Terrible stuttering

[renda]

I was thinking about buying the game so I decided to try the demo. While I'm playing the game is stuttering horribly, it's like every second the game pauses for a moment. Is this a problem with the demo or my computer? I can usually run games like GTA 5 and Dead by Daylight on pretty much maxed settings and get 50-60 fps, yet on this game I only get 30-45 + stuttering. I've tried reinstalling, resetting my pc and changing the quality in the settings doesn't change anything. Vsync doesn't stop it either. Help? I've searched online and other people seem to have this issue yet I found no fix.

CPU - AMD Athlon 860k
GPU - nvidia geforce 1050

[Overeagerdragon]

Seeing as you run Nvidia be sure NOT to let the Geforce Experience optimize Factorio....I have a i9-9900 64gb with a RTX 2070 and when optimized with Geforce experience I actually get a worse play experience than when I let the game's config handle it on it's own.

Just something you might want to try.

[renda]

Originally posted by Overeagerdragon:

Seeing as you run Nvidia be sure NOT to let the Geforce Experience optimize Factorio....I have a i9-9900 64gb with a RTX 2070 and when optimized with Geforce experience I actually get a worse play experience than when I let the game's config handle it on it's own.

Just something you might want to try.

I don't have Geforce Experience

[Fel]

Are you manually downloading and installing your driver updates then?
Because if you don't it is usually a good first step when having FPS issues in games.

[renda]

Originally posted by Fel:

Are you manually downloading and installing your driver updates then?
Because if you don't it is usually a good first step when having FPS issues in games.

I've checked for updates and the drivers are up to date. No change.

I used a program to measure my CPU load while I play and according to it no core went past 50% usage while playing, yet Steam overlay said I was getting only 30 fps and the stuttering was still happening.

[Kirino]

Originally posted by Renda:

Originally posted by Fel:

Are you manually downloading and installing your driver updates then?
Because if you don't it is usually a good first step when having FPS issues in games.

I've checked for updates and the drivers are up to date. No change.

I used a program to measure my CPU load while I play and according to it no core went past 50% usage while playing, yet Steam overlay said I was getting only 30 fps and the stuttering was still happening.

Try to deactivate Steam Overlay, might help you in that Case then.
Other than that, there are FPS Boost mods available for Factorio that might help in your Situation, just check the Factorio Forum.

[Morphic]

Another thing that might be causing the "stuttering" is your monitor. E.g. I recently got a 240hz monitor with a some bells and whistles; one of the features was "adaptive sync" which defaulted to On. This feature is supposed to prevent screen tearing, however in Factorio it makes it look like the game is stuttering hard whenever I move. I had to turn the feature off and everything was fine.

So maybe check your monitor settings if your monitor is more than 60hz?

[renda]

Originally posted by Morphic:

Another thing that might be causing the "stuttering" is your monitor. E.g. I recently got a 240hz monitor with a some bells and whistles; one of the features was "adaptive sync" which defaulted to On. This feature is supposed to prevent screen tearing, however in Factorio it makes it look like the game is stuttering hard whenever I move. I had to turn the feature off and everything was fine.

So maybe check your monitor settings if your monitor is more than 60hz?

No, my monitor is 60hz.

I've noticed once I complete all the tasks in the upper left the game turns buttery smooth and the stuttering stops. What's causing that?

[AlexMBrennan]

I just had a look at the 0.18 tutorial (which I think is also the demo) and UPS tends to hover around 40 (on a tiny finite map with no enemies) which suggests that the scenario scripts are the problem because this doesn't happen on normal freeplay maps.

[ShutEye_DK]

Originally posted by Renda:

...
I've searched online and other people seem to have this issue yet I found no fix.
...

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

I just had a look at the 0.18 tutorial (which I think is also the demo) and UPS tends to hover around 40 (on a tiny finite map with no enemies) which suggests that the scenario scripts are the problem because this doesn't happen on normal freeplay maps.

@Renda: Maybe you should report this on the official forum, after AlexMBrennan's test it could sound like a bug.
Find it at forums.factorio.com

[Zaflis]

Press F5 and post a screenshot with the big amount of debug text? From that we should be able to tell what takes the most amount of time per frame.

Windows may also mess up some games with power saving settings. It might have even been problem with Factorio for some users. Basically if a game uses so little CPU the OS may think it can reduce the CPU power and then it overshoots... then ups it back again and you see that as stuttering. Such things can be turned off.

[renda]

Originally posted by Zaflis:

Press F5 and post a screenshot with the big amount of debug text? From that we should be able to tell what takes the most amount of time per frame.

Windows may also mess up some games with power saving settings. It might have even been problem with Factorio for some users. Basically if a game uses so little CPU the OS may think it can reduce the CPU power and then it overshoots... then ups it back again and you see that as stuttering. Such things can be turned off.

Here [cdn.discordapp.com]

[Zaflis]

Script update 14.4ms, that is definitely bug (in demo).

Added discussion to bug reports:
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?f=226&t=85243

[Fel]

I don't know what to think of this, there are several places with very high numbers on the third "column" that represents the highest it recorded for it.

The script update is particularly bad since the first and second columns are both significantly higher than what you would expect.

I went and downloaded the demo (from the factorio website but it should be the same as the one on steam) and after progressing though it somewhat close to where you were here is what I have:
https://imgur.com/M70JP0G

As you can see the numbers are all significantly lower than yours, and while I have a pretty good computer (AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2920X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080) it isn't to the point where it could make that big a difference.

It seems like your computer decided that factorio isn't worthy of getting a core for its thread and it has to fight for leftover CPU on a core that is already heavily used or something similar to that.
I am definitely not computer-savy enough to tell you how to remedy this but hopefully someone with better knowledge will be able to.

[Morsk]

It's almost certainly a bug in the Lua script for the encounter. 2ms minimum update is insane, and not the way the system is supposed to work. Script responds to events, and often does nothing, so the minimum should be 0.

2ms of script wouldn't be noticable on its own, but 2ms of script that was never intended to run this often is not optimized, and is going to generate tons of temporary objects, and garbage collections. Those are the stuttering.

The solution is probably going to be to reload an older point in the save before the script went nuts. The save file would probably help the developers though.

[Zaflis]

I guess you should post a savefile after uploading to some cloud or to that forum thread. Script lag shouldn't be computer specs-specific but happen for everyone. From a save that they can easily load at any time they might be able to debug what is happening.