Weird stutter/hitch occurs randomly.

[DiasFlacOg]

Just as the title says. For months now I have been battling a weird stutter/hitch that seems to happen randomly at any given time.

When I turn on a frame rate counter like RTSS my game will for the most part be locked at 60fps with zero issues. However out of no where my fps will drop by either 1 or 2 frames. Causing a hitch/stutter.

This can literally happen anywhere. I could be completely alone just randomly flying on my mount and the game will randomly stutter. It happens in raids and trials too. It's 100% random from my experience which is what makes this issue more frustrating. It's hard to reproduce it.

However it happens often enough to be annoying. I have tried different Nvidia drivers, lower graphic settings, even changing settings on the Nvidia control panel but nothing seems to fix it. This isn't game breaking of course but it is very annoying since my game is usually locked at 60fps with no issues until the random and completely out of no where stutter/hitch rears its ugly head.

If anyone can offer some helpful tips it will be greatly appreciated.

PC is a 13600k/RTX4080/32gbs ram and NVMe ssd.

[EveningBird]

I am following this thread too! Since this is exactly what happens with me.
The game will run smooth as heck @ 75fps (75hz monitor) but once it even hits 74/73 fps i get something that can be best described as a hiccup or hitch.

[NamiRocket]

I'm having this same problem. I've been exhausting all options I can think of to discover a fix. I've forced v-sync off in Nvidia's control panel. I've shut down background programs. I've reinstalled video drivers. I've tried different video drivers. Nothing has worked.

[DiasFlacOg]

Haha yes I have literally tried everything and nothing fixes it. I did some digging around and came across an old thread and someone seemed to have the same issue when reducing their fps to 60 from a 120hz monitor (this was back in Endwalker though), however EveningBird has a 75hz monitor and its happening to him.

Supposedly playing at 120fps was perfectly fine but their game would have this weird random stutter/hitch if they set their fps to 60hz.

I have literally tested all the Nvidia drivers all the way from early 2024 to the newest one that came out a week ago. All suffer from the same exact problem.

However from what i've seen in my research, driver 556.12 and driver 561.09 seem to have this issue the least.

So far i'm using driver 561.09 and the random stutter/hitch only happens once in a while. I noticed that with the newest driver 572.16 the stutter/hitch happens a lot more frequently.

It still happens on 556.12 and on 561.09 but no where near as frequent as it does on 572.16.

So for now I suggest you guys give these older drivers a shot. It kinda sucks though since we have to use older drivers though.

Hopefully SE can fix this issue or Nvidia. I have a feeling it's an Nvidia problem though.

This problem isn't game breaking by any means, but as I said in my previous post, it's very jarring when the game is running at a perfect 60fps to all of a sudden have a 1fps drop that causes a hard stutter/hitch.

Also as I said before this can literally happen anywhere, in trials, raids, just randomly flying on my mount, when i'm completely alone etc etc. I can literally be alone in the firmament doing some crafting and out of the blue the game will stutter for no reason then go right back to a locked 60fps.

[EveningBird]

What driver do you recommend we use? Since you used plural. 556.12 or 561.09? I have tried other drivers too to try and troubleshoot this issue, but unfortunately it's been a no go so far.

edit: tried 556.12, unfortunately the stuttering persists in the same manner. I've also tried playing at 60hz @ 60fps, but also there, once it goes below 60, it will stutter. This makes me believe it's game related and not my hardware. It could also be a Windows thing (as if not).

[DiasFlacOg]

The problem persist on both 556.12 and 561.09 but at least in my findings it's less than say the newest driver (572.16). I felt like the stutter/hitch problem was happening quite often on 572.16.

However it's really hard to know as this problem seems to be completely random. There's no way (as far as i'm aware) to recreate the problem.

It seems like a bug in the game or in the drivers themselves. Sadly I do not own a AMD card to test it to see if it does it on AND as well.

I have tried both Windows 10 and 11 and it happens on both.

As of right now I would recommend either 556.12 or 561.09. These seem to be the smoothest drivers for me.

Some of the later driver in 2024 are broken in other ways so I don't recommend them. For example, some break Digital Vibrance (resets after each restart or power off/on), others break DSR ( no more down sampling) and they also break the windows 10 transparencies (Only affects windows 10 users).

[EveningBird]

Yeah I am still having the issue unfortunately. It seems to just stutter once it gets 1fps under my refresh rate, it's so weird. I never had this issue before. Like a month or so ago it worked just fine.

[miaou_ml]

Having the same issue and I've tried so much to fix it. I'm able to get 80+FPS normally but the stutter will send it down to 20FPS for 1 second. Often it will cycle back and forth between 60 and 20 for a few seconds before going back up to 80.
It most definitely has nothing to do with the driver because none of my other, more graphically intensive games are behaving this way. FFXIV itself is just not cooperating at all with the GPU's vsync and frame creation.

[EveningBird]

Yeah I suspect now that the issue lies within the game too. I see more and more posts like these. Driver wise it doesn't matter which I pick, all have stutters and weird frame drops. My current system is 6 months old, so that cannot be it. I also tested my temps and they are fine, so it's no throttling issue.

[Yeol]

I'm running latest drivers with no issues. Maybe this cloud help.

I have 2 monitors:
- Main (3440x1440) locked at 60hz | g-sync enabled.
- Side (1920x1080) locked at 60hz | g-sync disabled.

My husband had FPS problems only when both monitors had g-sync enabled.
- Main (3440x1440) locked at 120hz | g-sync disabled.
- Side (2560x1440) locked at 60hz | g-sync disabled.

All the monitors and game FPS match. Meaning my monitor is set to 60 FPS everywhere. Monitor settings, windows settings, Nividia settings, and game graphic settings.