Stutter research

[Frugal McMayhem]

I've tried every method I could find to eliminate the stuttering but nothing seems to work. I saw a post somewhere that mentioned device manager appears to be refreshing inline with the stuttering and that appears to match what I'm seeing. Thinking this has to be connected some how I've tried to dig in further hoping I could find some logs in the event viewer of possible hardware changes that might be causing the problem but nothing. I did find some other events that match the timing of the stuttering and device manager refreshing. In Windows Logs \ Security events 4626 (Logon) and 4672 (Special Logon) are happening about every 1 to 2 minutes and lines up with the issue. Unfortunately this is where my trail went cold. I haven't been able to identify the process that is creating the events or even really confirmed if they are connected to the stuttering. Any thoughts?

System: 5900X, 32gb Ram, 3080TI

Other Methods attempted:
NVidia Shader Cache Size (This helped a little)
Driver vsync
Windows Graphics performance set to high
Disable Steam Overlay
Uninstalled Xbox Gaming Services
StutterFix DLL

[Tech Damage]

have you tried uninstalling EAC(easy anti-cheat)? i mean you will have to play offline but iv'e heard EAC might be a large culprit to the stuttering issue. Other than this the only other solution i can think of is to wait for a patch to drop by fromsoft.

[MeGa]

Unlimited shader cache helped. Whats that stutterfix dll?

[stvoconnor]

When I first started playing it was smooth, no stuttering. After about 100 hours in, the performance was a mess. Stuttering was bad enough that I couldn't dodge attacks in time, none of the posted fixes were helping. So I decided to uninstall and re-install the game and voila the performance is smooth again. Might not be a guaranteed fix for you guys but hey worth a shot.

[Mei]

The stutter is do to poor DX12 implementation. None of these placebo fixes does anything.

[JellyPuff]

Stuttering is a mix of poor shader-caching and the way, the game handles system memory. The DX12 graphic's API hands more responsibility on how memory is managed to the developer and that's likely where FromSoft has dropped the ball. Not much you can do, except play the game, to get rid of some shader-compile-related stutter until you install a new GPU driver.

Since so many users report better performance on a NVMe-drive (not the fastest, "only" 1.5GB/s read) and the game overusing the pagefile and being entirely dependant on it, i've just tried re-installing it on there.

Stuttering still persists, at least at my testing spot around Church of Elleh at Limgrave, but in situations, where i get generally lower FPS, like at Nokstella or when using "Night Maiden's Mist", i got close to 60. At these situations, neither GPU or CPU is even close to being fully utilized, so i thought maybe it was a memory-buffering-related bottleneck, that i brute forced with faster storage.
But then i remembered, that i was in offline mode with Steam, which required me to bypass EAC. I went back online and get lower FPS again. Now, i'm not sure, if it's EAC or the extra load from playing online (bloodstains, messages, ghosts). But it nevertheless is interesting to see, that simply playing in online-mode has a noticeable impact on general performance on my computer.

For reference:
CPU: Ryzen 5 2600
GPU: RTX 2070
RAM: 2x8GB 3200Mhz/Timings: 16-18-18-38-56

[Valmour]

I know that TIny Tina's Wonderlands loads shaders every single time I load my game with D12.... I also remember some others games that do the same thing to avoid stutter issues.

[dark-breed]

Originally posted by Frugal McMayhem:

I've tried every method I could find to eliminate the stuttering but nothing seems to work. I saw a post somewhere that mentioned device manager appears to be refreshing inline with the stuttering and that appears to match what I'm seeing. Thinking this has to be connected some how I've tried to dig in further hoping I could find some logs in the event viewer of possible hardware changes that might be causing the problem but nothing. I did find some other events that match the timing of the stuttering and device manager refreshing. In Windows Logs \ Security events 4626 (Logon) and 4672 (Special Logon) are happening about every 1 to 2 minutes and lines up with the issue. Unfortunately this is where my trail went cold. I haven't been able to identify the process that is creating the events or even really confirmed if they are connected to the stuttering. Any thoughts?

System: 5900X, 32gb Ram, 3080TI

Other Methods attempted:
NVidia Shader Cache Size (This helped a little)
Driver vsync
Windows Graphics performance set to high
Disable Steam Overlay
Uninstalled Xbox Gaming Services
StutterFix DLL

ths is interesting both 4626 and 4672 are every 1 till 2 minutes is not good this means your windows internal login got kicked and got renewed (since the game lost the shader cache connection during a kicked login this is highly the cause).

i would try a new local administrator profile if this happen again at this profile (only for test porpose).

[Morgan]

Originally posted by Frugal McMayhem:

I've tried every method I could find to eliminate the stuttering but nothing seems to work. I saw a post somewhere that mentioned device manager appears to be refreshing inline with the stuttering and that appears to match what I'm seeing. Thinking this has to be connected some how I've tried to dig in further hoping I could find some logs in the event viewer of possible hardware changes that might be causing the problem but nothing. I did find some other events that match the timing of the stuttering and device manager refreshing. In Windows Logs \ Security events 4626 (Logon) and 4672 (Special Logon) are happening about every 1 to 2 minutes and lines up with the issue. Unfortunately this is where my trail went cold. I haven't been able to identify the process that is creating the events or even really confirmed if they are connected to the stuttering. Any thoughts?

System: 5900X, 32gb Ram, 3080TI

Other Methods attempted:
NVidia Shader Cache Size (This helped a little)
Driver vsync
Windows Graphics performance set to high
Disable Steam Overlay
Uninstalled Xbox Gaming Services
StutterFix DLL

Have you tried disabling Microsoft device association root enumerator? Initially it totally solved the problem for me. Since the last pact the stutter has come back with the "fix" but only about once every hour or so rather than every minute like it was.

[MaxxGold]

Originally posted by Frugal McMayhem:

I've tried every method I could find to eliminate the stuttering but nothing seems to work. I saw a post somewhere that mentioned device manager appears to be refreshing inline with the stuttering and that appears to match what I'm seeing. Thinking this has to be connected some how I've tried to dig in further hoping I could find some logs in the event viewer of possible hardware changes that might be causing the problem but nothing. I did find some other events that match the timing of the stuttering and device manager refreshing. In Windows Logs \ Security events 4626 (Logon) and 4672 (Special Logon) are happening about every 1 to 2 minutes and lines up with the issue. Unfortunately this is where my trail went cold. I haven't been able to identify the process that is creating the events or even really confirmed if they are connected to the stuttering. Any thoughts?

System: 5900X, 32gb Ram, 3080TI

Other Methods attempted:
NVidia Shader Cache Size (This helped a little)
Driver vsync
Windows Graphics performance set to high
Disable Steam Overlay
Uninstalled Xbox Gaming Services
StutterFix DLL

Who makes your motherboard ? And, did you build your PC or did you buy it. I have a similar system to yours and the game plays flawlessly. I always build my own PC’s because when you buy a prebuilt computer, you usually get a very weak motherboard and issues. I always buy ASUS Motherboards, and I’m never the guy in the forums trying to figure out why my game doesn’t work. Obviously the game is poorly optimized, but your setup shouldn’t be stuttering. I’m also on Windows 11.

To the people still trying to say removing EAC helps, please stop. It doesn’t help people who are having stuttering issues. EAC is a big topic because cheaters want to cheat while playing online. Anyone that keeps linking EAC, DRM, or any other system to stop cheaters, is just mad because they want to cheat. Any developer knows that even the cracked copies don’t remove all instances of DRM. Only the people without any knowledge on the subject try to say different. Don’t believe me, then do some research, and you will find out for yourself.

[Borkineer]

I was having horrible stutters with these specs: I9 12900k, gtx 3090 and 64 gb ram.

Upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 fixed every performance issue i had, i think it was related to the new thread director in W11 and my I9 processor.

[dark-breed]

Originally posted by Valmour:

I know that TIny Tina's Wonderlands loads shaders every single time I load my game with D12.... I also remember some others games that do the same thing to avoid stutter issues.

devs that are able to code for pc do use as much RAM as possible since the patch 1.03.2 the game uses 5.7 GB RAM at my 32 GB rig and the shader cache gets recreated on the fly and textures are loaded in tiny chunks overall not more than 1GB.

[dark-breed]

Originally posted by Striker:

I was having horrible stutters with these specs: I9 12900k, gtx 3090 and 64 gb ram.

Upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 11 fixed every performance issue i had, i think it was related to the new thread director in W11 and my I9 processor.

i think it is the ability of windows 11 to create a RAM cache for shaders and textures.

[MeGa]

Interesting, upgrading to w11 could fix it?

[Jork]

disable EAC

completely eliminated my stuttering.

[H-Man]

Played the pirated and steam version
the steam version is simply unplayable for me
while the pirated one runs at 60fps high-max settings 1080p
i definently feel like EAC is the culprit, i didnt test it by disabling it because i kinda got mad and instantly refunded it but i saw many people mention disabling it fixed it for them
but then again imo i wouldnt spend 60$ to play offline i bought it to play some pvp but yeh not possible for now
i hope it gets fixed buying it then 100%