AC: Stuttering reduction

[Rick Malm]

What can a user do to reduce or eliminate stuttering even in practice runs where their are no other cars on the track?

With Lotus F1 on Monza track I sometimes get as many as 6 stutters per lap, sometimes its 0 which is great.

What is the key cause of stuttering when running AC local vs MP which involves network response time as well as AC MP implementation?

Background:

My system: CPU: Intel i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz (some small amount overclocking was installed from Main Performance)
Video: NVIDIA | EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti to 3 ASUS VE278Q 27” monitors 85hz refresh

I use a SSD memory for the AC install (The SSD is my C: drive)
My cpu usage is about 26% when AC is running. Processor Affinity shows all checked (0 to 8), Priority=Normal,
window resource monitor shows the cpus are getting used and none are any where near 100%, more like 40-50% and there are graphics showing PARKED cpus.

I turned off the car interior controllable items: no wheel, no driver arms.
I set Frame Limit to match my monitor max at 85.
FRAPS shows FPS will dip to 67 in some corners.
I tried reducing smoke generation and mirror resolution, I turned blur off completely.
I have not turn off HDR yet.
I have not tried to us msconfig and kill all background processes. I typically have firefox running in the background
which is the larger memory user (then Spyhunter4, explorer, LCore, office.bin, Steam....)
I have not tried to ALT-TAB out of AC when I see stuttering to see what is running with the resource monitor.
After I ran the resource monitor and looked at the CPU tab and saw a number of PARKED cpus I downloaded and ran a disable parking utility (edits the registry). This seems to have helped. Any problem with doing this?

http://coderbag.com/Programming-C/CPU-core-parking-manager

http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility

AC settings: Fullscreen Rendering ON | Triple Screen ON (6065x1080) | Vsync - OFF | Frame Limit - 85 | Aniso x 8 | AA x 4 | FXAA x 3 | Shadows -Low | World Detail - Maximum | HDR Color Sat On @ 92%| Smoke Generation – Low||Smoke in Mirrors OFF| Motion Blur - OFF | Mirror Resolution High| CubeMaps at Low | Faces per Frame - 4

 

[Rick Malm]

Paul, I will put your suggestion to the test... Thank you.
Sorry about the long post, just hoping it might spark a solution.
I have to rebuild my OS and reinstall AC. Got screwed up somehow by colision of malware hunters. So I have some work todo before I am up and running again.

Blkout, Yes I did try single screen some time ago (did get stutters and I reported this in this thread) but forgot to undo vsync. I will put this on the list to see what FPS I can get. Thanks for the continued input, everyone has been so helpful.

 

[Blkout]

Ill be honset Rick, your background programs shouldnt really be an issue with that CPU and 16gb of memory unless you have an antivirus program that is running real time updates and or scans during your play time. My CPU is only a little faster than yours and I also have 16gb of memory and I dont disable any background apps, not even my AV, but my AV only runs updates and scans at 3am when Im sleeping.

 

[Blkout]

Can anyone else here confirm they're running an i7 CPU with hyperthreading enabled and not getting stuttering?

 

[Blkout]

Rick, do you know what type of hard drive your game is installed on? Brand and model?

 

[Rick Malm]

Blkout,

Yes, C: is the install drive, 477Mb, raid0, 2 drives
Intel 520 Series 240 GB $186.49

I have a 1Tb storage drive, and a slower USB 2T drive (My Book)
WesternDigitalCaviarBlack2TB=$115.00

Sidebar, due toa hw or sw issue that I am looking int,o Main Performance wants me to run with no overclocking for awhile.
They build it with BIOS performance option 4Ghz but a power supply went bad and (unknown to me) got reset to normal. 3.5Ghz about a month ago.
Do have Corsair H80i Liquid CPU Cooler installed when I try overclocking again.

 

[Blkout]

4GHz would have been sufficient. I run AC on two PC's at my house one is an i5 2500k CPU at 4GHz, the other is an i5 CPU at 4.4GHz. But honestly, I would be surprised if a 3.5GHz i7 or i5 was a bottleneck. The SSD"s should be way more than fast enough for games, but I wonder if its possible that they might be causing some stuttering since they're in RAID. Could you install AC to that 1TB storage drive and see if the problem remains?

 

[Rick Malm]

I dont know how to point Steam to a specific path now but I could try to look it up. Just getting my apps reinstalled. Might be some time before my system is really up. Doing drivers right now and try to get audio working.
No sense testing until all the support stuff is working.

 

[Blkout]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7710-tdlc-0426

 

[Rick Malm]

Blkout,



Well I just got AC running again after os install. Remember before this I would get from 10-18 stutters some days in 5 laps and a few races with 0.

With the OS reinstall and AC reinstall I also had some
big changes in background processes: did not install Norton 360, installed Kaspersky, did not install SpyHunter or RegHunter. Still using Malwarebytes instead. All based on Main Performance recommendation.
No overclocking yet.

Race 6, No stutter, slight few pixel tearing. I did not do any msconfig to limit default running of background processes. I did unpark all the cpus.

I will continue to use afterburner and taskmanager on each race for awhile looking for why I start getting stutters if they come back. Wow this race 6 I was so nice and smooth. What a joy to drive.

Had the in game settings pretty high. (ala smoke on, reflections max, but faces 1 and cubmap low, in game Vsync on. AF 8x, AA 4x, shadow medium, triple screen, full screen rendering checked. HDR not disabled, motion blur off, max world, normal smoke, but did not allow smoke in mirrors. I also run with the 3 extra mirrors enabled as well. (Fkey 11) which does cost some performance I am sure.

Nvidia control panel: AF 16x, FXAA on, AG On, AM off, AT multisample like you suggested, pre rendered frames was set to app setting, not 1 yet. Power max performance, Shader on, TF anisotropic off, TF neg LOD was clamp, TF trilinear ON, threaded Auto, Triple buffer Off, vsync off but IN GAME is on.

Thanks for looking up the help on how to change the install path in steam. Maybe I will not have to do this
but now I have notes on the process.

 

[Blkout]

I don't like Norton AV, most gamers don't. I use Kaspersky and never had an issue. I highly recommend it over Norton. Norton is pretty well known to cause random PC performance issues. Its a good AV but it doesn't care what you're doing, it just does its own thing. Kaspersky protects just as well, isn't a resource hog and even has a game mode so that it won't try to do anything while you're gaming.

In regards to Malwarebytes, its a good program but you don't need to run it actively with Kaspersky running. I usually just install it and don't keep it running in the background and don't let it run at startup, I just open it periodically and run a check but it always comes back clean with Kaspersky running. If my teenage stepson can keep a virus-free and malware-free PC with Kaspersky, I think anyone else can too. Kaspersky does a masterful job even with malware and I've personally seen Malwarebytes slow down a PC when its trying to analyze websites, this isn't really game performance related though, just my .02 since I build PC's for people.

 

[Rick Malm]

Blkout and anyone that is still reading this thread,


4 races this morning try to get shutter rate down (did get improvement)

1st race attempt:
I used msconfig to cut down the background processes to a min.
Saw same old stutter rate about 5-7 per lap, stopped with just 2 laps or so

2nd race
Tried the suggestion to use Nvidia control panel and set pre-rendered frames to 1. This helped, maybe down to 2 stutters per lap (I stop after 2 laps.

3rd race
This time I took the suggestion to use the taskmanager to increase the priorty. I set REALTIME for all 3 AC processes. Better but still show 2 shutters in afterburner. Got 2 small stutters in 4 laps and in the last laps did not see any.

4th
Retry race with no setting changes. race 11 in the series. 4th today, prty HIGH again 2 in 4 laps. Also noticed cpu5, 6 and 8 almost idle. Got 2 small stutters in 4 laps and in the last laps did not see any. This is like chasing the end of the rainbow.

 

[cerebus23]

Well this next update is supposed to be the massive netcode and graphics update,

We in the stretch where stuff is going to be optomized and fine tuned, already saw improvements in the cpu warning and the latest update, i could run way more ai at nords wo the 95% warning so the work they did on the ai last update optomized that some.

I would not sweat stuff too much until this friday when we get the major update and see what all they do to the graphics and optomizations.

Another side thought what peoples replay size set to? Lets be mindful that is not optomized yet either and holds the whole replay in your pc memory while your driving. And is bloated as all heck atm also hope that gets addressed this friday also.

 

[Qazdar Karim]

I get a huge stuttering on valelunga's last sector,it happens if alt+tab during the session,it's very annoying ! anyone having the same issue ?

 

[cerebus23]

Try alt+enter to return to true full screen after you tab out.

 

[Qazdar Karim]

Thanks,i completely missed that

 

[Blkout]

Rick, did you try changing your install location to a different hard drive?

 

[Rick Malm]

Per your suggestion moved Stream to my D: (1T storage) and off of C: my 477G SSD.
Results 5 laps 3 stutters. Race 14
Changed Priority to HIGH Race 15 no stutters. (crashed at 4.5 laps when an AI bumped me on last corner)
See attached 2 races in one image.

 

[Blkout]

Well Rick, I'm about out of options. No chance I suppose that you can get into the BIOS and disable hyperthreading? You exhausted just about every suggestion everyone has made and no one has come along and answered my question if they're using an i7 CPU with hyperthreading without stuttering so I'm starting to think you may be the only one here using an i7 CPU, which uses hyperthreading by default if you didn't know. However you can disable it in the BIOS and it will simply run like an i5 CPU which I believe most people here are using.

 

[Rick Malm]

I looked around in the BIOS panels, did not see the text hyperthreading.
I will look around with google and try to find out how to do it if you think its worth it. By the way the stutters from 2nd storage d: were longer (like 2x)
but with prty high they reduce back to typical time width before the move.
I also have to see if this lower rate continues during the day and then figure out how to get SimVibe to see the install on the D: drive.

 

[Blkout]

I looked around in the BIOS panels, did not see the text hyperthreading.
I will look around with google and try to find out how to do it if you think its worth it. By the way the stutters from 2nd storage d: were longer (like 2x)
but with prty high they reduce back to typical time width before the move.
I also have to see if this lower rate continues during the day and then figure out how to get SimVibe to see the install on the D: drive.

I would just move the game back to your C drive directory or wherever you had it before if it didn't help to move it to another drive. If I knew what motherboard you had, I could tell you where to find hyperthreading in the BIOS.