Game stuttering/nearly freezing with RX 6600 XT

[Han]

Hello, I've got severe problems with AoE 2 DE. My setup is
AMD Ryzen 3700X
AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT (Radeon Driver version 21.8.2)
32Gb RAM on 3600Mhz (2x16GB)
Windows 10 Update 21H1
Everything fresh install, so newest drivers etc. on Chipset, Graphics Card and Windows.
I Have no Malwarebytes installed. I've still added exceptions for Windows Antivirus to folders involved (install location of AoE + C:\Users\MyUser\Games). I also tested it with deactivated Antivirus + without FIrewall.
The problem is the following: I have huge freezes for every 1-10 seconds. Everytime the game freezes for ~1 second. In later game this can add up to getting a slideshow. It doesn't matter if I play multiplayer or singleplayer. The FPS under F11 shows constant 60FPS. I've tested this setup with highest settings and with the lowest settings. With and without vertical sync.
Has anyone a clue or hint for me?

Update: It was possible to test the same setup with a different graphics card (GTX 970). WIth it there are no problems. I guess it is a driver problem with new RX 6600 XT.

Kind Regards

[Mangock]

tengo el mismo problema, alguna solución?

[Kani | AoeItalia.com]

Same problem. Did you figure out how to solve it?

[Lordnino]

Just randomly, i was looking for the origin of the problem and for statistical purposes how many of you run Citrix for work? I uninstalled Citrix reset the computer and reinstall it (Citrix) and the problem was gone. Let me know

[Grimbold der Schlächter]

Same problem here:
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600
- Radeon RX 6600 XT
- 32 DDR4 Ram
- 1TB SSD
- GPU Driver: 21.10.3
- Benchmark: 1260 Points

the game is freezing every now and then - no matter which settings I choose.
It run's on a clean Win11 system (no Citrix or 3rd party AntiVirusSoftware)

AoE III de runs in highest settings perfectly so it can't be a hardware-issue at all.

Any ideas how to fix this?

[[o.p.]Martinzilla]

hab das selbe problem grimbold :/ seit wann hast du die grafikkarte? hab schon alles mögliche probiert selbst ein austausch der 6600xt hat nichts gebracht. dachte schon es ist ein hardwarefehler.

[Grimbold der Schlächter]

@ Martinzilla:
Just to keep it "internationally" I'll answer in English:

I bought the system at the beginning of September and tried the game these days for the first time...

If the change of the GC didn't help at all it's maybe something else? The funny thing is: during the Benchmark the system runs perfectly well...
The lags appear right after a new building is finished -> so I guess it's a bug or at least we have to wait for an update.

Since the release of AoE 4 is ahead I'll which - hopefully without any lags.
It's still a pitty - so maye anyone has an idea?!

[vanDyck]

It`s not a new problem, I got this lags since April until some Weeks ago. There is no real solution i know of, the lags just got slowly better over time an stopped some Weeks ago. You will find a lot of threads with people with the same problem. The only advice the support gave me was to deactivate freesync. Here is my original post (May 2021):

Originally posted by vanDyck:

I hope you can understand my english, it`s not my native language. I hope this reports helps to fix the problems some players have with this game.
On my old PC (AMD CPU and GPU) the game worked fine. Only on large maps with lots of units I got lags, but the game was playable.

On 23.04.2021 I got my new PC:

ASRock B550 Steel Legend Board
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU
16GB DDR4-3600 RAM (2x8)
Samsung 980 Pro SSD 1TB
AMD Radeon 6700 XT GPU
Win 10 Pro
AMD Freesync FullHD Display

AoE II DE was the first Game I played on my new PC an it worked fine. The game runs in FullHD, with Ultra graphic setting, with around 144 FPS. Ingame Benchmark was about 1250 – 1350.
The last day I played without problems was tuesday, 25.04.2021.
Since 01.05.2021 I have massive problems with lags and FPS going down to 1 (or even below):

- Finishing buildings (especially fields, but not reseeding them) causes 1+ second lags. This starts after the first building in the game is finished, so the first lags appear finishing the second building. This lags can also appear when an allied player I share sight with finishes a building.

- Scouting enemy bases leads to FPS dropping to 1 an lagging. After a short period of time, the game runs faster than normal (like trying to catch up) for some time, then the lagging is starting again. During this time i can do nearly nothing. This can repeat for minutes. Longest time this occured was around 20 minutes.
My CPU, RAM, Disc, Network and GPU usage during the lags are around 30 – 40 %. On my windows desktop with the game running in the background, everything is normal. The only other app running is Teamspeak.
After some time the Game starts running nomal, maybe after most of the enemy is scouted. I think researching spys may help.

I play online with Friends (2-4 Humans) against AI (4-6 in several Teams sometimes) on the largest map, but these lags also appear in single player skirmish battles without the running faster part.

Some testing showed me that playing on the 8 – Player map with 6 players total the game is working nearly without lags, with 8 players total (same map size) it gets annoyingly laggy but is playable.

I tried some things to fix, but nothing worked:
- Setting PC and Game for best performance
- Excluding the game folder from Windows defender (no other Anti – Virus installed)
- Limiting FPS to 60
- Reinstalling the Game (on Steam)

AoE DE and AoE III DE works fine like everything else.

Game Version 101.101.47820.0 6624001
Windows 10 pro 21H1
AMD Graphics Driver 21.5.2

[aoe_scout]

This could potentially be a driver problem. Could you guys provide DXDiag.txt from your computer? It can really help identify the problem. How to do that:
1. Press Win key + R to open Run dialog, type "DXDiag" and press Enter.
2. Wait a few seconds for the window to appear and the program to fully load.
3. Click on Save All Information and save the text file where you want.
4. Upload the text file to a cloud service (like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) or paste its contents in PasteBin or similar site.
5. Provide a link to the file/text here.

[Henswi]

I'm playing with a RTX 3060 and an i5 10400f at 1080p and my game stutters a lot and for some reason swapping between screen modes sort of fixes this issue temporarily. Since my game is still above 60fps when it stutters, I tried to lower the maximum framerate to 60 in Nvidia's control panel, but as consequence the game would keep stuttering, but this time at around 40fps.

Have a nice day.

(Edit: In addition, I let my game in the background and it runs at smooth 144fps, but when it's not in the background it starts stuttering and I have to change the resolution. It feels as if the game stutters because it thinks it's in the background when I'm playing, and it thinks it's not in the background when it actually is in the background and starts to work as intended xd).

(Edit 2: I managed to solve this problem by disabling HDR. I hope this can help someone too).

[Conan the Bavarian]

Many people still seem to have game-breaking stuttering issues on systems with AMD GPUs. I've found that disabling AMD SmartAccessMemory in AMD's Adrenaline Software solved the issue for me. Maybe also a worthwhile information for the Devs.

I hope this will help you out!

[aoe_scout]

Thank you. I have forwarded your message to our dev team.

[Tama]

RX5500XT - RX7600: I had the same issue.

I found that the cause is a possible driver issue. I noticed gpu clock going down to 0 mhz when freezes occurred. So I tried playing a video on the second display which increased clock to about 900mhz. Game run smooth as butter. Enabling instant replay from amd software also prevents clock to going down too low and fixes the issue.