Help: 3770k / GTX 1070 stuttering in RES multiplayer

[Alonzo Solace]

I've got a 3770k OC'd to 4.0 Ghz and a GTX 1070 (with some factory OC).

Previously I've been running fine with a mild HMD supersample on roughly VR Ultra settings. In the past week, however, I've seen significant stuttering at the CG. It's a bounty hunting contest and there are lots of PvP fights in the HAZ res (so lots of asteroids, commanders, and NPCs). Yesterday I was in a fight and getting 35 fps, and I even put the settings down to VR low and still had the problem.

I don't think my CPU is bottle necking, as it sits around 70% usage most of the time. One of my wingmates suggested checking CPU temps. The 3770k runs around 75-80C while in VR, but it's not throttling itself (as far as I can tell).

Has anyone else seen bad stuttering in multiplayer? Is it finally time to put the 3770k to bed? Seems such a shame since it works great most of the time (in stations, in 8-12 person wing fights, etc). The problem really seems to be a combination of Open, asteroids, NPCs and players.

 

[Dibiase]

VR Ultra seems a little much for a GTX 1070. But also if you are Bounty Hunting in a CG in Open or Mobius with a bunch of other people it can slow down and get choppy because of all the other people in the area. The network connectivity comes in to play in those situations because Elite uses some peer to peer connectivity over dedicated servers from what I understand. My guess is that if you logged into the same res as solo the issues would go away. I'm running a 3770k OC'd to 4.5 Ghz and a GTX 1080 ti and the only time I really see slow downs it in events like you are describing. If it gets really bad I usually log out of Mobius and into solo and the problem goes away.

 

[bobbyk1012]

I've got a 3770k OC'd to 4.0 Ghz and a GTX 1070 (with some factory OC).

Previously I've been running fine with a mild HMD supersample on roughly VR Ultra settings. In the past week, however, I've seen significant stuttering at the CG. It's a bounty hunting contest and there are lots of PvP fights in the HAZ res (so lots of asteroids, commanders, and NPCs). Yesterday I was in a fight and getting 35 fps, and I even put the settings down to VR low and still had the problem.

I don't think my CPU is bottle necking, as it sits around 70% usage most of the time. One of my wingmates suggested checking CPU temps. The 3770k runs around 75-80C while in VR, but it's not throttling itself (as far as I can tell).

Has anyone else seen bad stuttering in multiplayer? Is it finally time to put the 3770k to bed? Seems such a shame since it works great most of the time (in stations, in 8-12 person wing fights, etc). The problem really seems to be a combination of Open, asteroids, NPCs and players.

I logged in last night and for the first time in 2 years the game was stuttering so bad and the audio was inaudible that I had to log out! Not sure what's different but it was awful!!! :S

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Any windows updates? That can cause issues.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Any windows updates? That can cause issues.

If you have been hit with creators, make sure to disable ALL game bar functions particularly the DVR function was causing me no end of stuttering and double vision since MS forces a 60fps render cap in some games.

Something that really doesn't work well with VR.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...in-lots-of-visual-weirdness-with-probable-fix

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Has anyone else seen bad stuttering in multiplayer?

4 people in a haz res doesn't perform well for me, 2 wings in a combat zone with capital ships is awful.

I run a haswell i5 and r9 290, I've not bothered to find out which is the bottleneck, high memory prices and mining make upgrading expensive, I'll wait it out.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

4 people in a haz res doesn't perform well for me, 2 wings in a combat zone with capital ships is awful.

I run a haswell i5 and r9 290, I've not bothered to find out which is the bottleneck, high memory prices and mining make upgrading expensive, I'll wait it out.

Game is honestly pretty broken.

As I get wingmen or other players in my instance even my rig starts dropping.

 

[NeilF]

I've got a 3770k OC'd to 4.0 Ghz and a GTX 1070 (with some factory OC).

Previously I've been running fine with a mild HMD supersample on roughly VR Ultra settings. In the past week, however, I've seen significant stuttering at the CG. It's a bounty hunting contest and there are lots of PvP fights in the HAZ res (so lots of asteroids, commanders, and NPCs). Yesterday I was in a fight and getting 35 fps, and I even put the settings down to VR low and still had the problem.

I don't think my CPU is bottle necking, as it sits around 70% usage most of the time. One of my wingmates suggested checking CPU temps. The 3770k runs around 75-80C while in VR, but it's not throttling itself (as far as I can tell).

Has anyone else seen bad stuttering in multiplayer? Is it finally time to put the 3770k to bed? Seems such a shame since it works great most of the time (in stations, in 8-12 person wing fights, etc). The problem really seems to be a combination of Open, asteroids, NPCs and players.

By sheer chance I've been testing this very thing with my 1070 @ ultra detail.

In an empty HazRes I'll be at say at 40% CPU isage (I4790K) and 80% on my GPU.

As more ships arrive at some point the GPU usage will exceed 100% so my FPS will reduce from 90fps to 45fps, and therefore the GPU usage reduces down to about 55%.

This seems to work perfectly smoothly for me, and in truth I don't even notice if I'm in 90fps or 45fps performance.


I would say 75-80C seems hot! Look at some of my grabs from my monitor I use for system stats. Note the CPU usage, temps and GPU usage, temps and FPS.

And what's your internet speed/ping like?



It may say 0 FPS but it was 90 FPS and only 0 as I ducked out to grab a screenshot.

Here's the death of an Imperial Clipper, and 45fps -> 90fps accordingly.

A long period with lots of ships so GPU overloaded so 45fps all the time...

In this sequence I boosted further out and close in, and as the ships were lost, and re-appeared you can see the GPU flicking between 90 and 45fps.

 

[Alonzo Solace]

Wow, that's some detailed stats! Thanks for posting.

I've fixed the problem, kinda. Here's what happened for anyone finding this thread in future.

I enabled the Oculus debug tool and the on-screen HMD overlay, and looked through the performance screens. What I found really useful was the "frame drop indicator" -- this puts a little 'F' in white in your vision when the game isn't managing 90 fps, and it puts a red 'C' in your vision when the compositor misses a frame. Frame drops indicate graphics are set a bit too high and ASW is kicking in (personally I find 45fps is fine, with ASW interpolation) but the C compositor miss is awful. When that happens, the previous frame is replayed with no warping and that's basically judder.

So I was seeing tons of compositor misses. This is very bad. I started looking for causes, and seeing a lot of people complain about various stuff.

I uninstalled both f.lux (even though it was set to disabled during Elite) and also my Asus motherboard AI suite fan control. I then also got rid of plenty of other stuff like auto updaters and so on, but I believe f.lux and Asus AI suite are the main culprits. With those gone, I was seeing far far fewer compositor misses.

The other thing that seems to happen is that using a higher HMD supersample increases load on the compositor. This might just be me imagining things, but it looks like I get better performance and fewer compositor misses when I run in-game SS at 1.0, HMD at 1.0, and then use (say) SMAA to improve quality. Visual quality is probably better if you're using higher HMD quality and no in-game AA (see many other threads on it) but on my rig at least, this seemed to increase load on the compositor.

Finally, running with Oculus debug tool on, visible HUD off, but "frame drop indicator" ON is pretty useful. It's not all over your screen like the performance HUD, and you can see 45fps ASW kick in (you get the white F permanently because Elite is dropping every other frame) and you can see (hopefully rare) compositor misses with the red C.

I suspect part of all this is that Elite isn't super duper optimized and multiplayer hurts a lot, as well as that the 3770k is marginal for VR these days. With better IPC on newer Intel processors the touchiness of compositor timings and all that might be less.

Thanks all for the suggestions and help.