Game suddenly became unplayable

[Charlemagne]

I've always had the stutters here and there but mostly the game runs pretty smooth at high graphics.
It had been becoming a bit more stuttery the last days but today it became unbearable, incredibly choppy with constant fps dips to low values. A total chopstorm. I'm flying the ship and it's chugging along. Used to fly pretty smooth. If I approach a landing, or when I leave the ship, it almost freezes for a while.
Lowering graphics to enhanced did very little to improve it. I was wondering if anyone has experienced this or has any ideas.

[The Cog (O.T.H.G.)]

When I had to uninstall and re-install the game it seemed to help me.

Try a disk drive defrag first.

There was also something about the shader cache I believe as well.

[taniwhat]

And check that you have nothing else using the GPU.

[Charlemagne]

RTX 2080, i5 6800K, 16 GB memory, because I know someone will ask.

[taniwhat]

I had similar issues when I was stupid enough to leave Stable diffusion running in the background when I launched NMS. That's VERY GPU heavy and NMS was unplayable.

Check your OS settings, and close down any browsers.
Both can now be set you use GPU acceleration and that will be stealing resources from NMS.

[RustyNail]

Just wild shots...

Back when I used a GTX 1080, I would sometimes experience severe lag/stutter in NMS; and what I'll mention below helped several times.

I'd try doing a clean re-install of the GPU drivers; and also check the NVIDIA control panel settings against recommended settings (there are a few videos on YouTube that review the optimal NVIDIA control panel settings for various NVIDIA GPUS).

I've heard it said that driver updates can sometimes overwrite/change control panel settings without our knowledge.

[Zak]

Since this is sudden and noticeable, have you tried... ahem, restarting your PC? Maybe you have a process that is eating away CPU time or hitting your drive?

[Guyver8]

do you have steam shadercache 'on' for NMS?

[Charlemagne]

Thanks to all. Restarting the PC helped. I had been using it all day in other games and stuff, and maybe had some memory issues. Also I did have a browser running in the background. I always do, but perhaps this time it was more obtrusive. I'll keep watching it. Maybe restart the PC every time I'm going to play NMS.

[ohiorice]

SSD? You can't defrag an SSD afaik. Biggest issues with almost any game is the pipeline for data flow. One thing not often mentioned is components loosening from the motherboard due to heat cycling.

In the old days this was a huge issue. These days it is much less of an issue but still possible. Your explanation of things slowly degrading could be a couple of things. The restart was a good idea. Depending on your skill level, you might want to investigate what software/modules load when you start the pc. Sometimes stuff we do not need or want loads itself as soon as we restart.

You can also look at the system usage via the task manager. If you are unsure as to how to use this tool, check some reputable pc channels on youtube for videos. As long as you are just looking you won't mess anything up. You really want to see what is using the resources, that is, who's the pig at the trough? This will tell you oodles as to what's happening.

Of course before you go digging too deep, ensure all your graphic drivers are current. Also look at free space on the drive where your OS is stored. If your drive gets down low on storage, the caching function of Windows will start slowing things down.

TL:DR: Check drivers. Check free storage on OS drive. Check whats loading on startup.

Oh yeah - hardware side - make sure the pc is getting good airflow, nothing is blocking vents or the fan and look in those vents for dirt or lint clogging things up, decreasing cooling. A pc will almost always slow down as it gets hotter. You'd be surprised how many pcs get their cooling intakes blocked with carpet.

All the best.

[Zak]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

Thanks to all. Restarting the PC helped. I had been using it all day in other games and stuff, and maybe had some memory issues. Also I did have a browser running in the background. I always do, but perhaps this time it was more obtrusive. I'll keep watching it. Maybe restart the PC every time I'm going to play NMS.

Sometimes a program may not quit properly and even it looks like it's closed, it may still be running in the background using your PC resources. This is rare and normally there is no need to proactively reboot each time before playing a game. But if you get a sudden onset of unusual and severe slowness or stutters then either check the Task Manager, if you know what to look for, or just reboot. If this starts happening frequently then further troubleshooting may be needed.

No, there is no need to defragment SSDs as they don't suffer from file fragmentation issues the way hard drives do, and Windows 10 and 11 maintain SSDs weekly, trimming them properly as needed.

[Know Won]

Originally posted by Zak:

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

Thanks to all. Restarting the PC helped. I had been using it all day in other games and stuff, and maybe had some memory issues. Also I did have a browser running in the background. I always do, but perhaps this time it was more obtrusive. I'll keep watching it. Maybe restart the PC every time I'm going to play NMS.

Sometimes a program may not quit properly and even it looks like it's closed, it may still be running in the background using your PC resources. This is rare and normally there is no need to proactively reboot each time before playing a game. But if you get a sudden onset of unusual and severe slowness or stutters then either check the Task Manager, if you know what to look for, or just reboot. If this starts happening frequently then further troubleshooting may be needed.

No, there is no need to defragment SSDs as they don't suffer from file fragmentation issues the way hard drives do, and Windows 10 and 11 maintain SSDs weekly, trimming them properly as needed.

Updates also cause these same issues. Hidden, invisible, background updates you may not even be able to view.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Originally posted by Board:

...Updates also cause these same issues. Hidden, invisible, background updates you may not even be able to view.

Yeah PCs often ask you to set a time for updates to the OS. Often the response is 'remind me later', perhaps updates are timed inappropriately, so the timing of updates might be changed to when you are not playing games or other busy use of the PC.

[Zak]

Originally posted by Johnny in the Clouds:

Originally posted by Board:

...Updates also cause these same issues. Hidden, invisible, background updates you may not even be able to view.

Yeah PCs often ask you to set a time for updates to the OS. Often the response is 'remind me later', perhaps updates are timed inappropriately, so the timing of updates might be changed to when you are not playing games or other busy use of the PC.

Windows active hours, when updates won't run, by default are only 8 AM to 5 PM. So for many people this is inadequate as evening is the time most people play games. Microsoft is such a weird company, do they think people don't use PCs heavily after 5PM? Although Windows Updates are fairly light on resources and rarely cause bad performance issues. But it could be any other piece of software trying to update. Not all developers do things properly.

Most likely though, it was just another game not quitting properly.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by ohiorice:

SSD? You can't defrag an SSD afaik.

Oh, you can defrag an SSD, but it is not necessary and doesn't improve performance, so most utilities intended to defrag normal hard drives will simply ignore SSDs.

Running a defrag on an SSD also creates a huge amount of writes and degrades the lifespan of the drive. So if you do want to defrag your SSD, only do that once or maybe twice a year using a defrag utility which knows about SSDs, TRIM, and VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to avoid wearing the drive out too quickly.

[Charlemagne]

Just an update. I'm following good computing hygiene, not having other programs open, seeing if anything is guzzling memory in task manager, etc. and enjoying smooth play again.