Periodic freezes of around 4-5 seconds, every 10-15 seconds of game play, regardless of game speed

[Metrinome]

Ryzen 9950x
64 gb ram
5070 Ti (driver version 572.60)
Windows 11, 24h2

Periodically my game freezes for about 4-5 seconds. I can move the mouse and the background music keeps playing, but everything else is frozen. The UI is unresponsive, clicking on various buttons does nothing. This happens every 10 to 15 seconds of game play, regardless of game speed.

I've tried changing v sync on and off, setting maximum fps to 60 and to unlimited. I've changed various graphics settings up and down, but they made no difference. I've tried playing in windowed mode, still the same. I've tried different autosave options and even disabled it completely, no help. I also have cloud saves disabled, no change. I've gone into the game's main executable's compatibility settings and tried turning on and off the setting to disable fullscreen enhancements. No change. I have the latest in windows updates, no change.

I'm not the only one who has had this problem because I've seen previous posters both here and on reddit talk about the same issue. One poster mentioned downgrading to windows 10 solved their problem, but I'm trying to avoid that if possible.

No other paradox game I have suffers this issue. Stellaris and Crusader Kings 3 both run perfectly fine in comparison.

Any hints, suggestions, shared experiences?

 

[AndrewT]

Windows 11, 24h2

I see you have Windows 11 24H2; this can be the cause of this problem.

A user has come up with another possible workaround
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/24h2-w11-update-issue-found-no-more-crashes.1728373/
Some affected users have definitely seen that help them with this issue. I'd suggest you look at this step first!

Also make sure you are on the latest Nvidia driver

 

[Metrinome]

I see you have Windows 11 24H2; this can be the cause of this problem.

A user has come up with another possible workaround
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/24h2-w11-update-issue-found-no-more-crashes.1728373/
Some affected users have definitely seen that help them with this issue. I'd suggest you look at this step first!

Also make sure you are on the latest Nvidia driver

I tried that fix. It doesn't get rid of the problem, but it does seem to make it occur a little less often.

 

[AndrewT]

Right click on victoria3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

If those don't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.
IF dxdiag.txt fails to attach here, rename it to dxdiag.log , or zip it up.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/pdx_settings.json .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

 

[Metrinome]

Is it okay if I direct message you instead of posting those files here for everyone to see?

 

[Metrinome]

I didn't get rid of the problem entirely but I did manage to greatly reduce its occurrence rate down to around once every few minutes (It also doesn't freeze the game for as long).

I used DLSS Swapper and changed the DLSS version for Victoria 3 to the latest version. Game doesn't use DLSS (I think) but for whatever reason doing this greatly alleviated the problem.

 

[AndrewT]

Is it okay if I direct message you instead of posting those files here for everyone to see?

We get those files posted in multiple forums from many users all the time, there really isn't any personal info in them. The only possible exception might be your Windows user name, which you are welcome to redact, but isn't really any use to an external hacker anyway!

Otherwise you could zip them up with a password perhaps?