Why do some games micro freeze.

[mxoagentjohnson]

Hey guys, quick question.

So i've recently branched out from gaming on the usual stuff i do and started going at all the games on my steam list, ticking off one by one, which i finally have the time to do and have had time to play some absoloute gems!

But i've noticed some games have problems, not game breaking but surely noticable.

How come some games, when say, walking into a new area, spawning in an enemy, doing certain things, does the game freeze for a very short period of time?

I've noticed it with a few games recently, stuff like Skyrim, DmC, Dishonoured and a few others, going into certain areas or certain things happening cause a slight hiccup and then back to normal for a little bit.

Some games benefit from being on the SSD, but usually this doesnt eliminate it, sometimes i notice it more on games because i limit my FPS in order of stability but sometimes it just... Happens?

Some games run smooth as all can, Sleeping Dogs being a great example of a game that runs so fab on my computer, and Fallout 3 being a case of one that really doesnt.

I assume it's loading stuff off the Hard Drive, because in some games it happens in the same area, and in stuff like TF2 it happens sometimes (but i suspect thats tf2 being a bit shoddy lately)

It isnt completely game breaking, in most cases, fallout 3 has definately been a pain to replay due to this problem, but others seem completely fine.

Is it just natural? or is something in my setup causing it? Maybe the VRAM/RAM isnt as good as can be?

Many thanks for the insights!

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Complicated one - disc IO or memory swapping can sometimes be the cause but it can be due to a number of game design consideration - sometimes the code for spawning a new enemy can be CPU time costly or the developer just forgot to precache resources for a given entity causing it to load data in the first time that object appears.

Yea, i find the problem more noticable at higher framerates, but its always there annoyingly enough.

Some games just do it smoothly, like spec ops and sleeping dogs, others like DmC and Dishonoured handle it poorly

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Yea DmC does it every time anything happens, its a bloody nightmare.

Most games are fine, others just seem to do it, my main 1tb is kidna dying but even then the ssd helps but not amazingly.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Not all games are well optimised on PC so consider all game engines are different for starters.

Then consider many games have code which is ported to run @ 1920x1080 or 1280x720 anything else is most likely untested for more than a few moments so any bottlenecks are left in the game relying on the brute force of extreme PC hardware to make it go away.

Its way too complex a subject to give any specific answer as it could be down to hardware drivers, GPU, CPU, HDD, SSD, RAM, OS etc etc

Most likely a combination of several different factors also consider @ the higher resolutions = a lot more pixels for the game engine to render/manipulate especially if you use AA like MSAA.

1280x720 = 921600 Pixels
1920x1080 = 2073600 Pixels
2560x1080 = 2764800 Pixels
3440x1440 = 4953600 Pixels
3840x2160 = 8294400 Pixels

Yea, some games seem to HATE if you unlock their fps, and some give you a 120hz option but dont seem to want to play at that framerate, and some just have broken features from the get go (borderlands physx)

Am i safe to assume i'm not alone in this problem?

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

This is my SSD

I dont think this is normal??

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Havent had any problems with booting, or anything, and my Samsung Magician always scores high.

And the SSD still makes games load better than the HardDrive. I just wonder if games are suppose to pause a bit like that.

Thanks for the link @vincent

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Getting games to run totally smooth is my holy grail. I waste a lot of time trying to fix stuff, and have even bough the Rog Swift to try Gsync out.

The thing is - there is no quick and fast answer, or a one fix for all solutions. It's usually game dependent and/ or a specific engine issue rather than anything to do with hardware (running on ssd etc does nothing for games that have an endemic issue.)

What specific games you having trouble with? I may have an answer for some. Got one for dishonored which I think you mention....

Open "My Documents\My Games\Dishonored\DishonoredGame\Config"

Open the file "DishonoredEngine.ini" with Notepad.exe

Find the following section:
bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE
MinSmoothedFrameRate=30
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=130

Change the last line to your native monitor refresh rate (probably 60 but whatever it is you have set), so if 60hz then:
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60

Save the file.

Also, try changing bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE to bSmoothFrameRate=FALSE which may be better.

Dishonored is an unreal engine game, and most unreal engine games have problems like this and need similar tweaks. It's pathetic that the devs don't just implement simple fixes like this.

Yea i gave that a shot but no dice, most unreal games have horrendous texture streaming bugs. I find it prevelent in almost every unreal game, the best games that dont have it are Spec Ops The Line and Hard Reset, both run amazingly.

Bioshock Infinite had it, but after some tweaking made it only certain areas transitioning, dishonoured just does it a lot and DmC does too.

I think it depends, some games dont expect to be over 60fps because of being made for consoles so when you hit 120fps and suddenly the games problems that are masked by a lower framerate are exacerbated and small freezes are extended out a bit.

ITs like, i can play Sleeping Dogs fine, same with a few other games, some games pause for .3-5 of a second like F3AR and Half Life 2, whilst others do it like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Dishonoured going into new areas or chunks etc.

Some games like Dota 2, it happens when an ally buys an item that pops up on the side hud, it gives me a slight freeze when a couriers been purchased or something, or when visage first summons his minions.

Sleeping Dogs is perhaps the best port ive played in a long time, game is so friggin smooth and a joy to play in every way!

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Agreed. Sometimes it is simply the game, and nothing we do will ever fix it. I think some people just aren't bothered by the odd stutter. I am though, hate it.
I'm surprised about Dishonered though. With that tweak (I think it was only that tweak, may have been more) I got it running so smooth it was unbelievable.

I would say the smoothest running games I've ever played are Tombraider, SLeeping Dogs and Dishonered. And that was before I got the Swift and tried Gsync by the way. As long as I had vsync on and could maintain my monitor refreah rate (was was an overclocked 75hz on my Dell superwide).

Perhaps i notice it more as i'm running 120hz? i usually got 120fps in Dishonoured, and running through some areas would make it micro freeze, regardless of the harddrive it was on or SSD, sometimes it wasnt as bad other times it was a nightmare i dont understand why.

Tomb Raider was very smooth yea i agree on that one!

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

I was running vsync off and w/o any fps limiter hitting 170 fps on max settings with dishonoured, when i go inbetween certain points it still stutters unlocked, just noticable when locking to 120 (well noticable unlocked but yknow i see the fps drop on the counter with it lockeD)

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Tell us your specs, what game, have you googled, do others have this problem, have your updated drivers, have you tried turning audio off and/or lowering settings?

As I think was said, it could be complex to pinpoint to answer but generally it will be do to with loading resources, the relationship between gpu, cpu and system memory can be complex. Allocating and deallocating memory blocks, the memory manager(os) has to constantly search through all memory to find a suitable block of memory if not it resorts to virtual memory(paging) where the hd is used instead of system memory, this is slower and could result in the symptoms described, but it could be a line or two of badly implemented code, some overly complex shader trying to run on the gpu, or some overly large audio file trying to be fetched by the gpu from memory. Generally it's probably some bad coding doing it.

CPU: i7 2600 @ 3.40GHZ - GPU: MSi 680 Power Edition - RAM: 8GB Samsung Green - HARDRIVE: 2TB -

Most games i google have a problem but the fixes dont elimate it, others i google the problem and dont find similar symptoms

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Have you tried messing with HPET settings? It can create this sort of effect on a few setups.

Never fiddled with that, any tips on it?

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

There's 3 settings that seem to work best for different people depending on their hardware.

Off in BIOS, Off in Windows.
On in BIOS, Off in Windows.
On in BIOS, On in Windows.

You should be able to find the setting in your BIOS for High Precision Event Timer.

It's enabled by default in Windows I think but to enable it in windows use this command in an elevated command prompt:

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

to disable it use:

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

Is there any benefit or drawback to disabling or enabling this, just so i can understand what i'm getting my hands into?

I think this problem has already existed since i made the rig years and years ago, ive just never fully noticed it til now

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

There's 3 settings that seem to work best for different people depending on their hardware.

Off in BIOS, Off in Windows.
On in BIOS, Off in Windows.
On in BIOS, On in Windows.

You should be able to find the setting in your BIOS for High Precision Event Timer.

It's enabled by default in Windows I think but to enable it in windows use this command in an elevated command prompt:

bcdedit /set useplatformclock true

to disable it use:

bcdedit /deletevalue useplatformclock

when trying to command prompt disable it was saying it was an error, someone said that means its already off.

I'll play a game of Dota or something and send the results back.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

I did that yea.

Slight stutter still there, fps reduced

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Heres a video, showing how it happens more so the higher my fps is most of the time.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Unlocked, the framerate is beyond 120, so why it stutters and micro freezes when hitting 119 is what the problem is, if i lock it lower though it doesnt happen.

It's starting to become a pain, as what was the point of getting a 120hz monitor when i can spew out 200fps on some games and then get problems achivieving that framerate without uneven frames, then locking it only to get micro freezes.

It still micro freezes at unlocked framerates.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but have you tried wiping your graphics drivers totally clean with something like DDU and then reinstalling the latest driver?

I'll give it a shot, but i've never done a graphics card wipe before, so i'm a bit worried.

When i reinstalled windows the problem persisted so i dont think its that unfortunatly

Also never apologize for helping out a fellow overclocker every suggestion is one i appreciate.

It's not game breaking, i can imagine some games have more problems than others, but it sure as hell is extremely frustrating :/

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

It isnt like a rampant horrible stuttering, some games have it when i turn around quickly like Borderlands 2, others like Sleeping Dogs (which is definately more graphically intensive and better looking) runs like absoloute butter

I'm just confused why everything in my rig is working how it should yet i get some games momentarily pause when something ever bloody happens o_O

I get some games do it cause they're auto loading or auto saving, like F3AR, but like, how do people play Skyrim or Fallout 3 without noticing it every time you enter a new grid, id be driven insane by it.

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

Yea, its all at stock, CPU, GPU, RAM and everything is all running at stock levels ^_^

 

[mxoagentjohnson]

If possible, I would overclock the cpu - that is if you can with it being what appears to be a non-K version.

I can achive a maximum of a 4.2 overclock iirc with the Non K version.

I'll give it a shot, i actually turned off my 3.8 overclock in order to test if the issue still occured and it does unfortunatly.