I5 2500k @ 4.4ghz
12GBs DDR3 1600mhz
R9 390 @ 1100/1600
Windows 10 64 bit
I should be able to max out Grim Dawn @ 1080p right? And stay pegged at 60fps? I ran the game at 3200x1800 resolution with VSR and didn’t notice any difference in performance. Lowered the settings to medium, still got the same stuttering. 1080p medium vs 1800p max = same performance. Same amount of stuttering.
I have the latest AMD drivers.
I’ve disabled steam overlay.
I’ve disabled unnecessary programs while gaming.
Checked for updates for other drivers, to my knowledge everything is up to date.
I’ve disabled Vsynch in settings.
No temp problems ever on my PC, everything runs cool, always. Using a Cooler Master HAF-X case.
Power settings are optimal for gaming in general.
Nothing should be throttling in low power mode/core parking.
Nothing should be throttling due to temps.
If there is something on my end causing the stuttering, and not something with the game, then I’m at a loss as to what could be causing it. If anyone has any suggestions, shoot away.
The stuttering seems really random. I can’t pinpoint any specific situations where it occurs more often than other times. I can go 20 minutes without a single hitch, and other times I get a hard stutter several times within 5 minutes. When it stutters, its hard enough where the audio sometimes skips a beat. This isn’t just an occasional FPS hickup, its a pretty serious stuttering issue for me.
Also, maybe 1 out of 5 times I try to start the game, it crashes on startup. The game also crashes sometimes when I “quit to desktop”.
I’ve ran the repair program as well, didn’t seem to have much of an impact.
First, verify the cache to make sure everything is ok on that front. Right click GD in the Steam library and select Properties>Local Files> then click the Verify integrity button.
You could also open Device Manager, right-click your HDD and select Properties>Policies and enable Write Caching if it isn’t enabled to see if that smooths it out.
I was looking online and noticed 480GB SSDs were going for about $100 or so. I think I’m just gonna get one and see if that solves my problems. This HDD I’m using is about 4 years old.
I also have stuttering on a decent gaming notebook (i7 6820HK, 2x128 NVMe SSD in RAID 0 + 7200rpm HDD, 2x8gb ddr4-2133, GTX980M 4gb). In my particular case it happens when I rotate the camera. Don’t know how to handle it, but The Witcher 3 runs just fine on this laptop. Maybe, the issue is that game is installed on HDD, and SSD only used for OS and apps.
Just upgraded to an OCZ Trion 150 480gb, and my stuttering issues appear to be solved. And its not just Grim Dawn, but my stuttering issues in some other games went away as well. Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, etc just to name a few. $110 upgrade, and feels like a brand new PC, basically.
The stuttering issues haven’t gone away. There are a few particular areas where the stuttering happens frequently enough to be annoying. The stuttering doesn’t seem to occur on indoor maps, only outdoors.
These are the worst areas:
All outdoor areas of act 1 seem prone to stuttering.
Act 4, areas surrounding Fort Ikon.
Any outdoor area with lots of “aether” ground effects.
Blood Grove
Misc areas with Aetheral mobs.
Basically Aetheral mobs & Aether ground outdoors = lag and stuttering. Some of the stuttering is extremely “hard” stuttering. I got Vsynch off, and I can go from the FPS being over the refresh rate of my monitor (screen tearing) to stuttering in 0.5 secs. PoE does the same thing, just worse and more frequently. FYI Its worse in both games with Vsynch on and triple buffering enabled.
My PC is way over the recommended specs, so if this is related to particle effects (PoE has a similar problem with particle effects causing lag even on very high end PCs), then maybe this is something that needs to be looked into. But I’m not 100% sure its entirely particle effect related because I still get stuttering (less but it still happens) when I turn the effects down or off.
If my PC isn’t good enough to play with everything turned on/maxed, then what does Crate think the recommended specs for that should be?
There are certain areas that are too big, and therefore can’t be reliably optimized.
The same is with monster density and too many skills going off onscreen and offscreen. This is difficult to take care of even with a reliable processor, graphics card and ram.
What you need to do is tweak settings when it happens and rerun those sort of situations, the reliable ones atleast and see what works well.
The game uses DX9. DX9 is notoriously inefficient for particle effects. One of the reasons the PoE devs are making a DX11 version of PoE for more modern PCs. But I do understand why Crate would use DX9. So people with potato rigs can run the game. If a AAA developer was to do this, it would be inexcusable IMO for not offering a DX9 and DX11 version. It would be nice if they could put together a DX11 version, but I’m not gonna badger them over it. They might not have the time or the resources to do that. But there is probably something they could do to improve the performance a little other than just telling people with PCs way over the recommended specs to disable the particle effects.
