girl deserves the avatar treatment.
As for the stuttering, it can be zoom related as I mentioned above, and in the case of the mall I would assume that the number of zombies there would tank performance, as build 41 cannot handle many zombies on a screen just yet without tanking performance (optimizations are in the works).
As for the map mods I wouldn't really know what causes that or how to fix that, perhaps some texture issues on the map mods or other weirdness.

[WiseCog]

For me it always stutter after a while and I need to restart game. It can start stutter early on if I drive with my car a lot. If I keep to the main city that I start on though it can take hours before stuttering happens.
I use 0 mods.

[GR4V3 MIST4K3]

There are some mods which are known to cause stutter issues like Superb Survivors.
Weather is taxing and driving requires maximum zoom out to be able to drive at least partially effectively. The game is always in development and these are new features. Honestly, the fog looks magnificent.

I'd say try running a new savegame without mods and then I'd say try to reduce your settings on less important stuff for you and see if it helps.
If you are running at 100+ frames, that probably means there's 2x as many pathfinding checks and weather updates as for somebody running at 60 FPS. Try limiting FPS.

I have some FPS drops from stable 60 to 45-50s while driving through towns with weather effects happening. So I'd say you need to expect some of those. I'm on AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor and RTX 2080 and it plays fine.

[Farsa]

Beard님이 먼저 게시:

So to make sure, does it play fine in a Multiplayer game but stutters in a singleplayer game? Do you have any mods enabled in the singleplayer game that arent enabled when you played with your friends?
The specs that you have definitely arent the problem as other people already said, which means that there are either mods or something else causing the stutters that need to be looked into.

Absolutely no mods. Just started playing, everything vanilla.

[Farsa]

Mr Grave님이 먼저 게시:

There are some mods which are known to cause stutter issues like Superb Survivors.
Weather is taxing and driving requires maximum zoom out to be able to drive at least partially effectively. The game is always in development and these are new features. Honestly, the fog looks magnificent.

I'd say try running a new savegame without mods and then I'd say try to reduce your settings on less important stuff for you and see if it helps.
If you are running at 100+ frames, that probably means there's 2x as many pathfinding checks and weather updates as for somebody running at 60 FPS. Try limiting FPS.

I have some FPS drops from stable 60 to 45-50s while driving through towns with weather effects happening. So I'd say you need to expect some of those. I'm on AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor and RTX 2080 and it plays fine.

I have no mods at all. Playing with everything vanilla. The weird thing is MP is fine but SP is almost unbearable

[Brainslug]

No mods here. And yes, it's when zoomed out. I also think it gets worse the longer I play.

I love the game, I just want to provide feedback.

Which settings should I try lowering apart from lowering fixed FPS?

[Blue_Skies]

Yer I get the stutters after a 4 or 5 hr sesh. Usually happens more often when I'm driving to another town, but a quick exit to desktop and restart solves the issue.

Optimizations?! I won't have an excuse not to play on Insane!

[Marco]

No mods here, vanilla apocalypse. I have a decent pc, not as good as OP, but good enough. Not that is necessary at this point but I confirm while driving there's often stuttering especially when going from town to town. Impossible to drive and avoid obstacles, only good thing for my char is that has the chance to improve the useless first aid skill :)
I read somewhere if you quit and restart it goes away, it's true, or well, it worked in my case, but...
Just a couple of notes:
- it's the car only (regardless zooming in max or zooming out max), if you get out of the car it's smooth again
- In one occasion, when I kept playing instead of quitting and restarting, it stopped stuttering when I entered a new town, one would think the opposite...

I have a 9900k, 2070s, 16gb, playing 1080p.
So far I've had problems with stuttering while driving and huge fps drop with blood decals above 10% (I turned it off, but anything above 10% causes a fps drop from 60 to 30 especially zooming out a little).

[Beard]

Oak님이 먼저 게시:

Mr Grave님이 먼저 게시:

There are some mods which are known to cause stutter issues like Superb Survivors.
Weather is taxing and driving requires maximum zoom out to be able to drive at least partially effectively. The game is always in development and these are new features. Honestly, the fog looks magnificent.

I'd say try running a new savegame without mods and then I'd say try to reduce your settings on less important stuff for you and see if it helps.
If you are running at 100+ frames, that probably means there's 2x as many pathfinding checks and weather updates as for somebody running at 60 FPS. Try limiting FPS.

I have some FPS drops from stable 60 to 45-50s while driving through towns with weather effects happening. So I'd say you need to expect some of those. I'm on AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor and RTX 2080 and it plays fine.

I have no mods at all. Playing with everything vanilla. The weird thing is MP is fine but SP is almost unbearable

You mentioned that you were driving in Singleplayer and you had stutters there, were you also driving in the multiplayer game. Asking just to see when the stutters happen, because right now it makes no sense that it would lag in singleplayer but would work perfectly fine in multiplayer in the same situation.

[jinx20001]

im running the game at 3840 x 1600p ultrawide and yeh its pretty rough performance wise for me also with lots on screen. bit of a let down.

my pc is a 9900k @ 5.1ghz, RTX 3080, 32gb 3733mhz ram and all SSD/nvme drives.

im looking for a solution too, be nice to get hoards nice and smooth, looking at my cpu usage it appears the game only takes advantage of 4 cores, maxing them out which is a shame but not unexpected.

[jinx20001]

there is a setting in the options that reduces the zombie animation updates when they are out of view, that certainly helps so make sure that is switched on, i can still see sub 30 though when things get crazy. gpu usage is around 11 percent max so its all on the cpu as expected.

[Silversun Pickups]

EnigmaGrey님이 먼저 게시:

Problem is it’s just so inconsistent, almost random if someone has a problem or not.

[...]

Is the rtx 3080 being used in task manager, or does the load show up on the integrated gpu?

I would gladly help you fix this bug (as it appears to be one), but what information would you need for that?
I have the same problem, and it definitely does not come from too many zombies, since I cleared the whole neighborhood of them and still get more stutter the further I zoom out.

I checked the task manager, the game does not use the internal GPU.

[WiseCog]

I can say with 100% certainty that at least build 41 does eventually start stuttering. I do not know if this is different from build 40. When you drive a car for example long stretches then it will start stuttering, and you will need to restart. If you have played for a lot of hours you will also experience stuttering, and you will have to restart.
This is happening for anyone playing 4-8 hours or traveling long distances, I would assume, without turning game off. Iv'e seen every streamer eventually having to restart as well. I am positive that eventually this will be fixed.

[Farsa]

Beard님이 먼저 게시:

Oak님이 먼저 게시:

I have no mods at all. Playing with everything vanilla. The weird thing is MP is fine but SP is almost unbearable

You mentioned that you were driving in Singleplayer and you had stutters there, were you also driving in the multiplayer game. Asking just to see when the stutters happen, because right now it makes no sense that it would lag in singleplayer but would work perfectly fine in multiplayer in the same situation.

Yes, I'm actually the designated driver among my friends while playing MP and the difference to SP is like, day to night..