Game pausing/lagging

[Ratzap]

I've noticed recently that the game seems to be 'sticking' regularly. Various different saves with different mod packs all show this behaviour to a degree as does the stock game with no mods at all. It's the same pause whether near the factory or way off in the middle of nothing.
I put on debug with F5 and even that is freezing up every few seconds for about half a send each time. I tried playing with the number of threads (I have 8 cores available) but settings from 2 to 8 make no difference. I tried with SLI on or off, updated video driver - no diference.
It's still playable but it's very disconcerting to run along and freeze mid stride every few seconds.

[Ratzap]

To check it wasn't something else running clogging things up, I rebooted, turned off all non-essential services, killed off any processes that didn't need to be running, stopped the firewall, switched off defender and MSE (the scanner part and the real time crap). Only steam was running and I launched Factorio, still getting the same pauses. I took a screenshot with debug on over darkish terrain so it's hopefully legible. This is with it set to 6 threads and SLI is on.



Mod-list.json is here but as said, it's still going on with pure stock.

[Rseding91]

Can you post the log file and your system specs?

[Ratzap]

Can you post the log file and your system specs?

A reply in this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22282 supplied the answer. Factorio was set to use 'All' video memory in the graphics settings. I have an SLI pair made up of GTX 760s and it may have been trying to grab the memory from both cards? Anyway, switching down to 'High' made the pauses go away and my mods still load no trouble even though I'm running the HD textures and Bobs extra revamp.

If you still wish to investigate why 'All' was making this stutter happen, I'd be happy to post logs and specs.

[Rseding91]

Can you post the log file and your system specs?

A reply in this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22282 supplied the answer. Factorio was set to use 'All' video memory in the graphics settings. I have an SLI pair made up of GTX 760s and it may have been trying to grab the memory from both cards? Anyway, switching down to 'High' made the pauses go away and my mods still load no trouble even though I'm running the HD textures and Bobs extra revamp.

If you still wish to investigate why 'All' was making this stutter happen, I'd be happy to post logs and specs.

"All" simply uses more VRAM to load all the sprites into VRAM instead of swapping them between system RAM and VRAM on demand. That graphics card should have no issues with "all" and the game in fact performs better on "All" vs "high" if your system can support it.

Depending on what mods you have it could be reaching the limits of your graphics card.

If you could post the log file and what mods you have that would be great.

[Ratzap]

The only log I can find is factorio-current.log, is that the one? Mod list is in the mod-list.json I linked to in the 2nd post, just under the picture. I'll PM you the link to dxdiag output.

[Rseding91]

The only log I can find is factorio-current.log, is that the one? Mod list is in the mod-list.json I linked to in the 2nd post, just under the picture. I'll PM you the link to dxdiag output.

{
"name": "WaiTex",
"enabled": "true"
}

You're almost certainty running out of VRAM to run the game when you have it on "All" - that particular mod alone will up the VRAM requirements beyond what your graphics cards have and then you add the other mods into the mix and it makes it even worse

I'd bet if you removed WaiTex you could run it on "All" without any issues.

[Ratzap]

The only log I can find is factorio-current.log, is that the one? Mod list is in the mod-list.json I linked to in the 2nd post, just under the picture. I'll PM you the link to dxdiag output.

{
"name": "WaiTex",
"enabled": "true"
}

You're almost certainty running out of VRAM to run the game when you have it on "All" - that particular mod alone will up the VRAM requirements beyond what your graphics cards have and then you add the other mods into the mix and it makes it even worse

I'd bet if you removed WaiTex you could run it on "All" without any issues.

I just tried it and you're correct. I read the Waitex post when I downloaded the mod and it said it used about 1.5GB of vram, my cards have 2GB each so I thought it'd be fine. Welp, I'll keep the mod since it looks nicer zoomed in on my monitor and just run on 'High' since that appears to work no problem.

Maybe add this to the tech FAQ? Or get 'All' to log a message when it runs out of space? Or drop back to 'High' if it runs out?

[Rseding91]

I just tried it and you're correct. I read the Waitex post when I downloaded the mod and it said it used about 1.5GB of vram, my cards have 2GB each so I thought it'd be fine. Welp, I'll keep the mod since it looks nicer zoomed in on my monitor and just run on 'High' since that appears to work no problem.

Maybe add this to the tech FAQ? Or get 'All' to log a message when it runs out of space? Or drop back to 'High' if it runs out?

A computer can run out of VRAM on high, medium, low or any setting. There's no one true simple "How much available VRAM is left" to know when it's out or we would have done so already and just left out the setting.

[Ratzap]

Fair enough. It's bound to come up again though so a FAQ entry might be useful.

Thanks for answering on a weekend.

[posila]

Some GPUs use dirty tricks, like having 0.5GB of slow memory, to be able to sell with higher total VRAM number.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx- ... explained/
http://www.pcgamer.com/why-nvidias-gtx- ... 35gb-vram/