Stutter fest of doom

Anybody have stuttering issues? If so how did you fix them?

I thought I fixed my in game stutter issues but now (for no good reason it seems) they have come back out of nowhere.

Any other game seems fine apart from DCS.

Ask me anything and suggest anything to help me.

I've already tried the guide to help reduce/eliminate stuttering to no avail.

Post PC Specs? and your in game options

Post PC Specs? and your in game options

i7 2600k

GTX680

8GB ram

ASUS p67 pro mobo

track ir5

in game options:

textures: high

scenes: high

civ traffic: medium

water: low

visib range: high

heat blur: on

shadows: high

res: 1980x1080 16:9

1 screen

res of cpit displays: 512

msaa: 8x

HDR: on

nothing on apart from cockpit shadows on the buttoned options

maximum range/preload radius/clutter and bushes

Are all drivers up to date? With specs like that, you should be running fine.

first - here is a guess as this stettings aren't listed from you:

switch of TSSAA and please reduce MSSAA to 4x

it became much more demanding with the higher gras-density in DCS .

IS this the guide you are talking of?

>>> Got stutters? Odd lag? This helped us! - ED Forums

Sticky: TROUBLESHOOTING - Help us helping you.

#5

Other contributing factors to your DCS issues.

There may issues with your Windows installation which may affect the performance and how well DCS is working for you.

 

Troubleshooting Best Practices.

• Updated Drivers. Make sure you have tested and updated to the lates drivers for your Graphics, Sound and mainboard Chipset drivers (such as AMD/Intel).
  Bottlenecks in the system may appear for your graphics, loading, sound abnormalitites, fps performance if you have outdated drivers. It may even cause game-crashes for you in some situations.
  
• A healthy Windows system. Please see the next section.
  
• Clogged up cooling? Your GPU/card may be overheating?
  
• Get rid of all unnecessary software.
  
• Security Software. Make sure you can temporary disable and test without Antivirus / Security Suites. Note - DO NOT disable it while you're connected to internet / surfing - wait until you can disconnect from internet.
  
• O/C is bad when troubleshooting. O/C must be set to standard frequencies.
  Timings and everything related to PCI-bus/Graphics are being affected. Even FPS may be affected by a improperly set O/C or Memory timings.
  

 

Misc Performance Tweaking guides:

• DCS Black Shark Tweak Guide Alpha Version
  
• Crazy Huge improvement of FPS (nvidia)
  
• Got stutters? Odd lag? This helped us!
  
• ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide
  

 

Misc Other guides:

• Nvidia SLI Corrupt TGP/MAV/Mirror + Cloud Flicker + 'Every Frame' display FIX
  

Please use forum search for more results & threads.

Healthy system

- Free up your disk, check them for errors (CHKDSK C: /F etc)

- Defrag. (It's quite often superfluious - but it's hard to tell in advance when there's something related to fragmentation).

- Ensure that your system is without other related glitches (read the Event Logs for System, Application)

- Ensure that you *did* remove all unnecessary software - because Services running in the background will affect your game performance.

- A previous virus-infection on your computer, but you think you have cleaned it out?

Your Windows is damaged - it may need a full reinstall to actually work properly with the game.

NOTE: TFC, ED or it's affilitates is not responsible for external content nor by content suggested by any members of the forum community.

Usage of this content is solely at your own risk and responsibility.

 

There are 3 good tools to use on your Windows Vista / 7 PC which can help track down a problem.

• Reliability monitor; your "Best friend" in Vista / Windows 7 to detect changes to your PC. (not found in XP).
  
• Event Viewer; Check out the "Application" and "System" Eventlogs for crashes or strange system-behavior.
  
• Checkdisk; Simple fix for any system-related issues which may be caused by a corrupt file.
  

 

Reliability monitor: Use your "Best friend" in Vista / Windows 7 to detect changes to your PC. (not found in XP).

a) Poke around until you find some relevant issues - try revert some of your changes.

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Event Viewer: Check out the "Application" and "System" Eventlogs.

a) Look for *anything* relevant to the problem you are trying to solve.

b) Look for anything being serious enough to cause stability / system issues.

 

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CHKDSK: Automaticly fix your disks.

Quite often minor issues in your filesystem may cause rather big and very strange issues, crashes.

The disk check takes very little effort to perform - a very good insurance for getting a healthy system.

- Using CMD (Command prompt) in Administrator mode type. (No admin mode for XP).

(You can do it from Explorer/Disk Properties too - but CHKDSK and CMD is the same for all OS - using GUI may vary from OS to OS).

 

1.) Start a Command Prompt in Admin mode.

2.) CHKDSK C: /F

3.) If you have more disks, continue checking all of them. If you get questions about "disk in use, check on next reboot?" or "dismount volume?" answer "Yes" (Y) to them and continue the process.

4.) It will be complete after a reboot (if a reboot is required).

 

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thanks peter. I'll have a play around with some of the stuff you posted tomorrow.

Thats an odd resolution, try 1920x1080 unless that was a typo. even so you could go down a notch to see if you get a good result in your process of ilimination best practices practice. :) (Logistics Humor)

And have you defragged and emptied the system cache?

You say out of no where, I get that. You haven't run any tweaking apps have you? (the kind that tout speeding up online gaming)

Or any other tweaks, like adjusting your Paging File?

Thats an odd resolution, try 1920x1080 unless that was a typo. even so you could go down a notch to see if you get a good result in your process of ilimination best practices practice. :) (Logistics Humor)

 

And have you defragged and emptied the system cache?

 

You say out of no where, I get that. You haven't run any tweaking apps have you? (the kind that tout speeding up online gaming)

 

Or any other tweaks, like adjusting your Paging File?

How do I empty the system cache or adjust my paging file?

Actually I think I just solved it and it was because I had a hard drive connected to my PSU but not connected to any other cables and it may have been confusing my computer?

That was the last variable I changed and now it seems to be running fine.

Man computers and convoluted and confusing.

Huge appreciation for your guys help though. This community is awesome.

Don't defrag your hard drive/s if they are SSD's and the 680's have an nVidia acknowledged fault with them (whether the fault is driver or hardware related remains to be determined)

having a HD connected to the PSU but not the mobo, shouldn't cause any "confusings"

Don't defrag your hard drive/s if they are SSD's and the 680's have an nVidia acknowledged fault with them (whether the fault is driver or hardware related remains to be determined)

 

having a HD connected to the PSU but not the mobo, shouldn't cause any "confusings"

My 680 seems to be running fine. What kind of fault are you referring to?

Also the only other thing I did was to plug everything that was connected to my computer so perhaps that had some kind of effect?

Don't defrag your hard drive/s if they are SSD's and the 680's have an nVidia acknowledged fault with them (whether the fault is driver or hardware related remains to be determined)

 

having a HD connected to the PSU but not the mobo, shouldn't cause any "confusings"

Why do people keep saying "Don't Defrag an SSD" You can't defrag an SSD in Win7, It will not allow you to do it.

Having the HD unplugged from the Motherboard when it was plugged in will cause issues as the OS looks for the info on that drive, that is no longer attached. I think that is what he is saying.

Before I learned not to do it, Win7 defragged my SSD with no troubles.

I use D3DOverrider to lessen the stutters I see with my 680 GTX's. But then someone will be along soon to tell me how wrong I am for doing it and it doesn't work.

I just smile. D3D OR has been very good to me for a long time, in many sims.

I defrag my SSD all the time, no problems here.

I defrag my SSD all the time, no problems here.

I also don't see what the big deal is in Defragging an SSD. It is beleaved to have a life cycle shorter than a mechanical drive and hence don't use it up ideaology was born. but looking at the numbers you will see that the drives life span is so long that most of us will have updated our systems long before this drive dies. 579Billion read write cycles is like 7yrs for the average user. Heck I upgrade on average of 3to4yrs.

I defrag my SSD all the time, no problems here.

And why would you do that?

Even if it does no harm, there is no significant value in defragging an SSD.

Why not defrag an SSD? I'm sure it'll run better if you put all the data as close to the cable connection as possible.

this is one of the shortest and still best explanations that I found - http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1004&message=40335972

...well, there are some more that fill up a entire book and explain it to the dot. - please feel free to use a search-engine together with your question to find one of these.

edit:

Why not defrag an SSD? I'm sure it'll run better if you put all the data as close to the cable connection as possible.

This analogy of mine doesn't really fit - but it schould give you a good guess why defraggig a SSD isn't a good idea:

Its similar like suggesting a librarian to order the books by their weight instead of their subjects and/or titles in alphabetic order.

- what is a good thing for a mechanical drive is a worst-case-scenario for a SSD.

What worked for me to improve the stutter in previous versions (A10 stand alone, before World) was to delete the DCS folder in C:\Users\yourname\Saved Games\. I noticed that after every crash, the freezing/stutter situation was worse than before until it became unbearable.

My theory is something in that folder gets corrupted. Try to move the DCS folder to the desktop (backup), when you launch World a new one will be created. Run the game, adjust your graphic settings and see if it improves and if it does, and you want to (I didn't do it) you could start bringing the folders one by one to recover your stick settings and stuff to try to determine what was producing the stuttering. Next time you just delete that.

It definitely worked for me. Worth to give it a try if the game was running ok and performance started to degrade. It takes no time to do it.

 

My 680 seems to be running fine. What kind of fault are you referring to?

 

The have been serious reports of Vsync associated faults, mostly fixed with the latest Beta driver (though still not fully rectified) and other more frustrating time out errors associated with the 680's and some mobo/ cpu/ op sys combinations.

A complaint thread of some phenominal size and view count list is on the nVidia forum apparently but unfortunately (or conveniently) the nVidia forums have been down since early July.

 

Why not defrag an SSD? I'm sure it'll run better if you put all the data as close to the cable connection as possible.

 

LOLOL, of course it will... everybody knows that (just like pressing the button harder makes the elevator go up or down faster ;)