Kovaaks stutters a lot when playing

[Eagle Eye Smith]

In the past few weeks I've noticed that Kovaaks has begun stuttering a lot when playing. It'll only last about a second, but it makes a huge impact on my overall score. I've been playing a lot for a few months now, trying to improve my aim mostly in Tile Frenzy, but randomly, and throughout the my time playing, it will begin to stutter for seemingly no reason. I've improved a lot, with a high score of 141.2 and average challenge outcome of ~120-130, however since this stuttering began I've been having trouble even making it to 120, usually falling short around 105-115. As you can imagine, this is very frustrating, as I would like to continue improving my score. I just can't seem to figure out what's causing the stuttering. As far as I can tell there isn't a way to roll back the game version to a previous one that did work as intended.

My set up is:
Windows 10, latest version
Intel i7 9700kf (Highest temperature reached is ~75c, usually less)
GTX1070ti (Highest tempreature reached is ~75c, usually less)
16GB DDR4 3000MHz RAM, dual channel

I looked at past fixes for this problem and nothing's worked. Post Processing is off, so is AntiAliasing, VSync, Shadows, One-frame thread lag, tiled reflections, etc. all turned off. Healthbars turned off, Info Bars turned off, Floating Combat Text is off, etc. etc.

Full-screen, 1920x1080

FoV measurement is set to Apex Legends at 110, max FPS is 144. Setting it to 300 FPS doesn't help.

Any insight into fixing this would be greatly appreciated.

[FrenzY]

Is the 'stutter' present in any other titles? or just Kovaaks?

Also, it might be worth setting up RTSS to monitor FrameTimes ingame so that we can have some data.

[Eagle Eye Smith]

FrenzY の投稿を引用：

Is the 'stutter' present in any other titles? or just Kovaaks?

Also, it might be worth setting up RTSS to monitor FrameTimes ingame so that we can have some data.

I've only ever noticed a stutter in Kovaaks. I'll download RTSS and see what I can get once I figure out how to use it.

Edit: I have RTSS installed and it doesn't show any dips while actually playing Kovaaks that I can see (I can't really look up in the left hand corner of the screen while playing though), but there are still very noticeable stutters all throughout playing. I notice that the stutters are much more present when in "Challenge" mode (I usually warm up by blasting 5000+ tiles before going into Challenge mode to really test myself). They happen in Free Play mode, but not nearly as frequently as in Challenge mode.

Is there a way to set up RTSS so that it records a log I can look at or upload? There doesn't seem to be any intuitive way to do this.

[Eagle Eye Smith]

Still looking for assistance with this issue.

[FrenzY]

Hey mate, i didn't get a notification for your edits, my bad.

If you installed RTSS along with MSI Afterburner, you can log history to a file. To do so; Open MSI Afterburner - Options - Monitoring. Scroll down the list, Tick and "Show In OSD" for "Framerate" & "Frametime". Scroll down, you'll see "Hardware Monitoring History Logging", Tick Log to file, Select where you want to save the file, Then hit Apply.

Then, play normally as you would for 20mins-40mins once you're done, close the application and head to the History Log, Scroll down to the bottom of the list till you see your Frametime Graph.

In the perfect setting, this graph will be completely flat. If you have large spikes in places, compare the data to your above graphs: specifically CPU Usage/GPU Usage. Are there drops in cpu/gpu performance? Are you Thermal Throttling?

If you're thermal throttling; you need to increase Airflow to your system or Downclock/Undervolt your CPU/GPU.
if your CPU usage is dropping at seemingly random intervals; Disable bad drivers/Services, set higher cpu priority to the game - Maybe Unpark Cores?
If your GPU is the problem (I highly doubt it); Consider setting the GPU to run in Message Signaled-Based Interrupt Mode. It may also be worth Overclocking.

If the stutter is being caused without any visible hardware cause, then follow this guide: https://pastebin.com/FFRZ0NGB

[Eagle Eye Smith]

Fix didn't work. I'm still getting massive stutters all throughout playing Kovaaks, and **only** Kovaaks. No other game is giving me this issue.

I also tried using DDU and re-installing the GPU drivers from the NVidia website. Still no good.

It's not a heat issue and there doesn't appear to be any physical cause. RTSS for some reason won't show me the framerates it records, but it *does* show that CPU1 and CPU2 utilization is very high for some reason. CPU1 average ranges are from 65-88%, CPU2 average ranges are from 50%-75%. CPU3 averages around 20% with occasional spikes up to 48%. CPU's 4-8 stay around 5% with occasional spikes up to 35%, though very rarely. These spikes aren't frequent enough to coincide with any in-game stuttering. CPU temperatures never exceed 51c. I'm not running any programs in the background.

GPU temp never exceeds 65c, usually stays consistently at 64-65c; GPU usage maxes out (And stays consistently at) 38% throughout.

Again, this didn't start happening until a few weeks ago, now. Was there maybe an update that came out that messed up Kovaaks? Is there any way to re-install an earlier version of the game? I already ran the "verify" and even reinstalled the game entirely and nothing helped.

Please help, this stuttering is unbearable, and it keeps getting worse and worse.

Edit: To reiterate, the problem is most apparent in "Challenge" mode, and is barely noticeable when in Free Play. Going into "Challenge" mode is like kicking the stuttering into high gear.

[Struth]

I'll pass this along and see if anyone has ideas that you haven't tried yet. Would you be able to upload a video of what this looks like?

[KovaaK]

Hrm...
There haven't been any changes to the game that would have impacted anything like that, especially considering it seem very limited in who is experiencing it.
Realistically it's probably something about hardware/os/system/drivers/pre-reqs, but that is really hard to identify. You could try an older graphics card driver version maybe.

Maybe you can try installing the game on an SSD, but I don't think that would make a difference since Challenge mode doesn't write anything to the hard drive until the challenge is complete...

If it was my own PC, I'd probably try to reinstall Windows too, but I understand that can be a hassle.

[Eagle Eye Smith]

I appreciate the responses. I'm trying to upload a couple videos I captured with GEForce Experience to YouTube to show you what's happening. What I notice is that you can't actually see any stutters in the videos, but I still try to point them out as they happen. Whether I shake the mouse over the spot where the stutter occurred or circle the actual bullet hole in the wall, I try to point out when stutters happen. I spoke during the videos, but for some reason my mic's very quiet lately (I'll troubleshoot it later).

I'll link them when they're ready.

[Eagle Eye Smith]

Here's the good video showing the stuttering. Not posting the other one because it's 20 minutes and you can't really see the stuttering at all, though it's pretty obvious that it's happening (Also it wanted to take 2 hours to upload, and I wasn't doing that.)

Edit: Sorry, I didn't realize uploading it was going to make my voice even quieter, somehow. All throughout the video I'm saying, "There's a small stutter" or "There was a big stutter" while I continue to shoot. I didn't realize it was going to be completely overshadowed by the pinging sound the targets make when they're shot. The "clustered" misses are mostly from the game stuttering, where I want to shoot one target and quickly move to another, but because of the stutter I end up missing all of them, because the crosshair isn't where I thought it would be... Because of the stutter. I usually only miss 7-10 times per a 30-second challenge, but as you can see I'm up in the 10's and 20's in this video. Not all misses are stutters, but you can locate a pattern if you pay enough attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DLdcNVyU74&feature=youtu.be

[FrenzY]

We'll get to the bottom of it, it'll just take time.

In the video you provided, I noticed that the FPS of the game doesn't seem to drop outside margin of error. Now, i dont know how reliable the ingame FPS value is for troubleshooting, but if its to be believe, you're not even dropping a frame per run. Which makes me believe that the game is not necessarily the source of the issue.

Follow KovaaKs advice first; Fresh Windows install. Grab the 'Miracle' driver for your card - since you're Pascal it would be 399.24. in the GPU control panel, make sure "prefer maximum performance" is enabled along with Prefer Highest RefreshRate and Threaded Optimization is On.
In addition, i would ensure the BIOS is up to date and its probably worth checking the Health of your storage drives as well just to be safe.


if the issue STILL persists after all that, i've still got a few bits of advice i can offer like adjusting DPC latency and tweaking IRQs order, but it's all tedious and time consuming so hopefully the above works. just report back if you need more help.

[Eagle Eye Smith]

All right, so some good news: At this moment, the issue **appears** to be resolved.

Today I downloaded the Windows update, "2019-09 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 for Windows 10 Version 1903 for x64 (KB4522738)" I've been able to play without any stuttering for the last 30 minutes, and I'm back to getting my usual scores, around 120-135, and I'm able to do this consistently. The update just came out today, and it appears to have resolved the issue I was having.

Thank you everyone for your input. I'll be sure to come back if something else messes up. I appreciate the help.

[Struth]

That's great to hear :)

[Pink fever]

Man I am having the same issue wtf is wrong with kovaak I made a mistake buying this should've stayed with aimlabs

[Gordon]

my stuttering issue is way worse. and im not sure how to fix it. lmao

[Jerrycans]

if anyone else encounters this problem, reinstalling kovaaks worked for me. i began experiencing this after a geforce system update, it persisted for a week making the game nearly unplayable. immediately after a reinstall it worked fine. not sure if my problem is exactly the same as OP's, but for me essentially all of the bots in any tracking scenarios would 'glitch out' for a few frames every couple of seconds, making them invisible on some frames and completely in the wrong position on others. yes i know this is an insane claim, but i swear to god thats exactly how it happened, in addition to some more 'normal' looking stuttering and screen tearing.