I've ran out of options and seek tech helkp from the tribe of FFXIV peo

Alright, I've played this game for years but have never used the forums, so hello i guess?

Onto the meat of the problem. I get frame hitching/stuttering randomly when playing the game.

What ive done to try and resolve the issue:
1: reinstalled the game
2: reinstalled my gpu driver after using DDU in safemode
3: turned off my gpu, cpu, and ram OC.
4: ran the game completely vanilla.
5: played in both full screen and windowed
6: tried every single preset graphics setting, including setting everything to the lowest possible

Some info that may be helpful: it seems to only happen on a single character. Could the character data folder cause this issue? The character data folder was transferred from my old computer when i built this new one a month ago.

This issue is extremely frustrating and is a huge issue for me, especially in DRU prog.

any potential help is greatly appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

Alright, I've played this game for years but have never used the forums, so hello i guess?

Onto the meat of the problem. I get frame hitching/stuttering randomly when playing the game.

What ive done to try and resolve the issue:
1: reinstalled the game
2: reinstalled my gpu driver after using DDU in safemode
3: turned off my gpu, cpu, and ram OC.
4: ran the game completely vanilla.
5: played in both full screen and windowed
6: tried every single preset graphics setting, including setting everything to the lowest possible

Some info that may be helpful: it seems to only happen on a single character. Could the character data folder cause this issue? The character data folder was transferred from my old computer when i built this new one a month ago.

This issue is extremely frustrating and is a huge issue for me, especially in DRU prog.

any potential help is greatly appreciated.

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What GPU are you using? I personally had this issue in virtually every game I played while using the GTX 970 for example.

CPU: 12700kf
GPU: asus rtx 3080 oc

You're not running the game from a standard hard drive are you? Or is it on an SSD? Are you using Vertical Sync by chance?

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Originally Posted by Jagick

You're not running the game from a standard hard drive are you? Or is it on an SSD? Are you using Vertical Sync by chance?

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samsung 980 pro nvme, have tried it with vsync on or off. Monitor is gsync ultimate and the same issue happens when i enable gsync.

You could try Low-Latency Mode in the Nvidia Control Panel, but beyond that I'm also at a loss. :(

It's strange that the issue only seems to affect one character. I would definitely try temporarily removing that characters data files, and see if the problem persists.

If you still have the parts from your previous build on hand, you might want to try your old GPU or RAM as well. The last time I had serious freezing/stuttering issues in 14, it was tied to bad gpu RAM.

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Originally Posted by Jagick

You could try Low-Latency Mode in the Nvidia Control Panel, but beyond that I'm also at a loss. :(

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thanks for trying! Ill give that a shot, but i doubt it will work. Any guess on why it's only seemingly happening on 1 character and not my alts?

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

It's strange that the issue only seems to affect one character. I would definitely try temporarily removing that characters data files, and see if the problem persists.

If you still have the parts from your previous build on hand, you might want to try your old GPU or RAM as well. The last time I had serious freezing/stuttering issues in 14, it was tied to bad gpu RAM.

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i've ran my ram through 16 hours of memtest86. The ram was the first thing i assumed to have been wrong haha. Ill give removing the character data a shot.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

thanks for trying! Ill give that a shot, but i doubt it will work. Any guess on why it's only seemingly happening on 1 character and not my alts?

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Like LittleImp said, it could just be the ported over character folder, but I've done the same for several characters between a Windows 7 Desktop and Windows 10 Laptop with no such issues that I recall. That could very well be it though!

Move the character data folder to your desktop, and then login as usual. The game will automatically create a new data folder for that character with all the settings and ui stuff at default. If it runs without the issue, then you can be pretty sure that the problem is probably the character data folder.

If that ends up being the case, you could probably move files over from the old folder to the new one one by one, to figure out what exactly is causing the issues, if you had the patience for that.

But yeah the fact that its only affecting one of your characters does really point towards it being an issue with that folder. Worth a try, even if just to rule it out.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

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Could try wiping the whole hard drive and reinstalling a fresh copy of the operating system too.

hopefully this isn't a case of something running in the background. bad 'net connections can also feel like "stuttering".
also; you might wanna check if you're limiting your fps to 60. if the game always runs at 200-400 fps a drop might feel more dramatic than it is when you enter a busy area.

You could open task manager and change the priority of the game to be above normal. Stuttering can happen when the CPU doesn't see the game as a priority over all of the other things although it's not normally a problem with a good PC.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Could try wiping the whole hard drive and reinstalling a fresh copy of the operating system too.

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it was a fresh install when i built the computer a month ago and the issue has been persistent since. Id really like this to be the absolute last thing i try.

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Originally Posted by Denji

hopefully this isn't a case of something running in the background. bad 'net connections can also feel like "stuttering".
also; you might wanna check if you're limiting your fps to 60. if the game always runs at 200-400 fps a drop might feel more dramatic than it is when you enter a busy area.

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Its actual frame drops, i have the system config window open showing the fps, and fps drops happen when the stuttering happens. The stuttering also happens in areas where im the only live character in it. Tested it in multiple places across the map :/

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You could open task manager and change the priority of the game to be above normal. Stuttering can happen when the CPU doesn't see the game as a priority over all of the other things although it's not normally a problem with a good PC.

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This was my first thought but i can't seem to do that in windows 11, unless im completely missing something. The option to set priority is gone.

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Originally Posted by Cinno

Move the character data folder to your desktop, and then login as usual. The game will automatically create a new data folder for that character with all the settings and ui stuff at default. If it runs without the issue, then you can be pretty sure that the problem is probably the character data folder.

If that ends up being the case, you could probably move files over from the old folder to the new one one by one, to figure out what exactly is causing the issues, if you had the patience for that.

But yeah the fact that its only affecting one of your characters does really point towards it being an issue with that folder. Worth a try, even if just to rule it out.

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going to bne trying this once i settle down tonight, you and imp both suggested it. fingers crossed it works.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

Its actual frame drops, i have the system config window open showing the fps, and fps drops happen when the stuttering happens. The stuttering also happens in areas where im the only live character in it. Tested it in multiple places across the map :/

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Do you have multiple monitors? and is XIV running on the primary or not?

I had issues with stuttering with it was not running on the primary monitor with Win11

Don't forget to post in the Tech Support forums. There are some folks there who are very knowledgeable and they don't often post here.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You could open task manager and change the priority of the game to be above normal. Stuttering can happen when the CPU doesn't see the game as a priority over all of the other things although it's not normally a problem with a good PC.

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Please be careful when changing process priorities, you could potentially starve other programs of CPU time.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Do you have multiple monitors? and is XIV running on the primary or not?

I had issues with stuttering with it was not running on the primary monitor with Win11

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it's on my primary. Even disconnected my other monitor to see if that would help.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

Don't forget to post in the Tech Support forums. There are some folks there who are very knowledgeable and they don't often post here.

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didn't know that existed tbh. First time posting on the forums. Thanks for the tip! ill post there if the solutions here didnt help. Wasnt able to test the character data folder last night, got home a bit too late.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

didn't know that existed tbh. First time posting on the forums. Thanks for the tip! ill post there if the solutions here didnt help. Wasnt able to test the character data folder last night, got home a bit too late.

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It has to be that, as you have no issues with other characters. If it were a driver or hardware error all characters would have the same issue

Also you once you delete the glitchy character config files in " Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn " after you have gone back into the game and itr remakes a profile , exit the game and go into one of the other characters folders and copy paste their config files over to the fresh profile saving you having to redo keybinds and ui layouts

If not solved yet, you could try to reset client configs (on the launcher options) and look for corrupted files if you are using the steam version (just right click on the game in the game lists on your steam library).

I met a person in an old FC I went who had a similar issue with only one character. Seems to be some corrupted file on the SE server's end. His character was transfered from another DC and was created a very long time ago (I think it was when we are in beta test for ARR yet). After a lot of struggles, he decided to delete the character after leveling another. I remember helping him transfering some itens between them...
He never had any problems with any other of his characters before or after this particular one.

Well, removing the character data didn't work. Honestly dont know what could be causing the problem at this point. May just give up and live with it haha. Thanks to everyone who gave ideas and tips!

I had this problem for a while and it ended up being firefox. If I'd left firefox on for too long, or if I was watching youtube / twitch on my other monitor, my game would randomly stutter now and again. Then magically one day it stopped happening so... I wish I could give more info but the only way I could live with it was making sure the game was the only thing running.

Most likely random, but found that Windows 10 wallpaper slideshow causes computer wide stuttering when it changes background.

have you tried restarting your computer?

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Originally Posted by Jessica_VS

If you have not already, check your power supply. Over time, those draw power ineffectively and distribute it inefficiently to the CPU and video card. Often people think something is wrong with their video card when the problem is with a slowly-failing power supply (which is a much cheaper remedy).

If you were overclocking your video card previously, overclocking can damage the power supply and shorten its lifespan, especially if it were already barely high enough capacity. (Some people disbelieve that overclocking a video card can damage a PSU. They are wrong.)

If you do not know how to check it yourself, take the PC to a highly-rated PC repair place nearby. They can check the power supply and other components to figure out what is wrong. Diagnosis of problems usually costs about $75-100.

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The pc is brand new, built it myself a month ago. The power supply is a very good 850W PSU, which is more than enough to handle the transient spikes a gpu throws at it. Also, overclocking your system does not damage your power supply, whomever told you that it does is either horribly wrong, or you misunderstood. The ONLY time it would is if your power supply is either really cheap, or very low end and does not have enough rails to support a proper load. Good quality power supplies have so many fail safes in place that even overloading it and causing undercurrent or another protection to kick in wont damage it.

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Originally Posted by dapperfaffer

have you tried restarting your computer?

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Yes, ive reinstalled the game multiple times as well. The only things i can try now is a fresh wipe of my drive, or completely wiping my saved character data from the server save, which id really like to avoid if at all possible. Or maybe there's something else im missing, and posting in the tech part of the forums would be beneficial.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Most likely random, but found that Windows 10 wallpaper slideshow causes computer wide stuttering when it changes background.

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I dont use a slideshow of wallpapers, its a static wallpaper.

Mmmmmmmm.. If you have your old computer still up and running, maybe try backing your char data from that, and then downloading it into your machine using the restore char config feature.
Other than that, the only thing I can really think of is thermal throttling or something in your character config options that's different compared to other other characters (LoD objects settings and character brightness for one).

Well, there's been lots of suggestions, but little clarification on what exactly your issue is. When you say "frame drops", are you going from 60 fps to 20? from 240 to 220? What exactly, in detail is happening. Is it just a "feeling", or do you keep track of exact numbers? What other applications do you have running on your system while you play? there is a lot of information that we don't have.

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Originally Posted by Mordred_Kishi

Yes, ive reinstalled the game multiple times as well. The only things i can try now is a fresh wipe of my drive, or completely wiping my saved character data from the server save, which id really like to avoid if at all possible. Or maybe there's something else im missing, and posting in the tech part of the forums would be beneficial.

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I was just kidding tbh. but from what iv read if you use mods its likely that those are what are causing your random stuttering and drops. try turning on, or off, use low detail models on distant objects. and your shadow settings. this game is poorly optimized.

otherwise I would check your sound card mounting if you already haven't, there is a frequent reoccuring issue with sound and frame drops and stuttering.

Also, try to see if your sound card needs updates or if disabling other aplications while playing could solve it. Don't use addons, mods or anything in the same folder of the game.

If I was in your skin, I'd level up another char "just in case" I end up giving up and deleting the char. xD

Since it's seems to be an issue with only one char, maybe it's some error in his data or on your end or on the SE server's end. In any way, this might end up in the char being deleted to solve the problem.

I ran into a similar problem around 12 months ago. Finally managed to pin it down via Resource Monitor. Seems that when the problem occurred there was a service that would max out the activity on my SSD, creating a system bottleneck. Once the offending service was stopped the problem went away.
It may be worth keeping resource monitor open whilst running this character to see if anything similar happens.
I've forgotten the name of the service that caused the issue (sorry).

I found the solution. The issue was the windows scheduler, when doing its normal thing and shuffling the processes around the cores, shuffled the game to one of the efficiency cores the new Intel cpus have. When it would shuffle if to an E-core, it would immediately move it back to a p-core. The e-cores are clocked considerably lower than the p-cores which explains the sudden frame drop and return to normal. I set the affinity for the game process to only use p-cores so the game could never be moved to an E-core, and bam! problem solved. I want to thank everyone who gave their input and tried to help me fix the problem, ya'll are awesome! I know i butted heads with 1 particular person and that was probably an unsightly thing to read, so I thank you for still trying regardless of that fact. Have a great adventure!

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Originally Posted by dapperfaffer

I was just kidding tbh. but from what iv read if you use mods its likely that those are what are causing your random stuttering and drops. try turning on, or off, use low detail models on distant objects. and your shadow settings. this game is poorly optimized.

otherwise I would check your sound card mounting if you already haven't, there is a frequent reoccuring issue with sound and frame drops and stuttering.

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It was stated in the orgional post that I had tried all graphical levels of settings, from maxed, all the way down to the lowest settings, and that iu had run the game completely vanilla (meaning no mods, which was the first thing i did cause i assumed they caused the problem tbh).

Also, dont have a soundcard, so cant exactly re-seat it haha (but for real, ff14 and sound problems causing the game to crash is a tale as old as time, and quite an annoying one at that). Issue has been fixed, answer in a reply i made in this thread if you are interested.

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Originally Posted by Wanzzo

Also, try to see if your sound card needs updates or if disabling other aplications while playing could solve it. Don't use addons, mods or anything in the same folder of the game.

If I was in your skin, I'd level up another char "just in case" I end up giving up and deleting the char. xD

Since it's seems to be an issue with only one char, maybe it's some error in his data or on your end or on the SE server's end. In any way, this might end up in the char being deleted to solve the problem.

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It was stated in my original post that i had ran the game from the vanilla launcher completely vanilla (sop no mods). Also did the clean boot and issue still persisted. If you are interested in what the fix was, i made a reply to this thread detailing the fix.