So, on that stuttering

[it's a gabe]

Started happening to me after the latest NVIDIA update (1050 Ti here). I don't know what they did, but I just noticed that this stuttering is very similar to when Cemu is compiling a shader cache from scratch (i.e. it only stutters when I'm seeing something for the first time, such as switching weapons, but after that first time the same action happens smoothly).

Anyone found a solution for that? Really don't wanna run around the entire map to build a shader cache if that's what the game's doing. The problem's so serious right now that it takes me about 10min to load Totomostro (10min just to load the main menu for that mini game).

This is the only game where this happens at all, by the way. It ran just fine before the latest update. Funny enough, I went back to Black Desert last week and that's actually running much better than before (granted the SA version received a bunch of optimization improvements).

[jclosed]

Maybe something to do with Windows 10 "game" modus? And you always can roll back to an older driver, by downloading the previous one and do a "clean" install.

[it's a gabe]

I have game mode disabled. I might try rolling back to a previous version at some point. This only happens with FFXV and I already finished the main game. Not finding the endgame or Comrades to be worth the trouble, so meh. Maybe another day. Just wanted to make sure if anyone found a way to fix this.

[ehs03y3ol]

It happends, this game stutters couse shaders compiling and scene loading. It becomes bit better wtih 6+ cores CPU's and high ends 1060+/RX 580+ GPU's. Become shorter, but are here equal.

[Lone Wolfe (Hoover1979)]

I get the stutters and I have a GTX1080, however I do only have an i7-4790k which has only 4 Physical cores, so CPU may be the reason for stutters. I am not on the latest drivers as I have had problems with the latest Nvidia drivers that forced me to roll back to 391.35.

[it's a gabe]

I have an i7-7700HQ, but I didn't have stuttering before, though. Played this game from start to finish and it was surprisingly smooth for the most part. Definitely didn't have any of the performance issues I'm having now all of a sudden. I wonder what changed that's causing this? There were Windows updates recently, I know that much...

Any way to change how the game makes use of the CPU? I don't remember seeing something quite like thaton Kaldaien's kit, but then I could've just missed it.

[jclosed]

Hmmm... Didn't had the latest Windows 10 update an extra patch for the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities? There where some reports that fixing that stuff could slow down you Intel (and to a certain degree AMD) processor. I wonder if this has something to do with that.

I am just speculating, because I do not seem to have any extra stutter, but I am on a older processor (i5-3570) and older video card (GTX970), so it can also have something to do with newer hardware. The update could also broke some things that are in the latest graphical driver. However, I also wonder if things are slowing done because of software/applications that are in the NVIDIA installer but are no graphical driver (such as GeForce Experience, 3D drivers, Shield drivers, Audio drivers for NVIDIA hardware). I do not install that stuff and it could be the reason I do not have any change in performance.

Strange things are happening....

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by unnecesaurus:

I have an i7-7700HQ, but I didn't have stuttering before, though. Played this game from start to finish and it was surprisingly smooth for the most part. Definitely didn't have any of the performance issues I'm having now all of a sudden. I wonder what changed that's causing this? There were Windows updates recently, I know that much...

Any way to change how the game makes use of the CPU? I don't remember seeing something quite like thaton Kaldaien's kit, but then I could've just missed it.

In the game itself? No.

An i7's not really going to need too much assistance from me though. They basically divy up your CPU cores between 1/2 total = synchronous jobs, 1/2 total = async jobs. Then there are 2 threads for rendering, 1-2 for audio, 4 for disk I/O.

This is a reasonable design, but they have the render threads running with a higher priority that makes it impossible to run smoothly on CPUs with fewer than 6 cores. Not terribly surprising, given the game came off of two consoles that give developers access to about 6 or 7 CPU cores at a time.

[it's a gabe]

So in short, there's no way to fix it? What even caused this to being with? This is literally the only game I have that's running worse than before. Not even Black Desert with its massive open world and thousands of players running around is having any problems running well, and on that one I have the settings at a mix of medium and high.

[Kaldaien]

If I had to guess? Disk throughput.

That's what I notice throughout looking at this game, it doesn't really throttle this stuff correctly. You can get stuttering when loads happen _too quickly_ on the one end and then on the other, you get hitching when something is waiting for a disk load to finish.

I would 1. lower the TRAM setting, because the game doesn't load as many textures and 2. make sure your installation storage device is defragmented (if mechanical) or TRIM'd (if SSD).

The TRAM setting cannot be stressed enough here. It both lowers the amount of data being loaded and the amount of game systems waiting for data, making all these stutter / hitch events less problematic.

[it's a gabe]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

If I had to guess? Disk throughput.

That's what I notice throughout looking at this game, it doesn't really throttle this stuff correctly. You can get stuttering when loads happen _too quickly_ on the one end and then on the other, you get hitching when something is waiting for a disk load to finish.

I would 1. lower the TRAM setting, because the game doesn't load as many textures and 2. make sure your installation storage device is defragmented (if mechanical) or TRIM'd (if SSD).

The TRAM setting cannot be stressed enough here. It both lowers the amount of data being loaded and the amount of game systems waiting for data, making all these stutter / hitch events less problematic.

Alright, sorry it took me so long. Made sure to defrag my HDD manually instead of relying on the automatic schedule. Took me the entire afternoon.

So, I set TRAM to the lowest and after doing that and optimizing the HDD, the stutter is less constant. There's still some when I'm just running around (quite a bit on Lestallum, where I had none at all), but not the aggressive type that reminded me so much of Cemu building shader caches (such as heavy stutter when hit by an enemy, or changing weapons, or just at random when driving around).

The performance isn't where it was before where stuttering and FPS drops were so rare, I barely even noticed them, but sure it's better than what tI've been experiencing lately.

Thanks for the hints, Kaldaien! Is there anythign else I should know that would help boost performance? I already have some settings on NVIDIA profile inspector that are supposed to give me some boost. Found suggestions on those on another thread months ago.