Massive frame and audio stuttering

(Buttback) #1

Makes the game unplayable for me.

Previous time it happenend, it could be fixed by restarting my laptop. That doesn’t work now.
Messed around in my video options, which didn’t do anything.

Almost feels like you’re playing with a broken/overheated GPU, but I’m not.

My framerate is normally between 40 and 50, according to the steam FPS overlay it drops to anywhere from 23 to 2. The audio stutters are hard to describe, they make the audio sound like everything’s slowed down by 40% and played from a very old blown-out speaker.

Anyone else with this problem? Did somebody find a temporary fix?

(Amerika) #2

Can you download Open Hardware Monitor and run it. Then turn on Dirty Bomb and start playing. Check to see if your temps get to a certain threshold and then remain there.

I ask you to do this because on my laptop you will start getting massive performance hits when the temperature gets to 79C. My laptop will start throttling the CPU at that point which causes stuttering yet my laptop doesn’t ever look like it’s overheating. Also, this is a common issue with laptops as they age too. My laptop used to never have heat issues with anything but now it will have heat issues with playing Twitch streams, movies and games unless I set it up in a certain way.

I’d wager your laptop is doing the same thing as mine. If I want to play a demanding game on it I have to have it in an open space, make sure it’s cool in the area and I also have to keep it from making full contact with any surface (I usually put DVD’s under it). That gives it enough breathing room to not have too many issues.

(Humbug) #3

I have the same problem.
Only restarting the game after every match and a very low graphics config fixes it.
It’s not an overheating issue, because i can instantly restart the game and have 100fps again. Also FPS wouldn’t drop THAT hard (From 100 to 35).
Furthermore i don’t understand why it feels so laggy at 35fps (feels more like 10-15)

(Amerika) #4

[quote=“Humbug;10703”]I have the same problem.
Only restarting the game after every match and a very low graphics config fixes it.
It’s not an overheating issue, because i can instantly restart the game and have 100fps again. Also FPS wouldn’t drop THAT hard (From 100 to 35).
Furthermore i don’t understand why it feels so laggy at 35fps (feels more like 10-15)[/quote]

Turning the game off for a while and then turning it back on immediately decreases your system temperature. That’s why your FPS gets better after either a reboot or turning off the game for a bit. At least in the situation I described. My laptop does the same thing.

And yes, FPS does drop that bad. I not only experience EXACTLY that issue on my laptop but my friend had the same issue with his new desktop. If he played a game everything was fine but if he streamed the FPS would act exactly as described in the OP’s post. We found out that his heat sink was on correctly and that his 4790k was capping out at 100C and it was being throttled but it would only get there due to the game + trying to stream. Once he replaced his heat sink his temps went down to the 60’s and he’s never had an issue since.

Perhaps it’s another issue but this really sounds like a system throttling itself. Especially in laptops where those class ‘m’ processors can’t withstand the same heat as a desktop model.

(Buttback) #5

Thanks for the tip Amerika, I’ll try that next time. My laptop is about 3 months old, and I had it cleaned out by the store I bought it from a few weeks ago, so I doubt overheating causes it.

Never hurts to check of course, since I read that some people reported the game to cause massive temperatures on their CPU.

(Amerika) #6

Most laptops, despite some being marketed at gamers, have a lot of heating issues. It’s the great untold thing that doesn’t get past along by salesman. The same can be said for how they label the CPU’s and GPU’s which usually only give you half the performance of the desktop version AND is based on the last generation hardware and not the current. It’s pretty lame and you only realize it once you dig into the specifics on hardware sites.

I’d wager you’ll see your laptop clocking itself down to the non-turbo speed and also sticking at one high temp that doesn’t really budge (which is where the laptop starts hardware throttling you that causes the stutters).

I hope it’s not that but I’ve seen this tons and tons of times. It’s just a fact of life when buying a laptop for gaming.

(Buttback) #7

I’m not unfamiliar with (laptop) hardware, but thanks for the advice once again.

(Humbug) #8

[quote=“Amerika;10705”][quote=“Humbug;10703”]I have the same problem.
Only restarting the game after every match and a very low graphics config fixes it.
It’s not an overheating issue, because i can instantly restart the game and have 100fps again. Also FPS wouldn’t drop THAT hard (From 100 to 35).
Furthermore i don’t understand why it feels so laggy at 35fps (feels more like 10-15)[/quote]

Turning the game off for a while and then turning it back on immediately decreases your system temperature. That’s why your FPS gets better after either a reboot or turning off the game for a bit. At least in the situation I described. My laptop does the same thing.

And yes, FPS does drop that bad. I not only experience EXACTLY that issue on my laptop but my friend had the same issue with his new desktop. If he played a game everything was fine but if he streamed the FPS would act exactly as described in the OP’s post. We found out that his heat sink was on correctly and that his 4790k was capping out at 100C and it was being throttled but it would only get there due to the game + trying to stream. Once he replaced his heat sink his temps went down to the 60’s and he’s never had an issue since.

Perhaps it’s another issue but this really sounds like a system throttling itself. Especially in laptops where those class ‘m’ processors can’t withstand the same heat as a desktop model.[/quote]

i play more demanding games where my laptop gets way more hot, but fps don’t drop
And i never experienced this in other ue3 engine games and i played a lot.
Also i’ve limited my FPS to prevent overheating. So it’s 100% a problem of the game itself

(Buttback) #9

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that as well. Other demanding games run perfectly fine for me too.

(Amerika) #10

If it’s not a heat issue then do a quick test doing what I said using a free and open source program that is well supported. It will cost you nothing but a few minutes and you can eliminate it being a heat issue.

I too thought the same thing. My laptop would run games like DMC or Metal Gear Rising at 1080p without any issues whatsoever. But with WoW the performance would degrade severely after 10-20 minutes of play. I found out it’s because WoW relies a lot more on CPU performance than those other games and it was turbo boosting and causing my laptop to overheat. Diablo 3 also destroys my laptop due to it’s reliance on CPU over GPU and it’s not a graphical powerhouse.

It could also be an issue with Optimus if you have an Nvidia card. However, if your performance is fine then goes down over time it’s not Optimus. But if it’s bad from the start your OS might have chosen to use onboard video to play the game instead of your Nvidia card. You can fix this by going into the Nvidia control panel, bringing up the list of executables and selecting Dirty Bomb and choosing the option to always force the Nvidia card. You might need to reboot after this too (for some reason my laptop requires it).

I know you don’t want to think it’s a heat issue but you really should test it. Because if it is you can damage your laptop over time if you don’t take steps to prevent heat buildup.

Good luck to you guys!

(Buttback) #11

Holy shit, my CPU cores reach a peak of 86 degrees C. I’m pretty sure that if I continue playing the game in its current state, my CPU will be dead or severely damaged within two months.

(Humbug) #12

86° is not too high and it won’t damage your CPU
i get the same temperature ~85° but my CPU has a maximum operating temperature of 105° (that’s the temperature where it will shut down to prevent damaging i guess)

(Buttback) #13

You sure about that? Maybe I’m severely overreacting, but I googled for a bit and most people seem to agree that your CPU should never exceed 75C.

(Amerika) #14

85c is pretty hot regardless of the processor you are running and REALLY hot for a laptop processor. I’d wager it’s the system throttling you down to try and keep it from melting that is causing the lag. Even if it doesn’t get any hotter than 85c it’s because the system is doing all it can to keep it from going over.

(Humbug) #15

for a normal cpu it’s hot but not for a laptop… if it was too hot your laptop would shut down automatically
One more argument: everything was fine before the patch at 28th march.

(Buttback) #16

Oh woops, I forgot to mention this. When testing the temperatures and they were steadily over 80 degrees, my framerate was perfectly fine. This makes me believe it does have something to do with the game. (since other people are reporting this too)

(Nail) #17

check GPU temps as well, lappies should be off surface for games

(Amerika) #18

[quote=“Humbug;10772”]for a normal cpu it’s hot but not for a laptop… if it was too hot your laptop would shut down automatically
One more argument: everything was fine before the patch at 28th march.[/quote]

This is not an argument and I am not attacking your laptop. I put in a suggestion based on personal knowledge and experience to do a check with freely available software. Whether you want to do it or not is your call but it would be nice information to have validated and passed along to the devs. Simply claiming it’s the game is not a valid troubleshooting method during a beta and we are all beta testers here. If you checked it and said, ‘yeah I’m running at 50c max at all times and my CPU isn’t bouncing between normal speed and turbo speed’ then I’d move on.

Don’t check the games temps when it’s fine. Check it when the game starts dropping frames. Notice if the CPU is locking at one temp in particular and possibly clocking the CPU down from it’s turbo speed. Also, check your RAM usage and make sure it’s not pegged out because you might be experiencing a memory leak of some kind as well.

(Buttback) #19

Amerika, not sure how you managed to read my previous post as offensive (since you’re defending yourself now) - but it wasn’t. At all.

Not sure why you think I didn’t run the program you suggested, since that’s how I got those temperature numbers.

Too bad the dropping frames are extremely rare and random, means I might only have a result in a week if I’m (un)lucky.

(Amerika) #20

[quote=“deliberateMaster;10792”]Amerika, not sure how you managed to read my previous post as offensive (since you’re defending yourself now) - but it wasn’t. At all.

Not sure why you think I didn’t run the program you suggested, since that’s how I got those temperature numbers.

Too bad the dropping frames are extremely rare and random, means I might only have a result in a week if I’m (un)lucky.[/quote]

That’s a forum bug. I originally quoted Humbug as he mentioned that he was adding another point to the argument but it quoted you instead. I’ve seen a lot of quotes that are quoting me but it doesn’t fit the response with others telling me the same thing.

I’ll try to fix it.

-edit- Fixed.