Stutters only in FF14, sometimes hours between stutters

Our stutters seem to be different in terms of length, but similar in that they can happen anywhere under any circumstances, and can go hours between them. Maybe we're having the exact same issue, maybe not. :shrug:

How about setting character and object quantity to minimum? Stutters can still happen but hopefully can make the game a bit more playable.

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Originally Posted by FriendlyPerson

How about setting character and object quantity to minimum? Stutters can still happen but hopefully can make the game a bit more playable.

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It seems like the issue we're dealing with happens regardless of what's on screen. It's happened while I was standing in a zone with 0 other players and all that was displaying was trees. I've done hunt trains with 150+ people all being rendered and my fps go down, but there are no stutters. Either way, we all seem to be running rigs that are way above the recommended specs, so it would be strange for our issues to be being caused by too many objects or players being rendered, y'know?

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Originally Posted by gilmorej

Yes, it happens randomly at any time.
I can go minutes or hours between the appearance of any stuttering.
There can be 100 people around, or zero people, or even a cutscene panning across a scene with no characters visible at all.

It will just randomly stutter like it dropped two or three frames, and then go back to being normal for a random period of time.

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This is exactly what my stuttering looks like. It doesn't matter if it's Limsa at peak times, or just soloing a dungeon, or just being in some randomly lonely place with zero players around. It's frustrating because as far as I can tell these lil stutters come completely randomly.

I tried playing the game on low settings (on a 4080) to see if this would fix the lil micro stutters that randomly pop up and it doesn't. I don't think it's a graphical settings issue.

During my time with EW using the same 4080 and driver version 537.58 (from October 2023) the game ran perfectly smooth with no issues or any micro stutters from 60fps to 58fps randomly. The game just played perfectly. Like I said in my previous post. I even went ahead and tested DT with these old drivers (537.58) and the game runs mostly fine, but now even with that old driver I still get those lil random stutters.

Funnily enough I feel like I get the "random" stutters a bit more with the newest Nvidia driver. However I don't want to keep using such an old driver on a new expansion.

I have to wonder if DiasFlacOg and gilmorej are having a slightly different issue than aqualenne and I. We seem to be having complete freezes for half a second to a second, whereas you guys seem to be having a much smaller stutter. Maybe it's the same fundamental issue, which seems to be something up with 14 that doesn't like background processes that it didn't have issues with before, but aqualenne and I are experiencing a different conflict and therefore longer stutters? Intel, AMD and Nvidia are all presented in this thread, though, so maybe that rules out the issue being specific to a certain brand of hardware.

Maybe Fullscreen vs borderless improves the stutter?

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Originally Posted by Clawhammer

Maybe Fullscreen vs borderless improves the stutter?

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I can't speak for anyone else, but fullscreen vs borderless windowed makes no difference for me in terms of the stutters.

Same.. No difference.

Borderless vs. Fullscreen
FPS capped vs. no FPS cap
vsync on vs. vsync off
FreeSync on vs. FreeSync off
minimum settings vs. maximum settings
gamepad plugged vs. gamepad unplugged

None of it makes a difference... It's frustrating.

Good morning! Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

Please try the following:
- Please try adjusting/lowering the resolution.
- If you have multiple peripherals (such as multiple monitors) please try removing them to only the necessary components to see if it helps.
- Please try running the game as an administrator.
- Perform a clean boot by opening the task manager and select the 'Start up' Tab. Disable everything.
- Please be sure that Final Fantasy XIV is installed to the C: Drive. (If Steam version, make sure both the game and Steam are installed on same drive)
- Verify installation files (Steam)
- Reinstall game (If steam version, try uninstalling and reinstalling both the game and Steam)

If you had attempted any of the above, did any other the steps help or perhaps even made the issue worse?
When the issue occurs, is your system overheating at all?
Were there any recent changes around the time of the issues began?

Thank you once again for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums!

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Originally Posted by Votraftur

- Please be sure that Final Fantasy XIV is installed to the C: Drive. (If Steam version, make sure both the game and Steam are installed on same drive)

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Why does it need to be on c: drive? I have the m2 ssd just for the OS and 3 1TB SSDs for games in my system, so ff14 is on drive H: (Steam Version)