stutter Trying to fix the stuttering ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ʰᵉˡᵖ

[narkoticici]

Had a lot of issues with stuttering and small to medium fps drops every few seconds, but after a lot of searching the goog and limited testing i have compiled a list of the things ive done
that helped or didnt help that much in hope that someone can use them and fix their stutter.

The final conclusion i came upon is that my ddr3 ram with 1600mhz is the problem and has been for other games too (rdr2,cemu botw,ac odyssey)but i still have hope for a software fix ᵖˡᶻ ᵍᵒᵈ

My machine
GTX 980 ti 
i7 4790k 
16gb DDR3 ram 1600mhz
~500mb/s write/read ssd

mobo b85m-g

The testing I did on a vanilla 1.19.8 instance on a fully fresh windows 10 pro system debloated extra chris titus tool and O & O shut up and a few settings like backround apps and some services turned off
like aljoyn router service,windows indexing, work folder...  and uninstalling bloatware
that means no Steam no Geforce experience no Discord no anything only Microsoft edge and Vintage Story and Rivia tuner statistics server 

Programs like Xbox overlay and Steam might also be causing stutter but I havent tested those

So the things which improved my fps the most is

-disabling internet for Vintage Story with a firewall rule helped the most

-Disabling internet completely by plugging off my usb wifi catcher (no noticable improvemnt buts stil saying it if you want to test it)
-disabling Windows defender real time protection helped the most and the others like cloud delivered protection, tamper protection and automatic sample submission didnt have a noticable improvemnt
-turning off threaded optimization in NVIDIA control panel
-In game Vsync Steep with unlimited fps limiter (you might also want to try normal ingame vsync with fps limiter to 15fps and unlimited)

Settings that didnt help but also didnt make it worse

-ultimate performance profile (added with chris titus tool) no noticable dif
-high performance in settings/graphics settings no noticable dif
-windows defender exclusion no diff
-disconnecting all other usbs except keyboard and mouse (for me being my controller and a wifi catcher) no noticable diff
-overclocked my cpu from my bios to 4.5 ghz no diff 
-open to lan kind of helped but not sure if it even does something since im offline and cant test server without the internet
-task manager high priority no diff
-optimize for compute performnace nvidia kinda better? to no diff
-disable full screen optimization by right clicking/ properties and going to compatability seemed to help with graph

Down here are the mixed results I want to emphasize again that i did not do extensive testing 

-riviatuner statistics server best graph but feels choppy 
-no ram optimize config maybe helps/ no dif  feels choppier https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/15208-fix-for-garbage-collection-pauses/
-maximized borderless seemed to help with the graph but feel more choppy???
-run as Vintage Story as admin seemed to help with the graph but feel more choppy???

settings that made the stuttering worse 

Threaded optimization on/auto worse
-nvidia control panel vsync/fast/adaptive worse
-nvidia control panel  vsync and ingame vsync worse
-low latency worse
-low latency ultra maybe worse
-tripple buffering worse
-game mode off worse 

Some other outside things that i have tried or heard about

-hardware accelerated gpu scheduling on off (newer GPUs) not available for me
-try spectre and system meltdown disable (older CPUs) no difference
https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm
-try msi mode no difference
https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimizedGaming/comments/107blhi/msi_mode_on_gpus/
Cracked vintage story? (haven't tested)

-enabling xmp from bios (not supported for me )

Some other things i didnt need to test or have already done

cleared your DirectX cache
clean install of your GPU's latest driver
Running a local server not from LAN (if you have tested with no internet and it doesnt help)

Current settings I run

Nvidia control panel
Optimize for compute performance
power managament prefer maximum performance
Threaded optimization off
high performance in settings/graphics settings 
Firewall Vintage story internet
Disable Windows defender real time protection
Disable fullscreen optimization
Task manager priority high
open to lan

My Vintage Story settings during testing
128 block view distance
AO smoothlight
Fxaa

SSAO medium
Shadows low
Particles 36%
Dynamic lights 1
Resolution 75% (preference)
Full Screen
Fps limiter - unlimited
Vsyn on Steep
Occlusion cullng
Chunk upload rate limiter 3

If anyone has other suggestions for me please do tell.

I hope this helps and sorry for bad editing or whatever

 

Edited April 24, 2025 by narkoticici
adding stuff

[narkoticici]

*edit

-disabling internet for Vintage Story with a firewall rule /Disabling internet completely by plugging off my usb wifi catcher (no noticable improvemnt buts stil saying it if you want to test it)

i mean disabling the internet with a firewall rule helped a lot but plugging off my usb wifi i didnt notice an improvement 

[StCatharines]

7 minutes ago, narkoticici said:

Some other things i didnt need to test or have already done

...

clean install of your GPU's latest driver

The latest Nvidia driver, you say? They've been having some issues for sure, lately. Would you be willing to try 560.94? That's the latest stable driver with which I've had good luck across a spectrum of games.

Also, did you see about the various fixes in this thread? Some of that helped me, a while ago.

I don't think your 16GB of DDR3 would be an issue here, either. A few of the players on my small server have lower amounts, with older GPUs, and they all do alright.

Fingers crossed you can fix things up! I know the pain all too well.

Edited April 24, 2025 by StCatharines

[wildforester]

You could also take a look at xmp in the bios. That should speed up your ram

(if supported)

Edited April 24, 2025 by wildforester

[narkoticici]

24 minutes ago, StCatharines said:

The latest Nvidia driver, you say? They've been having some issues for sure, lately. Would you be willing to try 560.94? That's the latest stable driver with which I've had good luck across a spectrum of games.

Also, did you see about the various fixes in this thread? Some of that helped me, a while ago.

I don't think your 16GB of DDR3 would be an issue here, either. A few of the players on my small server have lower amounts, with older GPUs, and they all do alright.

Fingers crossed you can fix things up! I know the pain all too well.

Yes actually shoud've included it in the post i remember this post years ago and the first thing i tried with my most recent testing

I did some quick testing right now and the settings the post provides it seems to be more choppy more often even if my min fps is ~100 and rare falls below 60 with 60 hertz monitor

But something else that seems promising is disabling vsync in nvidia control panel and using riviatuner statistics server for fps limiter for now this is probably the best performance i've seen and it doesnt use 99% of my gpu

Will also update later when i try the 560.94 driver 

thanks for the suggestions!

[narkoticici]

2 minutes ago, wildforester said:

You could also take a look at xmp in the bios. That should speed up your ram

(if supported)

My mobo doesnt support it and forgot to add it to the post.

thanks!

[StCatharines]

13 minutes ago, narkoticici said:

Will also update later when i try the 560.94 driver 

Again, fingers crossed! I really hope you can figure it out, I know how frustrating the stuttering can be. For me, tinkering in the Nvidia control panel managed to solve the problem for good.

[radfast]

You may find some useful pointers here: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Framerate_and_Performance

In general, though I cannot see your system:

• The framerate is normally GPU-limited, not CPU-limited.   You have an i7, so that should be fine.  Unless you have something like 10k entities spawned or farmed, that should be ample.
• Hardware faults such as faulty RAM are rare, but if they happen they will have an effect, for example due to hardware interrupts or other OS type issues
• In the vast majority of cases, the issue is GPU-side
• We provide a wealth of graphics settings which control what the GPU is doing.  I would suggest start with low-spec settings (small view distance, shadows and SSAO off, etc).  See if you can get stable framerates.  Then slowly and gradually increase the settings and see if things remain stable.
• If you changed configs in clientsettings.json or servermagicnumbers.json, go back to defaults (if necessary, delete those files even, so the game will recreate them with defaults)
• The Chunk Upload Rate Limiter setting in graphics settings is potentially relevant, though usually has more impact for Radeon than for Nvidia.  I recommend set it in the middle of the range, for testing
• Observe what game actions cause stutter - for example if you stand completely still, if you rotate your head?   If you look straight up into the sky you should be able to get 150fps
• There is a command .debug logticks 20 which will show the potential reason for any drop below 50fps (20ms frame time = 50 fps because 20 x 50 = 1000, you can try other numbers).  However, if the issue is GPU-side it will not show any useful information

For Nvidia specifically, try the things discussed on this forum thread - there are some Nvidia Control Panel settings discussed there which might still be useful and relevant, even though I guess Nvidia have changed things since that was first written.

Some other things to try:

• Use a good quality hardware performance monitor to check that your CPU and GPU are maintaining high clock rate and not thermal throttling.  Open Hardware Monitor is good, and free
• You are playing on Windows 10.  If you didn't carefully clean things up already, you likely have a lot of processes running, both from Windows itself and other software you have installed.  I would strongly recommend take all possible steps to 'de-bloat' it and disable unnecessary startup processes, before looking to blame your game software.  Especially if you have similar issues in multiple games.  For a start, OOSU10 allows you disable many of Windows own annoying and unnecessary elements.  Personally I have almost no other software running when I play games, except for Nvidia Control Panel and an audio control panel.  So I stop the VPN, the antivirus, the auto-updates, the drive scanners and search optimisers and all those types of background processes
• Re-read and fully apply the above bullet point.  Especially, do not have Discord running (not even in background), nor any browser, nor any VOIP process.  Use your phone or another PC if you need to read internet guides while testing things.
• Try playing the latest game version 1.20.11-rc.1, it has the highest performance
• Test without any mods

[KiaYaha]

I've recently also had stuttering issues,  but only after I downloaded the latest nvidia drivers. I'd recommend doing what StCatharines said and roll back your drivers, just to see if it isn't an issue with that