PC Microstuttering

I'd like to remind ppl that there are many stutter issues with this game. Since this topic wasn't really specific on which one, expect other kinds to get mentioned as well.

 
I believe the topic is specifically micro-stuttering. The tiny blips when roaming and such. Not freezing up due to zombies doing things. Freezing completely up and a fraction of a second are entirely different topics.

 
I have discovered the cause of my stuttering as the process which tells zombies to attack a block or swing at a player.
Each and everytime a zombie attacks a block, microstutter.

Each and everytime a zombie takes a swing at me, microstutter

When i enter a PoI and there are many awake zombies and some come out to fight me, often i cannot aim for s### because all the zombies in the building are creating constant stutters.

I just dont understand these fps issues anymore, for example:

I have a Ryzen 7 1800x 8x3.6ghz and a GTX 1060 6gb and between the microstuttering ruining the gameplay i usually have around 60fps.

My friend who has a slightly weaker computer; AMD FX 6350 6x3.5ghz and a Nvidia GTX 1060 6gb...(still a very good rig) who was next to me on the occasions we tested, reported that his fps dropped from 25-40 down to 5-10 when in encounters with zombies, becoming unplayable.

The AMD FX 6350 is still a great processor and he normally has great FPS...yet A17 seems to be slapping everyone in the face.

My wishes for the next version of 7D2D is:

-Optimize

-Optimize more

-Yet more optimizing

Many of us are running top end rigs and STILL having issues. You cannot continue like you are now, to blame US for YOUR poor optimization.
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A lot of people with similar hardware are playing the game fine, so telling us to optimize solves nothing, since we have already optimized the game in numerous ways. Our testers and us play the game on a variety of hardware just fine with the correct settings.

I have a Ryzen 7 1800x and until I updated my GPU a few months ago, I was also using a GTX 1060 6GB and the game played fine for me.

I have 16 GB of RAM. How much to you have?

What resolution are you running at? It makes a big difference. With a 1060 1440p was bad for me, so I would not go above 1920x1080 and reflections should be at medium or lower.

 
I set my resolution to 1600x900 for it makes a huge difference in my fps running a GTX1060 6GB. Sometimes I log in to find my resolution has been set back to 1920x1080 is this the same issue your talking about and or something else?
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I was talking about windowed vs fullscreen modes and registry keys, not the bug with resolution changes. Now the same code could be causing that issue too.

 
A lot of people with similar hardware are playing the game fine, so telling us to optimize solves nothing, since we have already optimized the game in numerous ways. Our testers and us play the game on a variety of hardware just fine with the correct settings.
I have a Ryzen 7 1800x and until I updated my GPU a few months ago, I was also using a GTX 1060 6GB and the game played fine for me.

I have 16 GB of RAM. How much to you have?

What resolution are you running at? It makes a big difference. With a 1060 1440p was bad for me, so I would not go above 1920x1080 and reflections should be at medium or lower.
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16gb (2x8) 2666mhz Corsair Vengeance DDR4 Ram

960gb Agate SSD (550mb/s read 530mb/s write)

Resolution 1440x900 Windowed

Reflections: OFF

I usually play 1920x1080 Fullscreen, but have lowered the resolution to attempt to improve stability (so far not much improvement). I run in Windowed mode in A17+ because there is an unknown issue im experiencing in which FullScreen adds another 15'c onto the CPU tempature to a point i become concerned (i dont experience this in any other game) yet whilst running in Windowed mode these very strange and dramatic temperature increases do not happen. I want to play a game, not run a 24/7 stress test and severely deplete the lifespan of the CPU in your game.

Why Windowed and Fullscreen have such a dramatic effect on CPU temperature when the resolution is the same, i have no idea. This started in A17.

Reflections off to maximize frame rate stability, you advised us that Reflections were one of the causes of microstuttering therefor i turned it entirely off. Im doing everything to minimize the effects. Turning off reflections has not improved things for me, but other people have had improvements. Me and the majority of the people i play with, report these stuttering issues when engaged with zombies, the longer they play the game without a restart, the stuttering is worse. (after a long 6 hour session, FPS is much lower of what it was when they first logged in, and zombie engagement produces much worse stutters)

Stutters are not related to map generation or loading as we play on Navesgane and have no issues with slow chunk load. In fact chunk loads are greatly improved on A17 and travelling fast has far less issues than in the past. Gotta give credit where its due and chunk loading is rapid.

 
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Interesting Gsync with Vsync read:
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1002056/geforce-drivers/understanding-how-g-sync-and-v-sync-work-together/
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I think the problem with topics like that is no one can agree with anything, making it difficult to separate fact from opinion. But I agree in that it was a good read.

I personally have never visually noticed any tearing with games while not using v-sync at all but instead using g-sync + frame limiter. Whether or not this game benefits from v-sync in terms of frame time stability is another matter. But I don't think we should be forced to enable v-sync just so we can enjoy this one game (since this is the only game I know of that has severe frame time stability issues).

There's also the matter of players with older hardware who average 30 - 35 fps with this game. They don't really have the option to use v-sync as that would effectively half their average fps + the 1 frame input lag causing the game to be really not enjoyable.

 
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It would not halve their fps, it would give them what they're already getting. Your card doesn't magically find the ability to create twice as many completely rendered frames simply because vsync is off. If you card can handle 20fps with it on and 30-35 with it off, the extra you're seeing are incomplete frames, this the tearing.

Also, v-sync drastically improves G-Sync, as is mentioned many times on the nVidia forums. Capping a framerate is NOT the same as v-sync. You can cap your rate and still get half-rendered buffers sent through. V-sync simply times things and makes sure the buffer is full before flushing it.

Snake, your problem sounds like garbage collection. The longer you play the worse it gets has nothing to do with video options, that's garbage collection failing to catch stuff or something. The team would be better suited to helping with this but that is NOT micro-stuttering, those are pauses as stuff is either spawned in or removed, such as zombies and their animations. I get that if I play long enough, but I do not have micro-stutter. Again, it sounds like an entirely different problem.

 
I have a fairly decent rig.. 16 gigs ram i5 8600k and a gtx 1070ti and the game is on an ssd. I get micro stutters. Micro stutters are not game breaking and unless you're looking for them they most likely won't bother you and you might not even really notice them. For some people it's very jarring and immersion breaking and a huge annoyance. Everyone experiences this differently. I notice it during a swing . If I'm swinging at a rock no big deal but the smooth animation and timing in my head gets thrown off because i count as I swing. It's kind of a mild OCD thing and when it happens its very disatisfying and makes me frown. I can imagine if someone also does this or has real OCD it might make them freak out.

If the micro stutter happens when I'm swinging at a zombie it throws my aim off and I miss a hit that looked like I should've got. THIS is the current problem with melee at the moment that I feel is causing people to say melee is broken or hitboxes are off. It's the microstutters.

Yes it's alpha. I'm not even complaining about it because my microstutters are mild, just trying to clarify some points. People compare the game to other popular survival type games where the graphics are nicer and theres "alot more going on" and these micro stutters don't happen. There's a freakin butt ton of stuff going on in the background of the game with loading blocks and saving info about block damage and entity damage and locations. I imagine it has to do with stuff like that and also might not even be local,it may be partly dependant on the specs of the server you're playing on.

Short clips of people experiencing these micro stutters would be great

 
It would not halve their fps, it would give them what they're already getting. Your card doesn't magically find the ability to create twice as many completely rendered frames simply because vsync is off. If you card can handle 20fps with it on and 30-35 with it off, the extra you're seeing are incomplete frames, this the tearing.
Also, v-sync drastically improves G-Sync, as is mentioned many times on the nVidia forums. Capping a framerate is NOT the same as v-sync. You can cap your rate and still get half-rendered buffers sent through. V-sync simply times things and makes sure the buffer is full before flushing it.
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If a game can't render at exactly 30fps or higher, it'll drop down to I think 15fps (aka half). It tries to hold a steady fps instead of allowing chaotic fps to go all over the place. It doesn't remove bad frames or the tearing you're talking about... it just "helps" prevent it by simply stabilizing the fps. So if you're averaging 25 - 29fps... it won't render at that fps at all... it'll just drop down to 15fps because that's the rounded number v-sync is programmed to render at.

You'll notice I used "" when I say it "helps" prevent tearing... cuz in my experience, it really doesn't do a whole lot in preventing tearing. Super Hexagon is an excellent game for testing screen tearing as it plays at a locked 60fps and is easily attained with a potato computer. With v-sync enabled (no g-sync), screen tearing is an issue with that game. With v-sync off, there's really not that much difference. But with g-sync enabled (no v-sync), tearing is completely eliminated. With both enabled, I notice the input lag causing me to fail the level sooner.

I may not know the exact specifics of v-sync, but that's been my experience and what I know of v-sync, which is why I don't use it.

 
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If a game can't render at exactly 30fps or higher, it'll drop down to I think 15fps (aka half). That's what v-sync does. It tries to hold a steady fps instead of allowing chaotic fps to go all over the place. It doesn't remove bad frames or the tearing you're talking about... it just "helps" prevent it by simply stabilizing the fps. So if you're averaging 25 - 29fps... it won't render at that fps at all... it'll just drop down to 15fps because that's the rounded number v-sync is programmed to render at.
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I am pretty sure I explained that this problem no longer exists in the present day. D3D employs a flip cue that will provide filler frames at the very next sync interval. It doesn't always show the most recent frame available because of timing issues and the fact that it is not true triple buffering. That may cause some felt mouse lag at times or it might not.

V-Sync does remove tearing since it does not allow the passing of incomplete frames through the buffer. The reason that this might help microstutter is because it essentially forces a defacto frame time of 60milliseconds assuming a 60Hz refresh rate.

 
CoolJ is correct. Vertical sync is just exactly what the name implies. It syncs an entire frame buffer to the refresh rate of the monitor. So instead of a half-drawn buffer, you get the whole shebang, as often as possible, up to the refresh rate. G-Sync advances this further by preventing micro-stutter when you have v-sync on and your card cannot maintain whatever your refresh rate is. For example, my monitor is 144Hz but I do not get that very often in-game. G-Sync sets the monitor refresh rate to whatever my fully-drawn frame buffer rate is. Normally I get 40-80fps, so my refresh rate is automatically adjusted to between 40Hz and 80Hz. So no micro-stutter or tearing.

Also, let's see if The Pimps can give us ray tracing in A18. Then we can all go buy 2080's. I bet the game would look awesome. Quake 2 was just redone with ray tracing and it looks better than BF5!

 
Ok, after testing Alpha 17 for the first time... I'd like to say I was wrong on a few things... it turns out v-sync did in fact receive some improvements. It seems to only take away 10fps (from 100 to 90) with v-sync on and it is in fact variable instead of locking at a rounded number like it used to be, although half v-sync does literally take away half the fps (brought me down to 50). Also, losing 10fps when you average 30 without is still a massive loss, so I still think v-sync sucks, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to use half v-sync setting, dear lord that sucked. But to say g-sync + v-sync enabled will eliminate stutters is misinformation... at least with my results while testing with v-sync and half v-sync enabled. I noticed at least 2 separate types of stutter issues within 15 minutes of game time, both of which I've complained about since Alpha 11, though one of them isn't as bad anymore which is great cuz that one prevented melee from being possible (I haven't tested blood moon though, so I can't say for sure). But the other one gave me a headache just for testing the issue for 5 minutes... that to me is bad.

Also, ray tracing would be terrible in a game like this considering the fact that this game is already a massive pig on resources. I can't even imagine what ray tracing would be like on each individual entity and block... the amount of hardware resources needed would likely be insane, and for what... a hardly noticeable visual improvement which would take ages to implement into a game that only a small select few ppl in the world right now could enable? I personally would much rather see performance improvements than things that would kill performance (or features that most ppl couldn't benefit from).

Now I need to take something for my headache.

 
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Just adding here that the stuttering in 17.1 is out of control. I beefed up my rig recently with a 1080 GTX and 32 GB of ram ... and the stuttering is out of control. It's not a framerate issue per se, but moving the mouse right or left will often just STOP ... continue. It's like there are brief micro second moments of NOTHING and then back to normal. Last night it was terrible. No Z's, just me moving through my base and looking around at containers etc. STOP move STOP move. Going up a ladder FREEZE BLUR move BLUR move. At one point I was looking towards my spikes (no Zs or anything around) turned to move away, and in the middle of the 180 the game FROZE so much that Iw as actually back looking at the spike (full 360) and walked into them. It's worse than I ever remember in previous versions.

 
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I think the reason is the constant I/O access to the disk, it constantly opens reads/writes files. Within 2 minutes it caused 10225 file events, maybe thats something to look into, especially older HDDs will usually stall for the operation to complete.

 
Just adding here that the stuttering in 17.1 is out of control. I beefed up my rig recently with a 1080 GTX and 32 GB of ram ... and the stuttering is out of control. It's not a framerate issue per se, but moving the mouse right or left will often just STOP ... continue. It's like there are brief micro second moments of NOTHING and then back to normal. Last night it was terrible. No Z's, just me moving through my base and looking around at containers etc. STOP move STOP move. Going up a ladder FREEZE BLUR move BLUR move. At one point I was looking towards my spikes (no Zs or anything around) turned to move away, and in the middle of the 180 the game FROZE so much that Iw as actually back looking at the spike (full 360) and walked into them. It's worse than I ever remember in previous versions.
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Are you playing the game on an SSD? If so, which one (as not all SSDs are created equal)? Some SSDs are so terrible in performance, they might as well be a cheap hybrid hdd.

 
Are you playing the game on an SSD? If so, which one (as not all SSDs are created equal)? Some SSDs are so terrible in performance, they might as well be a cheap hybrid hdd.
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Thanks for the response. I never had this stuttering in 14 or 15, this happened when I rejoined in 17, but to answer your question:

Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SATA3 2.5inch SSD

I can easily move this to a Western Digital Black 1TB SATA3 for testing purposes.

 
Thanks for the response. I never had this stuttering in 14 or 15, this happened when I rejoined in 17, but to answer your question:Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SATA3 2.5inch SSD

I can easily move this to a Western Digital Black 1TB SATA3 for testing purposes.
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Ok, that ssd isn't too old / dated, so that clearly isn't what's causing it. (as there is a stutter issue that relates to hdd bottleneck, but I haven't seen anyone with a decent ssd have that issue yet)

 
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I don't normally have stuttering, EXCEPT when on my dual monitor setup I have a web page with the current map displayed (from the server extensions). I noticed that when that page updated, for example if I was riding on a bike and keeping it centered, it would stutter in-game. This happened whether I was in fullscreen mode n 7DTD or not.

OS: Win 10 Pro

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K

Mem: 64 GB

GPU: GTX 1080 (Dual Monitor 1440p 144Hz, framerate capped at 60 fps)

Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-H

SSD: Samsung 970 EVO M.2 2TB

 
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