More than 1 save file causes STUTTERING, I found.

[Le'vita]

I have tried a LOT of troubleshooting, but now have reached the conclusion to the problem.
OMFG.
You hear a lot online about people posting about the game becoming less smooth and more stuttery in the later parts of the game. It is absolutely tied and related to Having multiple saves and quicksaves.
6 hours of testing with only one save file to load from and the results are absolute night and day, it feels great to just be immersed in the game this way instead of tensing up, dreading and waiting for the hitches in gameplay.
DELETE ALL YOUR SAVES BUT THE ONE MOST RECENT.

C:\Users\YOUTHEUSER\AppData\Local\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public\Savegames\Story

You can backup simply by copying any saves you still want to hold onto into another folder.
Either that or just delete them ingame, of course.

Furthermore:
As usual, always use regedit to manually set every game you play to high priority.
Always disable full-screen optimisations for the .exe file.
Make sure to disable the data submission in the Larian Launcher, even if you (AND YOU SHOULD!) have the launcher disabled.
Disable Steam cloud saves, in steam's settings.
Try run BG3 as an Admin as well... And while you're there just completely close off Steam and all it's other BS, might as well, then run either the DX11 or Vulcan variant as admin.
Hell even turing your PC onto aeroplane mode can prevent a potential stutter if your internet happens to drop out for a second. (Australian internet, it happens.)

Playing BG3 on max settings rn in UltraWide at 240 FPS (WITH NO STUTTERS).
I am at peace at last.



Edit: After another 40 hours, for my system at least, it seems that the Vulcan variant will idle at 10 or so lower FPS in complex areas than the DX11 one, BUT it seems to have an easier time keeping a consistent FPS. Consistency is key, so I prefer Vulcan, I get 240 FPS in UltraWide while chilling at camp regardless of what I pick lol.

[Levianne]

Yea, doing hoops and loops just because you want everything shiny. I get that preventing clutter of save files might help a lot, I don't doubt that (I'm deleting unecessary autosaves frequently to reduce them), but doing all the other stuff just for having the game playing smoothly on the highest graphics settings, no thank you. Also some people care about achievements, so disabling Steam just for a slightly better performance (which could also be achieved by maybe toning down on graphics, maybe?) might not be the way for them. Just saying.

[wtiger27]

Well, not saying it makes any difference, but I limit auto saves to 1 and never do a quick save and only allow myself 2 manual saves. Game has always been very stable, with no noticeable slow downs in Act 3 after 1400+ hrs and 5 complete play runs, several not complete yet.

I do have the Launcher and Steam Cloud disabled. Am playing at 1440p, max graphic settings.

[Le'vita]

Originally posted by Levianne:

Yea, doing hoops and loops just because you want everything shiny. I get that preventing clutter of save files might help a lot, I don't doubt that (I'm deleting unecessary autosaves frequently to reduce them), but doing all the other stuff just for having the game playing smoothly on the highest graphics settings, no thank you. Also some people care about achievements, so disabling Steam just for a slightly better performance (which could also be achieved by maybe toning down on graphics, maybe?) might not be the way for them. Just saying.

Bro, no way you typed ALL THAT because you think troubleshooting advice is too difficult for you to follow lol.
Noone cares. I posted this to help those that have been driven up the wall without finding a solution. This issue would be affecting everyone, but just be more noticeable the higher their fps is averaging.
I post this so that hopefully when someone types 'BG3 stuttering' into Google, that they might find an answer that is documented. I don't want people to go through my trial and error.

(Also, nice 7 achievements on 200 hours of playtime lmao, why the larping as an achievement hunter lol..?)

[meowlo]

Originally posted by Le'vita:

Originally posted by Levianne:

Yea, doing hoops and loops just because you want everything shiny. I get that preventing clutter of save files might help a lot, I don't doubt that (I'm deleting unecessary autosaves frequently to reduce them), but doing all the other stuff just for having the game playing smoothly on the highest graphics settings, no thank you. Also some people care about achievements, so disabling Steam just for a slightly better performance (which could also be achieved by maybe toning down on graphics, maybe?) might not be the way for them. Just saying.

Bro, no way you typed ALL THAT because you think troubleshooting advice is too difficult for you to follow lol.
Noone cares. I posted this to help those that have been driven up the wall without finding a solution. This issue would be affecting everyone, but just be more noticeable the higher their fps is averaging.
I post this so that hopefully when someone types 'BG3 stuttering' into Google, that they might find an answer that is documented. I don't want people to go through my trial and error.

(Also, nice 7 achievements on 200 hours of playtime lmao, why the larping as an achievement hunter lol..?)

Well I didn't find this by google but it is VERY helpful. I've been recently getting the habit of backing up all of my current campaign saves (my quick save limit in game is set to 25) but I've been copy-pasting every save to another location so I can go back to any one of the 1000+ quicksaves I've made at this point -- because this my first play through with mods and god knows when and where everything might go catastrophically wrong.

Since I'm already in the habit of backing up saves regularly -- it never occurred to me that to delete all but the most current from the game's save folder in the local user appdata folder.

This is perfect, too, because I'm never not going to savescum -- judge me all you want -- but single-save, permadeath, failing dialogue checks thanks to a nat 1 causing me to miss out on story progress, lore, extra dialogue -- no thanks. That's not for me. I even quicksave in the middle of battles sometimes because I'm an idiot who often mislicks attacking or casing offensive spells and the amount of times I have obliterated a party member because they were stand too close to my intended target and I clicked on them instead is uhh... embarassing, to say the least. One thing I love about BG3 is that if you're a save scummer, BG3 does nothing to discourage you from doing so. On the other hand, if you prefer NOT rely on save scumming as a fallback for poor dice rolls, BG3 not only allows that as well, but adds incentives such as a VERY prestigious achievement for completing an honour mode run, which you KNOW i'd be showing off on my Steam profile if I wasn't too much a wimp to even try that mode out.

Er... I'm getting off topic, but yeah. I appreciate this thread. Like I said, I back up my entire save folder after every session -- so in theory, deletating all but the latest save just means if I need to go back for any reason further than where I am, can just copy-paste an older save back in, right?

[Levianne]

Originally posted by Le'vita:

(Also, nice 7 achievements on 200 hours of playtime lmao, why the larping as an achievement hunter lol..?)

Playing with mods disables achievements. That's a thing. And while I play with mods almost from the start, I've been playing with BG3MM, which has a component (Script Extender), that enables them by default (that's where those 7 come from). But I switched from that to the in-game mod manager, which again disables getting achievements (not that I care at all anyway).
So, "bro", try using some brain cells and google out stuff about mods and achievements relationships, before you type similar nonsense next time. Not everyone is an achievement hunter, some people just don't care, if they get achievemnts, they get them, if not, the world won't end.

And just to be crystal clear. I agree with the save file deletion. Maybe you've missed that notion. I'm doing it myself, deleting autosaves, keeping just a few manual saves for use.
What I don't understand is the other stuff you have to do just to squeeze some more FPS out of your computer to be able to play with the highest settings. Like graphics isn't everything, so why not just tone it down a bit? Why should anyone instead disable Steam and Larian's Launcher and doing other clearly unecessary things?
What if someone (again not me, some people) actually does care about achievements? They don't get them without Steam, so disabling it might not be the option for them.
But yes, why not throwing a tantrum at someone, who dares to criticize your dear work? Right? All I said is that I agree with the main point, but all the other stuff isn't necessary. Then what come you up with? Laughing at me (mocking me) for having too few achievemnts for the amount of time I've played the game for. Very civilised of you.

[alanc9]

I can't imagine how the number of save files would matter for anything. The game only reads and writes to one at a time.

[God Queen 158]

Each save file has an image that shows up in the save/load screens. Theoretically, it could be accessing those files.

I have 100+ saves for one playthrough since launch. I copy all the old saves out of the folder and only have the most recent ones. This helped when I got to Act 3 a while back.

[Le'vita]

Originally posted by Levianne:

Very civilised of you.

You are an actual npc, lol.

[Le'vita]

Originally posted by meowlo:

so in theory, deletating all but the latest save just means if I need to go back for any reason further than where I am, can just copy-paste an older save back in, right?

Yeah, what I've been doing is just at the start of every session I copy my save to a folder on the desktop, and I make new folders with numbers so I know which is most recent (1,2,3, onwards etc.) It takes like 5 seconds if you set up a shortcut to the actual save file folder location.

I hope more people learn about this still. Anything to help the homies out.

[Sazie]

Originally posted by Le'vita:

Originally posted by meowlo:

so in theory, deletating all but the latest save just means if I need to go back for any reason further than where I am, can just copy-paste an older save back in, right?

Yeah, what I've been doing is just at the start of every session I copy my save to a folder on the desktop, and I make new folders with numbers so I know which is most recent (1,2,3, onwards etc.) It takes like 5 seconds if you set up a shortcut to the actual save file folder location.

I hope more people learn about this still. Anything to help the homies out.

Where does it put the save files when you save? I want to know this so I can do the same thing. Is it in steam folder in the game file somewhere or somewhere else?

[Thomas D.]

Its in this path:
%localappdata%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public\Savegames\Story

But usually the game itself works fine no matter how many savegames you have.

Usually the amount of savegames has primarily only an effect if you have cloud saves on, very very very many saves and a very very slow HDD, anti viruses that do odd stuff or when something in general is wrong with your system.

Edit: Wait the path is for the GoG version, Steam puts it probably somewhere in
SteamFolder\userdata\xxxxxxx\yyyyy\remote

Where x and y are numbers (where x is your user and y is a unique number of the game)

[Sazie]

Originally posted by Thomas D.:

Its in this path:
%localappdata%\Larian Studios\Baldur's Gate 3\PlayerProfiles\Public\Savegames\Story

But usually the game itself works fine no matter how many savegames you have.

Usually the amount of savegames has primarily only an effect if you have cloud saves on, very very very many saves and a very very slow HDD, anti viruses that do odd stuff or when something in general is wrong with your system.

Edit: Wait the path is for the GoG version, Steam puts it probably somewhere in
SteamFolder\userdata\xxxxxxx\yyyyy\remote

Where x and y are numbers (where x is your user and y is a unique number of the game)

Thank you and yea I did notice I had clouds saves on, is that usually not good to have on? I usually use cloud saves just in case I need to back up saves, but I could switch to using my usb again as backup.

[Thomas D.]

Cloud Saves might slow down stuff or introduce freezes when Syncing. Also Baldurs Gate 3 Savegames are big and the Cloud Storage for the Savegames is limited.

Its not directly good / bad, it has advantages / disadvantages and finally its up to you to decide which is better.

[RustyNail]

Originally posted by Sazie:

Thank you and yea I did notice I had clouds saves on, is that usually not good to have on? I usually use cloud saves just in case I need to back up saves, but I could switch to using my usb again as backup.

Background tasks have the potential to hurt performance; but if, and how much, depends on a number of things.

[Humpenstilzchen]

I have multiple savefiles with each one having lots of quicksaves in them and haven´t noticed any performance issues. I play without steam cloud and of course I use an ssd.