major stutter to single digit frame drops P3d version 3

[stampee 8]

Hi all: I have searched google and on avsim and everyplace I can think of, until I am blind from reading, and so far no solution to my problem.

I am seeing a massive lockup/stutter while flying which I cannot seem to find a cause for.

I will show 50-75 FPS on unlimited (depending on terrain) and then I will get a jerk(screen stop) and show a minimum frame of 5FPS. This happens around every 30-45 seconds. Sometimes it will drop to 11 fps or 15fps or usually into single digits.

Straight and level flying it happens, and view panning, or turns or loading of scenery seems to make no difference.

 I recently built a new system, about 3 weeks ago. I swear I did not have this problem initially immediately after the new install. I added Utx recently, but disabled it and saw no changes.

I am running an i74790K overclocked to 4.8GHZ.

1600 mhz Gskill raptor memory 16 gig. (a little slow maybe, but...)

Sapphire 7950 3 gig video card. ( older yes, but I can average 70fps and then drop to 5 so doubt this is the problem either.

1280x1024 display on my LG tv.

Samsung ssd850 pro for P3d and a 2nd for the operating system.

Windows 7 64 bit

bothSSD  show over 550 gps so I doubt that is the problem either.

Radeon Settings Version

2015.1223.1060.19763

Direct3D® Version

9.14.10.1171

Asus Z97 pro gamer motherboard.

I ran windows msconfig and shut off all services to no avail. I killed my comodo antivirus also without it helping.

Various affinity masks did not help.

I tried with and without any traffic. I THINK it is a little better with zero traffic settings but I am not positive.

I tried shutting off water, and setting water to ultra to no avail.

I also do not think it is sound related, as some other people have had.

I have let P3d rebuild its cfg file to no avail. I cleared the shader cache.  I have the minimal settings P3d picked for me, and I even lowered them further to no avail. I have these stutters over photogen scenery as well as over default scenery. Different aircraft make no difference.

 I have very minimal crap on my system,as this is a new build, and I have no other windows or programs open while P3d is running anyhow.

I am guessing something may be running in the background causing these disruptions, but what and how can I find it?

 I am thinking of doing an older restore point and see if it solves anything.

 Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Stampee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeAdamo 51]

Hey Stampee. 

 

Sorry to hear you're having some hiccups. One thing I noticed about the stuttering had to do with bloom settings. I turned bloom off and tested and noticed smoother flight especially in areas of clouds. I slowly brought bloom up until the sim started stuttering and then dropped it back down and now I have it at 0.70 and it's been pretty stable.

 

Could you post up some screen shots of your P3D settings and also tell us which P3D tweaks you applied?

 

We'll get you through this and into smooth flight, you just have to have some patience :-)

 

Mike

[gboz 157]

1280x1024 display on my LG tv.

 

This is a very unusual resolution for a TV.

??

 

gb.

[stampee 8]

OOPS sorry on the resolution, it is 1920x1280 native I am running.

I have not done any tweaks to the CFG file other then set it to show average frame rates.

Here are the screen shots requested.

Thank you so much for the help.

-Stampee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MikeAdamo 51]

Thanks for the screen shots. Try turning off the bloom settings all together and see if you still get the stutters and try locking your frame rate to 30. Apply the tweaks LM suggest from their learning center as a start and you'll need an affinity mask setting as well. Are you running hyper threading on or off?

[stampee 8]

By the way, I just turned off hardware tesselation because it is giving me 10 fps better in flight.

Maybe because I have an older video card? it did not help the frame drops however. I still drop to as low as 5 fps at times.

I check task manager and process lasoo and do not see any background process's taking up a lot of cpu time. For what that is worth.

-Stampee

no tweaks at all to the CFG file, other than the line to give me average frame rate.

and I let prepar3d build a new one also to no avail. I will turn bloom off now and  set to 30 and test.  Thank you.

-Stampee

I set bloom to zero and set frame lock to 30.

As you can see in the photo, it did not help. it dropped to 6.9 fps. Actually it dropped to numerous values while I was trying to get a good screen capture.

11.4, 7.8, 5.6 etc. all around 20-45 seconds at a time.

Thanks much for the help however.

-Stampee

 

 

[Slayer 190]

Hello. Have you considered the update to 3.1? You can do this without a total reinstall of everything by a few simple steps. It's a 5 minute job. Also try a limit of 60 or 45 FPS and see if it smooths things up. The hiccup is probably due to scenery paging.Running unlimited puts more priority of FPS than background scenery loading. By setting a speed limit you let the sim load smoothly vs.  running all out trying to maintain high FPS then causing a stutter while the scenery is loading. 

 

edit: also see the numerous affinity tweaks around here , your mileage may vary...

[stampee 8]

Thanks slayer. I tried 252 and 254 affinity tweaks. I dont want to update to 3.1 until I get this resolved first. P3d was running fine and something changed either in p3d or on my system and I cannot understand what happened. The only software I installed in weeks has been Utx a few days ago, I disabled that to no avail.

-Stampee

[Guest]

Try disabling everything in your DLL.XML And EXE.XML and make sure you don't have duplicate entries in alternate location for DLL.XML and EXE.XML.

 

I've actually ran into something similar recently ... at first I thought I damaged my CPU due to OC, but after running many tests with diagnostics tools and other sims/games it doesn't appear to be my CPU as everything passed and performed well.

 

The only other time I had strange stutters was a result of an airport Add-on ... took me a long time to locate the offending BGL and remove it.  I have over 140 add-ons so I'm not going to do that process again.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[stampee 8]

Thank you: I only had fsforce in the dll files. I copied them, and then deleted both files. I searched around some and did not see any other dll files that may have been duplicates.

I still get the strange fps drops.

I will disable all addons and see if some bgl file is corrupt causing this.

-Stampee

[stampee 8]

I found out that mytraffic is causing the worst of my frame drops when it is enabled. I THINK it is sound related, but I am not certain. Sometimes when atc speaks I notice the bad frame drop, but not always. I also found another bad problem causing frame drops. If I click on any "click spot" in the cockpit with the mouse I get an immediate drop to 5-7 fps.

 I do not understand what has changed. I did not have this noticeable frame drop before with my traffic, and never noticed the drop before with the mouse either.

 I now have a NEW bug that cropped up. I now see huge black patches at times as scenery loads.

Sigh...

-Stampee

[stampee 8]

Well: I am about to give up. I thought mytraffic was causing the drops. But with it disabled I still get them. I thought UTX was causing it, but disabling UTX I get the drops also.

The period is much longer now, on the order of 2 minutes, not 30 seconds as I was having previously. The mouse still most definitely causes a drop. That is repeatable. I dont know if other people see that or not. As I understand it mouse lag issues were supposedly all but solved and a thing of the past. I sure never noticed them before, but.. So, I do not know where to go from here. My P3d is so mucked up with changed settings and disabled scenery etc, I may have to start a whole new re-install to get things back to a semblance of normal.

-stampee

[MikeAdamo 51]

Hmmm....if click spots are giving you stutters you can disable the tool tips. Can you send me your p3d.cfg file by PM through the forums? Again, have patience. We'll figure this out

[Guest]

As a test:

 

1.  Turn OFF ForceFeedback

2.  Unplug ALL your USB devices (except mouse/keyboard)

3.  Run P3D and fly with just keyboard (difficult I know, but this is just for a test)

 

Cheers, Rob.

[stampee 8]

Hi all: Before I saw the latest advice I did a restore point. I moved back to catalyst 13.25 and rolled back some windows updates as well. I now am back to running pretty much as I always have. Mainly maxed out settings and 30fps average.

I have Mytraffic running, with flight following and see no horrible frame drops.

Once in a blue moon, it will drop to 20 fps for a split second on the display. I do not see the drop visually, but the number itself drops. (previously, visually I saw a horrible stutter and the screen would jerk and stop)

I  do not have UTX reinstalled yet however. I have hardware tessalation turned off now and I see a 20 fps increase in unlimited mode. I guess my older video card cannot handle tessellation as well as a modern one? So I learned something good from this adventure anyhow!

The mouse is acting fine once again. Click spots do not affect the mouse at all. I tried various aircraft panels, and clicking on a control does not change the fps counter at all.

SO. the bottom line is. I do not know what changed on my system causing this bad problem, but thankfully the restore point pretty  fixed it for me.

 For all I know, it is normal for the counter to drop to a low number occasionally. I could care less as long as the actual visual display does not stutter, or stop as it was doing.

 I could care less about high numbers, but now I run at 30fps locked instead of 20fps locked as I used to do.

At this time I have no affinity mask assigned and am running at 4.7K over clocked. I will leave it for awhile. Things are nice and smooth and I am enjoying the eye candy once again.

 I believe I will leave UTX uninstalled for awhile until I am sure things are working properly.

  Thank you so much to everyone who responded. I am a happy camper once again, and even picked up some more FPS, by turning hardware tessellation off.

-Stampee