Serious stuttering with vanilla game

[NineNine]

I'm running no mods. Just a vanilla game. It ran fine until the last hour or so of game play. Now, game hangs every few seconds. No errors.

I have 7000 logistic and 9000 construction bots. I have maybe a hundred trains. My sciences are being produced at about 240/min and consumed at about 170/min. I went from 8 GB RAM to 64 GB RAM (to try to solve this problem), and I'm running a late model i7. Neither processor nor memory seem to be anywhere near maxxed out. No other applications are running at the time.

Factorio Problem 1.png (1.12 MiB) Viewed 492 times

Factorio Problem 2.png (34.93 KiB) Viewed 492 times

I don't know where a bottleneck might be that would cause this performance problem.

[BlueTemplar]

These might help :
(accessed from F4)

[NineNine]

Thanks, but I don't know what to do with any of that information.

Did I maybe just reach the max of what Factorio can do?

[Loewchen]

Check out: How to make a report - READ BEFORE POSTING and make sure to follow the instruction for Performance Issues linked within as well.

[mmmPI]

Thanks, but I don't know what to do with any of that information.

Did I maybe just reach the max of what Factorio can do?

If you press F4 and select the options shown, some numbers will be displayed on your screen, it may help to diagnose the problem. Transmitting the save file would help too but given the screenshot it will be too big to be attached in the forum.


There are different "limits" or way to reach them using factorio on any hardware, but often time stuttering is not expected or can be avoided in favor of a smoother decrease in fps, say you loose 10% or 20%, but it doesn't feel like "stutter" which may indicate other problem. The numbers shown in game could help determine if something in the game is slowing down too much, say trains, that happens sometimes wich grid network, in which case there is a gameplay way of fixing things, or it could indicate something is wrong with the configuration, like drivers, or error occuring. For the second part to help diagnosis a log could be helpful, this describe where to find the logs files by default https://wiki.factorio.com/Application_d ... _directory

[NineNine]

I read the "how to make a report" post, and enabled my UPS. My UPS is in the 45-50 range, so I think I just need a faster CPU, according to that post.

[SoShootMe]

I read the "how to make a report" post, and enabled my UPS. My UPS is in the 45-50 range, so I think I just need a faster CPU, according to that post.

Your original description and the word "stuttering" suggest your FPS/UPS (probably UPS) is varying significantly; is that the case? If so, this is where the debug overlays already mentioned (and in the post linked from the "How to make a report" one) come in: they should point to a more specific cause.

[BlueTemplar]

My base is extremely modded and got pretty big : I used to have stuttering when moving around and/or zooming out. After lowering sprite resolution from «High» (basically for UHD-1) to «Normal» (basically for FullHD), that specific issue went away, and the gameplay is smooth even though it's around 30-45 UPS (/60).

So, as mmmPI already said, «"stutter" [...] may indicate other problem» and another solution than having to get a faster CPU.

[mmmPI]

It is also possible to use this mod https://mods.factorio.com/mod/GTTS

One can set the target UPS to 30 instead of the default 60, the mod will double most base speed in the game and update will only occur half of the time. This allow to play at lower fps, when the base is getting too big for the computer, while not having the game itself, like science, trains or biters becoming slow as when one doesn't use the mod.

It can also get rid of stutter or variation in UPS as the game is given more time to compute each frame which may be enough to smooth things out.

[NineNine]

BlueTemplar: That didn't help me, unfortunately.

mmmPI: That mod looks crazy. I'm scared to install it!

I think the best thing to do in this situation is just to get a new CPU.

[SoShootMe]

I think the best thing to do in this situation is just to get a new CPU.

Your current CPU is fairly recent and decent for Factorio; I'm pretty certain the gain from this will be quite small. Extra cores aren't going to help, for example.

It's not obvious from the information you've provided why you would have performance problems. Perhaps something is hindering performance of Factorio on your computer, or perhaps there is something about the way the game runs your particular save causing it to perform unusually badly.

Try another computer (with sufficient RAM, I suggest at least 16GB) if you can. Share the save if you're happy and able to. Post screenshots with the debug information requested when the game is stuttering with your save (and if it varies, when it isn't). Or buy a faster CPU for perhaps a few hours more expansion.