Bad performance in Halo 3

[DDoom]

Is it normal for the fps in Halo 3 to keep dipping? I can play ODST, Reach and even 4 just fine, but 3 is a lagfest whenever the shooting starts.

[Zhong Xina]

performance being normal or acceptable depends on your pc specs

[joshlc2]

i dont have fps drops on halo 3 so its not normal not sure how to fix it tho

[IvanTheRexouium]

RX 580 8GB+i5-8400+16 GB DDR4 on an NVMe m.2 SSD here, Halo 3 performs fine...unless the Halo Online maps are involved, then I should expect drops to 50 - 40fps for some reason even though H2A and Halo 4 run fine.

[The Peak]

Yeah, for some reason on very specific maps ithe FPS just tanks.

[Year 8 wraith main]

The multi-player can dip if you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ processor. Halo 2 really can tank in campaign as it's half way demanding compared to the rest of the games

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by 6 year Wraith main:

The multi-player can dip if you have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ processor. Halo 2 really can tank in campaign as it's half way demanding compared to the rest of the games

Built for Xbox 360 with it's 2004 - 2005 era hardware, ported to Xbox One's 2008 era Jaguar CPU. If the game doesn't run well over 60fps even on a first gen Ryzen CPU, that's an optimization issue.

And in my case, Halo 2 Anniversary campaign mode runs quite a bit better than the Halo 3 map "Waterfall" on my i5-8400. Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer, Reach, CE(and CEA), ODST, and Halo 4 in all gamemodes all run better actually than specifically Waterfall and Icebox from H3. The rest of Halo 3 runs well too, other than those two maps.

Originally posted by Mastre Yode:

Yeah, for some reason on very specific maps ithe FPS just tanks.

^This. Most of MCC runs fine, but the Halo Online maps are somehow optimized as poorly as Halo Infinite, while graphically not reaching the same quality as even Halo 3's default maps in places.

Unfortunately, it seems poor performance and stuttering on 343i's games is their normal, and has become a trend for their releases.

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by CaptainSteel117:

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

Built for Xbox 360 with it's 2004 - 2005 era hardware, ported to Xbox One's 2008 era Jaguar CPU. If the game doesn't run well over 60fps even on a first gen Ryzen CPU, that's an optimization issue.

And in my case, Halo 2 Anniversary campaign mode runs quite a bit better than the Halo 3 map "Waterfall" on my i5-8400. Halo 2 Anniversary Multiplayer, Reach, CE(and CEA), ODST, and Halo 4 in all gamemodes all run better actually than specifically Waterfall and Icebox from H3. The rest of Halo 3 runs well too, other than those two maps.




^This. Most of MCC runs fine, but the Halo Online maps are somehow optimized as poorly as Halo Infinite, while graphically not reaching the same quality as even Halo 3's default maps in places.

Unfortunately, it seems poor performance and stuttering on 343i's games is their normal, and has become a trend for their releases.

I've noticed all of that too. On a 3090 and ryzen 9. You're not alone

While not my PC (kind of just used it for testing things a bit), I did have access to an R9 5950x+Nvidia RTX A4000 build with 32GB DDR4 RAM@3200MHz as well...and it has the exact same issues I linked examples of in all of 343i's Halo games. Even on top-end hardware like your own, it does have issues unfortunately.

Sadly I don't see this changing unless Infinity Ward or ID software, or someone else becomes the update and support teams for 343i, they just aren't good at optimizing PC versions of their games, even if they run alright on (most) consoles

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by CaptainSteel117:

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

While not my PC (kind of just used it for testing things a bit), I did have access to an R9 5950x+Nvidia RTX A4000 build with 32GB DDR4 RAM@3200MHz as well...and it has the exact same issues I linked examples of in all of 343i's Halo games. Even on top-end hardware like your own, it does have issues unfortunately.

Sadly I don't see this changing unless Infinity Ward or ID software, or someone else becomes the update and support teams for 343i, they just aren't good at optimizing PC versions of their games, even if they run alright on (most) consoles

Yeah it kinda sucks. All of the multiplayer, regardless of which game, has this tendency to randomly freeze for a second. It's so random and flairs up sometimes and sometimes not as much. I've troubleshot it as much as i've could and can't figure it out. Sad.

Unfortunately, that's just how it is. This has been a worsening problem for some time, a bit of history below explaining what's happened to get this point, so text wall warning and TL;DR short version at the end.


While I'm not able to say 100% what exactly caused the issue in what update, I do know what update(s) caused the sudden multiplayer lag spikes, they did get a lot worse with the more recent Season 7 and 8 updates, but stuttering and framerate drops actually got introduced into Halo MCC back when they flighted the Xbox One X update in 2017.

It was smooth before that update, and performance has slowly and steadily, on all platforms, gotten worse over time and devolved into what we have now, the largest breaking updates for the performance were in this order:

Mid 2017 Xbox One X support update, also known as the "update that fixed MCC", introduced random hitching and freezing during multiplayer games, and small framerate drops in H2A on Xbox One/One X

2019 Halo Reach update, which introduced massive performance drops on Xbox One/One X (as low as 20fps in H2A) and added Xbox Series console support, Halo Reach got introduced with some worse hitching and freezing than what the 2017 and 2018 updates had.

2020 H2A update, also known as the H2A PC release, this is where things started to get bad, the framerates got even worse on Xbox One/One X, where they can't even reach 60fps at all in the HCEA or H2A remastered mode, and fall as low as 40fps in all games' multiplayermodes, this also introduced extreme stuttering and freezing for all hardware configurations into H2A PC due to the poor optimization done in this update.

2020 Halo 3 update, also known as the PC Halo 3 release, and the HCE and H3 new skins release, this is where things went seriously downhill. With this update, the game now crashes in Halo CE or Halo 3 about 50% of the time on Xbox One, and 25% of the time during loading on Xbox Series S/X, crashing the entire consoles and causing them to shut down.

Stuttering became a massive issue on Xbox One/One X, with the game constantly freezing for up to 3 seconds every time a new skin would be rendered or loaded, effectively making Halo 3/CE multiplayer unplayable competitively without disabling skins, and even then, the game now falls as low as 30fps in BTB multiplayer.

2021, the Season 7 update, with this update and the addition of Waterfall into Halo 3 matchmaking, the game has gotten to the point of beginning to stutter and hitch on higher-end hardware like Ryzen 5s or 7th gen intel cpus, at this it's mostly microstutter with this kind of hardware but that's because it's brute forcing the slowly devolving optimization. Consoles had an extra SECOND of time added to these freezes and hitches on skin loading.

2021, the Season 8 update, and Anniversary patch (as well as the addition of Icebox), This is where we are now. The game is now unplayable on Xbox One/One X entirely, crashing about 60% of all games no matter what settings, never reaches 60fps AT ALL in any gamemode, freezes and hitches constantly during gameplay for up to 5 seconds at a time.

Xbox Series X is beginning to fall below 60fps in H2A, and Xbox Series S is falling to 50 - 40fps in the same cases. In a game with a 120fps target. Xbox Series consoles are still crashing about 20% of the time in Halo 3 or CE no matter what setings.

On PC, as we've seen, the game is stuttering on all hardware configurations, no matter what their speed or hardware is. It's much worse on an lower-end hardware, but it's present even on top-end hardware, and this applies to every game to varying extent. Halo CE/3 multiplayer have hitching and stuttering for up to a second on top-end hardware, and H2A has massive freezes during just about any campaign section.

The maps "Waterfall", "Edge", and "Icebox" are all beginning to perform worse than H2A's campaign for some reason, falling as low as 40fps on even an RX 580 8GB and 8th gen i5 build. These are games that as their requirements state, run on an AMD FX-4100 and GTX 450, with the said games being all almost 10+ years old, and using "new" assets designed for the above mentioned PC hardware requirements (Halo Online, cancelled Russian F2P multiplayer game built on Halo 3).



TL;DR: The game's optimization was slowly stripped away beginning in 2017, and this was accelerated by the addition of Halo Reach and skins.

[Fuzzybeard3]

Something is wrong. Server's and multiplayer I've been getting lag spikes, server disconnects, server side hit registration problems. Something happened with the update and/or the servers that has screwed with something. Forgot to add. The constant server disconnects are making it I'm getting temporary bans even though I have not left the game. 343 needs to do some fixing.

[Socrates]

I'm having a similar issue. It started right when I installed the update for this current season. The game always ran great and now it's unplayable. Getting 10-15 fps. Hopefully someone finds a fix soon.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 6-Core Processor 3.40 GHz
16 GB RAM
GTX 1660 Super

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by Socrates:

I'm having a similar issue. It started right when I installed the update for this current season. The game always ran great and now it's unplayable. Getting 10-15 fps. Hopefully someone finds a fix soon.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 6-Core Processor 3.40 GHz
16 GB RAM
GTX 1660 Super

It should be performing a bit better than it is for you (you should be getting 40 - 60fps at max settings 1080p), but there are performance issues as I posted above above, to keep it short:

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

TL;DR: The game's optimization was slowly stripped away beginning in 2017, and this was accelerated by the addition of Halo Reach and skins.

I'm sorry but there's really not much you do other than to try reducing graphics settings, reducing resolution, disabling skins, or reinstalling the game. If you continue to experience performance issues after that, submit a ticket at support.halowaypoint.com

[Любимый отчим]

I have the same issue.

[Socrates]

Hello all!
I just fixed the issue for myself!
If you have software installed called "Citrix Workspace," get rid of it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/scfg7i/suddenly_very_low_fps_only_for_specific_games/