Why do I experience lag under 50 FPS.

[MadClover]

Hello, I've had this computer for a while, and I'm really tired of always experiencing lag under 50fps, it pisses me off. Everything is smooth as butter but the second it takes more than 20ms for every frame (under 50fps) I experience lag, which feels like I'm playing at 20 fps or something. It only happens on this computer, I've tried running games on my older laptop and 30 fps looks amazing compared to 45 fps on this computer. Stuttering, mouse lag (sometimes), choppiness, it all happens the second I hit 49fps. I just can't explain it. I have switched screens, which didn't work, played with some settings in Nvidia control panel, etc... Before I used to have a HD 5970 which ran like crap already from terrible drivers, and this issue forced me to get a new card (now a GTX 580), it is much better than before, don't get me wrong, but I still have that unbearable lag. Any help appreciated.

Specs :
Core i7 860 @ 3.33GHZ
8GB of DDR3 ram
GTX 580 (Asus Matrix 1.5GB)
Gigabyte P55-UD6 Motherboard
Screen resolution : 1680 x 1050

 

[JJ1217]

Check your temps for your card, I dislike Nvidia cards because they take a horseload of power and heat up really quickly. I have a generic crappy Widetech Case and my HD 7850 never surpasses 55 degrees celsius when Oced at 1050 core, 1300 mem, and playing BF3 with everything turned up to maximum.

 

[MadClover]

I can assure you it's not my graphics card getting too hot. With all the fans it's got on it that would be impossible. Thanks though!

 

[Sunius]

Do you have VSync on? If you do, there's you issue. Try using adaptive VSYNC (force it in the nvidia control panel for all applications).

 

[MadClover]

Nope, I normally have it forced off in almost every game. And turning it on or off doesn't solve the issue. D:

 

[MadClover]

Bump.

 

[Guest]

I have EXACTLY the same problem. Pretty much the same rig as yours, GPU is probably a bit weaker at hd7850.

Please tell me if you find a fix.

 

[casualcolors]

Games begin to stutter and get less smooth under 50 fps? Yep.

Turn off Vsync and Triple Buffering if you're in a game that can utilize TB, but don't expect a greatly improved performance. Disabling those two features doesn't so much make 49 fps look smoother, as it does reduce your chance to get say 45 fps when you could potentially get 55 without (this gets complicated but because of how Vsync works, if it applies to frames under your refresh rate it can drive your fps lower than it naturally would be). But, 49 fps looking kinda shitty is normal. That's why no one wants lower than 60 fps.

 

[MadClover]

Vsync and Triple buffering forced off at all times, except on some games where screen tearing is a big issue. Trust me, if Vsync and TB were the problem, I wouldn't be on these forums asking this question. This computer has an issue with slower framerates and I can see it VERY easily. But on other computers running at 30FPS looks smooth as butter compared to 45FPS which looks like 20 on this machine. Thanks for talking your time to answer!

 

[casualcolors]

30 FPS never looks smooth as butter. It may have framesmoothing enabled if you're in unreal engine, but the game also handles like an oldsmobile at that speed. Anyway, the reason you're stuttering and your game looks bad is because your fps is jumping around which exacerbates an issue that you already have with something like 45 fps where a game is not going to look or feel "smooth as butter" because 45 fps is underperforming. Particularly in an fps. The reason that your 5970 had this problem, and your 580 has it now, is because every graphics card has this problem. If you're running at low fps (which you are), your game is not going to look or feel smooth (which it doesn't, appropriately).

 

[MadClover]

Thing is, my HD 5970 also had REALLY bad micro-stuttering which is a common issue with Dual GPU setups, and the GTX 580 helped GREATLY on that front, but never actually fixed the issue. I understand where you're coming from, yes 30 FPS is pretty bad but when your friends' rigs run 30FPS and it feels better than your 50 and under FPS you start asking yourself questions. I mean, I get all sorts of crap under 50 FPS. From stuttering to mouse lag etc etc etc. When I sit down in front of another computer and play the same thing I get absolutely no issues at the same framerate.

 

[casualcolors]

It depends on what he is running at 30 fps. If it's an unreal engine game with framesmoothing set to 30 fps capped (which many are), then the game will look relatively smooth for as low as the fps are, but it will handle really sloppy as well. All I can tell you, is that having a choppyish experience at 45 fps in a first-person shooter game is normal. It's the reason we buy fancy stuff and the reason we don't turn on 8x MSAA.

 

[HEXiT]

try using a bf3 configurator or some other bf3 config file maker.
select 60 fps a the max and this will help lift your minimum. it may only be by 1 or 3 fps but that may be the difference between jerky and smooth. reason being its it wont be producing 90 fps then sudenly dropping to 50 which you will notice but if your running at 60 and drop to 55 the game will feel smother. because your not seeing huge fps droop.

 

[HEXiT]

or make a txt file called user.cfg with notepad
put the bleow in it and save it. the put it in c: program files (x86)/origin games/battlefield 3 (or where ever you have bf3 installed)
now when your boot the game you will have 60fps limited and everything else needed for an optimized game. you can if you want remove some of the stuff with a ; in the beginnin of a line or if you want to turn something off or on then replace a 0 with a 1.
notice i have the fps set to 60 but no vsync on. if you put it on you will likely get more stutter so make sure you disable it when using this cfg file... if you dont like the effect it has on your game just delete it from the install folder.


GameTime.MaxVariableFps 60.000000
render.drawfps 1
Render.DrawScreenInfo 0
render.perfoverlayvisible 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 1
Screenshot.Format jpg
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 1024
Render.DrawFps 1
RenderDevice.TrippleBufferingEnable 1

 

[MadClover]

Is there anyway to lower the FPS jumps in games in general? So that instead of having let's say a jump from 40 to 65 have it much smaller at let's say 40 to 50 so that you average at 45 and have much less stutter instead of massive FPS spikes that result in much more stutter?

 

[HEXiT]

yes limit the max fps... the first line in the above GameTime.MaxVariableFps 60.000000 will limit the fps to 60 but you can use any number from 30 to 120.
also turn down shadows (turning them down to low will give an fps boost. turn of ssao or hbao for the same.
i use the above to get a solid 60 fps on every map running mostly medium to low settings... game still looks good at 1080p but is way smoother without the fps droop.

 

[MadClover]

Bump.

 

[casualcolors]

What more reason is there to bump? You've gotten your question answered very specifically and some background on the subject. There's nothing else to contribute really. lol

 

[MadClover]

Because no "fix" was given to my question, I don't care about anything that could "help" gameplay in BF3, that's just ONE game and also a terrible one to make example of because it looks basically the same from very low to very high... I don't know what you guys took from my question but it's extremely far from what I expected. Even after I said nothing helped you kept pushing me into believing that it's one hundred percent normal, and it's NOT. 30 FPS should not look as crappy as it is for me unless you have extremely sensible eyes. I told you that putting my computer side to side with anything else, even a crappy laptop resulted in the laptop looking thousands of times better than my computer at 30FPS. One looks like a regular normal 30 FPS and my computer looks like 10 FPS for absolutely no reason. Hell even consoles don't have the visual stuttering and jumping my computer has. There IS something wrong and it's NOT just Vsync or some other setting, I tried everything and completely reinstalled windows to try and fix it. Even my friends think my computer is lagging when my FPS is as high as 45. If I check how their computer looks at 30 it STILL looks like 50FPS on my machine. I'm not saying you didn't help. Sure you gave me some good settings that do help but I think you're missing the point. It's not a single game or an FPS. It's EVERY game that looks like crap at 30FPS.

 

[casualcolors]

Because no "fix" was given to my question, I don't care about anything that could "help" gameplay in BF3, that's just ONE game and also a terrible one to make example of because it looks basically the same from very low to very high... I don't know what you guys took from my question but it's extremely far from what I expected. Even after I said nothing helped you kept pushing me into believing that it's one hundred percent normal, and it's NOT. 30 FPS should not look as crappy as it is for me unless you have extremely sensible eyes. I told you that putting my computer side to side with anything else, even a crappy laptop resulted in the laptop looking thousands of times better than my computer at 30FPS. One looks like a regular normal 30 FPS and my computer looks like 10 FPS for absolutely no reason. Hell even consoles don't have the visual stuttering and jumping my computer has. There IS something wrong and it's NOT just Vsync or some other setting, I tried everything and almost completely reinstalled windows to fix it. Even my friends think my computer is lagging when my FPS is as high as 45. If I check how their computer looks at 30 it STILL looks like 50FPS on my machine. I'm not saying you didn't help. Sure you gave me some good settings that do help but I think you're missing the point. It's not a single game or an FPS. It's EVERY game that looks like crap at 30FPS.

You want smooth gaming experiences at unregulated FPS levels below your refresh rate. There was no fix given because you might as well ask how to turn lead into gold. Several posts with realistic options were made for you on Hexit's part.

 

[MadClover]

Does getting a higher refresh rate monitor help by any chance then? Or like I asked earlier is there any setting that could help in the fluctuation of framerate?

 

[casualcolors]

Does getting a higher refresh rate monitor help by any chance then? Or like I asked earlier is there any setting that could help in the fluctuation of framerate?

Higher refresh rate monitor won't fix the issue of your fps being unregulated and shifting up and down. Like Hexit was telling you, if you wanted to sacrifice peak fps for steady fps, you could limit your max fps using a framerate limiter, and cap it somewhere below your lowest dip (30 fps for instance). You'd be gaming steadily at the same framerate and could get used to looking at it and playing with it, and you wouldn't feel the "jerkiness" in the game so to speak. It still won't look as nice as 60 fps though.

Also, using console as a comparison to your PC gaming experience is a bad habit. A lot of console games are built around running at 25 and 30 fps (depending if you're PAL or NTSC) and they use a lot of blurring and partial image overlay techniques to hide that fact and make the game look smoother. The tradeoff is that the actual image fidelity in these cases, sucks. You'll notice stuttering and texture popping and all of those nasty phenomenon more on a 1080 monitor with games designed to run at 60 fps because A. you're sitting closer to it than you would be to a television that you'd play an xbox on for instance, and B. because the image fidelity is better so you can actually see the flaws better.

 

[MadClover]

Well, I used Nvidia inspector to lock my fps to 30 and 40 and jesus does it look better now. I played skyrim with ENB and it looks amazing and runs pretty well, clearly not 60 fps but nowhere near as bad as before. I also tried Witcher 2 at 30 fps and that one felt AMAZING at that speed, metro 2033 was a tad worse because it's a shooter but still very playable. I could even crank the settings to max on Witcher 2 including Ubersampling because it's never in hell going to go lower than 30 fps anyway so it looks even better than before! I think I'm sticking to this from now on. Thanks alot!

 

[MadClover]

Best answer selected by MadClover.

 

[HEXiT]

thing is you have an 870 and a gtx 580 you should be killing bf3 at near max settings 60fps minimum . pretty much every other game you should be able to max with 60fps minimum... theres no way you should be at 45fps with a 580. you have tried a different screen? what screens have you tried? have they both had a refresh rate lower than 8ms?
have you tried overclocking the 870 although i cant see how it would help as 3.3 is more than fast enough...
maybe your stuck on x4 pci-e in bios or something... to be honest im a bit baffled...
maybe you can make a small fraps move to show your problem and help explain it better.
say 1-2 mins of bf3 maxed out then at high settings. to see if theres a difference in smoothness. then try another game... if you can be bothered give a commentary...
you say your 6970 ran like crap also? so that leads me to belive it is a system problem like the pci-e set wrong...
if you have more than 1 slot i recommend you move the card to a different 1 and set the slot appropriately in bios.
1 last thing. what size is your psu and what brand...