(SOLVED) ALT-TAB once and the game starts lagging (full screen mode)

[vagrant]

Well I've put a lot of hours into Elden Ring over the years.. recently returned after a long haitus...

Been trying to figure out why the game now freezes every 20secs or so, for 5-8 seconds and then fast forwards back to it's current state. It happens so often it's unplayable.
Anyway I tried to figure out why it's happening for days... and can now confirm that if I ALT-TAB out just ONCE.. upon return the lagging begins until you exit and restart.

So now I have to use another device to browse the web or anything else while playing.

I run the game in full screen mode, since I use HDR. I havn't confirmed if switching to borderless fixes it..

I'm curious if anyone else has this problem.. or wtf is going on in general?
Perhaps it is happening since the SOTE update..
I also upgraded from win10 to win11 prior to playing again.. so maybe it is exclusive win11 issue.

sys specs: win11, 9900k, 3080, 32gb.
drivers and win updates all latest.

UPDATE:
Either Nvidia driver 572.16 or Windows 24H2 cumulative update (KB5050094) has (for the most part) fixed the issue.

[SoundsOfNight]

Do you have Nvidia overlay running in the background? Maybe the Steam overlay?

[vagrant]

I'll disable both now and test it

[SoundsOfNight]

Two more considerations - disable Ray Tracing. And even reduce resolution if stuttering is still occurring.

[vagrant]

Can confirm it's not the overlays.
I tried all 3 combinations.. alt-tab still makes it lag (after about 3-4mins of alt-tabbing back).

Ray Tracing is already disabled, and this stuttering is not performance related.. no problems hitting max fps at the display's native resolution (4k).

[vagrant]

other things i tried in past:
- resetting router (have not tested game offline yet.. though switching to desktop is the problem.. doubt it's router related... more likely EAC does not like something.)
- disabling rebar
- disabling XMP profiles
- disabling low latency mode
- disabling the ms USB enumerator (the lag last far longer then the usual usb 'disconnect/reconnect' anyway)

havn't tried reverting to win10 yet.. obvsly would prefer not to lol

[Gitsid]

I encountered the same problem, thanks for the advice not to minimize the game, I was finally able to play without lags

[s̷h̷a̷d̷o̷w̷]

Win11 24H2 version per chance? This f***s many things up (acknowledged by Microsoft, still "working on fixes" third month in a row ), for this reason I downgraded to 23H2 until they fix their crap.

[vagrant]

Originally posted by Gitsid:

I encountered the same problem, thanks for the advice not to minimize the game, I was finally able to play without lags

That's great to hear.. I was hoping this would help others with the same problem.

Originally posted by csand:

This will sound crazy, but do you have the Windows weather widget on the taskbar? IIRC this thing would cause some issues with some games and alt-tab. If you have it, try disabling it.

Hmm well I have widgets disabled in the taskbar.. havn't tried uninstalling the weather widget though.

Originally posted by cat:

Win11 24H2 version per chance? This f***s many things up (acknowledged by Microsoft, still "working on fixes" third month in a row ), for this reason I downgraded to 23H2 until they fix their crap.

Yep.. 24H2. After reading the list of confirmed issues.. including problems with games that use EAC, it sounds like microsoft need to get their ♥♥♥♥ sorted out.
Hopefully sooner rather then later..

[vagrant]

Did a lot more testing today.. thought I'd found a winner by disabling "optimizations for windowed games"... but no.
Even though it seemed to take much longer to trigger the lag... it still happened eventually.
Just gotta stick with no ALT-TAB and wait for MS to fix I guess.

[vamirez]

This may be dumb, but you are talking about true fullscreen mode? If so, what speaks against borderless windowed mode?

[vagrant]

HDR.. should be able to enjoy HDR unimpeded my friend

[Gitsid]

Originally posted by vamirez:

This may be dumb, but you are talking about true fullscreen mode? If so, what speaks against borderless windowed mode?

I don't use HDR, so I tried it in borderless windowed mode and it didn't help.

[vagrant]

Originally posted by Gitsid:

I don't use HDR, so I tried it in borderless windowed mode and it didn't help.

Thanks for confirming that.

[LopLor]

Elden ring це дуже тяжка гра

[vagrant]

Well well.. two major updates today:
Nvidia driver 572.16
Windows 24H2 cumulative update (KB5050094)

It would appear that I can now ALT-TAB freely without inducing any lag whatsoever...
I'll continue to test.. but I've been playing playing now for about an hour, so it looks promising.