News SSD Usage In Starfield Is Causing Stuttering Issues: Report

[Admin]

Recent testing suggests that Starfield has an optimization issue that causes SSDs to bottleneck the game and cause traversal stutter on planets. The issue is purportedly related to the game's file system pulling data from storage in an extremely inefficient way on SSDs.

SSD Usage In Starfield Is Causing Stuttering Issues: Report : Read more

 

[Makaveli]

Yup probably better to pick it up next year after they have had more time to patch it.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Yeah, this is my might peeve at the moment. Games, that on release date are only beta versions. It's up to (us) the paying public, have to put up with a donkey of a game, New AAA games take a full year of updates, fixes etc to be playable. All the while those paying for the game in this form are being shafted. People are buying new rigs for this game. And it runs like a turkey!

 

[-Fran-]

Yup probably better to pick it up next year after they have had more time to patch it.

I mean... I think I've repeated this phrase so many times now I'll have nightmares, but here we go again: it is a Bethesda game. This implies they won't really fix it and wait for the modders to do it instead. I'm not even being cynical or doing hot takes on them. That is their history speaking for themselves on the titles which share a similar history, like Fallout and ES.

Look at the huge amount of mods the game already has that fix like 50% of the most annoying UI issues and then some more xD

Regards.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

I know that Bethesda is famous for these beta releases, but I find interesting how so many negative/issues posts are being posted all over.

Personally, I havent had the chance to play much, but so far, i havent noted any issues.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Yeah, this is my might peeve at the moment. Games, that on release date are only beta versions. It's up to (us) the paying public, have to put up with a donkey of a game, New AAA games take a full year of updates, fixes etc to be playable. All the while those paying for the game in this form are being shafted. People are buying new rigs for this game. And it runs like a turkey!

This is so true. The whole inventory management system, for the various Fallout games, Skyrim, and now Starfield, is utter garbage. It can work, but it's just so bad. I guess it has improved a bit from Fallout (?), but one of the big problems with Bethesda games is all the meaningless junk you can pick up that's literally everywhere. Immersive? Perhaps, but it makes it super easy to miss some actually useful stuff.

 

[SaddleMtnMan]

Easy - just buy 192gb of RAM and put the entire game into a RAMdisk.

 

[salgado18]

Easy - just buy 192gb of RAM and put the entire game into a RAMdisk.

I don't think that's easy...

 

[salgado18]

I mean... I think I've repeated this phrase so many times now I'll have nightmares, but here we go again: it is a Bethesda game. This implies they won't really fix it and wait for the modders to do it instead. I'm not even being cynical or doing hot takes on them. That is their history speaking for themselves on the titles which share a similar history, like Fallout and ES.

Look at the huge amount of mods the game already has that fix like 50% of the most annoying UI issues and then some more xD

Regards.

I don't think a mod can fix this, since it is probably an architectural issue. But then again, a modder fixed GTA V's long loading, so maybe a modder saves Bethesda (again), right?

 

[Makaveli]

Easy - just buy 192gb of RAM and put the entire game into a RAMdisk.

What desktop motherboards will take 192GB of ram?

99% top out at 128GB.

Secondly trying to use ram to cover up shoddy work is not the direction we want to go.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

What desktop motherboards will take 192GB of ram?

99% top out at 128GB.

Secondly trying to use ram to cover up shoddy work is not the direction we want to go.

I do believe that was intended as sarcasm. "Oh, your new $60 game doesn't run very well? I have a solution that will only cost you $725!" (Technically speaking, there are now 48GB DDR5 modules, and Z690/Z790 as well as X670 are all capable of using four such chips.)

 

[Makaveli]

I do believe that was intended as sarcasm. "Oh, your new $60 game doesn't run very well? I have a solution that will only cost you $725!" (Technically speaking, there are now 48GB DDR5 modules, and Z690/Z790 as well as X670 are all capable of using four such chips.)

lol he has to add the /s to the end of his post.

And yes you are correct the newest gen AM5 | Z690/Z790 desktop platforms will allow 192GB of ram.

Anything prior to this is 128GB I stand corrected.

 

[-Fran-]

I don't think a mod can fix this, since it is probably an architectural issue. But then again, a modder fixed GTA V's long loading, so maybe a modder saves Bethesda (again), right?

This problem in particular, maybe not. I won't discard a modder being able to improve the situation at least.

I mean, translation layers for games (like Proton and dxvk/d912pxy) started as mods originally, so yeah. Not too far fetched to consider it an actual possibility someone out there will actually figure it out and make a hack/mod for the game.

Regards.

 

[LabRat 891]

I do believe that was intended as sarcasm. "Oh, your new $60 game doesn't run very well? I have a solution that will only cost you $725!" (Technically speaking, there are now 48GB DDR5 modules, and Z690/Z790 as well as X670 are all capable of using four such chips.)

Wasn't this almost literally what Todd Howard said?

 

[hotaru251]

Bethesda will discover this problem and figure out how to optimize the game better for SSDs.

but bethesda states they did optimize it for PC....

could they be lying?

 

[rluker5]

I've got Starfield installed on Optane that reads over 300MB/s with 4k random q1t1 (but only 2700MB/s sequential) and I also get 100% usage spikes on it running the game. The fps dips aren't as bad, but I can't seem to tie them to the disk usage. Maybe HWinfo64 is out of sync with MSI AB?
I did notice that I don't have as much memory cached in standby after I exit the game as I would in CP2077.

I also seem to get normal levels of performance in this game with my hardware. I wish the Optane gave me more fps, or maybe my 64GB ram would help, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The performance problems in this game don't seem to be such an easy fix.

 

[BoredErica]

I traced the load from Starfield via Windows Peformance Recorder and tried to analyze the load via Windows Disk Trace Visualizer. For traversal from one end of New Atlantis to the other, in terms of disk service time, almost 100% of it were 64kb random read and 64kb seq read.

A 990 Pro will beat a 905p at 64kb seq. ATTO QD1 64kb read (seq): 1.61GB/s vs 2.52GB/s (905p vs 990 Pro). Since 990 Pro is a consumer nand SSD, the random 64kb is somewhere around a fourth of 2.52GB/s or ~0.63GB/s vs 905p's probably around 1.61GB/s. (At least that's what Newmaxx told me for 4k, I can ask about 64k). So I would *imagine* that a 905p will outperform a 990 Pro overall and I don't think the issue is 4k rnd reads.

T700 gets ~2.75GB/s at QD1 64kb seq. It's going to be lower in random, and random is already longer service time in total than seq on my 905p which is likely slower in seq and faster in random. So it's not that surprising to me that their drive is hitting 100% util and it doesn't prove the transfer sizes are below 64kb AFAIK.

I can know better how my 905p and 990 Pro perform at 64kb probably with iometer? I might look into that. I don't have a T700 to bench 64kb random though.

Here is trace from 905p

https://imgur.com/GYhjrJZ

View: https://i.imgur.com/GYhjrJZ.jpg

 

[TerryLaze]

SSD usage was hitting 100% utilization several times, with peak read speeds spiking as little as 555MB/s during one of these periods. That's far beneath the peak speed capabilities of the SSD.

Does starfield allow things like process hacker to run in the background?
It might be as simple as the thread that does the IO being a higher priority causing windows to skip other threads in an attempt to complete the IO thread.
On consoles the performance of the cpu core limits how fast that thread can go and the game is designed around that speed, on the PC it all gets messed up.

 

[JamesJones44]

This is so true. The whole inventory management system, for the various Fallout games, Skyrim, and now Starfield, is utter garbage. It can work, but it's just so bad. I guess it has improved a bit from Fallout (?), but one of the big problems with Bethesda games is all the meaningless junk you can pick up that's literally everywhere. Immersive? Perhaps, but it makes it super easy to miss some actually useful stuff.

I hate the way they mislead you on the junk as well. Both Fallout and StarField they will tell you that junk is valuable (10000 credits/caps for example), but only if you find the one specific vendor in the entire game that will pay the value price they listed for that one specific item. Otherwise 99.9% of the vendors will buy the item from you for 1/100th that value that game says it's worth so you end up lugging that junk around on the hope to get some caps/credits/etc. for something that you should really just drop.

 

[rluker5]

Does starfield allow things like process hacker to run in the background?
It might be as simple as the thread that does the IO being a higher priority causing windows to skip other threads in an attempt to complete the IO thread.
On consoles the performance of the cpu core limits how fast that thread can go and the game is designed around that speed, on the PC it all gets messed up.

I was just messing around trying to see if I could capture a video and the places where the read usage hits 100% are fairly repeatable so it isn't likely a random windows background occurrence.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

Yup probably better to pick it up next year after they have had more time to patch it.

Plus the mod community is going to make this a whole'nother experience by next year. I'm definitely waiting for all the patches and mods.

 

[ShirBlackspots]

Sounds like another AMD problem.

I have an Intel i7 11700K, 64GB DDR4 RAM, a nVidia RTX3070Ti, and a 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 plus SSD, and haven't seen anything like this.

(20+ years of reading Tom's Hardware, and I just now decided to register on the forums)

 

[Order 66]

Sounds like another AMD problem.

I have an Intel i7 11700K, 64GB DDR4 RAM, a nVidia RTX3070Ti, and a 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 plus SSD, and haven't seen anything like this.

(20+ years of reading Tom's Hardware, and I just now decided to register on the forums)

I don’t think that it is an AMD problem because I have an r7 7700x and an rx 6800 and 32gb of Ram. Maybe this only affects people who have 16GB of RAM or people who don’t have fast enough RAM.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

I don’t think that it is an AMD problem because I have an r7 7700x and an rx 6800 and 32gb of Ram. Maybe this only affects people who have 16GB of RAM or people who don’t have fast enough RAM.

Well, adding more to this mystery, I have a 5600X, 7900XTX, 16GB ram, regular of the mill 2 TB nvme and ChimeraOs in unstable channel yet i haven't noticed anything like this.

Granted, I havent had a chance to play this as much as others, so I am only speaking for my experience.

 

[PEnns]

I don’t think that it is an AMD problem because I have an r7 7700x and an rx 6800 and 32gb of Ram. Maybe this only affects people who have 16GB of RAM or people who don’t have fast enough RAM.

For some people, it is much easier to blame AMD than read a little bit into the technical details.

Or maybe they just don't understand the tech stuff.