Random FPS Drops (Major Stuttering)

[Deadmano]

So I specifically waited 5 years before playing this game because I wanted to ensure whatever issues that might be found would be resolved, and that I'd have solid hardware to run the game without compromising on visual fidelity.

Today I finally launched the game, and while it was going AMAZING at maxed out ultra settings, eventually it started to have random microstutters (7-10 FPS loss) and then eventually led to a full on PC hang for 10-15 seconds at a time, which further led to an entire system-wide freeze and crash that forced me to hard reset my PC.

It happened again, so I slowly started turning my settings down, not believing an RTX 5090 paired with an AMD R9 7950X3D (5GHz 16-core processor) could not handle this game... And rightly so; lowering settings did not work as again I got the dreaded freeze.

Before I continue, my specs and what I've tried:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance 5200Mhz

- The game is installed on an NVME drive.
- I am connecting to my PC via a Quest 3 running Virtual Desktop.
- I tried both 120Hz and 90Hz, dropping to the lower Hz thinking it'd help (it didn't).
- V-Sync + G-Sync On/Off.
- Game set to maximum performance alongside all Steam VR components.
- I have had HAGS disabled for years, that was a suggested solution.
- The Q3 is connected to its own dedicated network, perfect connectivity <1ms delay.
- Latest NVIDIA GPU drivers (572.20) with the latest Windows 11 updates.
- All hardware drivers up to date, including motherboard BIOS.
- Disabled any type of OC, including XMP.

Should the game really be struggling to run under this setup? I refuse to let it sour my excitement for the franchise, so I did a bit of investigative work when I lose all connection to my PC (headset showed the game frozen) and when I got to my PC I noticed it was responsive, but barely; checked task manager and there it was; the first CCD (CCD 0) had all its cores maxed out at 100%[i.imgur.com] thanks to hlvr.exe and since the game runs on CCD 0 and VD's streamer app also runs on the same CCD, it makes perfect sense why I lose connection, which initially I thought was related to my network.

I did some more research and it turns out there is some kind of memory leak that happens and many users have reported their CPU being maxed out... So I tried various things suggested in those posts online, and one stood out to me;

A post on Reddit mentioned disabling motion smoothing as a solution to resolve stutter/judder. On the off chance I went and followed the instructions.

Browsed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\resources\settings\default.vrsettings and changed the line "motionSmoothing" from "true" to "false" (did the same for the user file), restarted SteamVR, launched Alyx, and I don't know if by some shear stroke of luck or what; but the game seemed to run just fine, no major freezing anymore for 30 minutes of testing?

Wanting to be sure it was that, I went and changed the value from "false" to "true", restarted SteamVR, tried a chapter again (the whole of chapter 2) and again, the same experience... What??? Yet this time, it was all working fine; placebo?

So I'm just at a loss right now, having troubleshooted for the past 5 hours. And I am starting to believe that if it works, it just works... And if it starts to get bad; restart the game and try again because something clearly went wrong.

That's what I don't get; the game can be so buttery smooth, with everything maxed out and dynamic resolution scaling disabled with a fixed 150% scaling (4K per eye) at 120FPS no problem (-console -vconsole +vr_fidelity_level_auto 0 +vr_fidelity_level 3) and additional tweaks such as not having shadows or fog be culled (they pop in otherwise so I use +sc_no_cull 1 +vr_multiview_instancing 0 +vr_shadow_map_culling 0 +volume_fog_enable_stereo 0 to fix them) but then suddenly things can just go pear-shaped and there goes my system... And the same is true for the lowest settings; 90Hz (90FPS) with the lowest settings and it will still stutter and freeze/lock up the system!

It's frustrating, because I did not expect this given Valve's incredible track record at supporting their games across numerous hardware, and myself having gone out of my way to ensure my hardware was updated and ready for the game and then some.

Is there a solution I'm missing, or something else I can try that I haven't mentioned already? I really want to experience this masterpiece, but without the random stutters that can happen randomly (no system resource shows a culprit since when the microstutter happens no CPU core is ever at 100%, nor is the GPU, nor any throttling on the NVME drive or RAM). All my resources are under utilised, with my CPU being at most 40% used, my GPU at 70% at 2900MHz with 13GB of VRAM out of 32GB, etc.

[bekawe2016]

Try using the RESET in the HLA video settings options menue while in the game. Or, in SteamVR set the resolution lower (30%, 40%....) and in VIDEO the resolution for the specific game (HLA) to the native res. of the headset. ?

[Ceilingcat]

Runs just fine maxed out on my 9800x3d, 5070 Ti rig. Your Nvidia drivers are old though. Newest are 572.83.

[Deadmano]

Originally posted by bekawe2016:

Try using the RESET in the HLA video settings options menue while in the game. Or, in SteamVR set the resolution lower (30%, 40%....) and in VIDEO the resolution for the specific game (HLA) to the native res. of the headset. ?

I've tried that, though one thing I notice; a level restart tends to fix it for a while until it comes back? I find that very strange... But hey, kinda works? Play a chapter or two, starts to have issues? Restart the game; problem goes away. I guess I'll chalk it up to driver maturity on the RTX 5090?

[Deadmano]

Originally posted by Ceilingcat:

Runs just fine maxed out on my 9800x3d, 5070 Ti rig. Your Nvidia drivers are old though. Newest are 572.83.

That's amazing to hear! Headset/Software used? Would love to compare based on what I have. If using VD mine sharing the performance overlay values (encoding/decoding/network etc.). And yeah I noticed, I updated last night and it seems to be running slightly better, touch wood. Though ironically every time I "think it" (oh no I hope it doesn't stutter) it appears, maybe I need to stop cursing myself and sending negative thoughts into the universe?

[JoeNumb3rs]

I would look at your computer's temps to see if something is overheating. Primarily the CPU. The behavior looks very similar to me.

[Deadmano]

Originally posted by JoeNumb3rs:

I would look at your computer's temps to see if something is overheating. Primarily the CPU. The behavior looks very similar to me.

Thanks! But sadly not a temperature issue. :( GPU is at 57 degrees Celsius and CPU at 66 degrees Celsius at 5.1GHz.

[Deadmano]

So I managed to play for 3 whole hours with no stuttering/freezing with the latest NVIDIA drivers (572.83) however near the end I was starting to get the occasional stuttering (stutter every 10-15 seconds). I tried to quit to main menu to hopefully force the game to "reset" however that just caused my entire PC to freeze up and I had no choice but to hard reset (restart) my PC... :( Man, I am really trying, but WOW has it been AMAZING those 3 hours, 120 FPS, smooth, stutter-free, INCREDIBLE visuals, I was so damn immersed it is totally worth the hard crash once in all those hours; just hope I get to finish the game in the end!

[SwiftyAdrian]

Guys I have a 4060 ti ryzen 7 7700 8 core processor, and I'm having a similar issue i don't really lag at all in gameplay but when I open the weapon wheel, OMG it lags to hell and sometimes when I die and reload my game freezes and my whole pc locks it self until I unplug the link cable, it is insane i am thinking of upgrading to a 4090 also because it's telling me the video memory is low so I want a 4090, so I won't have an issue but I want to know if there's fix rn for my pc

[Deadmano]

Originally posted by SwiftyAdrian:

Guys I have a 4060 ti ryzen 7 7700 8 core processor, and I'm having a similar issue i don't really lag at all in gameplay but when I open the weapon wheel, OMG it lags to hell and sometimes when I die and reload my game freezes and my whole pc locks it self until I unplug the link cable, it is insane i am thinking of upgrading to a 4090 also because it's telling me the video memory is low so I want a 4090, so I won't have an issue but I want to know if there's fix rn for my pc

Two things that have helped me;

1) Previously I was told it is best to set Steam processes for VR and the game itself to "Real Time" priority, I set that back to "High".
2) I noticed TDR was disabled for me, I changed TdrLevel to 3 (it was on 0 so off). This article also goes over some values to test with; https://helpx.adobe.com/substance-3d-painter/technical-support/technical-issues/gpu-issues/gpu-drivers-crash-with-long-computations-tdr-crash.html

But the most important is TdrLevel being 3, as otherwise the GPU driver can't "recover" and the combination of the two I feel fixed my issue, either that or Placebo, but 2x 3 hour sessions and no hard freezes. Hopefully one of the two (or both) helps you?

[wrongadress]

Originally posted by SwiftyAdrian:

Guys I have a 4060 ti ryzen 7 7700 8 core processor, and I'm having a similar issue i don't really lag at all in gameplay but when I open the weapon wheel, OMG it lags to hell and sometimes when I die and reload my game freezes and my whole pc locks it self until I unplug the link cable, it is insane i am thinking of upgrading to a 4090 also because it's telling me the video memory is low so I want a 4090, so I won't have an issue but I want to know if there's fix rn for my pc

I observed video memory usage raises up gradually during gameplay, not sure why. Also in my opinion Steam VR 2.9 is broken, after update I had stutters not present earlier, downgrading it to 2.8.8 solved this issue. Also new nvidia drivers after 572.13 are broken, but this is for 4000 series only (there are problems with multi monitor setup which may affect VR display when using display port and introduce some crashes, for me it was only worse performance but I quickly got rid of them).

[Spiegel]

Probably wont help but i use this line
-novid -console -vconsole +vr_fidelity_level_auto 0 +vr_fidelity_level 3 -w 320 -h 240 -window.

Game Boost Priority in VD (Desktop Icon).
I also use ParkControl software to make all cores active during gaming.
Plays super smooth with everything maxed with Godlike + Max setting in game.

I will try that fix for shadow/fog pop in. I actually noticed that in a few areas and wondered what that was about. Usually big open area. I wonder if that affects performance. Will see today.

[Tiranys]

This is not a new problem, but a bug in the game. It has been around for a long time. There is a huge thread on the forum, but I don't think Valve will ever fix it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/546560/discussions/0/2143091644392827974/

[NachoMacho955]

Hello friends. I had the same problem and was able to solve it. My specs: Ryzen 5800X, RTX 3080Ti, 64GB RAM 3200MHz, Quest 3, Virtual Desktop (2401 Mbit, 5GHz connection). I tried everything: updating the network, updating the chipset driver, updating the GPU driver, and changing the settings in SteamVR—all to no avail. Then I deleted the driver with DDU (including Nvidia Physics), and after rebooting, Windows 11 installed the old Nvidia driver 560.94, and finally, the stuttering disappeared. I can't explain it, but it works. I've tested it extensively. The game is worth it. Good luck and enjoy!

[wrongadress]

That is because nvidia broke performance for older cards with new drivers, I am starting to think they did that on purpose.

[BRUTAL BUNDY]

Originally posted by wrongadress:

That is because nvidia broke performance for older cards with new drivers, I am starting to think they did that on purpose.

I unsderstood this back in 2018/2019 when rdr2 came out on PC: i installed the new nvidia drivers for my good old gtx 1060 and i immediatly lost around 10fps in game