Experiencing terrible stuttering issue on Dying Light

[Hunter21]

Hey guys, I've really been looking forward to play this game for a while (haven't played a zombie game in ages!). As soon as I had access to the game's main menu, I noticed the unusual amount of stuttering/lag on the mouse pointer, after progressing through the first cutscene and finally able to experience the gameplay, it all fell apart.

Whatever I do, move/look around/walk around the rooms, I get this unbearable amount of lag/screen stuttering while the FPS trails around the 75~100s on ultra settings (HBAO+, 50% FoV all that stuff). Even setting ALL of the settings to low does not make a difference, sure the fps increased by a considerable amount the stuttering was always there.

I'm currently running on a desktop setup with:
gtx 980 g1 gaming
i7-4790k
16gb of ram
Latest video card driver: Nvidia 347.52

few months ago i had a very similar problem with far cry 4 (with less intensity, the issue no longer exists after a few updates to the gfx driver) and these two games was performing in a very similar
regard in terms of FPS. I tried to play other heavy games (BF4, far cry 4, the evil within) under the same environment to test if the issue came from my hardwares, turns out, everything ran with the expected result, except for Dying Light with lags.

Guys if you had this problem before and solved it, please help me! Any advice is appreciated!

 

[cemerian]

I would say start with drivers, try different versions, since it's only in dying light i would say it is driver related

 

[Hunter21]

Something else worth mentioning, in the actual game, I can just stand there and see the fps jumps, for example the very first chapter inside the shelter, while standing STILL in the corridor, the fps goes UP to 90~92 and then jumps down to 80~81, back and forth, indefinitely.

 

[cemerian]

just to make sure, have you checked your temps while running dying light, what does gpu usage look like when it jumps like that?

 

[Hunter21]

just to make sure, have you checked your temps while running dying light, what does gpu usage look like when it jumps like that?

GPU temp would rise to 67~69C and GPU usage trails around 50%~60%

 

[cemerian]

actually i was more interested in cpu temps, since i cannot recall the last time a gpu would overheat itself(especially a maxwell chip), but the usage tells part of the story, it should be at 99% most of the time(ideally it should be there all the time, but there are factors that make it fluctuate), is your cpu overclocked, what are the cpu temps while running dying light, what are the cpu clocks while the game is running, also depending on what patch you are at, if the first or something like that, before they fixed the cpu usage issue, run the game open up task manager, in processes find dying light,right click -got to details, again right click -set affinity then uncheck the core 0 and recheck it, that was the fix for it before patch

 

[Hunter21]

actually i was more interested in cpu temps, since i cannot recall the last time a gpu would overheat itself(especially a maxwell chip), but the usage tells part of the story, it should be at 99% most of the time(ideally it should be there all the time, but there are factors that make it fluctuate), is your cpu overclocked, what are the cpu temps while running dying light, what are the cpu clocks while the game is running, also depending on what patch you are at, if the first or something like that, before they fixed the cpu usage issue, run the game open up task manager, in processes find dying light,right click -got to details, again right click -set affinity then uncheck the core 0 and recheck it, that was the fix for it before patch

CPU temp was always below 55C since I had a h80i cooler attached, I did not overclock my cpu which means it runs default at 4.0 ghz and turbo boosts itself to 4.4 when necessary. I'm currently running the game on 1.2.1 but I'm downloading the patch to upgrade it to 1.5.0. I will check gpu usage in other games that I ran for testing

 

[Hunter21]

actually i was more interested in cpu temps, since i cannot recall the last time a gpu would overheat itself(especially a maxwell chip), but the usage tells part of the story, it should be at 99% most of the time(ideally it should be there all the time, but there are factors that make it fluctuate), is your cpu overclocked, what are the cpu temps while running dying light, what are the cpu clocks while the game is running, also depending on what patch you are at, if the first or something like that, before they fixed the cpu usage issue, run the game open up task manager, in processes find dying light,right click -got to details, again right click -set affinity then uncheck the core 0 and recheck it, that was the fix for it before patch

So, I've went on testing some stuff on resident evil 6, had some interesting things going on. I could easily max out 120fps, however the gpu usage was only around 40~45%, when i switched to DSR and ran the game under 4k, the fps would trail around 95~120 but the GPU usage was at 70%, however, that made the temp going all the way to 75~80 celcius, I assume when running the gpu at 90% the temp would max to 90 degrees? is that bad for my gpu? what is a comfort zone for the 980?

 

[Hunter21]

I would say start with drivers, try different versions, since it's only in dying light i would say it is driver related

actually i was more interested in cpu temps, since i cannot recall the last time a gpu would overheat itself(especially a maxwell chip), but the usage tells part of the story, it should be at 99% most of the time(ideally it should be there all the time, but there are factors that make it fluctuate), is your cpu overclocked, what are the cpu temps while running dying light, what are the cpu clocks while the game is running, also depending on what patch you are at, if the first or something like that, before they fixed the cpu usage issue, run the game open up task manager, in processes find dying light,right click -got to details, again right click -set affinity then uncheck the core 0 and recheck it, that was the fix for it before patch

Truely sorry with my previous responses, I was looking at the wrong data graph which indicated power usage. So, I only left off the GPU usage and gpu clock tabs, still got interesting readings. For all games I play the gpu would run at 1404mhz (980 default clock is 1228 or sth and g1 gaming version boost clocks to 1329 but it can run at 1404 idk why). In resident evil 6 and resident evil revelations 2, the gpu usage was trailing around 35~50 depending on how much stuff is required to render by the gpu (revelations would have sudden bump to 80% for a split second when my character gets bitten and theres a huge flash of blood on the screen).

Dyling light on the other hand, was extremely interesting. The gpu usage goes up to 99% very often, however the issue is, when I'm standing still, the usage would literally jump at different levels, ranging from 8% (lowest observed) to 99%, when I move around, it would be the same expect maybe slightly better. The fps though would be horrible, it jumps between 30s to 100s when i walk around and its normally low if the usage of GPU is also low....

 

[Hunter21]

actually i was more interested in cpu temps, since i cannot recall the last time a gpu would overheat itself(especially a maxwell chip), but the usage tells part of the story, it should be at 99% most of the time(ideally it should be there all the time, but there are factors that make it fluctuate), is your cpu overclocked, what are the cpu temps while running dying light, what are the cpu clocks while the game is running, also depending on what patch you are at, if the first or something like that, before they fixed the cpu usage issue, run the game open up task manager, in processes find dying light,right click -got to details, again right click -set affinity then uncheck the core 0 and recheck it, that was the fix for it before patch

This game is really getting on my nerves, fps now stable, GPU usage not. I realised with every individual stutter, the gpu usage changes to a different number, there were instances where the usage was sticking at 99% and I was still getting all the stuttering and lag every second of game play.

 

[cemerian]

did you get the newest patch? also the fix with core affinity could help in that situation, and the view distance is kind of bugged in that game set it to some thing like 25% perhaps that will also fix issues(view distance is enormous resource hog for almost zero visual quality improvements) if the usage is low, but fps is good, than it's normal since the gpu isn't required to do more work at the moment, but if usage is low, or jumps around and so does the fps, then there is something that is bottle necking the gpu

 

[Hunter21]

did you get the newest patch? also the fix with core affinity could help in that situation, and the view distance is kind of bugged in that game set it to some thing like 25% perhaps that will also fix issues(view distance is enormous resource hog for almost zero visual quality improvements) if the usage is low, but fps is good, than it's normal since the gpu isn't required to do more work at the moment, but if usage is low, or jumps around and so does the fps, then there is something that is bottle necking the gpu

now at 1.5.0 version of the game, the fps doesn't jump so much (plus or minus 4 fps in the same scene), though the GPU usage still has that funny jumpy distinct. I don't really think anything is bottlenecking my GPU, my fps was quite similar to that of far cry 4 and maybe battlefield 4, I reckon it might just be poor optimization or im unlucky?

 

[Hunter21]

did you get the newest patch? also the fix with core affinity could help in that situation, and the view distance is kind of bugged in that game set it to some thing like 25% perhaps that will also fix issues(view distance is enormous resource hog for almost zero visual quality improvements) if the usage is low, but fps is good, than it's normal since the gpu isn't required to do more work at the moment, but if usage is low, or jumps around and so does the fps, then there is something that is bottle necking the gpu

I believe this game is just poorly optimized, I ran the evil within, borderlands-the presequel, and 4k resolution on resident evil 6 . the evil within had usage from 95%~99% all times, resident evil 6 99% all times and 99% for borderlands even though i was getting 200fps in some places.

To give a better picture to the issue, I also ran the evil within at 4k resolution (which is something far beyond the challenge dying light offers). At 4k, the fps is stable (depends on the environment though) and the GPU usage is 99%, I don't think i have any real bottlenecks and the game's optimization is just a pile of crap

 

[cemerian]

well, to explain how cpu bottleneck works, the less stressed the gpu and the lower the resolution the more you will se effects of being bottlenecked, while increasing the resolution will partly eliminate it since the gpu is already stressed a lot more, so you aren't gonna notice being bottlenecked unless you have a more powerful card, optimization can only go so far, if you where to try any mmo, you would immediately realize how weak the chip actually is for the tasks that type of games require, as I said before the patch simply changed how the game uses the cpu and now is more dependent on cpu, it hsaa always been amd's problem and unfortunately except for a big oc there is nothing you can do about it

 

[Hunter21]

well, to explain how cpu bottleneck works, the less stressed the gpu and the lower the resolution the more you will se effects of being bottlenecked, while increasing the resolution will partly eliminate it since the gpu is already stressed a lot more, so you aren't gonna notice being bottlenecked unless you have a more powerful card, optimization can only go so far, if you where to try any mmo, you would immediately realize how weak the chip actually is for the tasks that type of games require, as I said before the patch simply changed how the game uses the cpu and now is more dependent on cpu, it hsaa always been amd's problem and unfortunately except for a big oc there is nothing you can do about it

the 4790k runs on 4.4ghz while gaming which is enough to handle dying light...................

 

[Hendra Boedijono]

I think everyone here is experiencing FPS issues with Dying Light, some also experienced black screen and / or screen freeze. Me too but I figured it out yesterday & actually its a graphical perks (software / driver) issue.

Here's my working setting with avg of 60s FPS during gameplay :
Resolution : 1980 x 1080 (16 : 9)
Full screen : On
Vertical Sync : Off
Texture Quality : High
Shadow Map Size : Medium (No notable visual difference with High)
Foliage Quality : High
View Distance : Around 25%
Ambient Occlusion : OFF (This is the mother of all problem ! Be sure to also disable this option in your VGA Control Panel)
Nvidia HBAO+ : Off (Helped the FPS)
Nvidia DoF : Off (Helped the FPS)
Motion Blur : Off (Helped the FPS & cured your headache)
Antialiasing : On

Note : If you wanna up the FPS again you can set both Film Grain & Sun Shadow to 0 by adding & modifying var list noise & var list performance scripts with notepad (Plenty video tutorial for this in youtube).

My Spec : i3 4130, MSI H81M, 2 x 4 GB DDR3 Vengeance Pro 1600 c9, MSI GTX 760 2GB, 500GB SATAII HDD (Yep !) & PSU Corsair VS650 - Nvidia 347.88