[Twinsen] [0.15.1] Having Slight Micro Shuttering.

[XOffshore]

It used to work well in 0.14 because we didn't have so many sprites. With more entities in the game, 0.15 now uses more ram and vram.

But mister, isn't 2x Radeon 6970 (2GB VRAM each) enough?

[orzelek]

It used to work well in 0.14 because we didn't have so many sprites. With more entities in the game, 0.15 now uses more ram and vram.

But mister, isn't 2x Radeon 6970 (2GB VRAM each) enough?

The fact that you have 2 doesn't give anything - game can't use both memories for 1 render. And it doesn't do Crossfire AFAIK.

And 2GB of VRAM is on the minimum side for game with HD textures. After game loads GPU-Z shows total usage of around 2.2GB for me. So game might stutter if one of textures is streamed from memory and with default settings it might be one of the big ones (16k by x ).

[lonkero173]

So I just grabbed the new version, started a new game and noticed the game stutters like hell.

After some debugging I'm fairly confident that:
- Framerate occasionally drops from a steady 60 to something around 45/30 for a few seconds (it usually goes back up before the debug framerate counter stabilizes) with shorter jumps maybe once a minute
- Walking through a dense forest while zoomed out a bit seems to be the best (but not only or guaranteed) way to trigger this
- Doesn't seem to happen when stading still (at least not often enough for me to reproduce)
- This only happens when using the DirectX renderer. Everything is fine when forcing OpenGL (except the frame times seem worse though still sub 16ms)
- Disabling VSync removes the crazy stuttering and leaves fps at a rock-solid 60 but introduces microstutter that looks very much like missing a frame or two about once per second (hello desyncing 60fps game and 60fps monitor). Annoying as hell once you notice it
- Other graphics options are completely irrelevant (nothing changes, tested a few combinations including resolutions/render thread count)
- Disabling VSync in game and force-enabling it in the driver mostly works (microstutter again)
- F5 view says all the extra frame time during the stutter is spent in 'flip' aka waiting for vsync

Also to note:
- Running this on a GTX 970 and drivers are fairly recent (before anyone asks all the newbie questions)
- 0.12.X runs fine, even with decently sized factories (my current non-steam version, nice to keep it around)
- Happens on a new map in single player, got a starting point next to large a very dense forest
- Haven't managed to test a big factory yet (gotta build it first )
- Saw something similar first time I tried 0.13 but did not investigate back then (maybe unrelated, maybe not)

Based on all this my personal wild guess is that factorio has some scene update op that is causing missed frames at worrying frequency. The framerate hovering near 30/45 fps during the worst stutter would indicate losing half/a quarter of frames and some serious sync/timing issues.

Edit:
Forgot to mention, running everything in windowed mode

[Nulluhrzehn]

Hi guys and gals,
I have the same issue.
I only have 1GB of VRAM so now I deactivated HD Textures, put them on normal and the issue didn't go away. When I activated VSync they DID go away.

However this evening, I tried it with HD Textures again, and the stutteres returned.
I then proceded to put the textures on Normal again, and after a Restart of the game, the issue still was there!
Even after a reboot of my PC the issue remained.
Only upon deactivating VSync, loading the game again, noticing minor shutters and aktivating it again, and restarting the game and loading the save game again, did the issue go away.

Maybe it's an issue with my graphics card driver, which wasn't updated in half a year, but I expected the issue to be resolved, once I restarted the game.
However the issue obviously only disappears, when I deactivate and reactivate VSync.

[XOffshore]

It used to work well in 0.14 because we didn't have so many sprites. With more entities in the game, 0.15 now uses more ram and vram.

But mister, isn't 2x Radeon 6970 (2GB VRAM each) enough?

The fact that you have 2 doesn't give anything - game can't use both memories for 1 render. And it doesn't do Crossfire AFAIK.

And 2GB of VRAM is on the minimum side for game with HD textures. After game loads GPU-Z shows total usage of around 2.2GB for me. So game might stutter if one of textures is streamed from memory and with default settings it might be one of the big ones (16k by x ).

The issue disappears when vram usage is set below "all", so in fact 2GB RAM is enough and problem is with memory management.

[XOffshore]

Hi guys and gals,
I have the same issue.
...

Set memory usage below "all", this seems to be (temporary?) workaround.

[DutchBully]

Hi Folks,

Is this still getting attention?

[Twinsen]

Hi Folks,

Is this still getting attention?

As far as I can see the problem can be solved by setting the video memory usage to low.

I'm keeping this topic open to see if there are some different causes to the stutter.

[slaphappypap]

I too am experiencing the stutter you guys are talking of, and i know that right now my game is set to ram usage: all. When i get off work, i will update to the workaround yall are indicating and try that out to see if the stutter goes away. EDIT: I went home at lunch time and while i dont always experience the stutters, after the first couple of minutes of running around thats when they start. I ran around, zoomed in on the map on some radar dish i had out in the field and from then on, i had stutters. Setting the video memory option to low, does fix the stutters for me.

[milo christiansen]

Does anyone know why Factorio causes this and no other game does?

My stutters are super minor, and mostly noticeable as a split second of garbled sound. Interestingly when I turned the volume for music all the way down the stutters almost went away. I generally play my own music, and when a stutter hits it also garbles the sound from winamp... Once the game music was off it became almost unnoticeable.

My computer is plenty powerful, according to Rivatuner I could run two copies of Factorio if I had just a hair more VRam and a second monitor...

[KrzysD]

I had this problem too, I set video memory usage to high instead of all and it was fixed, this is with high sprite res.

[teenkertoy]

I'm also having this problem, and have been since 0.15.0 through today (0.15.6). I have tried many combinations of video memory usage between All and Low with VSync on and off. I've tried windowed and fullscreen modes. The stutters coincide with a spike of page faults are others have reported. I checked this using windows task manager and looking at the PF Delta column shows factorio.exe having a "normal" value of around 3,500 and a spike up to 208,000'ish, even when the game is paused while I'm in the menus adjusting things.

The only way I can get the stuttering to stop is to set the sprite resolution to normal. I cannot get the game to work without a stutter on High quality textures.

My setup is Windows 7 SP1, and Nvidia GTX660. GPU-Z utility shows video memory in use around 1,280mb out of a possible 2GB. Windows reports 88% ram in use with ~730mb free of a total 8GB.

I would greatly enjoy being able to see the new textures without this stuttering happening, but I cannot complain too loudly since you are doing so damn good at adding features and fixing tons of other problems too.

Let me know if you need anything else like screenshots, log reports, etc.

[teenkertoy]

Update: I just discovered if I check the box "allow texture compression" then the stutter goes away. Pagefault delta settles down to less than 100, usually less than 10.

I then gradually put the other settings back to where I think they should be: enabled wait for vsync, video memory usage to all. As I did this the PF Delta went a little higher and is now settled around 1,100. However, it the PF delta does not spike like it used to, and the stutter is gone, and I can see the new hires textures.

My video card memory in use is about 1,740mb now out of 2GB, so the recommendation for a 2GB video card seems spot on for the high-res textures. I also have 8GB of system memory and 81% is in use now, so that might be a good number to aim for if anyone else is having performance issues.

I hope this helps someone.

EDIT: After playing for a while and doing other things on the computer, the problem is back again. Back to normal quality textures again. Damn.

[orzelek]

I think that sadly it might be other way around - you might need more then 2GB to use high res without stuttering.
Does GPU-Z show also dynamic memory usage for you?
If it goes up after launching factorio that means that it allocated RAM for textures and will stream them - so it might cause stuttering.

You could try (it's a blind shot) to limit maximum size of textures to 8192 (or even 4096). It might help GPU cope better with a lot of textures. And it also might help with texture streaming since it won't need to swap big textures around. It's a bit of a gamble

You can set max texture size in config.ini file.

[teenkertoy]

After restarting the computer and playing for quite a while, I just now realized I've been on high quality sprites since giving up the other day. I've been stutter-free using vsync on, high quality sprites, and video memory set to all for many hours now. If I can recreate whatever condition that causes the stuttering to start again using these same settings, I'll try to narrow it down and post here again.

I'm guessing by dynamic memory usage you mean, does the video memory used shown in GPU-Z fluctuate up and down significantly while I'm playing? If that's the question, then I see it hovering around 1,800Mb +- 40Mb or so. I haven't seen it go above 1,900, so it *seems* like there is a tiny bit of extra memory to spare and I'm almost at, but not exceeding the limits of my hardware yet. Unless you think otherwise?

[orzelek]

After restarting the computer and playing for quite a while, I just now realized I've been on high quality sprites since giving up the other day. I've been stutter-free using vsync on, high quality sprites, and video memory set to all for many hours now. If I can recreate whatever condition that causes the stuttering to start again using these same settings, I'll try to narrow it down and post here again.

I'm guessing by dynamic memory usage you mean, does the video memory used shown in GPU-Z fluctuate up and down significantly while I'm playing? If that's the question, then I see it hovering around 1,800Mb +- 40Mb or so. I haven't seen it go above 1,900, so it *seems* like there is a tiny bit of extra memory to spare and I'm almost at, but not exceeding the limits of my hardware yet. Unless you think otherwise?

It seems for me that the border is somewhere around 2GB atm. I asked about dynamic part since tahts where it lists RAM used for textures I think.
And for me it pretty consistenly shows 2.2GB with factorio running but I also have 300MB taken before starting game.
So if anything takes some VRAM you can easily end up with stuttering because you'll dip below the threshold.