Possible Problem to my 680 120fps stutters

[mxoagentjohnson]

Hey guys.

So recently, on some games in particular, ones that i used to hit 120fps on no problem without any sort of stutter or jidder have been doing an odd thing lately, depend on areas where the fps seems to fluctuate between 120, to 119 whilst causing a small pause/stutter, it doesnt happen in every game, but the main culprit is Dota 2, Dishonoured and a few other unreal games.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the problem, but i noticed that the Voltage limit, OV Max limit and Utilization limit all seem to fluctuate when it happens, it doesnt do it for more than a split second, but it causes the map to scroll badly or teamfights to become a nuisance.

Also, my Graphics Card has some form of boost, which id like to turn off but i've heard isnt possible?

Correct me if i'm wrong but would this be causing problems? the temps are always fine i just wanna sort this darn problem out.

Many thanks

 

[DarkBahamut]

What is the actual GPU utilisation doing?

The card is fluctuating between it's performance caps which is implying GPU load is low. While the clock speeds changing could have some effect, your card isn't dropping many bins and unless there are some sudden large spikes of demand in the games then I'd be surprised if this is the cause. More so since this is a feature of the card and should have been doing this since the day you got it, which to me implies you have a different issue. Install anything new recently or changed driver versions?

You can get rid of boost by flashing a custom BIOS which will lock the card to a fixed 3D clock speed rather than it varying on ultisation. I think enabling K Boost (which you can do with Precision X, but not afterburner I believe) also forces the card to it's maximum boost state (power cap can still lower clock speeds however) but you'll need to turn it off whenever you don't want your card at full clocks.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

What is the actual GPU utilisation doing?

The card is fluctuating between it's performance caps which is implying GPU load is low. While the clock speeds changing could have some effect, your card isn't dropping many bins and unless there are some sudden large spikes of demand in the games then I'd be surprised if this is the cause. More so since this is a feature of the card and should have been doing this since the day you got it, which to me implies you have a different issue. Install anything new recently or changed driver versions?

You can get rid of boost by flashing a custom BIOS which will lock the card to a fixed 3D clock speed rather than it varying on ultisation. I think enabling K Boost (which you can do with Precision X, but not afterburner I believe) also forces the card to it's maximum boost state (power cap can still lower clock speeds however) but you'll need to turn it off whenever you don't want your card at full clocks.

Its a problem with a select few games, i'm uploading a video to demonstate, i'll repost it here when it has uploaded.

It's not a problem with every game, just a few, the video will show what i mean.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn6dF65osCk

This is the closest i can show.

Whenever i lock my fps to 120 in games, it fluctuates from 120 to 119.7/119.9, I usually notice if it goes down to 119.4 that i get a slight hiccup/stutter, some games dont do this, Half Life 2 being an example, some games drop to 119.7 often but dont visually stutter, sleeping dogs, and some do this where they stutter every time it does it.

But for an annoying reason, when i lock at 60 it never does this, ever, only in tf2 and ultra sf4 does it drop to 59.9 or so, and never stutters (tf2 does for another reason unrelated which is being fixed)

Yet, when i unlock the fps, you can clearly see beyond 120fps being achived, so i dont understand what to do.

Dishonoured does the same thing, so does DmC, yet others dont? I'm really confused as to what it could be.

Any help would be great!

 

[DarkBahamut]

It's look like a frame pacing issue. Your unlocked average frame rate drops to within 10% of your 120fps V-Sync and while the unlocked average is higher, this isn't telling us if any individual frame within that average fps capture period has taken longer than 8 milliseconds to render, which is all it would take for you to get the stutter. 10% really is not much headroom if you want an absolute rock solid 8 millisecond update without fail. If you are using double buffered V-Sync then your cards maximum peak performance will be lower than running unlocking also which seems a likely culprit to me.

If you don't already you might want to enable triple buffering as this helps to smooth out frame delivery as the card doesn't have to wait on it's buffer flips before starting the next frame. You could also try overclocking a bit to see if the extra performance make sure all the frames render in time. And you could try the K boost in precision x to see if that helps, but I suspect the GPU will be at full clock speeds in the panning tests you were showing anyway so I don't think this will help too much.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

It's look like a frame pacing issue. Your unlocked average frame rate drops to within 10% of your 120fps V-Sync and while the unlocked average is higher, this isn't telling us if any individual frame within that average fps capture period has taken longer than 8 milliseconds to render, which is all it would take for you to get the stutter. 10% really is not much headroom if you want an absolute rock solid 8 millisecond update without fail. If you are using double buffered V-Sync then your cards maximum peak performance will be lower than running unlocking also which seems a likely culprit to me.

If you don't already you might want to enable triple buffering as this helps to smooth out frame delivery as the card doesn't have to wait on it's buffer flips before starting the next frame. You could also try overclocking a bit to see if the extra performance make sure all the frames render in time. And you could try the K boost in precision x to see if that helps, but I suspect the GPU will be at full clock speeds in the panning tests you were showing anyway so I don't think this will help too much.

Vsync is always off, so its nothing to do with vertical sync.
It doesnt happen with every game, half life 2 being an example.

It seems to happen on online games when people connect, random times. its starting to become frustrating.

And i dont get how locking it to 90fps dosent recreate this problem but 120 deos.

 

[DarkBahamut]

You mean it's stays solid at 90.0? That would make a lot of sense given that card will have excess power to render frames in plenty of time.

If you lock it to 120 then you will get the same effect as V-Sync at 120Hz without the benefit of a guaranteed sync display update. To render at a fixed frame rate with double buffering, at some point the card either must fail to render a frame in time or it must stop rendering.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

You mean it's stays solid at 90.0? That would make a lot of sense given that card will have excess power to render frames in plenty of time.

If you lock it to 120 then you will get the same effect as V-Sync at 120Hz without the benefit of a guaranteed sync display update. To render at a fixed frame rate with double buffering, at some point the card either must fail to render a frame in time or it must stop rendering.

Its weird because it happens in games where id imagine it would happen, and doesnt in others.

Its just a tiny bit more frequent at 120, some games like Sleeping Dogs runs great at 120 no problem, others have small freezes, half life 2 micro freezes for .5 of a second in the same places, Dystopia online does randomly, dishonoured does it in the same places each time, its making me worry, made some games unplayable.

I know that some games have stuttering problems due to texture loading, like Arkham City, Devil May Cry reboot, and Dishonoured, and they only seem to amplify the problem when you run at a higher framerate, but games like Dystopia load up servers, linera maps into memory, yet they stutter in certain situations, like spawning in dystopia, going into a newer part of the map etc.

It's not completely game breaking, unless its Dota, in which it is, league never has this problem (as an example of MOba v MOba)

 

[DarkBahamut]

It's worse at higher frame rate because when you run a locked rate or V-Sync at 120FPS, the card has exactly 8.33 milliseconds to render that frame. So literally anything else the engine does that might cause a performance loss (waiting for texture, loading new characters, etc etc) just doesn't leave the card with enough time to then render it's frame out. It doesn't happen at lower frame rates because as the framerate decrease, the card has more time to deliver that frame so now it has the time to wait for the data and then to actually render the frame. Different games will always be different just depending on how good the engine is and how demanding the graphics load is. Your dota 2 video shows your machine running extremely tight on rendering times so it's reasonable to expect the odd dip here and there

I think the only way you'll overcome the issue is with more power. 8.3 milliseconds is a tiny rendering budget, even for an older game. You really need a vast excess of available performance if you never ever want a late frame and even then in some titles it can be nearly impossible to avoid.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

It's worse at higher frame rate because when you run a locked rate or V-Sync at 120FPS, the card has exactly 8.33 milliseconds to render that frame. So literally anything else the engine does that might cause a performance loss (waiting for texture, loading new characters, etc etc) just doesn't leave the card with enough time to then render it's frame out. It doesn't happen at lower frame rates because as the framerate decrease, the card has more time to deliver that frame so now it has the time to wait for the data and then to actually render the frame. Different games will always be different just depending on how good the engine is and how demanding the graphics load is. Your dota 2 video shows your machine running extremely tight on rendering times so it's reasonable to expect the odd dip here and there

I think the only way you'll overcome the issue is with more power. 8.3 milliseconds is a tiny rendering budget, even for an older game. You really need a vast excess of available performance if you never ever want a late frame and even then in some titles it can be nearly impossible to avoid.

So i'm correct in assuming it isnt my PC? because if so i'm really honestly ****ing glad it isnt because this has been driving me insane for a long time now.

It kind of makes sense, if i lock it to 110 it will do it, just a little less often, i find the sweet spot is usually 90FPS, so what you're saying is i should consider locking troublesome games at 90 as opposed to higher fps?

I can give a detailed list of games that do and do do this and give you the situations in which it happens aswell, but i'm kinda relieved it isnt an issue with my computer, i've tested every bit of hardware and cant find a problem.

I honestly just assumed that this happened because the lower fps masks areas of stutter in texture / loading streaming because games were designed with 30/60fps in mind, case in point why Arkham City stutters so bad.

I just worried because i know people who say their pc is fine yknow? Just ameks me wonder, and why im only recently noticing.

 

[DarkBahamut]

Guess it depends what you mean by your PC

It certainly could be lack of hardware power/performance in some cases and faster hardware would improve it, but I don't think it's because something is broken or anything.

Setting a lower framerate in more demanding games certainly should help with smoothness. If you really want the ultimate smoothness then you should also reduce your monitors refresh rate to match whatever rate cap you want to avoid tearing, but it depends if it bothers you or not.

It's really the same reason why console games are often locked to 30 FPS. In reality most games locked at 30 would probably average 40 or so, but gameplay experience is generally considered better with a smooth lock refresh so there's no juddering/tearing, even if the overall frame rate is lower.

One thing you might want to consider down the line if smoothness is really important is a G-Sync monitor. They reduced the monitor refresh rate down on the fly so even if the frame rate dips slightly the game is always smooth and in time with display updates. Really handy at high frame rates where maintaining a solid rate constantly is very difficult.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Guess it depends what you mean by your PC

It certainly could be lack of hardware power/performance in some cases and faster hardware would improve it, but I don't think it's because something is broken or anything.

Setting a lower framerate in more demanding games certainly should help with smoothness. If you really want the ultimate smoothness then you should also reduce your monitors refresh rate to match whatever rate cap you want to avoid tearing, but it depends if it bothers you or not.

It's really the same reason why console games are often locked to 30 FPS. In reality most games locked at 30 would probably average 40 or so, but gameplay experience is generally considered better with a smooth lock refresh so there's no juddering/tearing, even if the overall frame rate is lower.

One thing you might want to consider down the line if smoothness is really important is a G-Sync monitor. They reduced the monitor refresh rate down on the fly so even if the frame rate dips slightly the game is always smooth and in time with display updates. Really handy at high frame rates where maintaining a solid rate constantly is very difficult.

Its absoloutely nothing to do with not being able to hit framerates or fluctuating framerates, please see the video.

I'm not throwing money at a GSYNC monitor that wont sort a problem out with how my computer is handling things, not how the monitor is representing them.


I had a thought that maybe a registry edit i did a month ago might be the problem but i highly doubt it, as the registry edit wasnt on anything important

 

[DarkBahamut]

It's unfortunately everything to do with not hitting the frame rates. Uncapped frame rates are very different from locked ones in how important frame times are. See this example below.

Let's say you play dota 2 and the frame times are as follows.

Frame 1: 7.3ms
Frame 2: 8.6ms
Frame 3: 7.3ms
Frame 4: 8.6ms
Frame 5: 7.3ms
Frame 6: 8.6ms.

Now with an unlocked frame rate this translates to an average of 126 FPS. But if you now cap your frame rate to 120 the above example becomes an average of 118 FPS. This is because with a 120 cap no frame can be delivered earlier than 8.3ms, because that is what you've limited it to. But the frames that take 8.6ms still take 8.6ms because the hardware can't render them fast enough. This shows that while average uncapped frame rates can be over 120, this is no guarantee that you can hold a solid 120 once you enforce a limiter.

If you enable triple buffering it might help if it's only a slight delay like the example above, but slow frames could still be an issue if two occur back to back.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

It's unfortunately everything to do with not hitting the frame rates. Uncapped frame rates are very different from locked ones in how important frame times are. See this example below.

Let's say you play dota 2 and the frame times are as follows.

Frame 1: 7.3ms
Frame 2: 8.6ms
Frame 3: 7.3ms
Frame 4: 8.6ms
Frame 5: 7.3ms
Frame 6: 8.6ms.

Now with an unlocked frame rate this translates to an average of 126 FPS. But if you now cap your frame rate to 120 the above example becomes an average of 118 FPS. This is because with a 120 cap no frame can be delivered earlier than 8.3ms, because that is what you've limited it to. But the frames that take 8.6ms still take 8.6ms because the hardware can't render them fast enough. This shows that while average uncapped frame rates can be over 120, this is no guarantee that you can hold a solid 120 once you enforce a limiter.

If you enable triple buffering it might help if it's only a slight delay like the example above, but slow frames could still be an issue if two occur back to back.

Ah ok, that makes sense, sorry if i came off agressive, i just didnt think it worked this way.

So, i can list an example of a bunch of games that stutter and dont, if it helps? theres only like 3-4 that regularly do it randomly, the otehrs do it at expected areas (no game transitions smoothly between area to area from what ive gathered, even on a friends PC at the same fps)

Thanks for helping me out, i just assumed it was a case of my pc as even when i dont lock the fps i still sometimes get these stutters.

 

[RageQuit©]

I get this too with some games. So annoying. Elder Scrolls Online does it, when V-Sync is enabled. That slight hitch everytime it hits 59fps. Without V-Sync the fps is 80+ but it tears and judders along, so you can't win.

Perhaps an upgrade to a 970 will sort your stutter woes OP? Considering it myself...

 

[los]

Could it be related to parked cores on your cpu?
See this thread
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18576413

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

I get this too with some games. So annoying. Elder Scrolls Online does it, when V-Sync is enabled. That slight hitch everytime it hits 59fps. Without V-Sync the fps is 80+ but it tears and judders along, so you can't win.

Perhaps an upgrade to a 970 will sort your stutter woes OP? Considering it myself...

Yea i've noticed its not every game, just particular ones, the main culrpits being Dishonoured, DmC, Dota 2 and 1 or 2 others.

Could it be related to parked cores on your cpu?
See this thread
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18576413

I unparked my cores a while ago, when i reinstalled windows i sorted that out ^_^ thanks for the suggestions guys!

 

[DarkBahamut]

I think what I'd try is to actually force V-Sync (not just a rate cap) at 120Hz and run with triple buffering on as I think that has the best chance of sorting things out without a hardware change IMO. It gives the hardware the least downtime while adhering to a frame rate limit at the cost of a slight input lag increase, though at 120FPS we're talking pretty tiny delays anyway.

The triple buffering allows the card to work up to 2 frames ahead which means it can use any buffer from finishing a frame early on the next frame which can allow a 'late' frame to still be on time in some cases. In the 7.3ms/8.6ms example I used above triple buffering would allow all those frames to be delivered in the 8.3 ms sync updates, as it starts the 8.6ms frame 1 ms 'early' in the 2nd back buffer which means it still meets it's sync window. Multiple late frames will still result in judder happening as it's only a short time buffer from the previous frame, but it has the best chance to fix it.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

I think what I'd try is to actually force V-Sync (not just a rate cap) at 120Hz and run with triple buffering on as I think that has the best chance of sorting things out without a hardware change IMO. It gives the hardware the least downtime while adhering to a frame rate limit at the cost of a slight input lag increase, though at 120FPS we're talking pretty tiny delays anyway.

The triple buffering allows the card to work up to 2 frames ahead which means it can use any buffer from finishing a frame early on the next frame which can allow a 'late' frame to still be on time in some cases. In the 7.3ms/8.6ms example I used above triple buffering would allow all those frames to be delivered in the 8.3 ms sync updates, as it starts the 8.6ms frame 1 ms 'early' in the 2nd back buffer which means it still meets it's sync window. Multiple late frames will still result in judder happening as it's only a short time buffer from the previous frame, but it has the best chance to fix it.

That makes a lot of sense, and explains why some games have it and others dont.

I notice some games run at high framerates n problem, games like Sleeping Dogs, Half Life 2 etc all run great, however some, like DmC, Fallout 3, Dishonoured seem to amplify loading problems?

I know a lot of games load on the fly, Skyrim, Fallout 3 for example, so i get a little lag every now and then walking into new areas, but if i run anything at 120 that usually has these problems it sometimes amplifys them yknow? i think thats what is causing my problem.

If i lock Fallout 3 and fpsclamp it to 60, these stutters/freezes arent as drastic, they go from .8 or so seconds to almost instant and unrecognizable if playing.

However some games love high high framerates, and dotn usually have stutter problems, sleeping dogs is a good example.

I'll try a game of Dota with Triple Buffering, but i hope it doesnt add any input lag