Lag and Stuttering ONLY in Final Boss Rooms

[Soul]

I have beaten every other boss (including the DLC bosses) and have completed almost all content (110% completion) and never experienced any lag except in the final boss rooms. When I enter Hollow Knight's room I experience stuttering and lag. When Hollow Knight does his battle cry the lag is at it's worst. I also experience bad lag in Radiance's room (with or without her on screen).

Entering Hollow Knight's room and then leaving makes the lag persist in areas I have never lagged in. This effect lasts for about 30 seconds before going away.

I also lag in SOME cutscenes (like the ending cutscenes), but not all (such as in the mushroom cutscene or Godmaster cutscenes).

Is there any way to get rid of the lag and stuttering in the final boss rooms? Are these rooms just more graphically demanding (or poorly optimized) compared to the rest of the game?

Computer Specs: i5-4430 @ 3.0 GHz, GTX 650 Ti, 16 Gb of Ram

*It should be noted that changing the resolution or v-sync or fps or windowed/fullscreen has no affect on reducing the lag.

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

Your PC is a real beast for this game. Especially the graphics card. I personally am playing on an Intel HD Graphics 4600 which is a few times slower than your card, and I don't notice any lag most of the time in 1920x1080. Only some places like Colosseum of Fools, Godhome or some boss fights (including HK) run slower (like ~35-40 fps), so then I just lower the resolution to 1280x720. No cutscenes lag whatsoever.

These rooms are more graphically demanding. Generally the game uses much more GPU than CPU.

Have you tried:
— changing the blur quality to medium? and then to low if medium didn't help?
— lowering Particle Quality? (the most of the game's slowdowns comes from lots of particles on the screen)
— moving the game folder to an SSD (or even a RAMDisk), to see if it's a disk load problem?
— resetting your NVidia Control Panel settings to default?
— turning off MSI Afterburner/RTSS/other OSD programs before launching the game?
— turning off XBox Game Bar?
— turning off Steam Overlay for HK?
— adding an exception for HK folder in your antivirus program?
— closing all software except Steam before launching the game?
— clean manual reinstall of graphics drivers?

[Soul]

Thank you for taking the time to try and help me Rezno! I ended up trying all your suggestions but sadly none of them fixed the issue. No cut-scenes lag anymore except for the one following Hollow Knight's ending (The only other cut-scene I lagged on was the intro cut-scene but that was most likely due to default resolution issues with my 4k monitor when the game first starts).

Some more info about my setup and situation:

- The "stutters" or "lag" I am referring to is a 0.5 second visual freeze that happens every couple of seconds.
- The game is installed on a SSD.
- I have checked that the game is using the correct graphics card.
- Maximising the graphics settings (resolution, blur, particles,v-sync,fps cap) doesn't actually make the stutters worse, nor does minimising it make it better.
- I monitored my performance while in the boss rooms (with no background application processes) and saw nothing abnormal (no performance spikes or high usage of cpu/gpu/ram/disk).
- I reinstalled the game but that did not help either.
- I do not have any mods installed.
- When the stutters happens, the steam fps tracker goes from 60 to 45.

While monitoring the performance in Radiance's room, I noticed that after 1-2 minutes the stutters completely went away. This method of waiting for the stutters to disappear does not work in Hollow Knight's room. This leads me to believe that the stuttering in Radiance's room is the "leftover" stutters I experienced (mentioned in the first post) that happen when I enter and leave Hollow Knights room. The problem seems to be only Hollow Knight's room, and by proxy affects Radiance's room for a limited time. This would also explain why only the cut-scene after Hollow Knight's ending stutters.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or has encountered a similar problem with Hollow Knight and their room?

I am going to attempt to get to and fight the Hollow Knight in the Pantheon (Pure Vessel) to see if I experience stutters there too. I will update this post when I get there.

[MADE IN IRON]

Originally posted by Pechi:

Does anyone have any other suggestions or has encountered a similar problem with Hollow Knight and their room?

It happened to me too, but after finishing the game. I completed the game just with 102%, and never had any notable performance issue. Don't remember the graphic settings, but they weren't on minimum as it wasn't needed.
But then, when trying to fight HN for another ending, similar issues to the ones you describe started. Then lowered all the graphic settings, but didn't improve. After that, I tried PoP and experienced problems there too, but just the first time after HN. After some time they dissapeared.
I hadn't entered the Temple of the Black Egg in a while and didn't experienced the problems anymore.

No suggestions, that place is cursed. (?)

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

My pleasure! You did lots of things already.
I'm really not sure what else can be done. Maybe it's just how the game works on your PC+monitor combo. It seems some people have the same problem. It can be hard to pin-point the exact culprit in such situations.

Some ideas worth checking:
— What are your max temperatures? CPU, GPU, Motherboard, disks? (best way to check that is to use hwinfo64's sensors, minimize, play the game and then check the max values)
— Checking if the CPU and GPU are not downclocking / throttling (best way is to use windowed mode for this)
— Disable (or enable) Game Mode in Windows
— Setting Windows Power Plan to High Performance
— Changing Windows Desktop resolution to 1920x1080, and then launching Hollow Knight with the same resolution in game
— Alt+Enter switches between Borderless Fullscreen/Windowed
— trying Exclusive Fullscreen mode by adding

-screen-fullscreen 1 -window-mode exclusive

to the game launch options
— In Hollow Knight/hollow_knight_data/Config.ini set FrameRateCap=60 and then launch the game and activate frame limiter in options with VSync turned off
— If your monitor supports GSync/Freesync/HDR by any chance try turning them off

[Soul]

Thank you Made in Iron for your experience. It is reassuring that other people have had similar problems.

Thank you Rezno for once again suggesting multiple possible fixes to my problem! I really appreciate you trying to troubleshoot this problem for me.

Once again I tried all your suggestions but the fight still has stutters. Like you said, this seems to be a unique problem due to a combination of my hardware and how it handles the fight. My computer setup is 7 years old and I use a 4k monitor that is not purposed for gaming. It is possible there is something wrong with a piece of my hardware that is not diagnosable.

- Lowering my desktop resolution to 1920x1080 actually lowered the frequency of the stutters as well as their duration! It still is problematic, but the fight is a lot easier now!
- My CPU and GPU are not down-clocking. They are running consistently at their correct clock speeds.
- During the boss fight my CPU, Motherboard, and RAM operate from around 40-45C, never going above 50C. My GPU hovers around 70C never going above 75C. These values are pretty consistent with the rest of the game. To my knowledge these values are pretty normal for a computer running a video game.
- All other suggestions did not make any noticeable difference to the stuttering.

I have also fought the Hollow Knight version in the Pantheon (Pure Vessel) and that fight runs perfectly fine.

I am not sure what else can be done to optimise the game so the fight runs more smoothly. As it is, the fight is manageable, but it is a shame it is happening to myself and others without a consistent solution. Thank you for all the help!

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

I appreciate the dedication and everything that you are doing to solve your problem :)
I'm glad that at least one of these things helped reducing the stutters.

So if reducing desktop resolution reduced them, then my guess would be that something is going on between your graphics card and monitor. Because reducing desktop resolution reduces also the VRAM usage of the card (from 4K to 1080p it's ~4x reduction) as well as memory bandwidth usage.

The stutters may be due to having too little total VRAM on the card. If you have a 1 GB model, then you definitively 99.99% have your culprit here. If you have the 2 GB model though, then theoretically it shouldn't be that bad, but everything is possible (especially if it only happens on just this one moment in the game, where VRAM requirements can be higher than in the rest of the game).

You're right, all the temps are even better than totally fine!

Would you mind sharing a screenshot of your GPU specs from GPU-Z just for reference? I mean this page: https://sta.sh/0k9g3ej65v1

[Soul]

I do indeed have 1 GB of VRAM on my graphics card. Here is my graphics card: https://imgur.com/gallery/NnF3FE9

If the problem is the VRAM on the graphics card, what would you suggest be done to reduce VRAM usage/alternate solutions?

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

Thank you! That is a really nice model there. Everything seems fine for me.

I will probably make you sad, but unfortunately if a GPU has not enough VRAM for some task, nothing really can be done, except changing the graphics card. The GPU just doesn't have enough memory to work efficiently.

That's probably why on my integrated card I have no such stutters in HK, because my iGPU can use system RAM memory up to ~2GB+.

Some things that can be done to have more VRAM available on the GPU:
— turning off Anti Aliasing
— lowering desktop and game's resolution
— lowering texture quality
— turning off all background software/programs except the game
— running the game in Fullscreen Exclusive mode
You already did point 2, 4 and 5, and the game doesn't support points 1 and 3.

I would argue that for a 4K monitor a card with 6-8 GB VRAM is a minimum these days.

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

You can also try "-noheap" launch option in Steam: Right-Click on Hollow Knight > Properties > General Tab > Set Launch Options...

[Tamijo]

Hi. I realise this topic is slightly older, but I have the exact same issue. Reducing graphics settings and resolution didn't do much to help. I have a new GPU and Processor on the way, so I'm going to try that and I'll try to remember to stop by back here to let people know if it fixed the problem.

This is my current GPU, FWIW. http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/20/10/01/78v.png

I am upgrading to a 6Gb 1660 Super, so if that doesn't solve the problem then errrr....

EDIT: Also, thanks to everybody in this thread. Everybody has been really informative, which is unusual for a question like this, I find. >_>

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

Thank you. Please let us know what you will find with the GPU switch. Hope everything will be alright. Best to do a clean driver installation.

768 MB could be a little too low for Hollow Knight in certain places of the game. The game seems to run better on 1GB+ cards in low desktop resolutions. 2GB+ in 1080p recommended.

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

Originally posted by Tamijo:

I have a new GPU and Processor on the way, so I'm going to try that and I'll try to remember to stop by back here to let people know if it fixed the problem.

I am upgrading to a 6Gb 1660 Super, so if that doesn't solve the problem then errrr....

Hello there! How is your new GPU in Hollow Knight? 🙂
What about the issue after the GPU upgrade?

[Asmodeus]

all this is really interesting. I just had some weird issues too :
I opened the game, was able to play normally for about 15 minutes and then invariably strong slowdowns happened. i closed the game and also restarted my pc several times but it happened everytime after 15 minutes, no matter where i was. the slowdown sometimes kept happening even in menus.
I'm going to try all the things that were pointed out above (lowering particles and blur had no effect), but out of curiosity do you have any idea of what might cause this?
this is the first time its happening to me in 140 hours of gameplay (and ive never had any problem) hence my surprise.

[🉑 rezno[R].technology]

Originally posted by Asmodeus:

all this is really interesting. I just had some weird issues too :
I opened the game, was able to play normally for about 15 minutes and then invariably strong slowdowns happened. i closed the game and also restarted my pc several times but it happened everytime after 15 minutes, no matter where i was. the slowdown sometimes kept happening even in menus.
I'm going to try all the things that were pointed out above (lowering particles and blur had no effect), but out of curiosity do you have any idea of what might cause this?
this is the first time its happening to me in 140 hours of gameplay (and ive never had any problem) hence my surprise.

A sudden surge of bad performance? First I would check the CPU and GPU temperatures and clocks to see if they are operating in the same conditions and with the same performance like earlier when this issue wasn't happening.

[TheAmazingLink9]

Hi! The same problem was happening to me but I may have found a fix (might just be fore me) go to task manager, click on hollow knight and expand it, go to details, then re-right click on hollow knight, set priority to anything higher than what its already on. Then turn on V-Sync in game. No lag except for when hornet stabs the hollow knight in the face