Stutter

[DOOMed]

OK so I run a Ryzen 7 x1700x and an Asus Rog Strix RX480 o8g gaming gpu, along with 16 gigs of Ram. I know it's a few years old now, but the specs exceed the recommended for this game.

Yet I'm getting an odd stutter when moving or looking around. The FPS do dip sometimes but never to less than 120, and are usuallya round the 200 mark via steam's FPS display.

I'm running at 1920 x 1080 (monitors native res) on High settings, with water reflections turned down one notch (I get the warning indicator when it's on Ultra). Yet I'm still getting this annoying stutter. Are there any settings I should concentrate on? I've read some posts that seem to say that it is an engine issue, but wondered if anybody else knows anything.

Help appreciated.

[AlexTECPlayz]

It IS an engine issue. It's being pushed to its absolute limits before it starts dropping FPS like crazy, or even crash straight up.

[DOOMed]

It's strange, I got past the point where the incident occurs, and it seems to have stopped. At least for now.

[AlexTECPlayz]

Originally posted by Get Some!:

It's strange, I got past the point where the incident occurs, and it seems to have stopped. At least for now.

Not all maps push the limits. You may see stuttering again in Xen.

[hitbm47]

I get the stutter as well, seems to be a frame-pacing bug in certain parts of the maps. Currently on Ryzen 5 1600 and RX 480, seems to be more of a bug than a performance issue, since I can maintain 75FPS VSync in the area but the frametimes are jumping crazy instead of 13.3ms constantly I get jumps between 5ms - 10ms, etc.
Maybe a fullscreen/windowed/windows10/freesync compatibility bug.

I am currently experiencing it since around the rocket area just before you get to the first outdoors area.

Edit:

So setting the game to Windowed Borderless causes the game to use traditional Triple Buffered VSync and causes the frame rate to increase to 160-280FPS which removes the frame-pacing issue but is not healthy for the card since it is running at max load then.
Seems the game might have a bug with not knowing to time/pace for fullscreen or windowed VSync intervals or something of the kind in that area. Do you think the Developers will read this post?

Edit #2:

Ok so the frame-pacing is definitely related to the current Radeon (driver version doesn't seem to matter) + Windows 10 + Black Mesa combination in Fullscreen mode, since I was able to test a Nvidia as well and it did not have the frame-pacing issues.
Please note the game scales bad on multi-cores as well, there are instances where it only runs on one core on my R5 1600 causing low FPS as well, but this is a different performance problem in the games' coding.

What for the most part resolves the issue is to do the following:
- Set screen refresh to desired framerate (I recommend 60Hz)
- Disable in-game VSync and use Exclusive Fullscreen mode in-game.
- Set Radeon Chill Min & Max = 60FPS which is a CPU limiter and removes the "Render Ahead queue" stutter for this game. You can try Radeon anti-lag as well, but Chill instead seemed more consistent and reduces input-latency even more in this case.
- Set Frame Rate Target Control to 60FPS in Global Radeon Settings; since Chill breaks in low poly-count areas; and you need FRTC for stable GPU FPS limiting, but use Chill & FRTC in conjunction for this game.
- Enable Enhanced Sync to prevent screen tearing at the top of Refresh Rate even if you have FreeSync.

[Bitmiko]

Originally posted by Get Some!:

OK so I run a Ryzen 7 x1700x and an Asus Rog Strix RX480 o8g gaming gpu, along with 16 gigs of Ram. I know it's a few years old now, but the specs exceed the recommended for this game.

Yet I'm getting an odd stutter when moving or looking around. The FPS do dip sometimes but never to less than 120, and are usuallya round the 200 mark via steam's FPS display.

I'm running at 1920 x 1080 (monitors native res) on High settings, with water reflections turned down one notch (I get the warning indicator when it's on Ultra). Yet I'm still getting this annoying stutter. Are there any settings I should concentrate on? I've read some posts that seem to say that it is an engine issue, but wondered if anybody else knows anything.

Help appreciated.

Hello, try medium settings and fullscreen then try it again.

[EST-JP RS/BR]

I'm having huge stuttering in outside areas. Started in "On The Rails", and now even inside I get some random stutter (which didn't happend before I opened the door which leads to the rocket area). As I searched a whole lot in the internet, seems like a lot of players are experiencing this stutter.
I have this game for a long time. Played when I bought it, but left after a couple of hours. And I don't remember having this issue cuz I was like in the middle of the campaign and it never happend, but it does now.

[hitbm47]

Originally posted by jp:

I'm having huge stuttering in outside areas. Started in "On The Rails", and now even inside I get some random stutter (which didn't happend before I opened the door which leads to the rocket area). As I searched a whole lot in the internet, seems like a lot of players are experiencing this stutter.
I have this game for a long time. Played when I bought it, but left after a couple of hours. And I don't remember having this issue cuz I was like in the middle of the campaign and it never happend, but it does now.

Hi JP, did you look at my comment?

[ShugoTheRipper]

The Source engine is known to stutter on Ryzen systems with RAM that is not configured to proper dual channel.

Alternately the communication between the chiplets on Ryzen systems can be a bottle neck. You can try installing Ryzen Master and turn off a CCD. This will half the available cores but reduce the latency between cores in addition to allowing the Ryzen CPU to boost higher (With both CCDs enabled, communication need to cross the infinity fabric twice as much; in a worst case vs just turning off a CCD for gaming.)

This is a highly simplified explanation. You may want to look into both those things.

I don't stutter at all with a 3900x / GTX1080; but I do find turning off a CCDs can give better performance and better boosting when playing certain games. Disabling a CCD worked wonder for Half Life: Alyx for example.

[:::... FulVal85 [LMHT] ...:::]

Disable APM in your disk and stutter will be fixed

[hitbm47]

Originally posted by ShugoTheRipper:

The Source engine is known to stutter on Ryzen systems with RAM that is not configured to proper dual channel.

Alternately the communication between the chiplets on Ryzen systems can be a bottle neck. You can try installing Ryzen Master and turn off a CCD. This will half the available cores but reduce the latency between cores in addition to allowing the Ryzen CPU to boost higher (With both CCDs enabled, communication need to cross the infinity fabric twice as much; in a worst case vs just turning off a CCD for gaming.)

This is a highly simplified explanation. You may want to look into both those things.

I don't stutter at all with a 3900x / GTX1080; but I do find turning off a CCDs can give better performance and better boosting when playing certain games. Disabling a CCD worked wonder for Half Life: Alyx for example.

I guess no one read and tried the guide I wrote. As I have mentioned, the issue is with Radeon Cards and this game and the render ahead queue, there are instances I have thoroughly tested where it is not CPU bottlenecking, and that is the area he is referring to; so to repeat myself in this case you have to set Chill to 60FPS, enable Enhanced Sync, set FRTC to 60FPS and start the game in exclusive fullscreen mode.
Like I said, I have tested this scenario with an Nvidia card and it doesn't suffer the same frame pacing issues in areas where the CPU is not bottlenecking.
Furthermore, the CCX issue you are describing is not as big of an issue on chips such as the Ryzen 5 1600, 2600 or 3600 hence why AMD does not natively give the game mode option in Ryzen Master for our CPUs, actually from what I read the CCX issue was mostly resolved, but it is actually the fact that some of the Ryzen CPUs has more than 8 physical cores where it negatively impacts performance in games that do not scale.
Furthermore, as I have also mentioned there are areas where this game runs 100% load on a single core, even on a modern-ish R6 1600 which does bottleneck the game to 40FPS, but these aren't the stutters people are referring to, there are areas where the RX 480/ RX 580 cards are getting 200FPS but the game sutters horribly due to some bad frame pacing issue.

[jazluvr]

I got rid of the stutter (new amd build-5800x) after starting new game, and tweaking settings, but now it's back, just a little,

[hitbm47]

Originally posted by jazluvr:

I got rid of the stutter (new amd build-5800x) after starting new game, and tweaking settings, but now it's back, just a little,

You see and a 5800X CPU is not going to drop below 60FPS even in the single thread bound areas. Try the guide I posted above, I am playing with a R5 1600 and RX 480 at the Highest preset and the things I mentioned in my guide resolved the frame-pacing issues.

[DOOMed]

Originally posted by JMB:

Originally posted by Get Some!:

OK so I run a Ryzen 7 x1700x and an Asus Rog Strix RX480 o8g gaming gpu, along with 16 gigs of Ram. I know it's a few years old now, but the specs exceed the recommended for this game.

Yet I'm getting an odd stutter when moving or looking around. The FPS do dip sometimes but never to less than 120, and are usuallya round the 200 mark via steam's FPS display.

I'm running at 1920 x 1080 (monitors native res) on High settings, with water reflections turned down one notch (I get the warning indicator when it's on Ultra). Yet I'm still getting this annoying stutter. Are there any settings I should concentrate on? I've read some posts that seem to say that it is an engine issue, but wondered if anybody else knows anything.

Help appreciated.

Hello, try medium settings and fullscreen then try it again.

I did this, still get stutter. Which to be honest, I kinda expected. Why? Because of my specs exceeding recommended reqs, and due to my fps never dropping below 120. Even the game itself tells me that the only real issue at high settings is the water reflections. It is not graphical stutter. It's something else. Driver issue maybe, though I doubt it.

Or as hitbm47 says, though I haven't tried this yet.

It's also perhaps noteworthy that when playing half life 2, this stutter does not occur.

[hitbm47]

Originally posted by Get Some!:

Originally posted by JMB:

Hello, try medium settings and fullscreen then try it again.

I did this, still get stutter. Which to be honest, I kinda expected. Why? Because of my specs exceeding recommended reqs, and due to my fps never dropping below 120. Even the game itself tells me that the only real issue at high settings is the water reflections. It is not graphical stutter. It's something else. Driver issue maybe, though I doubt it.

Or as hitbm47 says, though I haven't tried this yet.

It's also perhaps noteworthy that when playing half life 2, this stutter does not occur.

Hi @Get Some

I believe you, and yes in this case it is a software issue; either on AMD's or Black Mesa developers side; and as I have stated, it can be mostly resolved with the steps I have given. I have noticed a similar issue in Test Drive Unlimited 2 where the stutters also had something to do with the Render Ahead queue even at high frame-rates.

[DOOMed]

Originally posted by hitbm47:

Originally posted by Get Some!:

I did this, still get stutter. Which to be honest, I kinda expected. Why? Because of my specs exceeding recommended reqs, and due to my fps never dropping below 120. Even the game itself tells me that the only real issue at high settings is the water reflections. It is not graphical stutter. It's something else. Driver issue maybe, though I doubt it.

Or as hitbm47 says, though I haven't tried this yet.

It's also perhaps noteworthy that when playing half life 2, this stutter does not occur.

Hi @Get Some

I believe you, and yes in this case it is a software issue; either on AMD's or Black Mesa developers side; and as I have stated, it can be mostly resolved with the steps I have given. I have noticed a similar issue in Test Drive Unlimited 2 where the stutters also had something to do with the Render Ahead queue even at high frame-rates.

I am just about to try your steps now, though I can't seem to find FRTC in my radeon global settings...