Game choppy and unplayable suddenly

[saber_avalon]

No idea what changed, April 26th I was able to play the game (working through the campaign no multiplayer yet) on ultra settings with no problems. Tried to play again yesterday, May 2nd, and right when I load into the game it's choppy. I move the mouse and the pointer lags a bit and hops across the screen. The marine breathing in the background is choppy too. If I click "continue" the single player battle barge area loads up fine, until I try to move the camera. Then it does the same thing the mouse does, it moves but it's choppy/stutters. It never stops. My CPU doesn't hit over 64% and GPU hits 55%, temps are all normal, GPU was 39 degrees and CPU got to 70 degrees. Tried again today, same thing.

I tried deleting the appdata "space marine 2" folder, since shaders can mess with things and saw a few suggestions for that, but it didn't change anything.
Ran Steam file validation, successful, no change.

Any ideas?


CPU: 5800X3D
GPU: 3080 Ti
Ram: 64Gb
Game installed on an NVMe SSD with 289Gb of space available.
OS installed on a separate NVMe SSD
Nvidia drivers: Updated
Windows drivers: Updated
Dual monitors (saw someone mention something about multi monitors having troubles but no explanation on what they did to fix anything)

Edit: Forgot to mention:
I changed settings from ultra to high, and low, no change.
Changed from native to balanced, to dynamic, no change.
limited FPS to 120, 60, no change.

[Sloths]

Do you have the 4k texture pack enabled?

Delete and clear out the nvidia shader cache.

Also there are some driver issues with nvidia cards(3000 and 4000 series) and newer games.

Game devs are recommending an older driver 566.36 until the issues are worked out by nvidia. Can try with that and see if that helps at all.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/game-developers-urge-nvidia-rtx-30-and-40-series-owners-rollback-to-december-2024-driver-after-recent-rtx-50-centric-release-issues

"Players using RTX 40 and even some RTX 30-series GPUs have reported problems after updating to the 572.xx driver. Newly released games, including inZOI and The First Berserker: Khazan, have been particularly affected, with players experiencing stuttering or frame drops. Developers of these games have gone as far as recommending users roll back to the older 566.36 driver, released in December 2024, to restore stability. "


https://wccftech.com/game-developers-are-discouraging-users-from-installing-nvidia-driver-572-xx-rtx-40/

" The newer drivers can cause instability, resulting in sudden crashes, freezes, and even performance issues. The issues are now widespread, to the point where some game developers no longer recommend installing them at all."

[Mr.Dark]

are your graphics drivers up to date?

[saber_avalon]

Originally posted by Sloths:

Do you have the 4k texture pack enabled?

Delete and clear out the nvidia shader cache.

Also there are some driver issues with nvidia cards(3000 and 4000 series) and newer games.

Game devs are recommending an older driver 566.36 until the issues are worked out by nvidia. Can try with that and see if that helps at all.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/game-developers-urge-nvidia-rtx-30-and-40-series-owners-rollback-to-december-2024-driver-after-recent-rtx-50-centric-release-issues

"Players using RTX 40 and even some RTX 30-series GPUs have reported problems after updating to the 572.xx driver. Newly released games, including inZOI and The First Berserker: Khazan, have been particularly affected, with players experiencing stuttering or frame drops. Developers of these games have gone as far as recommending users roll back to the older 566.36 driver, released in December 2024, to restore stability. "


https://wccftech.com/game-developers-are-discouraging-users-from-installing-nvidia-driver-572-xx-rtx-40/

" The newer drivers can cause instability, resulting in sudden crashes, freezes, and even performance issues. The issues are now widespread, to the point where some game developers no longer recommend installing them at all."

4k texture pack is not installed.

Cleared nvidia cache, no change.

I don't see how it'd be the driver if they say to roll back to December. I should have been having problems right from the start, it was working fine about a week ago. No other game I have played has issues either, just SM2. Now, I did update the driver but that was only after the issues started and I saw a new driver available. As a method of trying to resolve the issue.

[Sloths]

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

I don't see how it'd be the driver if they say to roll back to December. I should have been having problems right from the start, it was working fine about a week ago. No other game I have played has issues either, just SM2. Now, I did update the driver but that was only after the issues started and I saw a new driver available. As a method of trying to resolve the issue.

That's not true. You could of been fine the whole time and a change saber made in the most recent updates/hotfixes might of caused issues where there wasn't one before. There have been multiple updates where the patch notes stated they made further 'optimizations' to the game. Who knows behind the scenes what was actually changed.

You're right rolling back the driver to the recommended version might not help at all. Just in a lot of articles(linked two examples) a lot of game devs are recommending it. It's something easy and quick to do and a way to rule out possible things contributing to the problem.

[saber_avalon]

Originally posted by Sloths:

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

I don't see how it'd be the driver if they say to roll back to December. I should have been having problems right from the start, it was working fine about a week ago. No other game I have played has issues either, just SM2. Now, I did update the driver but that was only after the issues started and I saw a new driver available. As a method of trying to resolve the issue.

That's not true. You could of been fine the whole time and a change saber made in the most recent updates/hotfixes might of caused issues where there wasn't one before. There have been multiple updates where the patch notes stated they made further 'optimizations' to the game. Who knows behind the scenes what was actually changed.

You're right rolling back the driver to the recommended version might not help at all. Just in a lot of articles(linked two examples) a lot of game devs are recommending it. It's something easy and quick to do and a way to rule out possible things contributing to the problem.

If it was a change that Saber made, then it wouldn't be an nvidia problem. It'd be a game dev problem. Seeing as the driver worked perfectly fine until yesterday, I highly doubt it is a driver issue. Was there a game update between April 26th and May 2nd? If so, then I'd be looking at a dev issue. Especially since the only thing having issues is SM2. I've gone through my library and everything I tried works fine. SM2 is the only game with the issue.

Even the issues described in the article, don't match what I'm seeing. There's no stability issue, no crashes or freezes. Even when I watch stats in HWMonitor, everything looks normal. I think I can safely rule out this nvidia issue in this case.

[Barnaby Jones]

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

Originally posted by Sloths:

That's not true. You could of been fine the whole time and a change saber made in the most recent updates/hotfixes might of caused issues where there wasn't one before. There have been multiple updates where the patch notes stated they made further 'optimizations' to the game. Who knows behind the scenes what was actually changed.

You're right rolling back the driver to the recommended version might not help at all. Just in a lot of articles(linked two examples) a lot of game devs are recommending it. It's something easy and quick to do and a way to rule out possible things contributing to the problem.

If it was a change that Saber made, then it wouldn't be an nvidia problem. It'd be a game dev problem. Seeing as the driver worked perfectly fine until yesterday, I highly doubt it is a driver issue. Was there a game update between April 26th and May 2nd? If so, then I'd be looking at a dev issue. Especially since the only thing having issues is SM2. I've gone through my library and everything I tried works fine. SM2 is the only game with the issue.

Even the issues described in the article, don't match what I'm seeing. There's no stability issue, no crashes or freezes. Even when I watch stats in HWMonitor, everything looks normal. I think I can safely rule out this nvidia issue in this case.

If on win11, you currently do NOT want the latest patch (24h2)...

Roll that back to 23h2 and see if that solves the issue.

[Sloths]

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

If it was a change that Saber made, then it wouldn't be an nvidia problem. It'd be a game dev problem. Seeing as the driver worked perfectly fine until yesterday, I highly doubt it is a driver issue. Was there a game update between April 26th and May 2nd? If so, then I'd be looking at a dev issue. Especially since the only thing having issues is SM2. I've gone through my library and everything I tried works fine. SM2 is the only game with the issue.

Even the issues described in the article, don't match what I'm seeing. There's no stability issue, no crashes or freezes. Even when I watch stats in HWMonitor, everything looks normal. I think I can safely rule out this nvidia issue in this case.

"players experiencing stuttering"
"and even performance issues"

The latest hotfix was on the 29th.

With as much time as you have been arguing the point you could of already done it and moved on to the next troubleshooting steps. Get DDU uninstall your current gpu driver. Install the one game devs are recommending. You mentioned dual monitors and seeing issues about them. Unplug one and now try the game again. If that doesn't help you wasted a few min, but going forward you have given yourself a clean start for other troubleshooting if needed.

[Kotzi]

Got that issue almost everytime i join a game, first couple of minutes frame drops and screen freezes occure occassionally. After that everything is fine. Its great when you loose half your health because of that in the beginning of a run.

[saber_avalon]

Originally posted by Barnaby Jones:

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

If it was a change that Saber made, then it wouldn't be an nvidia problem. It'd be a game dev problem. Seeing as the driver worked perfectly fine until yesterday, I highly doubt it is a driver issue. Was there a game update between April 26th and May 2nd? If so, then I'd be looking at a dev issue. Especially since the only thing having issues is SM2. I've gone through my library and everything I tried works fine. SM2 is the only game with the issue.

Even the issues described in the article, don't match what I'm seeing. There's no stability issue, no crashes or freezes. Even when I watch stats in HWMonitor, everything looks normal. I think I can safely rule out this nvidia issue in this case.

If on win11, you currently do NOT want the latest patch (24h2)...

Roll that back to 23h2 and see if that solves the issue.

I'm still running windows 10.

Originally posted by Sloths:

Originally posted by saber_avalon:

If it was a change that Saber made, then it wouldn't be an nvidia problem. It'd be a game dev problem. Seeing as the driver worked perfectly fine until yesterday, I highly doubt it is a driver issue. Was there a game update between April 26th and May 2nd? If so, then I'd be looking at a dev issue. Especially since the only thing having issues is SM2. I've gone through my library and everything I tried works fine. SM2 is the only game with the issue.

Even the issues described in the article, don't match what I'm seeing. There's no stability issue, no crashes or freezes. Even when I watch stats in HWMonitor, everything looks normal. I think I can safely rule out this nvidia issue in this case.

"players experiencing stuttering"
"and even performance issues"

The latest hotfix was on the 29th.

With as much time as you have been arguing the point you could of already done it and moved on to the next troubleshooting steps. Get DDU uninstall your current gpu driver. Install the one game devs are recommending. You mentioned dual monitors and seeing issues about them. Unplug one and now try the game again. If that doesn't help you wasted a few min, but going forward you have given yourself a clean start for other troubleshooting if needed.

Ok, the 29th, so something did change between play sessions on the dev side. Worked fine before, did not after.

Again, if the issue was happening with other games and it was happening from the day I started playing the game, then I could see it being a driver issue. It was perfectly fine before though. Those articles also mention the issues happen with multiple games, not just one. It also says the OS is crashing for these people and black screens, I have none of that. Those articles are also specifically stating 572.XX as the issue, nvidia is on 576.XX now. The wccftech article even lists the recommended driver for 30 series cards is the latest, only suggesting 40 series go back to 566.36. Tomshardware even says to stick with proven drivers. Well, the driver I had, worked before. The only change between play sessions is this hotfix. Logically speaking, still pointing to a dev issue. If you have any IT background, you know as well as I do that reverting that driver isn't going to do a thing, given the circumstances. It's a cop out.

As for the monitors, that was the first thing I tried. Powered off monitor, disabled it in windows settings. No change.

[Thorkdin]

Running 576.28 runs super smooth, but I had to clear and reset the shader cache size to 10gb. That fixed everything for me.

[Golgoth]

Originally posted by Thorkdin:

Running 576.28 runs super smooth, but I had to clear and reset the shader cache size to 10gb. That fixed everything for me.

how do you clear the shader cache ?

[Thorkdin]

open Nivida app > graphics > global settings > scroll down to Shader cache size select disable, then reboot then repeat but this time select 10gb instead of disable. Should do it for you :)