PC Microstuttering

I've seen that in procmon, but I don't think it amounts to much, since it is a small file, but I don't think it needs to be doing that on a regular basis.
I play the steam builds from a HD, but saves go to C, which for me is a fast SSD, so people with slow C drives might have more lag from world load/saves.
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Small or not you have to consider that you are sharing I/O resources with the entire operating system, this wouldn't be an issue if you can guarantee that 7DaysToDie is the only thing running on your computer. Also its not just the server configuration it constantly writes tiny bits into the rng files less often but still high frequency, I mean it should help making file operations async in general best avoid reads/writes as long as possible.

 
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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Chers.

In all fairness I see it in other people (youtubers) playing, too.

Kage has it and assumes it's lag and zombies spawning in (it never is)

And JaWoodle has it and assumes it's lag from number of zombies (then curses a lot, lol), but it's the same stuttering that I also see ingame

 
Well how come I don't get stuttering if it is the HDD? I run two 1TB WD Black disks (mechanical) in a RAID0. The OS lives on a WD 1TB Blue mechanical disk on a separate AHCI controller, so only games on the R0 array. Also, why does it happen on NVME which far surpasses SSD?

 
Well how come I don't get stuttering if it is the HDD? I run two 1TB WD Black disks (mechanical) in a RAID0. The OS lives on a WD 1TB Blue mechanical disk on a separate AHCI controller, so only games on the R0 array. Also, why does it happen on NVME which far surpasses SSD?
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RAID0 is basically twice the performance of a single hdd setup, so obviously it'd perform a little better with this game. And I didn't say hdd / ssd performance was the cause for all the stutter issues. There are many stutter issues with this game, only one of which relates to hdd performance.

List of stutter issues I know about:

- hdd bottleneck stutters / lag ... (easily bypassed with hardware upgrade)

- subtle but constant stop motion style stutters which you see everywhere on anything that moves, including shadows ... (no known solution for this one)

- frame time lag causing stutters / split second game pause effect ... (Apparently v-sync fixes it for some ppl, does nothing for me though, and some ppl have it bad, others don't seem too bothered by it)

- and apparently zed actions create stutters too ... (I have yet to see this one)

- if you fly in circles around an object, you can see a trail / blocky texture effect on the object ... (This might relate to the stop motion one)

- stutters caused by poor fps ... (fixed by getting a better computer)

- there might be more, but it's difficult to keep track when there's already this many

 
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- subtle but constant stop motion style stutters which you see everywhere on anything that moves, including shadows ... (no known solution for this one)
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Shadow ticks are not a problem. Its how they work. Lots of games use this method for time scale.

 
Shadow ticks are not a problem. Its how they work. Lots of games use this method for time scale.
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I probably should have clarified... I didn't mean shadows moving around with the day/night cycle. I was more referring to when you walk around a shadow'd object like anything else... they all have that subtle stop motion stutter.

 
I moved 7 Days to the single disk with no issues. It took a hair longer to load in, but once in-game I did not experience any difference in gameplay or framerate. I'd REALLY like to see what each player refers to as micro-stutter. I imagine we'll get videos of full-blown freezes, low framerate issues, and everything else. It's like people who use "lag" as a generic term for anything not right on their PC, such as low FPS, instead of the definition, which is high latency.

Now, I need to tell Steam to move the game back to the array!

 
I moved 7 Days to the single disk with no issues. It took a hair longer to load in, but once in-game I did not experience any difference in gameplay or framerate. I'd REALLY like to see what each player refers to as micro-stutter. I imagine we'll get videos of full-blown freezes, low framerate issues, and everything else. It's like people who use "lag" as a generic term for anything not right on their PC, such as low FPS, instead of the definition, which is high latency.
Now, I need to tell Steam to move the game back to the array!
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You may have moved your game files to a standard hdd, but what about the save files?

Also, my stutter issues have nothing at all to do with fps since I average around 100fps while on high settings.

 
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Fox, save files with 7 Days are ALWAYS on that disk. Your saves go into AppData\Roaming, which is inside your user account folder. The saves were on the 1TB WD Blue the entire time. The game files were on the R0 array. R0 is mounted at C:\Games. Steam is installed to C:\Games\Steam. This means 7 Days was originally (and is once again) on the R0 array. When I moved 7 Days outside of the Games folder structure it was on the single WD 1TB Blue disk, same as the OS and saves.

Do you have vertical sync on? If not, try with that on. Otherwise it's pissing into the wind because there is no standard.

 
IMO, the stuttering is not video driver/card related. Frame rate seems fine when I experience stutter.

Guessing the root cause to be more of a loading resources from disk issue.

 
If it is a bottleneck, I would be interested in knowing what is bottenecking the I/O. Unless you have a $300 system from Walmart you likely have a decent disk or SSD which should not bottleneck on a single game. If it is choking, what the heck is running in the background? If you have Windows 10 I would disable that lame updates sharing crap. Who knows, your neighbors might be leeching updates from your PC!

 
If it is a bottleneck, I would be interested in knowing what is bottenecking the I/O. Unless you have a $300 system from Walmart you likely have a decent disk or SSD which should not bottleneck on a single game. If it is choking, what the heck is running in the background? If you have Windows 10 I would disable that lame updates sharing crap. Who knows, your neighbors might be leeching updates from your PC!
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I think you fail to realize just how much experience I (and many others) have with these stutter issues and how long we've had to try and find ways around the problems. Let's just say, I was likely the first person to notice the issues back when Alpha 11 was still in private testing stages and I was the first to make an official topic about it which currently has 15 pages worth of replies. This has literally been a problem since the new Unity engine. So how could it possibly relate to our hardware when most of us have expensive gaming PCs?

And v-sync does nothing at all for me other than drop my fps a bit. Since I have g-sync, I don't feel like I need it to prevent tearing anymore, and through my very recent testing, v-sync did nothing at all for the stutters. Though others claim it helped them a bit.

 
Cant discount the many changes between 16 and 17 that have added increased resource usage.

A16 had a lot stored into RAM. A17 removed them. For a short while the atlases were being streamed in which was silly (4K,8K files) and in a update they pushed these back into RAM.

The block textures are all 1K now and are in an array now (previously atlased) which are streamed in. I doubt these are cached at all, would push memory reqs up by about 1GB.

The streaming adds extra burden to the cpu as it swaps them out.

The higher the texture res, the more cpu hit.

The new AI. The new Pathing. The new sleeper volumes. Are all additional CPU hits that werent in A16.

It doesnt matter how fast your storage is when it isnt the cause.

The only thing 7 days understands is raw IPC, and when the GPU is left waiting.. well...

Thats why you really need a HEDT CPU to drive the 2080Ti. Even a 7700K cant drive that GPU properly.

 
I think you fail to realize just how much experience I (and many others) have with these stutter issues and how long we've had to try and find ways around the problems. Let's just say, I was likely the first person to notice the issues back when Alpha 11 was still in private testing stages and I was the first to make an official topic about it which currently has 15 pages worth of replies. This has literally been a problem since the new Unity engine. So how could it possibly relate to our hardware when most of us have expensive gaming PCs?
And v-sync does nothing at all for me other than drop my fps a bit. Since I have g-sync, I don't feel like I need it to prevent tearing anymore, and through my very recent testing, v-sync did nothing at all for the stutters. Though others claim it helped them a bit.
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I have yet to see where anyone suggested V-Sync would fix stuttering or any claims that turning on V-Sync fixed random bad FPS problems or general pauses. So I don't understand the fascination with bloating this thread with more of this non-sense.

General bad FPS and serious frame pauses are not Micro-Stutter. V-Sync will not fix this problem. This thread is about Micro-Stutter or poor frame pacing. The problem you are having is not Micro-Stutter. For the love of all that is just, please stop posting about things that are not the subject matter of this thread in here. Make a new thread if feel you must continue discussing your problem. Which is not Micro-stutter.

 
I have yet to see where anyone suggested V-Sync would fix stuttering or any claims that turning on V-Sync fixed random bad FPS problems or general pauses. So I don't understand the fascination with bloating this thread with more of this non-sense.
General bad FPS and serious frame pauses are not Micro-Stutter. V-Sync will not fix this problem. This thread is about Micro-Stutter or poor frame pacing. The problem you are having is not Micro-Stutter. For the love of all that is just, please stop posting about things that are not the subject matter of this thread in here. Make a new thread if feel you must continue discussing your problem. Which is not Micro-stutter.
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Or maybe you should pay closer attention and actually read more than just the latest post someone posted. I get an average of 100fps with this game while on high settings (as I mentioned multiple times already). Don't assume I'm a liar (or assume I'm dumb) and tell me I have fps issues, cuz that's very clearly not the issue here. Also, you were the one that brought up v-sync as possibly helping with stutters in the first place and faatal (aka a dev) made the discussion more focused around it.

I do notice that a lot of people play with V-Sync turned off. That may not be helping here.
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Is it micro stutter (several times per second) or just freezes every minute or when moving into a new area (loading/spawning)?Is vsync on or off?

Is the monitor at 60hz or one of the high refresh models?

Are you using nVidia's fast or adaptive vsync or triple buffering or gsync?
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I had microstutter issues with vsync off, even with gsnyc active. Turned vsync on fixed it for me.
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etc...

 
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Yikes, what a mess.

The worst part is the pimps don't seem to notice any problem at all, which gives me little hope they will ever fix the issues.

Someone rich here needs to mail the pimps a pc with the game installed that has the issues! If I was rich I'd do it lol. My game does a lot of pausing when lots of zombies are around, and about no setting changes that. It's really hard to get headshots like this at times.

 
I forgot to add, on my dual screen setup, using the -popupwindow launch option for windowed borderless would make my game stutter.

Also, setting shadows to OFF has greatly reduced the incidence of stuttering overall, especially around multiple sources of lights and trees.

 
I watched Kage stream the other day with a group and he was seeing/experiencing the stutter and made the observation that his FPS were good, but the stuttering was there and made it feel bad. Pimps just need to seriously sit down with the youtubers to see the stuttering in effect.

 
I've noticed that since I went from 8k maps to 12k maps that I now get the stutter too. It's pretty game-breaking when it happens mid fight.

 
I've been noting from my log file the last log entry I get right after I get that hard stutter (like roughly a full 1 second freeze). There's something firing off in game on or after a saving chunks log entry.

2019-01-25T18:14:37 36370.886 INF Saving 96 of chunks took 83ms

That 83ms may be correct for the saving of chunks, but something that is very time consuming from a computing perspective isn't being logged for performance and is causing it. It's not hardware. It literally happens every time this Saving event comes up.

I personally don't think it's Unity or anything else like that either. My guess is TFP has something running on the main UI/Graphic management thread of the game that probably should be pushed off to a background thread. But this thing is a code issue. Not hardware. And this one specifically I think was added in A17.

 
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