Game causes FPS stuttering which affects the whole PC.

Hello,
I have this weird problem with Final Fantasy XIV ARR on my PC.

The game runs rock solid, 60+FPS in pretty much every area. (On Maximum, 1080p)
Only about 30-40FPS in a really crowded area.
The problem I have is a really weird FPS stuttering, that not only affects the game but
also affects my entire PC.

To show you what I mean I recorded a video with my phone because the stuttering would also affect my recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmInR_tz3bA
The video shows the game, a gif to the left which should be the example how it affects my PC and a timer running on a tablet to show that the video has not skipping/stuttering.
The first half shows how it affects my PC in areas where it shouldn't have any problems, the other half or near end shows you when I log off and on and extreme stuttering during loading screens.

The problem can get really annoying to the point where I can not play the game.
A good example is in Primals, Garuda and Titan Ex can get as worse as up to 3s of FPS stuttering, where my whole PC seem not to react.
There is no spot in the game where I really don't get this stuttering.
Only some places where I get less of it.

Now to technical details:
My system:
Windows 7 64bit
Intel Core i7 3930K (OC to 4.0GHz)
ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU II 4GB
32GB Patriot G2
ASRock X79 Extreme6
240GB Crucial M500 (OS, game is also on this drive)
2x 1TB (Games/Storage)
120GB Corsair Neutron (Games)
Corsair AX750 750W

I already made a topic in the German subforum back in September but nobody could help me there and some mod just moved it to the "resolved issues" forum.
Here are two screenshots from back in September that show the GPU usage during those FPS stuttering.

http://abload.de/img/unbenanntxdufl.png
This one shows an extreme case where I wasn't even moving and the problem occurred. (Click for larger image.)
http://i.imgur.com/abJaQna.png
This image shows the same but during normal gameplay.
(It shows, top to bottom, Power%, GPU temperature, GPU usage and GPU fan speed)

Now the long list of things I already tried but didn't help or showed next to no effect:

• Trying different GPU drivers. (314.14, 314.22, 331.65, 331.82, 331.93, 332.21, 334.67, 334.89)
• Every version listed above was tried with a clean install.
• Trying several different combinations in the nVidia control panel.
• Trying several different in-game options.
• Fresh re installation of Windows 7.
• Clean install of pretty much every driver on my system.
• Trying FF on my main SSD, on my two HDDs and on another SSD.
• Trying some regedits for CPU core unparking.
• Looking around the internet to find possible solutions.

Thats pretty much all I can think about at the moment.
I really hope somebody could help me with this problem.

Small update, see post below.

These things are really hard to track down. For starters, I'd back off on all your overclocks a little. I found my RAM timings were just a little too aggressive. Apparently it was causing some micro stuttering from errors or something. I was seeing the same micro-stutter when I ran Furmark in a window, which made it easier to find the sweet spot.

Alos, might want to look at what is running in the background. Take a good look through your running processes in task manager and resource monitor (resmon). You may notice something odd like your security software is spiking CPU and/or network usage periodically while in the game (or something else for that matter). If it winds up being security, you may be able to remedy that by simply adding exceptions for the FFXIV executables and their folders so they don't get scanned. Other items, you may be able to disable them or something when you play the game.

It cold even be something as bizarre as the graphics card control panel. There's an old looping problem that likes to creep back in the nvidia control panel from time to time that can sometimes cause GPU resets, and the ATI CCC can sometimes be a resource hog and there have been instances where afterburner causes micro stuttering as well--even when used in a different front-end like ATI Tray Tools. Sometimes it can be remedied by simply not loading the system tray tool, other times you may need to disable the overclocking tool and try a different approach.

Oh yeah.. may want to look into your vertical refresh setting in the nvidia control panel also. Sometimes the adaptive modes can get a little weird. While you are in there, may want to set all our options to either performance or application settings as well. If it smooths it out, then you can go back in and start raising quality on some of them until you get a nice balance between stability and quality.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raist

These things are really hard to track down. For starters, I'd back off on all your overclocks a little. I found my RAM timings were just a little too aggressive. Apparently it was causing some micro stuttering from errors or something. I was seeing the same micro-stutter when I ran Furmark in a window, which made it easier to find the sweet spot.

---

Not the cause. Even on stock settings the problem still occurs, I also tried some underclocking but also no effect.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raist

Alos, might want to look at what is running in the background. Take a good look through your running processes in task manager and resource monitor (resmon). You may notice something odd like your security software is spiking CPU and/or network usage periodically while in the game (or something else for that matter). If it winds up being security, you may be able to remedy that by simply adding exceptions for the FFXIV executables and their folders so they don't get scanned. Other items, you may be able to disable them or something when you play the game.

---

The problem occurred before I reinstalled my Windows and it still exists after a fresh install. I also took the chance to test FF right after the new installation with the bare minimum installed. (Only important drivers and some updates.)
Also no effect, thats how I can pretty much exclude interference from any other program.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raist

It cold even be something as bizarre as the graphics card control panel. There's an old looping problem that likes to creep back in the nvidia control panel from time to time that can sometimes cause GPU resets, and the ATI CCC can sometimes be a resource hog and there have been instances where afterburner causes micro stuttering as well--even when used in a different front-end like ATI Tray Tools. Sometimes it can be remedied by simply not loading the system tray tool, other times you may need to disable the overclocking tool and try a different approach.

---

See above, even with Afterburner not installed or using another tool the problem still exists.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raist

Oh yeah.. may want to look into your vertical refresh setting in the nvidia control panel also. Sometimes the adaptive modes can get a little weird. While you are in there, may want to set all our options to either performance or application settings as well. If it smooths it out, then you can go back in and start raising quality on some of them until you get a nice balance between stability and quality.

---

I already played with pretty much every setting in the 3D control settings. Especially with the vsync option but also no effect.

I'm the kind of person that tries pretty much everything I know + searches through the web to find other possible solutions before open a topic
but I appreciate more ideas.

cool.. all the details weren't listed, so was just running down some of the usual suspects.

Are you running in a windowed mode (guessing so, since you have other windows over it in the screen shot). This game seems to suffer the same fate as XI did on some systems... full screen may resolve some of it if that is the case. If so and you want to run windowed mode, might want to double check the option about frame rate control when the game is not in focus (forget the exact wording, but it's in there somewhere). Some have even reported having things smooth out more if they run in borderless window mode.

Also, have you tried using another tool like Furmark, or maybe a different one with a DirectX engine like maybe the Last Remnant benchmark? Just curious if the micro-stutter is game specific, restricted to network applications (just like with XI, XIV can have jitter because of lost packets/bad latency), or more a systemic problem. Try to narrow it down better so maybe more people can come up with ideas.

I'm running it just fine on a laptop with a 670 in it (not the exact same card, but imagine some similarities)--but I'm on a much older driver version. I also had some weirdness that went away after updating my sound card drivers--it was to resolve an issue with the subwoofer flaking out in congested areas, but as a strange side effect my random black-screen/gold bars on screen problems went away as well. It's possible there could be something in the newer drivers you've been trying... SE games are notorious for that sort of thing (newer is not always the solution). I'm running on a 3.11 nVidia release... yeah, it's old, but it works. They have an archive of older drivers at guru3d.com if you want to turn on the way-back machine and try some of those older releases. Their driver cleaner works pretty good too if you don't already have one and have been cleaning up manually.

Just spit-balling, but it might be worth a shot, seeing as you've tried just about everything else.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raist

Are you running in a windowed mode (guessing so, since you have other windows over it in the screen shot). This game seems to suffer the same fate as XI did on some systems... full screen may resolve some of it if that is the case. If so and you want to run windowed mode, might want to double check the option about frame rate control when the game is not in focus (forget the exact wording, but it's in there somewhere). Some have even reported having things smooth out more if they run in borderless window mode.

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Sorry that I was a bit spare with the information, writing down every single step I tried would be a very long text.

Edit: It wasn't the cause of my problems.
It looks like borderless Windowed slightly reduces the overall stuttering but it still happens.
My guess there is something wrong the code that manages if the window is active or not.

I could also exclude my GPU itself, I tried a GTX660 from a friend and the problem in windowed/borderless windowed mode still happened.

I personally have an "hd" process from a program that runs in the background and can cause severe stuttering. It runs whether the program is running or not. I actively have to go into task manager and end the process tree every time i got into ffxiv or it restarts itself randomly while playing and i get massive spiking.

Small update:
I have upgraded my GTX 670 to an GTX780 Ti. The problem still exists.
I also tried to close down pretty much every program on my PC, tried updating drivers that shouldn't even matter in the first place, updated my BIOS.
It doesn't make sense, the GPU usage still spikes up and down and I still get those nasty stuttering that affects my PC and the game.

I guess my last chance is to wait for the DX11 client if nobody can help me

at a loss atm... about the only other thing that comes to mind is the old IR and HID wonkiness we used to see with XI. The usual aggravating process of elimination--disable/unplug all the extra devices and such not needed and if it goes away, turn them on one-by-one.

so many things.... bluetooth, infrared, cameras, system environment monitors/tweakers, unused network devices, firewalls/antivirus (the latest ZA has been recently shown to inject about a 15ms network lag, and Avast had issues with microstutter about a year ago), audio enhancers (3D/reverb effects and such--run it at minimum effects, 16bit/48k sampling and such), unplug anything USB that you don't absolutely need and try to run your mouse with the Microsoft interface instead of any custom Logitech or whatever (if you can).... oh man.. so many things that can be a suspect. That's just a handful off the top of my head.

I solved stuttering issue in the following way: set graphics to max (optional), disable ingame fps limit, disable any kind of vsync, set framerate limit to 30 in rivatuner statistic server (installed with msi afterburner). I play in the fullscreen mode with desktop composition disabled (windows aero is disabled too), my gpu is hd 7870.
A game with 3s gcd does not really benefit from fps over 30 - found it out during the video recording and set a global fps limit after that (works well in other mmorpgs too).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lxSch

I solved stuttering issue in the following way: set graphics to max (optional), disable ingame fps limit, disable any kind of vsync, set framerate limit to 30 in rivatuner statistic server (installed with msi afterburner). I play in the fullscreen mode with desktop composition disabled (windows aero is disabled too), my gpu is hd 7870.
A game with 3s gcd does not really benefit from fps over 30 - found it out during the video recording and set a global fps limit after that (works well in other mmorpgs too).

---

I would cry if I had to play any game at fixed 30FPS. Even worse than stuttering.

I actually managed to narrow down the problem but it still looks to be some kind of coding problem, not any hardware problem.
It looks like it has to be something to do with my CPU. FFXIV doesn't like a lot of cores/threads.
The spread of work load causes those spikes even though there is not much to see on the CPU usage graph.

I set the process priority of ffxiv.exe to high and set the CPU allocation to only 3-4 threads out of my 12.
This causes FF to use up to 90% of those 3-4 threads and eliminates 99% of the stuttering.
It will cost me a few FPS but overall it seems to almost solve my problem.
I also unparked all cores but that doesn't seem to have any affect.

My GPU usage still fluctuates but it works a lot better.
Overall I can probably live with this but I feel like I don't get even close to what my specs should give me.

O M G! Hope they aren't still having issues with the multi-core bridges? Man... that dates back to the original Dual-Cores. Remember having to use ICE to launch XI exclusively on the second core of my old D series CPU... but that was like 2006 or something. Would have thought for sure that was no longer a problem in this day and age... never even dawned on me to check that. DOH!

Wonder if maybe there is a BIOS update for the motherboard to correct a microcode issue? It's been known to happen in the past. Might be worth a shot?

My BIOS is on the latest version and FFXIV is the only game that has this problem.
As I said, it lessens the stuttering but I lose quite a bit of performance in crowded areas and overall FPS.
I hope it's just a bad implementation in the DX9 client or the game in general since it only happens in FFXIV.