Weird stuttering in Abyssos: The Eight Circle

My game runs at a pretty static 120 FPS in all areas and instances, except for P8 and P8S, which has a very strange stuttering. If I'm standing still, the game stays perfectly at 120 FPS, but if I start moving my character, for example, left and right around the arena, the FPS drops depending how fast I'm moving, if I walk, it drops around 2 fps, if I run normally, around 5 FPS and if I sprint, around 7 FPS. Now, normally, I wouldn't care about that low amount of lost frames, but that loss comes with a visual stutter, it feels like I'm running the game at 60 FPS, even though it's around 113~120.

For those who are familiar with 2 monitors with different refresh rates, you know when you're playing on the 144hz monitor, but you have something running at 60 fps on the 60hz monitor, and that causes the game to feel like 60 fps, even though it's running at 144? That's the kind of stutter I'm getting.

I tested changing my FPS cap to 60 (with NVidia settings, not the in-game one), and the same thing happens, when I move, I lose around 5 frames and it has a stutter (I shouldn't even been dropping those 5 frames with a cap of 60, since I can easily run the game at 120+). No matter what cap I have, I always drop 5 FPS when moving, if I cap to 30, it will drop to 25 when moving and so on, and it will always cause that weird stutter.

Maybe it's something from the arena graphics, like the fog effect or something? I don't know.

I tried several things already, like, disabling fullscreen optimization, disabling Nvidia HD Audio Drivers, sfc scans in CMD, disabling my second monitor, playing in full screen and windowed, the only thing I haven't tried, is reinstalling the game, which I will later, but I hardly doubt that would fix it.

Honestly, I can just deal with it, but I'm really wondering if someone else is having this problem as well. I've seen like only 1 other person complain about it, but also several others, on console (PS4).

Not the same issue as yours, but I have a similar issue. Ever since 6.21 went live my game has been having microstutters all over the place. I even noticed them in dungeons. The game is still playable but this is an annoyance for sure.

Before 6.21 the game ran perfectly fine at a locked 60fps with no drops. Normally I play on 1440p and I decided to lower my graphics settings and set the game to 1080p for testing and the same thing still happens. Before 6.21 I was running at 1440p with max settings and zero issues.

Yep seems like quite a few are having problems with P8n/s. I made a bug report yesterday after 6.21 didn't fix it but you might want to add to it that you're experiencing the same on pc. Link here

I'm seeing no issues, though as I noted in another thread about stutter in the open world/cities, I'm seeing some differences in GPU clock speed based on NCP power settings. Long story short, XIV has always ignored "Normal" or "Optimal" settings on both my current machines, and on all my past ones, boosting to full at all times. Now it obeys it, so it sits around 80 to 90% utilization and about 900Mhz to 1200Mhz. Launching Risen Master, causes it to go full boost as always, or setting it to "Prefer Max Performance". Consider checking that setting, or it's equivalent for AMD and setting it to Prefer Max Performance. Shot in the dark but who knows. As a side note, XIV has always had issues with lighting effects, just watch GPU utilization jump and/or frame rates drop in Afterburner when night falls and all the lanterns come on. Back in the waaaay back, when there was lots of sh!tty AMD FX CPU's around (I had one, no comment..) you'd tank to below 30 fps around certain lighting effects it was so bad. For sure something has changed, but what it is and why it only affects certain rigs is anyones guess rn. Best thing for everyone to do is post about what they see, and their general system setup, maybe a pattern will be established.

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Originally Posted by DiasFlacOg

Not the same issue as yours, but I have a similar issue. Ever since 6.21 went live my game has been having microstutters all over the place. I even noticed them in dungeons. The game is still playable but this is an annoyance for sure.

Before 6.21 the game ran perfectly fine at a locked 60fps with no drops. Normally I play on 1440p and I decided to lower my graphics settings and set the game to 1080p for testing and the same thing still happens. Before 6.21 I was running at 1440p with max settings and zero issues.

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Now that you mentioned, I just noticed these microstutters are happening in the overworld as well, and it's always when I'm moving, or moving my camera in this case as well, I tested in older content like 5.0 trials/raids/dungeons and even 6.0/6.1 content, and it's completely fine, it's basically just 6.2+ content

So, I think I mostly fixed it, I have an NVidia card, RTX 2060 to be more specific, and I installed an older driver, version 457.30, and the stutters are definitely better, not 100%, but it's like 90% better than before, I don't drop frames when I move in P8 anymore (only when there's too much going on on the screen, but that's partially my fault for playing at full graphics, so it's normal), I also disabled HPET (High Precision Event Timer) on my BIOS (not sure if this did anything). Maybe this will help others as well.

I play on console (PS4) and p8s is completely unplayable for me. It stutters on my every movement and most my abilities don't register.
To notice that i don't have any issues with all the other game content just in that one instance.
Hopefully they fix it, want shiny weapon :(

Lets up this cause its still an issue... I will also write a suppor ticket just to have it followed officially. Its not really that visible if someone plays the run for a long time, but when you stop and restart you immediately feel it.

Quick update fellas....

So i wrote to the support team and all they replied so far is to set my settings to high performance for energy settings.... even though it was already high performance, with a slight adjustments to 96% so that my laptop is not getting cooked.

I lost faith, whatever this is, I don't think they will look further into it, I am sure they think the issue is on user side. So good luck to yall. I will not roll back my graphics driver just for this, but I have seen that this seem to work. I am sorry I will nto roll back to a worse driver for a game that cannot fix compatibility issues.

I was also having major stuttering on my 3070 Ti. Updated to the latest NVIDIA drivers released yesterday (September 27th) and it's mostly gone! I set up an FFXIV profile on NVIDIA control panel for Maximum performance mode and got even better results.

All of these issues came right after 6.21 came along.

Before 6.21 my game literally ran perfect at a locked 60fps with no stutters.

I figured out what the issue is.

So for some reason after 6.21 vertical sync causes a lot of stuttering now. Normally I play on a 60hz monitor that I use for work and play.

I normally have Vsync set to on on my Nvidia control panel and I also have the frame rate to 60 on the game's settings. I turn off Vsync on my nvidia control panel and I set the frame rate to "none" on the game's option menu my frame rate is basically "free" to go as high as it can. It goes up to the 80's and 90's and hovers around there.

Basically now I have a lot of screen tearing (because vsync is off) but there is zero stuttering now. All the stutter that was introduced in patch 6.21 is completely gone if I turn off vsync.

The only problem now is that I have to choose my poison. Either turn vsync back on and get a bunch of random stutters or turn vsync off and have a stutter free experience but with screen tearing.

Also, the stutters are not real frame rate drops. Running MSI afterburner and RTSS while having vsync turned on clearly shows my fps as a solid 60fps with no drops when the game starts to stutter. Basically the game stutters but the FPS counter stayed at a locked 60 as the game is stuttering.

Essentially SE broke Vsync with the latest patch.

What I have been doing to alleviate this issue, is basically locking the fps to 60 with RTSS while having vsync turned to "Use 3D application setting" and settings the fps limit in game to "none". This basically locks my fps to a rock solid 60 and I have zero stuttering so my game is very smooth (just like it used to be with vsync before 6.21) the only problem again is that I get the occasional screen tear. But this is far better than having all these stutters. So I have been playing that way for the past two weeks now.

I hope they fix this issue in the next patch.

V-Sync definitely seems to be acting up. I noticed the stuttering issue just today, or it seems to be now more noticeable than previously. When it happens, it feels like the whole game stops for a short moment (fraction of a second, more or less). It's not an obvious FPS drop, it just stops and then continues normally. This happens when something is about to happen in the game like monsters start fighting or I turn the camera, but it's not consistent or triggerable.

I have V-Sync set as Off in game and Forced On in Nvidia Control Panel. I do this because it's the suggested settings for G-Sync compatible monitors. What I've noticed, that sometimes even G-Sync doesn't activate properly when I launch FFXIV and I have to manually force it on via the Nvidia Control Panel while the game is running (this works, which is surprising). I run FFXIV in Borderless Windowed mode and G-Sync is enabled for it. If I enable V-Sync in FFXIV (144fps), it doesn't work at all and the screen is floaty and tearing is obvious, however there seems to be less of no stuttering (or the game doesn't "hang up" as described previously).

The issue is not limited to P8S or anything, it can happen anywhere for example it happened in Puppet's Bunker (where I first noticed it) and in Troia dungeon. When I ran Smileton with FFXIV V-Sync enabled, I didn't notice that many FPS drops. I can't guarantee it as I've not done thorough testing.

Using RTX 3060 Ti with newest drivers (517.48). I might try going back to a previous driver version (512.95) which felt previously more stable overall but I updated the drivers as the G-Sync issue was pretty frustrating, I had to force it on every single time (now it seems to work at least more often with newer drivers).

In my issue it's pretty weird that the Stuttering happens when V-Sync is OFF in-game but Forced ON in Nvidia Control Panel, the Stuttering is happening, but if I enable V-Sync in both it seems to be lessened if not gone.. Contradictionary to the previous post, where disabling V-Sync removes the stuttering.. Actually a G-Sync issue?

Same thing on Freesync. I have an RX 6800 XT
As Unia said, when something is about to happen, the FPS drops like from 144 to 139/135 and i get stutter.
Only in P8 N/S

I started having stuttering in game after 6.21 as well, but for me it's not just p8. it's any duty, any overworld area, basically anywhere. It was tolerable for a while, but the past two days it has been really really bad. I noticed that whenever a stutter happens, my GPU usage percent drops, specifically the ffxiv process. It's a dramatic drop, about 20%. Even if I am simply standing in game, I can watch the GPU spike.

However, ffxiv is the *only* game that is acting this way. I can play multiple other games and have no issue.

I have tried everything I can think of:
-Lowered graphics settings
-tried fps limiter in game
-tried fps limiter out of game on NVidia card
-tried validating ffxiv file integrity through Steam
-Completely uninstalled Geforce Experience and graphics driver before reinstalling them.
-Uninstalled Geforce Experience and Graphics driver and went back to a driver I know was working fine, the June release.
-Checked for any available updates
-cleaned out temp folders
-ran disk defragment/disk cleanup
-scanned for viruses


I am at a complete loss as to why this is happening and why it only affects ffxiv...

Edit: Tried new Nvidia driver released 10/12/22. Issue still persists
Edit 2: Uninstalled ffxiv and reinstalled on a new SSD. still have stutter

Seems fixed since the new Patch.

No stutter for me.

P8s normal and savage is without any stuttering/fps drops anymore hurray! Thank you for fixing it!, this is coming from a PS4 player!.

Still happens in most recent patch 6.28. It's definitely happening in P7S for me where I'm currently progressing but doesn't happen as often outside of Pandemonium unlike previously. I still think there might be multiple separate issues though (broken V-sync/G-sync, the stuttering in outside world and the stuttering in exclusively in P7S-P8S where there is lots of "hidden" graphics going on like platfroms and additional NPC's).

Additionally the G-Sync not loading properly is still happening for me in 6.28, I have to manually toggle G-sync on/off every time I start the game or it wont load properly and fps is 144 fps with screen tearing.

Just updated to the newest Nvidia drivers released 12/8/22 and the latest windows update and all my stuttering problems are gone. Running at full 144hz with gsync finally working properly. Hopefully this works for everyone else