Trying to nail the stuttering issues some are having.

[cogvos]

Hi,

We regularly get posts from players who are having stuttering issues in NMS. They generally seem to be running high end nvidia cards (30/40 series) and Intel 12th gen + cpus. Sometimes uninstalling geforce experience fixes these, sometimes it does not as they didn't install that in the first place.

However other folk have no issues with apparently the same hardware.

So to try and nail this thing, or at least point the devs in a direction, please use the below form (just copy it) to post your specs. Please do not post anything else here, just the information in the form. Please keep this thread just for the information and link to it in others for discussion.

There are some good tech savvy people here and hopefully putting this info in one place will reveal a common link that can help everyone with the issues they are having. At the very least we can point the devs at this thread.

Thanks.
<edit> have added an OS section.
<edit 2> added a VR section
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Does your game stutter (yes/no) ?
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc :
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ?
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ?
If laptop, what make and model ?
(New)What OS are you using?
What is your CPU? (make and model) ?
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ?
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ?
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ?
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ?
(new2) Are you running the game using VR if so what device?
What is your anti-aliasing setting ?
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)?
Is your game modded in any way ?
---------------------------
Optional
Please briefly describe the stuttering. Does the game freeze? is it a significant frame drop? What happens?
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To start off here is my contribution:

Does your game stutter (yes/no) ? NO
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : N/A
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? N/A
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? DESKTOP
If laptop, what make and model ? N/A
(New)What OS are you using? Win 10
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? AMD RYZEN 3600
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 32GB DDR4 @ 3200
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? 6GB NVIDIA 1060
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? NO
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 1920*1080 FULLSCREEN
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? FXAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? SSD
Is your game modded in any way ? NO

[Zak]

Does you game stutter (yes/no) ? NO
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : NA
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? Only stuttered really bad once last year after a major update but it was fixed within a week, also can be somewhat choppy during expeditions, and in multiplayer on busy planets... but solo, MP off, far from "populated" areas NO stutters
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? DIY desktop
If laptop, what make and model ?
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? Intel 13900K
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 64GB (16x4) DDR5 5600
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? Gigabyte RTX4080 Gaming OC 16GB
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? NO GFE
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 3440x1440, fullscreen only, always
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? DLSS Balanced
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? NVME M.2 SSD
Is your game modded in any way ? Oh yes, I have at least 10 mods loaded t any given time

Thanks for trying to tackle this. Hopefully this will get somewhere.

[Raven]

Does you game stutter? NO
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : N/A
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? N/A
What is your PC form factor? Desktop
If laptop, what make and model ? N/A
What is your CPU? 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700F 2.10 GHz
What is you systems ram? 32GB ddr4
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? NVIDIA GeFORCE RTX 3070 8GB
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? YES
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use? Full Screen 1600 X 900
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? TAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? NVME M.2 SSD
Is your game modded in any way ? NO

Edit: Win 11 (SSD no defragmentation)

[ignition]

Does you game stutter (yes/no) ? yes
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : space only.
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? Never before only after Omega (expedition bug patch).
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? LAPTOP
If laptop, what make and model ? Lenovo LOQ16IRH
(New)What OS are you using? Win 11
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? Intel i7-13620H
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 16GB DD5-5600
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? RTX 4060 8GB
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? Hell NO!
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 2560x1600, Borderless.
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? DLSS - Balanced.
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? XPG S70 Blade.NVME. PCIE4.
Is your game modded in any way ? NO [/quote]
Description: My Max FPS setting is 83: but its starts to drop to 70's and there is input lag (using xbox controller).
My Solution: Using Lenovo Vantage Software: Change Power Settings to Balanced with Legion AI On.

[TonyMax.Fr]

Does you game stutter (yes/no) ? no
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : N/A
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? N/A
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? DESKTOP
If laptop, what make and model ? N/A
(New)What OS are you using? Win 10 pro cracked edition
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? Intel Core i5 9600k @ 4,5GHz
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 32GB DDR4 @ 3200
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? EVGA RTX 2070 super XC
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? no
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 1920*1080 FULLSCREEN
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? TAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? SSD
Is your game modded in any way ? NO

I'm sure playing the game in 'only' 1080p with a SSD is the better to not have issues. I have a 4k monitor but i hate playing in 4k.
I have little issues in bases in VR but it's in ~1440p.

[Daemonjax]

Does your game stutter (yes/no)? No. But it used to stutter (measurable fps drops to 0), until i fixed it. Not in space, though, that was always fine.
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? desktop
(New)What OS are you using? Win10 (installed august 2023, and never updated after that)
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? 10700k @5ghz, fixed voltage, hyperthreading disabled
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 32gb ddr4 3600 CAS:14 (with a 32gb pagefile because this game has a large commit size)
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? 4070ti super, 16gb
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? No
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? Fullscreen, Vulkan native swapchain -- verified with presentmon it's using hardware flip... but it doesn't really matter that much, stutter-wise.
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? DLAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? M.2 nvme
Is your game modded in any way ? Yes, kinda -- I unpacked NMSARC.MeshMisc.pak

You should also ask what resolution we're playing at. My lcd is 1920x1200 native, but I'm using DLDSR 2.25x, so the game's rendering at 2880x1800. triple buffer vsync, 60hz. Note: ingame fps limiter needs to be set to above vsync hz in order to not starve the buffer (so 61, 120, 240 are all fine for vsync @ 60hz). If you starve the buffer. then... there's no buffering happening. I also used CRU to set the hz to exactly 60 (60.001 actual reported in windows).

Probably also want to ask what planet quality is set to, because that affects draw distance. Mine is ulltra.

And texture quality... game uses 8.7gb vram for ultra texture quality. Mine's ultra. I'd expect stuttering on 8gb cards on ultra.

What fixed my stuttering:
1) NMSARC.MeshMisc.pak needs to be unpacked to eliminate that one long stutter when exiting a planet's atmosphere. This is the only thing that fixes this one stutter.
2) I needed to set the nms.exe priority to Low (which was enough when rendering at 1920x1200). With DLDSR, I need to ALSO set Win32PrioritySeparation to a value that disabled foreground process multiplier (so 0x24, for example). Doing these things slows down the overly aggressive texture loading, which eliminates all other stutters.
3) At higher res (using DLDSR) I have to run in fullscreen, or I get what LOOKS like stutters (but really isn't) when talking to NPCs or interacting with similar objects because in borderless mode (which can only really be achieved with vulkan over dxgi swapchain forced to on) the game screws up the camera placement relative to mouse position.
4) I also pre-cache the GAMEDATA folder. Because why not.
5) I forgot to mention: I used CRU to set my lcd refresh rate to 60hz (instead of 59.5) -- this has a HUGE impact in smoothness in all games (I always play with vsync on), particularly when moving the camera, which is what you're doing 98% of the time in most games. Windows reports it as 60.001 actual, but whatever. It doesn't need to be 60, it could be whatever your lcd supports (49, 75, whatever) -- but it needs to be an integer value, or at least super close and a bit over... never a bit under. And certainly not an inbetween value like 59.5. Updating drivers resets this. So does, as I found, switching from HDMI to a displayport cable. I admit it's a little weird that this matters, but I swear it's not some OCD thing I do for no reason.

Figuring out what was wrong with the colors in fullscreen relative to borderless revealed my lcd panel refused to display full rgb color when using an hdmi cable no matter what -- I needed to change it for a displayport cable (my gpu doesn't have a dvi port, otherwise that woulda worked too. Probably). This also revealed that "limited" RGB color, like for TVs, just plain looks bad and should be avoided when possible, because it looked BETTER when it was just crushing the whites and blacks (in borderless mode) due to the mismatch (full rgb color set in nvcp).

[Idaho]

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Does your game stutter (yes/no) ? yes, rarely (fps drop to single digits)
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : space, only near space stations
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? it began very recently
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? desktop
If laptop, what make and model ?
(New)What OS are you using? Win10
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? AMD R7 5800x
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? DDR4, pc3200, 64GB
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? RTX 3060 12GB vram
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? no (physx also not installed)
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 1080p, borderless
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? DLAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? nvme
Is your game modded in any way ? heavily modded (25-30 mods, mostly visual)
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Stuttering happens very rarely at space stations when conditions are right (lots of nearby asteroids AND freighters warp in close to station). Installing a mod to remove all asteroids alleviates the issue completely. Traveling more than 25,000u from the station also instantly stops the stuttering.
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[Zef]

Does your game stutter (yes/no) YES
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : everywhere, leaving planets, entering space stations, leaving space stations, turning the camera around while on foot
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? It has always stuttered for me but i only started playing it one year ago
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? DESKTOP
If laptop, what make and model ?
(New)What OS are you using? WIN 11
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? RYZEN 9 7900X
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 64 GB DDR5-6000
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? 7900 XTX 24Gb VRAM
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ?
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? BORDERLESS 4K
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? FSR 2
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? NVME
Is your game modded in any way ? NO

they never gonna fix this, it's been like this for year(s)

[TonyMax.Fr]

Originally posted by Idaho:

What is your anti-aliasing setting ? adaptive

Are you sure you're not talking about your vertical sync here? Never heard of a "adaptative" option for Anti Aliasing.

[wkitty42]

i wanted to add that if one still can, has the local storage device been defragmented so all the files' pieces are in one large consecutive allotment? if the storage system as to hunt about for all the pieces of a fragmented file, it can definitely slow down IO and lead to stutters...

[TonyMax.Fr]

Originally posted by wkitty42:

i wanted to add that if one still can, has the local storage device been defragmented so all the files' pieces are in one large consecutive allotment? if the storage system as to hunt about for all the pieces of a fragmented file, it can definitely slow down IO and lead to stutters...

Do NOT defragment a SSD or a Nvme in any way ! Fragment of files only slowdown old hard disks with a mechanic system, not magnetic disks. It will drop down their lifetime and break them.
Be aware.

(sorry if bad english)

[Daemonjax]

Originally posted by wkitty42:

i wanted to add that if one still can, has the local storage device been defragmented so all the files' pieces are in one large consecutive allotment? if the storage system as to hunt about for all the pieces of a fragmented file, it can definitely slow down IO and lead to stutters...

We can just pre-cache the GAMEDATA folder to eliminate all disk i/o from the equation.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Does your game stutter (yes/no)? Rarely and in very specific situations, because my settings are probably a little high for my system, but a bit of stutter here and there doesn't bother me enough to turn off the pretty. Pretty is the priority for me.

If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc: On grass-covered planets and in the Anomaly if there are a lot of people on it. I'm assuming the latter is more because of my crappy satellite internet that's the best I can have here in the middle of nowhere at very high elevation.

If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? It's always done the little stuttering I get because I must have the pretty.

What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? A desktop, built by a competent professional techie person about 8-10 years ago to be a machine to do large-scale professional digital art on.
If laptop, what make and model ? N/A

(New)What OS are you using? Win10.

What is your CPU? (make and model) ? 6th-gen i5, I think it's 3.2GHz.

What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed)? All I know is that I have 64GB of it. It's probably whatever type/speed was the best available 8-10 years ago because lots of fast RAM is very important for large-scale digital art.

What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? 4GB GTX 1050Ti. Since this machine is now used solely to play (mostly older) games and watch movies on these days, this is sufficient for my needs. When it dies, I'll upgrade it.

For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed? ......Apparently, yes. I've never touched it, though.

What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 1080p borderless

What is your anti-aliasing setting ? Uh...The highest one on the list in the game. Maybe FXAA?

What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? SSD

Is your game modded in any way ? I use a handful of mods, most of them visual ones (terrain/planet generation, more color palettes for everything, better water shaders, ones that change/improve lighting, etc.), for the pretty. These affect GPU performance, I imagine, but there is no more stutter now than before I started using them. I do use one that stops fade-in, which according to the description is supposed to improve performance. I don't know if it really does; I just use it because the fade-in annoys me.

[catch22atplay]

Does your game stutter (yes/no) ? NO
If yes, where. Eg space, on foot etc : N/A
If yes, has it always stuttered, if not what update did this start ? N/A
What is your PC form factor (laptop/desktop) ? Desktop
If laptop, what make and model ? N/A
(New)What OS are you using? Win 11 64bit Pro
What is your CPU? (make and model) ? I5 13600kf
What is you systems ram (size, type - ddr4 or ddr5 - and speed) ? 32gb DDR5 6200mhz
What is your GPU, include its ram as well ? RTX 4080 16gb
For NVIDIA cards. Do you have Gforce experience installed ? Hell NO
What resolution and screen (full,windowed,borderless) do you use ? 2560x1440 Full and Borderless
What is your anti-aliasing setting ? DLAA or TAA
What storage type is NMS installed on (SSD,NVMe,Hard-drive)? NVME
Is your game modded in any way ? NO
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Optional
I use Hyperthreading and all cores are enabled. I also have cpu core parking disabled. The last helps in lots of games. Core parking is horrible and always has been.

[Daemonjax]

Originally posted by catch22atplay:

Optional
I use Hyperthreading and all cores are enabled. I also have cpu core parking disabled. The last helps in lots of games. Core parking is horrible and always has been.

I edited a clone of the high performance power profile, and used Power Settings Explorer to expose the setting: Disable Idle. Running that profile drops my DPC latency to 0.7 ns, heh. Overkill? Probably. ;) But, yeah, I have CPU and Package c-states below 2 disabled in bios for overlocking stability reasons -- it's just too much work for me to dial everything in perfectly, otherwise... Unless I overshoot the vdroop, but I don't wanna do that.

[wkitty42]

Originally posted by TonyMax.Fr:

Originally posted by wkitty42:

i wanted to add that if one still can, has the local storage device been defragmented so all the files' pieces are in one large consecutive allotment? if the storage system as to hunt about for all the pieces of a fragmented file, it can definitely slow down IO and lead to stutters...

Do NOT defragment a SSD or a Nvme in any way ! Fragment of files only slowdown old hard disks with a mechanic system, not magnetic disks. It will drop down their lifetime and break them.
Be aware.

(sorry if bad english)

yes, good point that i should have made clear... i was speaking of spinning rust media... solid state storage does not have physical heads that must be moved back and forth across the spinning platters...