Constant stuttering in game.

[UchihaAtae]

As soon as I logged into PlayOnline this afternoon, and started up FFXI, the loading screens and title screen were stuttering constantly, and then when I got into game the constant stuttering carried on.

The time was around 14:00 GMT today.

The frequency of the stuttering as I have stated above is constant, now pauses, it makes the game unbearable.

Platform im on is PC.

Operating system I use is Windows 7 32-bit.

My graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD 5750.

My ISP is Virgin Media.

The connection type is Fiber Optic.

[Seriha]

Have any kind of virus scan running or maybe a firewall? Also check your resource monitor via the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) to see if your memory isn't being munched up by something.

[UchihaAtae]

Nope, I turned my anti-virus off, along with any other processes that weren't necessary, and there are no firewalls, FFXI has full access, Resource monitor is telling what i already know, hardly any memory is being used. I have 3GB available. I've looked around the the web for some answers, tried some methods, like turning off QoS, which didn't help, making sure I didn't have virtualbox installed which I don't. It's really perplexing, although I've heard that the newer graphics card don't work well with DX8 so that could be it, it's a shame if it is, as I really wanted to get back into the game.

[RAIST]

the 5xxx ATI cards had driver issues just like the nVidia 400 series. Not sure which release finally came out on top for FFXI (still on the 4800 series myself). May have to go to guru3d.com and just download older drivers and test. Think the oldest release supporting the 5700's were around christmas 2009, so may have to start at 9.10 and work your way up, unless someone can post what is working for them.

EDIT: SE did some testing in february, and they are listing 10.11 for use:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/envi/win/win01.html?pageID=win

[UchihaAtae]

Well I just tried out some older drivers, starting with the 10.11, still got the constant stuttering, and I'm back to square one.

[RAIST]

Only a few things come to mind to check on. Check your GPU's Catalyst AI and overdrive settings. In older drivers, there was an actual issue with the Catalyst Control Center itself--the fix was to install just the drivers without CCC and use a third party tool (ATI Tray Tools, RivaTuner, etc.) to configure the card. It could be some similar weird issue where it is throttling in/out of 3d mode or some screwy thing (can monitor clock speeds with GPU-Z while the game is running by toggling the option to keep monitoring when GPU-Z is minimized). If it is not locking into 3D timings, might have to force it into 3D mode by using something like ATI Tray Tools and setting clocks without the Overdrive method. Downside to that is it won't automatically reduce clocks/voltage when in 2D mode--locks your clocks full time.

does it do this also when you run the FFXI Benchmark? I ask this to try to rule out an issue with your connection--if it does it in an offline app that uses similar rendering methods, kinda rules out internet lag.

Download link if you don't already have it:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11eu/download/media/benchmark01.html

It has some spots where it kind of skips a little on it's own, what you're looking for is a regular pattern. If it is happening here after ruling out issues with the GPU config, then you need to look more closely at your system config...toggle powersaving options (change it to an always on profile, disable powersaving on the NIC, GPU, etc.), maybe even forcing the game to run on one core by setting core affinity via Task Manager or ICE Affinity program, etc.

[UchihaAtae]

Just checked over th GPU config, it's all running fine, tried out the benchmark, ran perfectly smooth, and all the powersaving is disabled, always is, I don't like powersaving options. I also set the game to run off of just one core, still with the constant stuttering.

[RAIST]

Along with the stuttering, are you seeing people blink-walk also? As in, they suddenly jump a few "feet" from where they were before? If so, there could be an issue with rx/tx to the servers.

[UchihaAtae]

Hmmm not that I'm aware of no, although I haven't seen that many people, apart from npc's, but I digress. Thinking about it no, I've just seen then walking like my character, all stuttery, I have to admit though, it is pretty unbearable so I can only stand to stay in-game a few seconds.

[Coldbrand]

This is pathetic. I have a Nvidia 480 and I'm getting 10 frames per second in abyssea? I can run freaking Crysis with 60 FPS.

[Mirrah]

Are you using a USB wireless adapter? I know it sounds crazy, but my brothers game would stutter like CRAZY when he used one, on set intervals.. like every 1 second it would stutter for .5 seconds. (not lag, but the actual video would stutter).

We tried everything, till one day i borrowed his internet adapter and my computer started doing the same thing. Noone has been able to explain to us why a USB internet card would cause video problems.

[RAIST]

This is pathetic. I have a Nvidia 480 and I'm getting 10 frames per second in abyssea? I can run freaking Crysis with 60 FPS.

known issue with the drivers for the 400 series cards... have to be using certain drivers for FFXI. Can't remember which release it was, should be the one posted on the POL site via the link I gave at the start of the thread (that shows both Nvidia and ATI drivers they tested with).

[RAIST]

Are you using a USB wireless adapter? I know it sounds crazy, but my brothers game would stutter like CRAZY when he used one, on set intervals.. like every 1 second it would stutter for .5 seconds. (not lag, but the actual video would stutter).

We tried everything, till one day i borrowed his internet adapter and my computer started doing the same thing. Noone has been able to explain to us why a USB internet card would cause video problems.

Forgot about the USB bus issues. There was also some stuff with IR devices too. Generic HID stuff in the device manager have tripped up issues too (sometimes UPS links show up as HID). Try removing/disabling them if getting updated drivers for them don't fix things.

[Kikorimo]

I have been having a problem like this myself over the past few weeks. I never had the problem before, and there was no change to hardware or drivers prior to the issue starting. I have tried running FFXI on both my primary OS, as well as my alternate dual boot OS. On the alternate OS (windows 7) I do not notice any stuttering of the camera or freezing for 2-5 seconds at a time, but I LOATH playing on windows 7 because the text in game doesn't seem to display properly (letters get cut off etc.) The problem had vanished for a few days, but it is back again. My primary OS is Windows XP Pro x64, I have tried everything I can think of with no success. This includes system restore, updating drivers (I saw the post about windows xp and driver issues, but I use an older driver than the ones listed causing the problems.) so on and so forth. I have also tried playing with router settings as well as internet properties on my computer. I can deal with the camera stuttering a little when I try to rotate it, but what really annoys me is the little mini-lockups. I'll be trying to type, and nothing will happen at all for a few seconds, like the game froze, and int he time it takes me to open task manager or alt+tab to internet it's working again... I have only noticed this while running FFXI, and not with any other game I play... Please help. >_<

[Runespider]

Stuttering is caused by a lot of things, Infrared devices and HID devices are the most common. I had this yesterday on a new pc, disabled/unplugged HID devices and it stopped. Very often doing something as simply as unplugging any controllers/mice can fix it.

As for horrible lag, that's usually a driver issue sadly.

You can disable them in device manager, HID = Human interface devices.

[Kikorimo]

Thank you. I'm not sure what exactly it was (I ended up disabling mouse but got that back on lol) but after turning off all of the ones I could, it stopped. It appears that some of them disappeared from the list as I turned others off... I think the only ones left are just the USB drives. Will try turning those back on since the others vanished and see if it stays fixed. But the HID thing seems to have helped (hopefully permanently.)

[Shyla]

470 SLI problems (http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/23248/gtx-470-sli-problems/#1410969) Try that.

[Carbuncle_Veteran]

Took me almost 3 gosh darn years to figure this out.

Using a WIFI NIC you need to trick the system by "BRIDGING" The WIFI NIC with your Ethernet NIC's. OMG i'm so happy to say that this problem is solved. Heavy Metal Donations accepted for this solution. See me on Carbuncle Server. Tips welcomed!