Crysis 2 stutter

[drkailinium]

I am experiencing stutter exactly like the stutter that the guy in this http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/118174-25-crysis-dx11-stutter thread did but I have a different system and i dont think it can be a bottleneck on the ati site under current issues for the latest 12.3 driver it does say 'Crysis 2 may hang randomly when run in DirectX 11 mode.' but im not sure if this is the same thing so can anyone help.

specs
CPU- i7 920 2.8 GHz
RAM- 6GB 1333 MHz
GPU- 2 x5870s
PSU- 750tx coursair
Mobo- gigabyte x58

 

[aicom]

How much VRAM on each of those 5870s?

 

[drkailinium]

1GB

 

[HEXiT]

i have a similar setup but only 1 5870 and the game runs smooth maxed out... what you may see due to runing xfire is micro stutter. if thats the case then you will need to run the game with vsnc enabled...
if this doesnt work then use the free version of fraps to make a 30 second vid of your problem and up it to youtube or similar then link it here...

 

[casualcolors]

i have a similar setup but only 1 5870 and the game runs smooth maxed out... what you may see due to runing xfire is micro stutter. if thats the case then you will need to run the game with vsnc enabled...
if this doesnt work then use the free version of fraps to make a 30 second vid of your problem and up it to youtube or similar then link it here...

He's running the DX11 version, unfortunately single 5870 have a hard time maxing that and keeping fps above 45 steadily. If he's running Hi-Res Textures along with it, his framebuffer could be fully consumed. Can cause stuttering on its own, and increase the risk for microstutters. Like you said, enabling vsync can combat this, along with triple buffering and increasing pre-rendered frames from default 3 to 5.

If none of that works, try disabling xfire and running the game on a single card. See if you can find settings where the game runs smoothly without hitches on a single card, then re-implement xfire. If it goes back to stuttering, at least you'll know for sure that xfire specifically is the issue. Otherwise, like I said it could be the 1gb VRAM being fully saturated. At that point, you can choose between disabling Hi-Res Textures or Anti-aliasing to try and free up some VRAM.

 

[HEXiT]

the 5870 runs the game at 30-45fps on ultra settings(i just checked)... so 2 cards should give 55-75 taking into account scaling of the 2 cards. the 5870 also supports variable vsnc where instead of waiting for a 60mhz refresh it will just sync to the next full frame... so turning on vsnc often will get rid of micro stutter if you can get the game to run at a solid 60fps... which is where microstutter appears at 30 or 60 fps when vsnc is disabled...

as crysis uses dx11 tripple buffering wont have any effect as its an opengl/direct 3d feature. as far as i know and only works with games that use opengl or direct 3d as its gfx api. also setting pre-render isnt something you can do with ccc panel you may be able to adjust it via the games config but i cant see an entry for it... this is where amd and nvidia take a different approach as its available in the nvidia games profiles but missing from amd game profiles...

you may be able to force triple buffering via a 3rd party program like d3doveride.
this has been shown to work with games like bfbc2 which is also a dx11 game...
http://www.mediafire.com/?ia3wiao4yparrpy get d3doveride here.... just remember that tripple buffering eats up gfx mem so turning it on can impact performance in itself... especially on games that use a lot of gfx mem as standard practice and dont natively support it...

there are known issues with ati cards and crysis 2 scaling especially the 5870's i have seen plenty of benches where you actually get less fps with xfire enabled than with a single card... so turning off 1 card as cas suggests may be your only solution...

*Edit
i just tried the d3doverride and it does allow you to implement triple buffering and vsnc on dx api based games. it increased my fps by 5 frames but it also lowered my minimum to 27 instead of 33
you can also add config files to the overider so you may want to look around for 1 thats specifically for crysis 2 like i said you can use this little app to enable tripple buffering on any dx based game that doesnt already support it(triple buffering was left to the devs for direct x and is used on a per game basis with no support or option to enable or disable it in the games that use it)

just for refrence i run crysis 2 at max settings (ultra ingame from the basic gfx settings) with minimum blur @1920/1080@60hz

btw if your a uk/eu resident add me to your crysis2 ingame friends list. if you want. if your in the u.s then it would be a waste of time as out pings would be to different to play a competitive game without lag(sorry)... my ingame tag is IIILSDIII (this goes for any toms member who plays crysis 2) who knows we may even start a toms clan

 

[casualcolors]

the 5870 runs the game at 30-45fps on ultra settings(i just checked)... so 2 cards should give 55-75 taking into account scaling of the 2 cards. the 5870 also supports variable vsnc where instead of waiting for a 60mhz refresh it will just sync to the next full frame... so turning on vsnc often will get rid of micro stutter if you can get the game to run at a solid 60fps... which is where microstutter appears at 30 or 60 fps when vsnc is disabled...

as crysis uses dx11 tripple buffering wont have any effect as its an opengl/direct 3d feature. as far as i know and only works with games that use opengl or direct 3d as its gfx api. also setting pre-render isnt something you can do with ccc panel you may be able to adjust it via the games config but i cant see an entry for it... this is where amd and nvidia take a different approach as its available in the nvidia games profiles but missing from amd game profiles...

you may be able to force triple buffering via a 3rd party program like d3doveride.
this has been shown to work with games like bfbc2 which is also a dx11 game...
http://www.mediafire.com/?ia3wiao4yparrpy get d3doveride here.... just remember that tripple buffering eats up gfx mem so turning it on can impact performance in itself... especially on games that use a lot of gfx mem as standard practice and dont natively support it...

there are known issues with ati cards and crysis 2 scaling especially the 5870's i have seen plenty of benches where you actually get less fps with xfire enabled than with a single card... so turning off 1 card as cas suggests may be your only solution...

*Edit
i just tried the d3doverride and it does allow you to implement triple buffering and vsnc on dx api based games. it increased my fps by 5 frames but it also lowered my minimum to 27 instead of 33
you can also add config files to the overider so you may want to look around for 1 thats specifically for crysis 2 like i said you can use this little app to enable tripple buffering on any dx based game that doesnt already support it(triple buffering was left to the devs for direct x and is used on a per game basis with no support or option to enable or disable it in the games that use it)

just for refrence i run crysis 2 at max settings (ultra ingame from the basic gfx settings) with minimum blur @1920/1080@60hz

btw if your a uk/eu resident add me to your crysis2 ingame friends list. if you want. if your in the u.s then it would be a waste of time as out pings would be to different to play a competitive game without lag(sorry)... my ingame tag is IIILSDIII (this goes for any toms member who plays crysis 2) who knows we may even start a toms clan

Have to swap to ATI Tray Tools if you want to adjust pre-render on AMD products. Was going to come back and mention d3doverride but you beat me to it. It's definitely not something that's preferred, only a way to minimize vsync-induced frame hitching if you run into it anyway.

 

[HEXiT]

ive never bothered with ati tray tools for years... i always found it would cause stability probems with some apps and games. rivatuner is another 1 but you really need to be on the ball where thats concerned. its not for the amateur. but as you say its worth a shot to try ATT...

 

[casualcolors]

Yeah I'm with you on rivatuner. I've never had any success using it with AMD products.

 

[drkailinium]

haven't got a chance to test v-sycn yet but one thing i was wondering is a 750 watt psu good enough for my system? I thought so and amd said so but some people I know were questioning if it was powerful enough

 

[casualcolors]

A 750w Corsair power supply should be fine man. I would doubt you pull more than 650 at full load.

 

[HEXiT]

yep you will likely pull a maximum from the wall of 550 or so watts... and thats with everything going full tilt. so yeah 750w on a decent brand like corsair is more than enough.

 

[drkailinium]

right v-sync gets rid of all the stutter i still get the occasional hang but that seems to be a problem with the driver according to ATI. one thing is that the v-sync is limiting it 50fps i was wondering is it possible to cap it at 60 or 70?

 

[casualcolors]

Set your monitor's refresh rate to 60 instead of 50.

 

[drkailinium]

hmm apparently it already is

 

[jessterman21]

I assume you're playing the 64-bit version? I'm playing the 32-bit and I'm wondering if that's my issue, though for some reason I get a lot more stutters when I'm near water - tesselated or not... I'm sure an LGA 1155 platform will fix our issues.

I seriously wouldn't mind playing in DX9 - POM, Tesselation, and pretty water are fine and good, but not if the game's barely playable. The only thing I can't get to work in DX9 is Anisotropic Filtering. I can force it in CCC and it works in DX11, but not DX9 for some reason.

I think there needs to be one final patch from Crytek. Of course I think that about the previous Crysis games too...

 

[casualcolors]

Crysis 2 doesn't have a legitimate 64bit version and I believe it's large address aware, so that shouldn't affect smoothness.

 

[jessterman21]

KNOWN ISSUES

Known issues under the Windows 7 operating system
The following section provides a summary of open issues that may be experienced under the Windows 7 operating system in the latest version of AMD Catalyst. These include:

•Vsync may be disabled after task switching when playing Rage
•Enemy Territory Quake Wars may crash when launched in High Performance mode
•Crysis 2 may hang randomly when run in DirectX 11 mode.

Yeah that's pretty terrible. I wonder if our problem is what they're referring to? I know my slower system is not helping the issue, but apparently AMD's got some issues to iron out too...

 

[jessterman21]

May have found the answer... The last graph on these pages shows the VLIW architecture doesn't play well with Crysis 2 in DX11. Lots of little lags.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22573/8
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22384/8
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22192/12
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22705/5

DX11 also uses 800+ MB VRAM even on the lowest settings @ 800x600 according to GPU-Z...

Also the stuttering might be related to water (tesselated or not) - the stutters seem to coincide with the rhythm of the waves in a given level. Sewer water doesn't seem to affect the smoothness, because it runs without lags at the beginning of Sudden Impact.

 

[jessterman21]

Nope, no stutters on my new rig. Though the game still crashes sometimes with tessellated water on.

 

[jessterman21]

This thread is old, but I've got some new conclusions: looks like the OP's problem was microstuttering due to CrossfireX, and MY problem was microstuttering due to a weak CPU only able to handle 2 threads at a time.

Apparently to run Crysis 2 in DX11, you need to be able to run more than 2 threads. (Makes sense, since at any given point in the game, my CPU graphs in Task Manager show >70% usage on all 4 threads.)

Check these new benchmarks for an Ivy Bridge Pentium in Crysis 2: http://techreport.com/review/23662/amd-a10-5800k-and-a8-5600k-trinity-apus-reviewed/11