Two possible solution for lagging and stuttering

[spitzer45 99]

Hello all, 

Maybe some of you know these little tweaks but unfortunately i have found these now. 

For Windows 10, Just disable windows game mode and for nvidia cards, at nvidia control panel, under power management mode, set "prefer maximum performance"

With these two settings my stutters and lagging dramatically decreased. 

[cianpars 1,174]

Haha. If only it were that simple.

Neither of these tweaks seemed to make any difference for me, though they seem to have worked for some.  I guess a lot depends on your hardware.

Switching from ultra to high makes a difference, but I just can't give up the eye candy 😀

[Cpt_Piett 4,811]

Although I have gaming mode turned off, and prefer maximum performance set in NCP, I don't find that they influence stutters. 

As I mentioned in another post, I did some troubleshooting yesterday to try to resolve stutters (more like several second long pauses). I dialled back the overclock, deactivated Process Lasso, fine-tuned the network settings (realised that for a long time XBox Live was not using open NAT as I didn't have UPnP enabled in the router). I logged out and back into my XBOX account and changed servers back and forth. I disabled all live services from the in-sim menu and even turned all the visual settings way down to low. Nothing influenced the stutters. 

It seems like a hit and miss right now. Sometimes stutters and pauses are due to certain addons, or addon combinations. Other times it seems unpredictable and random. I suspect that the quality of streaming services might be the culprit of a lot of performance related issues. And it happens even with high-speed fibre internet. 

[styckx 1,872]

Enabling "prefer maximum power" is like disabling Speedstep and c-states on an Intel CPU. It does nothing for performance and only creates more heat, and power usage. It just means while your PC is sitting there doing nothing your GPU clocks are always at their maximum for no reason at all

[AnkH 2,282]

8 minutes ago, styckx said:

Enabling "prefer maximum power" is like disabling Speedstep and c-states on an Intel CPU. It does nothing for performance and only creates more heat, and power usage. It just means while your PC is sitting there doing nothing your GPU clocks are always at their maximum for no reason at all

You are aware that you can set this specifically for the executable? Then "maximum performance" only applies when MSFS is running... No need to change it globally...

[bobcat999 8,502]

56 minutes ago, styckx said:

Enabling "prefer maximum power" is like disabling Speedstep and c-states on an Intel CPU. It does nothing for performance and only creates more heat, and power usage. It just means while your PC is sitting there doing nothing your GPU clocks are always at their maximum for no reason at all

Really?  I have this set for MSFS (not globally) and I don't see this behaviour.

I find the GPU clocking frequency may remain the same, but GPU utilisation and temperature vary according to the complexity of the scenery in the sim. 

For example, if I am flying over fairly empty countryside, I am getting a a GPU utilisation of about 65% and temperatures about 65C.  Landing at a major airport, utilisation goes up to around 90%+, and temperatures about 74-76C.

I would like to know what this setting does though.  Once again, there are so many settings and so much 'snake oil' type advice, and we never seem to get decent or conclusive answers.

Some say use hyperthreading, some say turn it off, some say use game mode, others say not, some say use hardware accelerated GPU scheduling, some say definitely don't!
It's an absolute minefield and a bit of a mess!  I could think of even more ambiguous settings, but it's pointless going on without the data.

True stuttering is normally due to a mis-match between screen display rate and actual frame rate - you really need to know what you are doing here.  Some people moan about it, but it can be because their PC simply can't produce the 30 fps required at all stages of flight, and so they get frame skipping, which looks like stuttering.

As for the lagging and pauses, which even some people with 3090's get, I think you can chase your tail with these, but ultimately it is down to a sim problem - it needs optimising in a few areas and has some peculiarities.  For instance, my lagging / pausing is caused by the 'manipulator' issue only in certain areas.  When my PC does the long pauses and the mini pauses (different from stuttering), my CPU utilisation, or GPU utilisation, or both, drops to zero (totally flat-line to zero), like the PC is waiting for something.

Hopefully DX12 and follow-on optimisations will help.  I have chased my tail for years with trying to optimise FSX, P3D, and Xplane, so it isn't just confined to MSFS, but these specific pauses and lagging need to be looked at.  As even testing with substantially lower settings, they are still present.  Annoyingly, some people with older hardware claim they don't get them.  Good for them! 

 

Edited May 18, 2021 by bobcat999

[RudyB24 296]

Switching game mode off is mentioned often ... almost as often as switching it on. 🙂

It's strange that turning game mode off increases game performance while the two things that it does are:

• increase the priority of the game such that it gets more CPU time at the expense of the other processes that are running (which always are many)
• temporarily halt windows updates, of which the automatic background download and install can negatively influence performance

But if it helps to switch it off ... by all means leave it off.

[Cpt_Piett 4,811]

Just realised I've had game mode ON all this time. Agreed it's unlikely performance would suffer with this one. I have Xbox game bar and all shadowplay off however, which makes more sense. 

Just did a short hop in Austria with everything on ultra. Smooth 40-50fps all the way, no pauses. Go figure. 

[marcg11 125]

As others have said - there is no one quick fix and I have tried both of these with no (or minimal) impact........What may or may not work on your setup is not a guarantee to work on others.   If it does great - but don't be surprised if it doesn't do anything.