Microstuttering

[mattlach]

Lets make sure we keep things defined properly.


Sound stutters are one thing.


Microstuttering is a very specific problem area usually attributed to multiple GPU setups (like crossfire or SLI, or using a dual GPU video card like the GTX590 or HD6990).

I run two 6970s in crossfire and have not experienced any microstuttering in this game.

I have very very rarely had some sound stutter issues, but it usually only happens once per map, so I presumed it had something to do with th esound not being loaded from the drive yet, and once it is loaded it resides in memory and is not a problem.

If you actually have microstuttering that is caused by multi-gpu solutions, first try is to update your video card drivers, and download your graphics vendors latest application profiles. This may help.

Sound stuttering may have something to do with what is called DPC latency, which can be caused by an insufficient CPU, or by driver issues.

This game is unusually CPU dependent, so if you are having these issues that's probably your issue right there. That being said, updating drivers is free, so the first thing to do is to check to make sure your audio, video card, and various other drivers are up to date (even if the driver seems unrelated, if it is in the DPC Queue at the same time, and it has an issue, it can affect the driver for your audio, even though it is not directly audio related in and of itself.

 

[mattlach]

Colt are you using the 11.9 drivers? And if so have you downloaded the latest xfire cap2 profile to see if it fixes it?

It's actually at CAP 3 now.

 

[mattlach]

Afaik the 4870X2 is not considered a crossfire internally to they system, however I have yet to use GPUZ to determine GPU Usage during play.

If you use more than one GPU it is crossfire (or SLI) regardless of whter it is on one or two video cards.

 

[mattlach]

If you have decent fps but have micro stuttering go into you RO engine file in my documents search for [TextureStreaming] under it is PoolSize set it to half your video card ram.Example I have 1024 Vram on my card so I set pool size to 512.Unless its been changed the default was 140 this will help you card load textures more efficiently.

Should help with micro stuttering just dont set it no higher than half your Vram or you could have stability problems.

important to keep in mind.

on Dual GPU systems your you have to use half the vram of ONE of your GPU's. VRAM does not add up between cards.

Example:

I have two 6970's with 2GB on each. I ahve a total of 4GB ram, but what I should set the number to is 1024, as this is half the ram of one card.

This also applies to video cards with two GPU's on the same card like the 4870x2, 5970, and 6990, all of which are dual GPU designs. For instance. a Radeon 5970 says it has 2GB on the box, but that's only 1GB per GPU, which means the setting should be 512.

4870x2 comes in multiple memory configurations. remember that the number in the specs is split over both GPU's, just like above. If it's a 1GB card, that means its 512Mb per GPU, and the setting should be 256, etc.

The same applies for Geforce GTX590's and other Nvidia dual GPU cards.

 

[Skvate]

the poolsize doesnt solve the microstuttering problem.

The sollution is the devs taking the time to properly optimize the maps that are troublesome(mostly pavlov and station). The 3gb patch didnt fix anything for me at least, and they posted that they were working on optimizing maps one at a time. Guess we just have to wait. Admins should just remove pavlov from maprotation until it is optimized and working properly.

 

[mattlach]

This game is unusually CPU dependent, so if you are having these issues that's probably your issue right there.

Also, keep in mind, before you reply something to the effect of "I ahve a plentyfast CPU, and my utilization isn't even that high":

I have a Phenom II X6 at 4.0Ghz, and I am still CPU limited.

This game is EXTREME on the CPU because of all the single thread DX9 draw calls.

What this means is that typically one core is always going to be maxed out, and the others are going to be relatively low use. On my CPU it reports about 40% utilization during game play, but its CPU limited as my two video cards are not fed quickly enough to peak out.

It may not LOOK like one core is pinned and the others are low, but this is because the Windows scheduler load balances your CPU and switches heavy threads around between the core several times a second. it does this so quickly that the charts in the task manager don't update fast enough to show it, so what you are seeing as actual load per core is only an approximate average load, not the peak load that is slowing you down.

So what this means for me:

if I turn off framerate smoothing in the video card settings, my framerate is anywhere from ~48fps to 88fps in game.

This doesn't change regardless of what graphics settings I use.

It's the same at low resolutions and high resolutions, at low video card settings and high video card settings.

With Crossfire enabled and playing at 2560x1600 with graphics settings at normal, the framerate is the same, but I get only ~35-45% GPU utilization.

With crossfire on, but quality set to ultra and post processing set to "war movie" framerate is still the same, but now GPU utilization is in the 70-90% range.

What this means is that my CPU is pinned and not able to keep up with my video cards.

Some systems handle the CPU being pinned better than others. Some sound cards handle pinned CPU's better than others (some have on board sound processing, others do it in software on the CPU)

If the drivers don't solve the issue, my suspicion is that CPU load combined with software audio processing of on board sound chips is the culprit.

IMHO, the only people who have fast enough CPU's in their machines right now, are those with overclocked Intel i5-2500K and i7-2600K running at ~4.5 to 4.8Ghz.

This may change if/when TWI release the DX11 update for the game, which should aid in spreading some of the load across different cores. Of course this will only help those with DX11 compliant video cards.

 

[mattlach]

the poolsize doesnt solve the microstuttering problem.

The sollution is the devs taking the time to properly optimize the maps that are troublesome(mostly pavlov and station). The 3gb patch didnt fix anything for me at least, and they posted that they were working on optimizing maps one at a time. Guess we just have to wait. Admins should just remove pavlov from maprotation until it is optimized and working properly.

If it's a map issue, then why have I never experienced it?

 

[PUTZ]

If it's a map issue, then why have I never experienced it?

It's not a map issue, that's why.

 

[mattlach]

It's not a map issue, that's why.

Kind of the point I was trying to make

 

[Skvate]

It's not a map issue, that's why.

the problem doesnt affect everyone it seems, but a lot of people. Most people that im playing with reports the problem at the same time on pavlov.
For a while we thought it was the vehicles that caused it, but it happens when noone is using tanks also.

But if it's not a map issue it seems that you know what it is. Care to share your knowledge about the issue?

 

[mattlach]

the problem doesnt affect everyone it seems, but a lot of people. Most people that im playing with reports the problem at the same time on pavlov.
For a while we thought it was the vehicles that caused it, but it happens when noone is using tanks also.

But if it's not a map issue it seems that you know what it is. Care to share your knowledge about the issue?

If it happens to everyone on the server at the same time, it would appear to me to be server related.

There are - apparently - a lot of servers out there running on servers that aren't fast enough to properly serve the number of player slots they are set up for.

Does the problem always appear or does it appear on some servers but not on others?

 

[PUTZ]

Care to explain "at the same time on pavlov" means? That might help us look into the issue.

We believe it's an audio issue. And since most people join the server at the same time, it could theoretically happen at the same time, independent of whichever map. It could be that since pavlovs is a more stressful map on systems, that it is much more noticeable.

 

[Das Bose]

Care to explain "at the same time on pavlov" means? That might help us look into the issue.

We believe it's an audio issue. And since most people join the server at the same time, it could theoretically happen at the same time, independent of whichever map. It could be that since pavlovs is a more stressful map on systems, that it is much more noticeable.

FYI since swapping from my onboard Realtek audio to my Xonar D2X, what little stuttering I did get seems to have gone. I haven't changed anything else.

I've played 3 or 4 times since on Pavlovs and so far so good

 

[>F|R< Sarcinelli]

Lets make sure we keep things defined properly.


Sound stutters are one thing.


Microstuttering is a very specific problem area usually attributed to multiple GPU setups (like crossfire or SLI, or using a dual GPU video card like the GTX590 or HD6990).

I run two 6970s in crossfire and have not experienced any microstuttering in this game.

I have very very rarely had some sound stutter issues, but it usually only happens once per map, so I presumed it had something to do with th esound not being loaded from the drive yet, and once it is loaded it resides in memory and is not a problem.

If you actually have microstuttering that is caused by multi-gpu solutions, first try is to update your video card drivers, and download your graphics vendors latest application profiles. This may help.

Sound stuttering may have something to do with what is called DPC latency, which can be caused by an insufficient CPU, or by driver issues.

This game is unusually CPU dependent, so if you are having these issues that's probably your issue right there. That being said, updating drivers is free, so the first thing to do is to check to make sure your audio, video card, and various other drivers are up to date (even if the driver seems unrelated, if it is in the DPC Queue at the same time, and it has an issue, it can affect the driver for your audio, even though it is not directly audio related in and of itself.

I have both sound (it starts stuttering then go completly mute after some minutes) and video stuttering (propably due to my archaic Athlon 64 X2 6400+).

 

[Filo90]

I have stuttering on almost every maps, more or less......sometimes it makes me going forward some some metres instantly

 

[DesiQ]

I don't get any stuttering, but at times I get small pauses where the game stops and it seems like the same sound is being played many times (like a rapid, low pitched dum-dum-dum sound). These pauses last for a full second or so, and probably happen most often whenever incidental music is being played (lost a cap, gained a cap, etc), although it can happen in normal combat too. It's never happened in ironsights mode.

Specs are below.

 

[>F|R< Sarcinelli]

I have stuttering on almost every maps, more or less......sometimes it makes me going forward some some metres instantly

Looks like latency problems, the same happens here when I'm playing on full 64 players servers.

 

[Skvate]

Care to explain "at the same time on pavlov" means? That might help us look into the issue.

We believe it's an audio issue. And since most people join the server at the same time, it could theoretically happen at the same time, independent of whichever map. It could be that since pavlovs is a more stressful map on systems, that it is much more noticeable.

We seem to notice when this "microstuttering" starts simultaneously. Someone mentions it on voicecom, and other people say they notice it to. Might be that the other people are lying though ...but im not.

Gona check with the other serveradmins about the serverspecs.

I have two soundcards - realtek onboard, and Native Instruments external USB. I seem to have more soundissues with the realtek card, but havent compared properly. Just noticed that some sounds disappear with my realtek card if theres many people on the server.

Also, i got the microjittering problem earlier today when we where about 10 people on the server - and some bots.

 

[Shepkoval]

I suppose this is related?

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?p=946645#post946645

 

[Freezy]

earlier today i was playing on station with about 20 players, stat fps showed between 45 and 60 fps but it looked and felt like barely 25.