Extremely Elusive Stutter Issue

[Nealius]

I just tried max preload radius, and it didn't seem to do much. When I had periods of high stutter, usually flying out of/in to Vegas, I checked my disk activity and noticed PID4 accessing two things:

 

1. Nvidia folders, often "backend" folders/files

2. C:\ drive's pagefile

[ST0RM]

How about swapping roles/aircraft during the same M/P session?

Starting in one jet, then landing and changing to another. I get bad stutters. I'm in the same session, so there isnt any new or additional object loading.

 

Or joining a M/P server and having to back out to the main menu, upon relogging in, I get terrible stutters in the entire game. This forces a complete program departure.

[pdmarsh]

The video at the link below will show the issue I am having, although not as severe as it can sometimes be. This is unedited, so I’ll point to the important parts and explain a few things.

 

 

At 00:44 seconds you will see the zoom factor change and a very slight stutter. On the MSI Afterburner charts you will see the downward spike that occurred at the same time in the GPU Usage graph and a smaller downward spike on the FB Usage graph. Later, I’ll show other graphs with corresponding spikes. Regarding the zoom, the initial setting is the “Enter” key default zoom. When these stutters occur, controller inputs get rescanned without any interference from me. The zoom that the screen jumped to is the zoom setting on my controller knob. After this, I reset the sim to the default zoom. That reset is a manual change by me and not part of the issue.

 

At 01:37 another incident occurs, this time with a more visible stutter. Again, see the downward spikes in GPU Usage and FB Usage. The gaps between incidents can be more like 20-30 seconds when the issue is particularly bad.

 

Now I pause the sim and Afterburner to show other corresponding spikes. I put a yellow marker on MSI just to the left of the most recent incident. Not spikes in the following graphs:

 

GPU Usage

FB Usage

Temp Limit

Voltage Limit

Framerate FPS

 

As far as cause, effect and/or relationship, I have no idea what these charts might be hinting at with regard to the root cause.

 

At this point I reset everything and let the sim go on. Another event, with stutter, occurs at 04:00.

 

I want to point out that these events can and do occur with a cold and dark plane sitting on the ramp. I only have the plane in the air to better demonstrate stutter. It was suggested that scenery loading could be the cause, but I believe I have ruled that out. Also, no other aircraft are spawning. This was single player, but I have the issue in multiplayer as well.

 

Finally, I flew a mission this evening on another PC and the image below shows much more clearly the spikes, which are a bit more severe and had the on-screen issues like above.

 

 

Paul

[BitMaster]

Graph & log your disc's usage, primarily SwapFile usage.

 

My guess is heavy swapping on "C" and thus you get the blockade.

 

If you have more drives, put a SF on every one and try again.

[BIGNEWY]

Try closing as many programs as possible before running DCS, for example motherboard apps, sound apps, msi afterburner, or whatever you have that can be closed down. Try to rule out other software.

 

Do you see a difference?

[BIGNEWY]

Try closing as many programs as possible before running DCS, for example motherboard apps, sound apps, msi afterburner, or whatever you have that can be closed down. Try to rule out other software.

 

Do you see a difference?

[pdmarsh]

Thanks for the input. I will be running tests to track hard drive/swap file usage and starting from a clean boot.

 

Paul