STUTTERING & LAG / FRAME RATE Drop - Video & Audio - All Discussion

[Spookyy]

I get the same loading? stutter that make the game freeze for split second.

I get 40% gpu usage, a bit low for a new game =)

Using Phenom II 4x, Geforce 460gtx 1gb, 4gb ram, Windows 7 x64, dedicated gaming drive with loads of space.
Defragged and no crap stuff in the background and updated drivers etc.

[libindi]

Are the developers working on this issue?

[funkRush]

Did someone try my suggestion? Uninstalling the 3D Vision drivers and the Stereo HD drivers from Nvidia. Or simply just installing the graphic card driver and the PhysX driver without any additions offered.

In the 25th August patch post they said they are reading our posts and working on the issues. So I guess this is getting worked on as well.

[ExDeus]

i did try it, it helped a bit, but it came back after awhile...

[AdamJensensAugmentedArm]

I tried a 360 controller and had the same results. Movement with the left thumbstick results in smooth gameplay, but the second I begin using the right, the same exact stuttering problem pops up again.

[ajd155]

Originally Posted by AdamJensensAugmentedArm

I tried a 360 controller and had the same results. Movement with the left thumbstick results in smooth gameplay, but the second I begin using the right, the same exact stuttering problem pops up again.

Bummer, it's more pervasive than I thought.

[jack_black_91]

Originally Posted by splitsticks

I'm having a similar, if not exact same problem. Running an i7 960, 12gb ddr3 1600 ram, 2x radeon hd6870 (crossfire). What I've found about this stuttering problem is that it primarily occurs indoors. Outside in the hubs I have virtually no issue, but if I step into the apartments (passing no loading screens), then I get major stuttering. I've found that if I disable crossfire this problem goes away completely, so that's what I'm doing. I've also tried lowering my graphics settings into the dirt to see if it fixes it, but the problem still persists. So it seems that the game does not handle crossfire very well.

Yup, that is pretty much what i'm getting. Though for me "studdering" or "hiccuping" occurs in pretty much every facet of the game; outdoors, inside, and even in the vents, where you'd think there would be a lot less to render.

And, you have a better rig than I do, and seems you are getting the same issue as I am. So that says a lot. Coupled with this knowledge, it has to be the games scripting that is causing the problem for so many PC users.

[funkRush]

I'd really like an offical statement on the problem if this is possible in any way.

[DesaanUK]

Stuttering is atrocious, totally unplayable. How can the highest and the lowest settings yield the same performance? Something is horrible wrong here......


So I took a look in the game folder and was surprised at the total lack of game files, there is basically 4 large files all named bigfile.001 to 004 and a few dll's. Surely this can NOT be a good thing when it comes to accessing files required by the game engine. The HDD (SSD or otherwise) must be thrashing like crazy grabbing the resources from such large (and probably compressed) files.

These files NEED to be unpacked as I'm pretty sure they are the source of the problem.

[Mystery]

Stuttering here as well.

I don't have a high-end rig, but it's well above the minimum requirements and performs the game quite well.

Athlon 64 X2 5800+ (2x3.00GHz)
4GB DDR2 800 RAM
ATI Radeon HD4850
Windows XP X86 SP3
Windows is installed on a 10K rpm WD Raptor and DeusEx is on a seperate 7.2k rpm SATA HDD.

These are my regular settings:
1680x1050 (native resolution of my 22" screen)
Edge AA
16xAF
Shadows, SSAO, DOF all on normal
Triple Buffering, VSync, Post-Processing all enabled

I usually get 30fps (vsync on) or 40-50fps (vsync off) with this configuration, but the game stutters heavily under these circumstances:
-loading a game
-entering a new area (loading screen)
-quickly travelling from point A to point B in the game world

While I'm (slowly/normally) moving at a certain location, the game runs perfectly, but when the engine has to stream a part of the game world that's not currently in memory, the fps drop significantly.

This would also explain why the video settings have little impact on the problem.
I tried the following settings:
800x600 and everything on low or off with no AA/AF. While the stuttering didn't last as long (for example after loading a game) it was still the same as before. As jack_black_91 said, it even happens inside a vent, where there shouldn't be any performance issues.

This -has- to be a problem related to the streaming of the game world itself, which works great on consoles but seems to have been poorly ported to the PC.

The problem also only occurs when I'm looking around. If I don't do anything after loading the game, the fps are steady. Moving forward/backward and strafing left/right doesn't have an impact on the fps as well. Neither does looking up/down with the mouse have much of an impact.
But when I turn around to a new area after loading, the fps drop heavily until the game has streamed the content. This also shows, that it's not a controller problem, because the issue would always be there, but it's not. After the game has loaded the current area around me, I can do whatever I want and the fps are smooth.
But when I quickly move towards a new area (or an old area that's not cached anymore), it starts all over again.

The game itself runs smooth even on my old system, but the streaming doesn't seem to be very well optimized for the PC, or for DX9, as some people report less stuttering with DX11.

[Arthur Hucksake]

I'm leaning towards a GPU issue.

My C drive is an SSD with an SSD swap file. 8GB of ram, I have a seperate SSD which has my Steam directory on with the game installed. Disabled Indexing, because they are SSD.

[Mystery]

It can't be a GPU issue. Why?
-people with high end Crossfire or SLI cards encounter the same stuttering
-the stuttering occurs even in locations like inside a ventilation shaft, which shouldn't cause any GPU to drop fps
-if it was a GPU issue, using the lowest possible video settings would resolve the problem or at least reduce it very significantly, which it doesn't

[Arthur Hucksake]

GPU-Z reports only 187MB of Vram is getting used during this game. Might have something to do with it.

[DesaanUK]

Also noticing low CPU and GPU usage on my end = screw you PC users enjoy your ty port?

[Cloakmachine]

Originally Posted by Arthur Hucksake

GPU-Z reports only 187MB of Vram is getting used during this game. Might have something to do with it.

Originally Posted by DesaanUK

Also noticing low CPU and GPU usage on my end = screw you PC users enjoy your ty port?

Sounds pretty serious. I'm on an i5-2500K (3.7Ghz Turboboost), ASUS GTX560Ti DCU II Top, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM. Using Realtek HD Audio Manager. Motherboard is an Intel, can't remember the exact one from the top of my head.

The problem occurs for me when I'm turning around most of the time. Turning in general seems to be the problem and it's always happening when on the move. Makes the game quite tedious to play, considering that my computer isn't exactly low tier either. Not to mention, I'm only on 1680x1050.

[DesaanUK]

Anyone else noticed DE:HR using obscenely low system resources?

Current V-Ram usage (CPU-Z): 187mb (lol)
Current System Memory usage (Windows Task Manager): 587mb

Meanwhile my CPU usage is spiking all over the place, anything from 30-90% (AMD Quadcore BE) WTF? So totally random.....

Is it trying to run this game via CPU/GPU processing power alone?

[Lamargo]

Having a quick read over what people are saying here about this, and kudos to the community for keeping this rational, but I get the feeling this is more processor related than graphics. I can't quite place it, but I am sure I have encountered something like this before with other games... Anyone looked in to updating their BIOS? This is usually the place for improvements on CPU handling. Note: I am not saying CPU's are maxed out, seems obvious most aren't, but that doesn't stop the info flowing in strange ways if there are certain system bottlenecks somewhere.

[Arthur Hucksake]

Originally Posted by Lamargo

Having a quick read over what people are saying here about this, and kudos to the community for keeping this rational, but I get the feeling this is more processor related than graphics. I can't quite place it, but I am sure I have encountered something like this before with other games... Anyone looked in to updating their BIOS? This is usually the place for improvements on CPU handling. Note: I am not saying CPU's are maxed out, seems obvious most aren't, but that doesn't stop the info flowing in strange ways if there are certain system bottlenecks somewhere.

Wish it were that simple. Worth risking a 6 month stable system because of one badly coded game? Not sure it is.

[cupojava]

Originally Posted by DesaanUK

So I took a look in the game folder and was surprised at the total lack of game files, there is basically 4 large files all named bigfile.001 to 004 and a few dll's. Surely this can NOT be a good thing when it comes to accessing files required by the game engine. The HDD (SSD or otherwise) must be thrashing like crazy grabbing the resources from such large (and probably compressed) files.

These files NEED to be unpacked as I'm pretty sure they are the source of the problem.

The large archives are used to reduce seeks.

The file systems used on consoles are rather simple, which has some implications. For example, simply opening and closing files takes a lot more time than you first might realize. When there are too many files in a folder, we need extra seeks to read file table data. There are hard limits on the number of files in a folder and the length of filenames. We want to allow artists and level designers to organize their data in a logical way, and we want to be able to quickly find data during development. However, even changing the folder being read from will cause an implicit seek. Checking if a file exists or a file's size may also cause an implicit seek.

Our solution to the overhead of handling files is to have a simple, platform independent game file system. All files are combined into several large archive files, and these files are kept open at all time. When the archive files are created, we hash filenames and store the hash. The archive file's table of contents is always kept in memory and contains the hashed filenames, the archive file handle, offsets of the files in the archive and the sizes of the files in the archive.

Since we have all archive files open at all time, we never need to use the expensive open/close system calls. As we always have the table of contents in memory, we can quickly return the size of every file. As all file request are simply seeks inside the already opened archive files, we do not cause extra seeks when we change to read from another directory.

[Arthur Hucksake]

Well good for the devs and their console friendly happier development cycle.

Alot of people still cannot play, and when they can it's stuttering.

[ajd155]

Originally Posted by cupojava

The large archives are used to reduce seeks.

So where did you find that from? Certainly not this thread...

Is this something they had prepared in already before the game came out? If so, then they KNEW.

[cupojava]

Originally Posted by ajd155

So where did you find that from? Certainly not this thread...

Is this something they had prepared in already before the game came out? If so, then they KNEW.

Not trying to be rude, but I'll just say this... the programmers are very smart. If the solution is just to unzip the files ahead of time, then they would have done it.

This is like you going into a hospital and trying to tell a doctor what to do after reading WebMD for 30 minutes. It just makes them laugh inside.

[Arthur Hucksake]

Originally Posted by cupojava

Not trying to be rude, but I'll just say this... the programmers are very smart. If the solution is just to unzip the files ahead of time, then they would have done it.

This is like you going into a hospital and trying to tell a doctor what to do after reading WebMD for 30 minutes. It just makes them laugh inside.

So smart their idea in this instance has obviously failed, where as many other games that don't use this method... work.

Doctors get things wrong all the time. Just like devs release most games broken.

[funkRush]

For many people the game works just fine so the technic works. Because of the wide varity of PC platforms and setups there are always going to be problems with released games. The developers can't test any possible actual or outdated PC configuration.
Give them time to figure out whats failing on certain systems. An offical statement would still be very appreciated.

[cupojava]

Originally Posted by Arthur Hucksake

So smart their idea in this instance has obviously failed, where as many other games that don't use this method... work.

Doctors get things wrong all the time. Just like devs release most games broken.

Ouch. Well, I guess as a programmer I see it from a different perspective than the end-users. You guys have no idea how complicated this stuff gets.