Crysis 1 - Every checkpoint/autosave causes a 5 second freeze.

[DudE132]

It seems that using any AA above 2x causes my game to freeze for 5 seconds during every checkpoint. I tried reinstalling and verifying the game files and it still happens. I have a 970, I5 4960k, and 16GB RAM so my specs should not be a problem.

Performance is perfect with 8x AA, but the 5 sec freezing it causes during checkpoints is unbearable. My system should have no issue with this game. Anyone know why this is happening or have a solution?

 

[rhysiam]

A quick/on-the-fly save is one of the very few instances during active gameplay where a game will write non-trivial amounts of data to your hard drive or SSD. So the fact that the freezes line up with those actions points to the HDD or SSD as the problem.

Monitor your disk activity using task manager and have a look what happens when it freezes. Is the disk usage (as in performance - no free space) pegged at 100%? Have you noticed any other issues with your hard drive (sometimes freezes or delays writing/reading from a HDD can be a sign that it's on its way out).

That's not guaranteed to be your problem, but that's the first place to explore.

 

[jasonkaler]

Sounds like writing to your drive is taking a long time.
There are a few things this could be:
A) Hardware:
Are drive writes generally slow?
In event viewer / windows logs / system - do you have any disk errors?
If you have the time, run a full disk scan.
B) Software:
Make sure write caching is turned on - in device manager, find your disk, under policies make sure enable write caching is on
Tell your anti-virus to ignore your save game folder - this is normally called "exceptions" in most anti-virus packages
C) Disk clutter
delete all old saves
Run defrag on the drive

 

[iamacow]

Back in the day when playing Crysis on a Q6600 and 80GB hard drive it would freeze for a few when auto saving too. That's just normal. It still shudders for me using a SSD.

 

[DudE132]

I just figured out that anything above 2x AA causes this long checkpoint freeze for me. With 2x AA checkpoints cause the normal split second stutter that I see from the youtube vids. While 4x and 8x AA are what cause the 5 second checkpoint freeze. DSR also causes this 5 second freeze. Is this potentially just an issue with the game engine not being able to efficiently handle higher levels of AA?

I recently did a disk defrag not too long ago and just passed a Short DST with Seatools if that helps.

 

[jasonkaler]

I just figured out that anything above 2x AA causes this long checkpoint freeze for me. With 2x AA checkpoints cause the normal split second stutter that I see from the youtube vids. While 4x and 8x AA are what cause the 5 second checkpoint freeze. DSR also causes this 5 second freeze. Is this potentially just an issue with the game engine not being able to efficiently handle higher levels of AA?

Interesting. Sounds like frame timing is slowing down saving... or something