Diablo 3 Beta - Frame Rate Stuttering?

[Gosukusan]

I am experiencing very odd frame rate stuttering while playing D3 Beta. It's not low frame rate, just a VERY quick freeze of a couple frames. It rarely if ever seems to happen while standing in one place and fighting, but when moving from area to area it's fairly consistent.

When I walk around in Tristram, it always seems to stutter around the same spots. It's literally like a 1/10th to 1/4th of a second freeze up, but it happens often enough to be annoying, especially considering the power of my system. I've closed every program and even tried running "Game Booster" to make it go away, but it just won't.

Oddly enough, the only other game I can recall experiencing this issue is with WoW, but that was usually only when the game was loading massive amounts of players.

Anyone else experiencing anything like this in D3 or any other game? Anyone know how to make it stop? lol

My system is fairly powerful.

Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Asus P6T Deluxe V2 Motherboard
Core i7 920 @4ghz
6 Gigs Corsair Dominator ram @ 1600mhz
Geforce 480GTX Overclocked

Perhaps my crappy 7200rpm nearly full hard drive is the culprit?

Or maybe my onboard sound?

I just can't figure it out.

Edit: I just realized this should probably be in the tech forums : /

2nd Edit: I just turned my monitor from 120hz to 60 hz (it's 3D capable) and it got rid of all the very tiny stutters. The larger stutters (1/4th second ones) are still there and still just as consistent. This is so annoying... I made a fraps of it if anyone wants to see it, though fraps made it worse lol...

[fsj]

How hot is ur GTX running and how overclocked is it? I've had this issue years ago on an nvidia and I had to restore it to default speed before I could play without frames stuttering every 30 seconds or so. I'm no expert but it sounds like your problem is the same as the one I had so it may be worth a shot.

That's when I asked myself why I even bother overclocking. Imo unless you have an age old system that is struggling to keep up all you are doing is reducing the lifetime of your hardware, unless you spend a lot on cooling.

*edit* I would ask the same question about your CPU. How hot and overclocked is it? Try restoring that to default as well. 4GHz isn't a stock speed (off the top of my head) so I'm assuming that's OC'd too.

[Gosukusan]

How hot is ur GTX running and how overclocked is it? I've had this issue years ago on an nvidia and I had to restore it to default speed before I could play without frames stuttering every 30 seconds or so. I'm no expert but it sounds like your problem is the same as the one I had so it may be worth a shot.

That's when I asked myself why I even bother overclocking. Imo unless you have an age old system that is struggling to keep up all you are doing is reducing the lifetime of your hardware, unless you spend a lot on cooling.

*edit* I would ask the same question about your CPU. How hot and overclocked is it? Try restoring that to default as well. 4GHz isn't a stock speed (off the top of my head) so I'm assuming that's OC'd too.

GPU overclocked to about 840mhz up from 700mhz stock, with a bump to 1.25 voltage. Runs pretty cool, never above 80c or so, it's been runnin this way for over a year with zero problems. CPU also run's cool. It's got a VERY nice heatsink on it and keeps temps around 40c @ 4ghz.

Thing is, I don't have this issue on ANY other games. So I'm leaning more towards it being the game's issue with my hardware, and not my hardware's issues in general. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try restoring default clocks.

[fsj]

I had the issue just on the 1 game when I experienced it as well. It wasn't my most demanding game either. I've also known on board sound to cause such issues. As a test you could disable it and check. Obviously playing without sound isn't what you'd want but it would help pinpoint the source of the problem. It's just a process of elimination. If no piece of hardware appears to be causing the problem then it may well be an issue with D3 instead of your set up.

[ThulRasha]

I had this in WoW a long time ago. Freeze for half a second about every 15 seconds.
Some people pinpointed it to a sound driver that was being installed by Windows over the existing sound driver (and indeed for on board sound) but this was not the case for me. Months later Blizzard stated that they had fixed the issue. But not for me, I never managed to get rid of it. I ended up buying a new computer...

[unmoses]

I seemed to recall the 4xx series having several problems with a driver issue that had issues with running other programs like evga precision and/or msi afterburner and fan polling.. I also seem to recall driver issues where it would throttle gpu performance based on estimated usage as it rolled out.. Of course, I would try downclocking to stock and starting from there myself, but you seem to have a good handle on the tech side of things (I'm not in beta, so this is just from a driver/card side of things)

[mgcemir]

I had this in WoW a long time ago. Freeze for half a second about every 15 seconds.
Some people pinpointed it to a sound driver that was being installed by Windows over the existing sound driver (and indeed for on board sound) but this was not the case for me. Months later Blizzard stated that they had fixed the issue. But not for me, I never managed to get rid of it. I ended up buying a new computer...


i have this **** in every game when i start and even close cpuz or hw monitor. if u had any of these programs should have tried uninstalling it.

[ThulRasha]

i have this **** in every game when i start and even close cpuz or hw monitor. if u had any of these programs should have tried uninstalling it.

It's been more than a year ago now, but I have tried nearly everything on that computer to fix stuttering in WoW. I don't recall stuttering in any other games. Also tried fresh installs with just Windows and only WoW.
Gifted the computer to my parents, who don't seem to have any troubles with it :p

[Kahilm]

There's a thread on the official tech support forum about this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/3280530366

It's happening to both ATI and Nvidia cards. I made a post in another thread on this forum that I'm having the same problem.

[Gosukusan]

Thank's for the responses guys. I've tried everything and am still having problems, I made a post in the thread that Kahilm linked, and I also made a video to show you guys the kind of stuttering I'm getting.

Fraps made the stuttering worse, which further leads me to believe that it's a hard drive and/or ram related issue, but here's the video.

Also, this problem seems to be affecting people with quad core cpu's, perhaps there is an issue in the way that memory bandwidth is used within the game?

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iukY2L8PpSM

[Azzure]

Try turning on Vertical Sync.

[Gosukusan]

Try turning on Vertical Sync.

I've tested every possible in-game option. Nothing helps.

[Azzure]

I've tested every possible in-game option. Nothing helps.

Just looked at your video - it looks video card or memory related, slight possibility hard drive (as it transfer game files into memory). (it's obviously a fault as your system is powerful)

[chriscowart]

This is obvious, but update your drivers or try beta drivers. Sometimes the obvious things are the fixes we overlook!

[Gosukusan]

This is obvious, but update your drivers or try beta drivers. Sometimes the obvious things are the fixes we overlook!

I already have beta drivers :P

[Xandor]

I notice it as well on my pc. But after some minutes, with everything in memory, the problems stops. I think the culprit is the disc i/o, although I have an hybrid ssd hd.

btw, I have quad core processor.

[Gosukusan]

I notice it as well on my pc. But after some minutes, with everything in memory, the problems stops. I think the culprit is the disc i/o, although I have an hybrid ssd hd.

btw, I have quad core processor.

Yeah that's what doesn't make sense to me, you'd think that after everything has been stored on ram that the problem would lessen, but nope, not for me at least.

I may have to buy an SSD to see if it solves anything. Was gonna get one soon anyway.

[Tilitoon]

If you have 2 screens or a G15 or any other way of seeing your hard drive activity while playing it might help you determine if that's the problem.

[raiderjb]

Running a 4 year old Quad core here and yeah I have the dreaded stutter. Funnily enough it didn't appear in the 1st couple of weeks of Beta. After the minor patch a couple of weeks back is when I noticed it.....

[korialstraz]

If you have 2 screens or a G15 or any other way of seeing your hard drive activity while playing it might help you determine if that's the problem.

This is a very sound advice.

Especially keep an eye on loads on CPU and/or RAM. I remember having a similar issue, although much worse than yours. Couldn't solve the issue, despite having a pretty good idea of what caused the issue.

OT: In my case it was a faulty GPU, and also some problems with drivers in Win7 that seemed to cause issues between the GPU, CPU and sound card where under different circumstances, I'd get CPU spikes of 100% when playing games online with sound enabled, and it was with a process that had its task prioritized over most/all others, causing the CPU to spike until that job was finnished. Disabling my sound card helped a little, disabling network card completely solved the issue, but I'd still get random crashed when watching movies (due to faulty GPU), etc. Worst issue I've ever had to deal with. >.>


Have you tried all the graphics settings in the beta? Is the problem still there if all the settings are set to lowest possible values? Does that have an effect on your issue at all (better or worse?).

[Frantic]

Have you made a similar thread on the b.net D3 beta forums? I think Blizz should know about this, because man that stutter is annoying.

[Gosukusan]

Have you made a similar thread on the b.net D3 beta forums? I think Blizz should know about this, because man that stutter is annoying.

Yes I posted in an already existing thread. The latest beta Nvidia drivers make the problem far less noticeable, almost non-existent. I'll be upgrading to an SSD regardless of whether or not it has anything to do with the problem, so I'll let people know what the performance is like after that. I'll also be getting a Geforce 590 GTX soon, so that will get a followup as well.