Micro-Stutter Every 20-30 Seconds

[Freely]

This dude uploaded a video of the exact issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOvtrnIajpc

I honestly cannot remember this being an issue back when I played in 2016. Google the issue, run across a dozen forum posts, nothing seems to fix. Unity problem? I honestly do not know.

960 / 4790k / 8GB / W10

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

What is your perspective?

The video is from 2016. So, even if you don't remember anything like that, in 2016 the maker of the video apparently was affected by it and found it necessary to record a video - perhaps the video has been linked in a problem report in the official tech support forum, but maybe not even that. One can find ancient topics from 2015 about "micro-stutter" every 20s.

Do I remember "micro-stutter"? I'm aware of Unity engine related performance problems, which cannot be fixed with high-end gaming hardware. In 2015-2016 I've played the game with 3-4 different graphics hardware setups, including a basic office desktop computer and one graphics adapter where the game crashed during the first cutscene while another one using the same driver worked fine. I've read about FPS issues, and I don't claim that I have had 60 FPS everywhere within the game. That has just not been important to me in a game where areas to explore are rather small, where one uses slow mode and/or party scouting mode as to detect traps and hidden caches and where I turned on Auto-Slow on Combat, too, and would pause combat from time to time. I've noticed that the engine isn't free of problems.

The video makers says "every minute / 30 seconds". You say 20-30 seconds. That could indicate that it may be related to a timer based task/thread that is executedly regularly and somehow disturbs party movement animations briefly. Either within the game program or also outside, such as something running in the background.

But foremost I remember that lots of graphical effects during combat, such as explosions for AoE spells, could occupy large portions of the screen and hide characters and opponents, making it impossible to see what is happening on the battle field. That has been bad in some cases, and I consider it a defect that is worse than what is shown in the video.

Conclusively, if there's "micro-stutter" that affects many or possibly all players while simply running across the screen for 30 seconds, oh well, don't hope for a late fix. Maybe point Google at Obsidian's tech support forum and try to find the first topics where it may have been reported to the devs. Sometimes the posts in such topics give some insight - but note that PoE 2 is not free of performance problems either.

[Freely]

Hmm.. This must be one of those "it could be worse" and just "deal with it" seeing as there are just way too many people expressing the same issue since the backer beta. Apparently PoE 2 has the same problem.

Course you get those "Works fine for me" and "Never notice this before" types. All in all? Guessing this is.. An issue with the Engine itself? Eh.

[Spliff]

Originally posted by Freely:

Hmm.. This must be one of those "it could be worse" and just "deal with it" seeing as there are just way too many people expressing the same issue since the backer beta. Apparently PoE 2 has the same problem.

Course you get those "Works fine for me" and "Never notice this before" types. All in all? Guessing this is.. An issue with the Engine itself? Eh.

it works fine for 99.9% of people who buy it, that's good enough imo

[John Doe]

One of the possible fixes, iirc, is change your "power plan" to high performance in win 10. At least, this helped me, but not everyone.

[Troboba]

Originally posted by Freely:

This dude uploaded a video of the exact issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOvtrnIajpc

I honestly cannot remember this being an issue back when I played in 2016. Google the issue, run across a dozen forum posts, nothing seems to fix. Unity problem? I honestly do not know.

960 / 4790k / 8GB / W10

Don't worry, it's a common issue in PoE 1. There's nothing wrong with your PC. I have tested this game on three completely different PCs and this periodic stuttering occurred on each one.

Some people on the Obsidian Forum have already analyzed this issue in detail. Unfortunately, there is still no way to fix it:

Link 1 [forums.obsidian.net]

Link 2 [forums.obsidian.net]

Here is another video from someone who also recorded this issue. You can even watch Let's Plays on YouTube for this game and notice the periodic stuttering. :D

My Specs:
Win 10 - 64 bit - Power plan: High performance
AMD RX580 - latest driver
i5 8400
16GB DDR4
SSD
Monitor (HDMI): 1920x1080 - 60Hz

[Chillin]

ever since these windows updates my game has not playd properly..now no sound and i cant fix it. wtf

[Ridebird]

For anyone searching for solutions, let me save you some time by chiming in with Troboba above that there is none.

This is just how the game is. POE2 is the same. It's garbage, yes, and it diminishes the enjoyment of two fantastic games. It is an unfortunate effect from using Unity (not all Unity games stutter, but a lot do, on console as well) and it is for some reason extremely apparent in POE1/2.

[Caramel_Clown]

I had similar issue in other game a while ago. I've narrowed it down to weird HDD behavior due to the use of monitoring software. I used Hardware Info 64, which polls information from various components including HDD your game might be installed on. Mine was set to 500ms, and stutters occured at roughly same interval. After closing it, everything ran fine. Now, this might not apply to this game. And it was more of a case of ancient crappy HDD, but who knows. Check any OC, monitoring software you might run in a background. Try closing it. Just throwing ideas out there.

[Troboba]

Originally posted by Ridebird:

For anyone searching for solutions, let me save you some time by chiming in with Troboba above that there is none.

This is just how the game is. POE2 is the same. It's garbage, yes, and it diminishes the enjoyment of two fantastic games. It is an unfortunate effect from using Unity (not all Unity games stutter, but a lot do, on console as well) and it is for some reason extremely apparent in POE1/2.

This issue also occurs in POE2 ? I haven't played it yet. That's unfortunate. Hopefully The Outer Worlds with UE4 is better optimized than POE1/2.

[Kareisha]

i had a similar problem, and the only way i fixed its with my antivirus avast. i added an exception to the steam folder. and now its working fine...