I never had an issue running the game until one of the patches after Forgotten Gods was released. I actually quit playing out of frustration, but wanted to give it a go one more time. I get stuttering game-play the majority of the time. Sometimes it is fine, but typically it happens every 2-3 seconds - sometimes almost at a standstill. I used to run with graphics settings on Ultra/High, no problem. I don’t note any particular stress on the graphics card, hard drive, memory or CPU temp when I check performance. I have tried the following steps, which haven’t resolved it:
Graphics on lowest settings, VSync and Triple Buffering disabled
While I don’t have a gaming rig, I don’t have issues running any other games. I think I have actually tried a couple other things as well, but I can’t even remember them all. If anyone else has tips/tricks that have worked for them, it is much appreciated.
You can always play with in game settings as some options have huge impact on efficiency (but not always lowest option is the best for some rigs):
-Disable/enable deferred rendering
-Play with shadow options
-Disable anti-aliasing (for me the game looks better without it)
-Shaders option / windowed mode/ vertical Sync
Thank you for the additional thoughts! I appreciate your quick reply. Unfortunately, I have also tried verifying the game files. In addition, I have tried many variations of the graphics settings. I did see some improvement in performance, but nothing that lasts. Sometimes it seems better for a few minutes, then starts up again. Windowed mode did not alleviate the problem either - I have played another game where I found that to be the issue.
None of this explains the “Why?” of the sudden onset of stuttering either. That is definitely the most frustrating part.
GD engine is quite old as it is improved Titan Quest engine and it’s pushed to the limits.
So the engine need quite good computer “guts” to perform perfectly.
Another thought is if have you checked the issues outside of GD ?
Maybe some process in the background is consuming your harddrive or processor? You can check that with task manager / resource monitor after few minutes of playing the game.
Windows can have some services that can do more harm to performance than overall good.
I have checked the resources previously, but I haven’t caught 1 particular program that is hogging things up. I guess I will have to try a process of elimination
You didn’t specify what your OS is. If by any chance you’re on Win 11, that kinda could cause some issues considering its “freshness”. Not that I know anything about W11/10/8 since haven’t used them myself, but that information could also be pretty important.
And at the moment of stuttering, does an LED for disk usage lights up? I believe most - or all - PC’s and laptops have such indicator.
aside from your Nvidia settings high performance etc, did you go into your system powerplan?
a lot of laptops don’t set powerplan, which affects cpu, to high/performance mode, and i recall, tho it was amd processor, that setting their powerplan to high/max/performance whatever helped them when the other usual stuff didn’t
as a side note, do you play in fullscreen, borderless fullscreen or windowed
and did you have a framecap on? like using vsync applied through nvidia instead of the game?
Do you have another hard drive you could run the game from?
Have you always had 20GB RAM? Try changing it (remove the 4GB RAM module) so you have two equal memory sticks in (or just single) - i.e. 2x 8GB or 1x 16GB. Having unequal memory could potentially be an issue as memory is usually dual channel and likes even distribution. Probably not going to be an issue, but worth testing.
I have adjusted the the power plan. I typically play in full screen, though I did test the other modes to see if it impacted performance. I have the frame cap manually set to 60Hz, with VSync disabled in-game and through nvidia.
Hm. You could try at least one more thing with Nvidia control panel, although I’m not sure if yours has such options. I also don’t know the “proper” English names for those parameters and such, because mine is not in English, so bear with me.
Go to “3D settings” category, choose “Image adjustment with preview”
Under the rotating Nvidia sign choose “Advanced (extended) 3D settings” and click the “go-to” link right next to it
In the “Global settings” tab, find “Shader caching” and turn it on, apply the changes
Reboot just in case and try to see if it’s still stuttering.
I did try adjusting the 3D settings, which seemed to help a bit. Thank you for that suggestion!
I hadn’t monitored the FPS closely, but I did so today. It tends to start at 60Hz (II have the max set at this) and then drop down into the 40s-50s, sometimes the 30s. Weirdly, it does not always seem tied to a lot of action happening on screen. I can have heavy action and be at 60 fps, then standing in town without much happening and drop down to 35 fps. Naturally, it is also affected by heavy on-screen action at times as well.
I know that GD tends to only use 1x core, so I don’t know if I am just getting a bottleneck and there is nothing much else to be done. I saw that some people had success forcing play through DX9?
