Minecraft Periodic Lag Spikes With a Pretty Good Computer

Uzrav

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Apr 26, 2014
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Hi guys, I just wanted to post this here to see if I could find any help. I've been experiencing some lag spikes while playing Minecraft and have absolutely no idea why. I do use Optifine and it does help with regular lag (more on that later) but I can't seem to figure out this issue in particular. Anyway, I use a 64x64 texture pack normally when the spikes appear. If I turn it off then the spikes disappear.

Here is an example of the lag spikes with optifine and my texture pack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy9i2SIyDPM&feature=youtu.be

But something else that concerns me is that I get absolutely HORRIFIC lag when I am using vanilla textures and no optifine. I'm talking 25 fps getting lagged to ~3 fps at points! Here's a video example of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPTPm522OGI&feature=youtu.be

Firstly here is my (important) specs:
Rosewill 750W 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Power Supply
Gigabyte R9 280x Windforce OC REV 2.0 (black pcb /w Hynix memory)
Intel i5-4670k OC'd to 4.2GHz and cooled with the Phanteks PH-TC14PE
8GB DDR3 G.Skill Sniper RAM @ 1600MHz (2 4GB sticks)
WD Blue 1TB HDD (7200RPM, 64mb Cache) (WD10EZEX)
PNY XLR8 SSD 120GB (not XLR8 Pro, plain Jane XLR8)
Windows 8.1 64Bit OEM
Fractal Design Define R4

This is some stuff I have tested for/tried:

CPU instability: tested with LinX and OCCT PSU Test (combined GPU + CPU stress tests) Made it through 10 minutes of LinX with the largest amount of RAM I could use for it as well as 50 passes of ~800mb problems. It gets quite hot in LinX (90C) but in the OCCT PSU test it only reached about 60C. All stress tests make the CPU usage rocket to 100%.

HDD/SSD instability: tested with the WD Diagnostics tool downloaded from their website. I ran the Extended Test option both on my Western Digital Blue 1TB and my PNY XLR8 120GB SSD. They checked out fine in the extended test as well as the SMART quick test.

RAM: I really don't think this is the culprit. But just to be safe, I've burned a copy of Memtest86 onto a CD. I ran one pass successfully without errors, but will run the recommended 7 overnight tonight.

GPU: Tested with Furmark, BF4 on 1080P with Highish settings, OCCT PSU Test. It reaches 76C max in Furmark, and less so in the other tests. I tried underclocking the GPU slightly to 1070 on the Memory Clock using MSI Afterburner but didn't affect anything. I HAVE noticed some artifacting in Minecraft before (I play this game predominantly so haven't seen it in other games). The screen will sort of flicker and I'll get random lines running whatever which way across the display. I once had arttifacts running from the ground to the sky in a sort of diagonal pillar of pixels. A restart of Minecraft or my computer fixes this straight away but it's distressing to say the least. I really do think it's this that might be killing me, but I can't replicate this artifacting in Furmark (I've tried the 1080p preset for half an hour and nada).

PSU: OCCT PSU Test and BF4 on the Highest playable settings (40ish fps for me). It held out just fine and I didn't encounter any errors or loss of power to the hardware.

Incorrect Graphics Drivers: I've used 14.2, 14,4, and now am using the 14.7 Catalyst Beta drivers. Everytime I installed new drivers I of course uninstalled through Control Panel and then used CCleaner to get rid of the remnants.

Java Versions: As you may know Minecraft runs on Java. I have tried multiple versions including the 64bit version (of which I'm using currently), and they haven't changed anything as far as I can tell.

Does ANYONE know what could be up here? If I am right in suspecting the GPU (I knew I should have gone with that Asus GTX770 for $30 more 🙁 ), how do I RMA it? I can't readily reproduce the artifacting and it really doesn't happen very often so what if I sent it in as an RMA and they pronounced it not faulty?

-Above all though, if you managed to read all this, thank you so much!! It's late here now but I'll be back to check this thread in 7ish hours or so.
 
Solution
My PC specs are pretty close to yours and i encountered the same issue, personally i use technic launcher even to play regular MC, its much smoother. thats the easy way around it

on the more technical side, youll want to make sure all your drivers are up to date, all updates are installed for your OS,

if you dont have an AV, download one of your choice, and disable windows defender, it helped my computers speed tremendously, not sure if it was a software incompatibility or what but it seemed to help alot

also for a faster windows 8 experience in general, try this registry tweak by Askvg.com :

-
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Created by Vishal Gupta for AskVG.com...
My PC specs are pretty close to yours and i encountered the same issue, personally i use technic launcher even to play regular MC, its much smoother. thats the easy way around it

on the more technical side, youll want to make sure all your drivers are up to date, all updates are installed for your OS,

if you dont have an AV, download one of your choice, and disable windows defender, it helped my computers speed tremendously, not sure if it was a software incompatibility or what but it seemed to help alot

also for a faster windows 8 experience in general, try this registry tweak by Askvg.com :

-
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Created by Vishal Gupta for AskVG.com

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Copy To]
@="{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\Move To]
@="{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"AutoEndTasks"="1"
"HungAppTimeout"="1000"
"MenuShowDelay"="8"
"WaitToKillAppTimeout"="2000"
"LowLevelHooksTimeout"="1000"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse]
"MouseHoverTime"="8"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLowDiskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001
"LinkResolveIgnoreLinkInfo"=dword:00000001
"NoResolveSearch"=dword:00000001
"NoResolveTrack"=dword:00000001
"NoInternetOpenWith"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control]
"WaitToKillServiceTimeout"="2000"

- paste this into a text document, and save it as "filename".REG, run it, after completion restart your pc

if all these steps still dont work, (including InfoOverloaders suggestion) then id suggest installing optifine into your minecraft and tweaking your settings to stop the lag spike (try changing your max framerate down to around 100)
 
Solution


Sounds like some good ideas but can the Technic launcher allow me to play on regular multiplayer servers (as that's what I do the most)? And what are those registry tweaks altering exactly? Thanks for the lengthy reply.

I should note I just ran 8 passes of Memtest86 overnight and got 0 errors which pretty much rules out the RAM. I also allocate 2Gigs to Minecraft when playing but still have issues.
 


Ok well Technic Launcher does help with the lag, but I can't figure out how to install Optifine to it so that I can use my texture pack. Is there a way to do this?
 


Memtest only checks for RAM errors, not whether or not a particular program is being bottlenecked by RAM. Because Minecraft is Java based (which you know) it is very CPU and RAM intensive, GPU has little impact on performance, although I have seen it help in some situations.
The artifacting you mention is interesting though. You are definitely not overheating it and the PSU should be providing enough power. A quick Google search of "R9 280x artifacting" brings up a lot threads about this in a variety of games, I did not look through them all to see if there is a definite solution, but that may be something to look into. At any rate I doubt this has a major impact on the performance of the game.

Have you tried leaving Task Manager open on the Performance Tab while playing (assuming you play in a window and not full screen?) If you can do that notice if you are running out of RAM or for some reason spiking your CPU. I notice you overclock the CPU, but your stress-testers didn't show any problems: Sometimes certain programs behave differently with OC'ed hardware, so just because the stress-testers worked fine, doesn't mean everything will. To that end it may be a good idea to go back to stock CPU settings just to see if it resolves the issue. If it still happens or gets worse you can always go back to OC'ed values.
 



Hmm, I'll go out and try what you suggested and report back in a while. Do you think I should rma the GPU though? I have my old MSI GTX560 Ti which I could use while I'm getting shipped the replacement card but I'm just worried they wouldn't be able to reproduce the artifacting and would end it back... Thanks for the reply!
 
So when using task manager during the lag spikes, nothing was spiking to 100% or anything, so I'm really not sure what's causing my problems. I downclocked the CPU to stock clocks, disabled my iGPU (was using for Intel Quick Sync), and then stopped using my texture pack.

Turns out the lag spike issue appears regardless off my texture pack because I was getting it tonight when I was using the vanilla texture pack. I think I'm going to reinstall Windows tomorrow to see if that helps anything but I'm honestly stumped 🙁
 
*sigh* Lag spikes are back... It was fine this morning but I installed about 40 odd Windows updates and now it's getting lag spikes again... Does anyone have any idea what's going on??