Constant fps drops/stuttering, game unplayable.

[ddm83836]

Hey, I have a 4070 Ti Super and 58003dx, my frametime graph is hills and valleys. I thought maybe because of ram speed cause I've got it at 2800mhz, but then it's a 3d cache chip so ram speed doesn't really affect it all that much, have no issues with other CPU intensive games, or AAA titles. This is at 1080p, but at 1440p it's equally bad. Settings are maxed out. 

Game shouldn't run like this, it should not drop from 200 to 40 fps, that's not normal. Not when I'm just standing and not doing anything. On Discord no one could give me an answer why, it seems not many people have this issue, yet I have seen some posts like this one. Limiting fps also does nothing, it actually makes the fps drops way worse.

It may look for a second or two, but the fps drops really make it just awful to play. Nauseating even. 

 

Edited March 8, 2025 by ddm83836

[Phillizae]

This is a critical issue that needs fixing asap. I have the same graphics card but a 7950x3D as the CPU. I do get some inconsistent stuttering in other games such as No mans sky and Dolphin emulator, although they're not as constant and annoying as in vintage story. Other games such as the planet crafter and 3D Mark - Time spy are much more stable. I have a suspicion the problem has something to do with the CPU, maybe the fact it's a 3D v-cache chip, though I'm not 100% sure. Maybe I have two problems; the cpu and vintage story are not working properly. Either way, we seem to be experiencing the same issue in regards to this game at least. It seems tinkering with v-sync options in nvidia control panel has resolved the issue for some, although not for me. Here's a post discussing the fix if you haven't tried yet:

 

[legodude678]

I am also experiencing this this issue as well with an 7800x3d and a 4080 super. I have tried the potential stutter fix for Nvidia and it has done nothing for me. I still get these horrible stutters no matter what I do. I don't remember having this issues on my old pc and it is extremely discouraging.  

Edited March 9, 2025 by legodude678

[RetroTekGuy]

I don't know if this will fix anything obviously but I noticed in your settings screenshot the optimize ram isn't set to anything. This needs to be set to "Optimize somewhat". Have you tried different fullscreen settings and trying to limit the FPS to your refresh rate?

[Kikii]

The reason it is set to nothing is because of this page here. Under the section named Advanced Tips for Maximizing Performance, Point 13 is specifically about the Optimize RAM Mode setting, and when it is blank, it uses a different setting than any of those which can be configured in game — this option is only recommended for people with RAM to spare, however. 

[Knoxford]

So I had the exact same issue, I’ve been searching through the forums and discord for about a month trying everything, obviously nothing worked, so I took an extreme route in my opinion and completely switched my OS. I mounted the bazzite Linux distribution to an old m.2 ssd I had, signed into the the client area, downloaded the flatpak package, started the game, created a world and everything was smooth with no issues. So maybe the problem is how the game, gpu, and windows interact with each other at the moment.

stats

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x

GPU: AMD RX 6800 xt

RAM: 64GB

Edited May 2, 2025 by Knoxford

[Moltrey]

I was wondering if I was the only one. Big, large skip stutters with latest stable patch about every minute, give or take. I have tried turning down a few higher fps settings to no avail (this wasn't necessary with previous stable patch). Edit: Noticing this is an older report thread, but I just started having this issue this week (April 20th, 2025). Previously the game ran outstanding with quite high settings except for shadows (med) and God Rays (off).

As of 4/27: I played the game for a couple hours and the frequency of the big stutters has abated somewhat; at least it seemed like it was happening less. Not sure if a number of storms that happened to my character in a short timeframe had anything to do with things. Doing some more testing today.

CPU: Ryzen 7 9800X3D

GPU: AMD RX 7900XTX w/24GB

RAM: 64GB DDR5

Windows 11 Pro on NVME SSD 4th gen drive.

Edited April 28, 2025 by Moltrey
Elaboration, clarification

[Yukio Katsuragi]

I tried turning 'Dynamic color grading' off and that worked for me. 
Had no stutters after that anymore. 

 

I hope this helps you aswell

[Moltrey]

On 5/1/2025 at 1:06 PM, Yukio Katsuragi said:

I tried turning 'Dynamic color grading' off and that worked for me. 
Had no stutters after that anymore. 

 

I hope this helps you aswell

Thanks YK, I will give it a shot today. Welp, no joy. I still have large single stutters about once a minute or so.

Edited May 3, 2025 by Moltrey

[thelaughingdog]

On 5/1/2025 at 12:06 PM, Yukio Katsuragi said:

I tried turning 'Dynamic color grading' off and that worked for me. 
Had no stutters after that anymore. 

 

I hope this helps you aswell

Thank you! This worked completely for me after spending a while trying to fix it, I assume it has something to do with the new updates as I haven't had any problems before them. 

[Moltrey]

Setting Optimize RAM in the config file to zero does appear to help quite a bit. I can't say all the large stutters (including audio stop) have gone away, but it is better than it was for me. I will keep trying things.

[wildforester]

Updating to the very latest version may help due to the additional ram optimizations

[SomeGuy]

Heya, I'm on an RTX 5070 TI, Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 32GB of 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM and I have the exact same issue regardless of settings or tweaks. I also get these big drops that are quite visible on the frametime graph, which make the game feel jittery/stuttery even with a high framerate. Vanilla or modded, the issue persists. I really hope the developers address this soon.

[Ryilo]

Foreshadowing: It's probably cpu settings.

Can't help much with Radeon graphics, but with NVIDIA try: Vertical Sync FAST in nvidia control panel, Vsync OFF in the game, then limit the FPS until you see the graph being smooth 99% of the time.. For example, for a 60hz display you should see it smooth by setting a maximum of 90 fps. Then try reducing SSAO, Shadows quality and dynamic lights number.

If it still stutters, it may need CPU configuration in the game. Keep a Task Manager window open in the Performance tab (remember to set to "logical processors" or you'll see only 1 graph and that is useless) and see if there are any cores stuck at 100% all the time (usually the first core) (let the game run enough for it to load everything once you load the save to have an accurate reading).

With it "fixed" you'll see the occasional 40fps spike in the game graph, but it won't be noticeable when playing. (I'm also playing with a view distance of over 900 blocks and height of 320, so I can't complain at all...)

To the devs: can we please have the cpu settings in the settings GUI in game?

[WAY2HELL]

hey have the same problems with big lags every 30 seconds lasting 1 min (no fix).

to the thing with the stuttering i found a fix which is setting your mouse polling rate to 1000hz or lower if possible due to java only using one core to render as well as the mouse usb inputs. fixed stutters for me but lags are still a big problem.

[SomeGuy]

Heya, guys. Update on my situation with performance in this game; I am on the latest update and have found a few tweaks which have improved the stuttering issue to a noticeable degree, but not outright solved.

(Specs: RTX 5070 TI, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB 6000 MHz DDR5, SSD) 

These are the tweaks that helped me:

1. NVIDIA Control panel - turn VSYNC (Vertical Sync) to Fast and Threaded Optimization to Off for Vintage Story (I'm not 100% sure on the effectiveness of turning off Threaded Optimization but from my testing, it seemed to be a little smoother on my PC).

2. Turn VSYNC off inside of Vintage Story's own settings.

3. I went down to 60 fps from 90 fps using the in-game FPS limiter.

4. I'm on 800 view distance and medium settings for SSAO & Shadows, then 10 for Dynamic Lights. I also put Far LOD to 50% but I didn't test that one much so it might be placebo.

5. Updating to the latest version of Vintage Story, version 1.21.6 (Stable version; this seemed to help noticeably in my case).

There will still be stuttering when loading in new terrain, but besides that it seems to be gone. However as I emphasized earlier - the issue is not fully gone and definitely needs some more optimization from the devs still. I have 16 threads on my Ryzen 7 9800X3D and it appears that the game offloads the entirety of terrain loading to threads 8,9,10 & 11 (Thank you, Ryilo). Thread 0 also sees a lot of use, which is normal. I got a feeling that VSYNC plays a large part in the stuttering, and it may very well be tied to GSYNC / FREESYNC on your monitor also - but my 144hz monitor has neither technology, so I cannot confirm whether that is true or not. Lastly due to what WAY2HELL said above - I checked my mouse's polling rate and it has been always been at 1000 Hz, so I'm unsure whether that affected my experience.

As for RAM settings, I just had it on Optimize Somewhat and seemed to have the best results with that one.

I also use a program called ProcessLasso to put Vintage Story's CPU Priority to always be High (right click Vintage Story.exe in ProcessLasso -> CPU Priority -> Always -> High), and to make some background apps like Discord, Spotify, Firefox and such not use threads 0,8,9,10 & 11 by adjusting their CPU Affinity on the Always option (right click the app in Process Lasso -> CPU Affinity -> Always -> select which threads you don't want it to use). I also generally put apps I use in the background to Normal or Below Normal CPU Priority, which is what I did with Discord and Firefox. Keep in mind it is a paid program though and I did not test the game without it. I'm not sure how much it helps (or if it does at all; since I always use ProcessLasso), but wanted to give the information since it is a tweak I made use of.

I hope this can help some other users frustrated with this problem. I personally am having a much smoother experience compared to last year!

Edited January 12 by SomeGuy

[Apocalypse_Andy]

Yeah but have any of you tried running the client and server from the same PC?  Sounds a bit silly sure, but the server software aggressively optimizes while the client just seems to keep things loaded in.  The biggest drawback to that is that you cannot pause the game.

[Wendellrw]

That is what has been confusing me. Ive been playing with friends on MP server and i maintain 200fps+ on max settings, then on my solo world on the lowest settings i can hardly maintain 60 fps. Just makes no sense