Games with FAF have a minor stutter that happens constantly

[XenoInReno]

Howdy! When I play faf, whether it be in sandbox with just my acu sitting there idly or with swarms of units; there is always this minor stutter that happens around every 7-9 seconds, it's quite slight but when things are moving fast or I am staring at animations it becomes quite noticeable. It certainly doesn't prevent gameplay but it is an annoyance; if memory serves this started happening after one of the major patches released a few months back - ballparking it i'd say around 2ish months ago? I've not quite narrowed it down to what would be causing it. This occurs with mods enabled and all mods disabled. My specs are: i7-6700k, Evga GTX 1080 FTW, 32 giggles of ddr4, Asus viii Formula mobo, and the game is installed on two 6tb WD blacks in Raid 0 - defragged of course. Any help solving this would be greatly appreciated.

Game Log: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9Zaq ... XdmaEdGNFE - The game log exceeded the max characters for a message so I had to upload it to my google drive

[JoonasTo]

I have the same thing on my Desktop PC but not on my laptop, weirdly. With the same settings(game and network) on both computers, both Win10.
The FPS on the laptop is constant, smooth 60. Desktop is smooth, constant 75 aside from the stutter, the game FPS counter shows the stutter too.

Logs don't really show anything interesting to me:
Game.log
Forever.log

I've had issues with the cores for the game going into powersave mode before so I just figured this had something to do with AMD specific powersave states but if this happens to his intel too, that can't be it.

[yorick]

Are you using UI Mods ?
My best guess would be some long calculation in the UI thread, but i dont actually have a clue.
Do you lose orders you give in that time as well ? Or if you select units quickly they dont respond or smth ? In that case it might be smth like TA's UI-Lag .

[JoonasTo]

It happens with all mods disabled too. The logs above are from a sandbox game without any mods or any units aside from the acu and it happens there too.

Yeah, it's different from TA's UI-Lag. This is more like the game just freezes for a couple of centiseconds every 8 seconds or so.

What's very weird is that it doesn't happen on my laptop that has the exact same game settings aside from resolution and refresh rate. Hardware aside, only difference is Windows Pro to Home Edition.
Now that I think about it, could be because the desktop has surround sound, will check.
EDIT: No effect changing to stereo.

[XenoInReno]

-snip-

It happens both with no mods, and mods enabled. No problems with unit responsiveness. I don't use any major ui mod when I do have mods enabled.

-snip-

It's quite weird, and I wouldn't think any power saver mode would be causing it; at least on my end. As I have all the power saver settings associated with UEFI, cpu, gpu, and windows disabled. When in game, supcom utilizes 100% of Core 1. Tis all just weird, as it's subtle but once you notice it - it becomes incredibly annoying; it seems that the more units active in a game might exacerbate the problem.

Watching replays is a lot smoother than actually playing a match


Also is that normal?^

[ThinkTank]

This halting is also recorded into the replays now and much more noticeable at +10 speed. I think it is related to a new behavior of replays, where game performance is now reflected in the recording. I had a terrible game on Setons where 3 people d/c one at a time, and as they left, the game never stopped lagging. If you watch the replay it becomes a slide show at 30-40 min with 400 units and 4 players left.

In the past a replay didn't record lag or stuttering or any other performance related aspects of the game. Now it is baking these into the recording. I don't know why this would change but it needs to be fixed.

As far as the halting, Sheeo told Visionik that this may be related to a sync check that was added.

My experience suggests that a few things are ruled out. Unit count doesn't matter. CPU performance is 25% at the most extreme degradation. The problem increases over time but unit counts are still well below limits for the CPU. The problem doesn't seem to get worse when ASFs merge and ASF counts are well below what is normally seen in Setons. My CPU index is 170 and has not changed in years. I have used both a NV 660 and a AMD RX480 and both show the halting and the rx480 was in use in this latest symptomatic replay.

The example replay is 5180302. Recorded on 9/20/16. I checked previous replays to make sure they still played at normal performance.

Thanks to anyone that will investigate this. I believe it is the canary in the coal mine.

[Uveso]

@XenoInReno

Maybe you are using the AI as enemy ?

Try the sorian AI and see, if those lags are alomost gone.

If yes, then your stutter is from the AI while searching the map for valid targets.

[XenoInReno]

-snip-

Thanks for the response and a bit of clarity, it is nice to hear this from others so I reassure myself im not so crazy after all

-snip-

The stuttering happens with anything, from me playing alone with no AI in a sandbox game, to me playing with just one sorian ai, and etc.

[SeraphimLeftNut]

Some placebo suggestions from an experienced UI lagger.
Erase the old fa and faf entries in the superfetch folder. windows/prefetch
Don't run faf or FA in admin mode, if you are then uninstall, erase, reinstall
Get a program that cuts the tcp connection from FA to FAF during gameplay.(two of them and your live replays/rating reporting will not work)
Cap FPS to 60 in gpu settings(it will max out to 100 fps, unless you go into console inside FA and change sc_frametimeclamp which is 10 ms by default, using this setting to cap framerate was not as smooth as capping it in the gpu settings for me), Cap prerendered frames to 2 in gpu settings. Turn off vsync.
Turn off windows defender real time protection. (or other antivirus nonsense you may have)

[RocketRooster]

Are you overclocked in any way?