Stellaris is Stuttering

[LoiteringAround]

(My post keeps getting flagged as spam/inappropriate, hence short message) HWMonitor is after 20 minutes of gameplay at fastest speed. This is my second fresh install of windows. Error log from a recent game. I have enjoyed a relatively smooth experience up until recently. Rolling back to previous versions does not fix the problem.

 

[AndrewT]

If a game version that used to perform well no longer does, that points to some new local problem or change.


Right click on stellaris.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, refresh rate 60.

Is that any better?

 

[LoiteringAround]

If a game version that used to perform well no longer does, that points to some new local problem or change.

My thoughts as well, but I have not found anything wrong with my hardware since the fresh install. Played satisfactory last night with some friends and it ran smoothly. I could run a set of intensive benchmarks to fully test it if you wanted.

I did not see any improvements, however, unless I'm being dumb, that was intended to cap the in-game fps to 60 fps right ? Both nvidia's performance overlay and 3dstats showed fps in the 200s when I started a new game. Attached my settings.text from Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris, which showed the settings change was picked up. Thank you for the help btw

 

[AndrewT]

I did not see any improvements, however, unless I'm being dumb, that was intended to cap the in-game fps to 60 fps right ? Both nvidia's performance overlay and 3dstats showed fps in the 200s when I started a new game.

Yes, that is what should have happened. But is geForce Experience running? It may be trying to optimise that game, I've seen that actually make it run worse. If it's loaded, unload it and try again.

If however it's not loaded, you can load it and set it to cap the frame rate.

 

[LoiteringAround]

I uninstalled GeForce experience and reinstalled the graphics drivers without it. The fps was over 60fps. I then used the Nvidia control panel to force 60fps and it worked. However, this made the stuttering even more noticeable.

I have just installed GeForce experience and reinstalled the graphics drivers through it. However when I go to 'optimize the game', I have very limited settings.
I have kept the 'disable fullScreen optimisations' ticked during all these processes.

If its of any help, I have noticed and remembered that Stellaris sometimes does not start with the right resolution, sometimes it will start in 4k and I have to restart the game. This was happening before the issue and it happened when I was going through these steps.

 

[HFY]

Pause the music.

That sometimes helps stuttering for me.

Here's a bug report about it:

Stellaris - Butler v2.8.1 (2890) and v2.8.0: Graphic stuttering while paused (caused by audio issue with soundtrack playing)

Description Stellaris - Butler v2.8.1 (2890) and v2.8.0: Graphic stuttering while paused Game Version Stellaris AI Beta 2.8.1 (2890) and 2.8.0 both with and without -dx11 command line option. What version do you use? Steam What expansions do...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[LoiteringAround]

Thanks for your suggestion, it does lessen the problem a bit sometimes, but my problem still persists. Not sure if this helps, but I think I found some missing textures. I'm just adding things I notice if it helps, but switching systems or opening menus will also cause the game to stutter as well. You can see it on the 3dstats menu.

 

[AndrewT]

I think what you are getting at with those screenshots is the fps are lower when there's a lot of stuff on the screen, is that right?

I have noticed and remembered that Stellaris sometimes does not start with the right resolution, sometimes it will start in 4k and I have to restart the game. This was happening before the issue and it happened when I was going through these steps.

This however I don't understand. The game should read the settings.txt file and use that resolution, and that's that.

Your Windows User Documents folder is not on OneDrive is it?

 

[LoiteringAround]

Screenshots were to show the missing texture and the stutter right after clicking on a system to view it.
I don't keep any local files back up in OneDrive, but I uninstalled it to be sure.

I did some more testing, I have found that pausing the music does stop the stuttering in the early game. However, I ran a game overnight in observation mode, and the stuttering is still apparent in the later stages of the game. Its less frequent than what I was observing in the early game, however, the framedrops or lag spikes are much more severe. I never had late game stuttering like this, ssure my fps might drop, but everything was responsive and relatively smooth.

I have run stress tests on my CPU & GPU to find that they are working well. I also checked the health of my drives, all of which are looking good.

 

[AndrewT]

I don't keep any local files back up in OneDrive, but I uninstalled it to be sure.

Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to Properties, Location. It'll say if it's held local or OneDrive there.

Screenshots were to show the missing texture and the stutter right after clicking on a system to view it.

I'm not familiar enough with how that screen should look to see what you were getting at there then, sorry - I don't actually play this game!

I have found that pausing the music does stop the stuttering in the early game. However, I ran a game overnight in observation mode, and the stuttering is still apparent in the later stages of the game. Its less frequent than what I was observing in the early game, however, the framedrops or lag spikes are much more severe.

That almost sounds like there are two unrelated causes of your problems ! But I don't see any cause for them in these files that you or I could do anything about I'm sorry - either there's a game bug affected it on your hardware, or there's a problem in your machine causing it, or perhaps both.

Can you test affected save games on any other machine you might have access to?

 

[LoiteringAround]

Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to Properties, Location. It'll say if it's held local or OneDrive there.

I think it's held locally, I've attached a screenshot.

I'm not familiar enough with how that screen should look to see what you were getting at there then, sorry - I don't actually play this game!

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse you. You should try Stellaris, its an amazing game!

That almost sounds like there are two unrelated causes of your problems ! But I don't see any cause for them in these files that you or I could do anything about I'm sorry - either there's a game bug affected it on your hardware, or there's a problem in your machine causing it, or perhaps both.

Can you test affected save games on any other machine you might have access to?

I don't have access to another machine that can run Stellaris well enough. I could send a save to friend to see if the problem persists. Honestly I'm baffled on how this issue came about. No other game I've played recently has had issues like this and for most of the hundreds of hours I have, its has been problem free. It's frustrating, I don't understand what triggered it. It must be a software issues of some kind. Regardless, thank you for your help so far.

 

[AndrewT]

I did play Stella soon after release but simply no time now; I am supporting something like 30-40 games now!

By all means attach an affected save file here for me or others to test out.

No other game I've played recently has had issues like this and for most of the hundreds of hours I have, its has been problem free. It's frustrating, I don't understand what triggered it.

Do you know when it last worked okay for you? If so you can try reverting to the game patch that was current at that time to see if it still runs well or now has this problem.

Patches - Stellaris Wiki

stellaris.paradoxwikis.com

Note that when you revert game versions you should delete the Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folder (except any valued save games of course) so the older game version can write it the way it wants to.

 

[LoiteringAround]

Save file has been attached, its the one I've been using to test. I have all the dlcs by the way. Not the original game where the stuttering starting occurring though.


It was last working on the current patch, but I have tried reverting to other patches to no success.


At this point, I really don't have anything else to test. I've sent a save to a friend to test and I'll hear back probably tomorrow. The only other things I can do now is starting replacing hardware.


Just to recap for future readers: When starting a new game, pausing the music can help reduce the stuttering for the early game ( you can still see it if you look closely). However, later on the stuttering gets much worse and a lot more easier to see. The stuttering can be seen when changing menus or viewing different systems. Ships will jitter when moving across a system. Panning the camera while in the ship design menu will also show the stutter.

This problem occurred on the current version of stellaris, and I have had no real issues with the game up until then. Performance is not a issue for me (see pc specs below). I do not remember making any major hardware or software changes at the time. The only thing that I remember happening was a windows update, but the restart to install the windows update was done after the stuttering started. So I don't think that really applies.


Changes I have tried:
- Changing full screen / border less windows
- uninstalled GeForce Experience and installing graphics drivers without it
- turning off v-sync, multi-sample level, lowered graphical settings
- turned off autosave and all event pop-ups
- turning off adaptive sync
- installled the game on my M.2, SSD and mechanical hard drive.
- disabling all my DLCS (which made the problem worse)
- rolling back patches (all the way back to 2.7)
- reinstalled windows and drivers
- used older drivers
- motherboard has been updated
- turned off multi core enhancement & Hyper-threading
- setting Stellaris' cpu afinity to real time
- Switching the load across different cores (it always maxed out one core)
- capping the frame rate to 144hz
- running the game in as a administrator
- signing out of the launcher
- playing offline
- Re-run the Redistributables
- disabled game mode, game bar, steam overlay, Nvidia's overlay
- capping the frame rate to 144fps and 60fps through Nvidia's control panel
- disabling windows defender and adding it the 'approved programs'
- Each time I reinstalled my OS, I only installed programs that were critical to testing.


Less reputable tests were:

I installed Linux (Ubunutu) and installed steam to run the game. Admittedly, I didn't have a lot of time to test on Ubuntu and I know very little about the OS, but I booted up the attached save to find the same issue. I also tried running the game through my integrated graphics (on a windows install), and I think the problem persisted as well. Though that may just have been the low fps making it hard to distinguish it.


I want to stress this: All the benchmarks and stress tests I have done so far have showed healthy hardware. The other games I have tried have not shown any issues. At first I thought this was an issue with my hardware, but nothing seems to be failing or faulty. If my quick Linux test was true, then it's not the OS either. This leaves Stellaris interacting with the drivers / hardware in some bizarre way. Am I oversimplifying this? Is there something I'm missing ? I'm no expert, but this the conclusion I have come to.

This might be a running issue with Stellaris, as there are others with this issue. Many of these people have higher end hardware, which is only thing I can correlate with all the other cases. Some people found that shifting the load around to different threads/core fixed the problem. Someone reported that upgrading their CPU caused the issue. So it could be possibly CPU related? While I"m probably already extrapolating too much already, other paradox games have people reporting a similar issue, even after going through the motions of reinstalling OS, etc.

Some examples:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/cant-find-solution-to-micro-stuttering.1467122/page-3

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/kb19m7

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/ugf1wb

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/7zgjmv

I recently was able to message Permannoyed (from the last link), and they confirm that they still have the problem. He had done the largest amount of testing:

• rolled back to every version of the game and back again. I did this every time I made another change, to make sure it wasn't that some version of the game worked with any of the other changes I made. this was an exhausting process.
• increased the windows swap file size from 8gb, to 16gb, and made sure the swap file is on my m.2. so its almost as fast as my ram is.
• disabled all settings in nvidia control panel that would potentially interfere.
• disabled SLI and tried the game using each graphics card alone.
• disabled all overclocks.
• disabled game mode, dvr, and suppressed windows 10 updates.
• rolled back to older drivers and back again. graphics, sound, network, chipset, you name it.
• updated my bios, and rolled back to older versions, and back again.
• verified steam files
• reinstalled the game,
• reinstalled windows 10,
• ran the game outside steam, signed out of pdox account,
• ran game with and without fullscreen optimizations,
• ran game in compatibility mode for windows 10, 8.1, and 7.
• ran the game in windowed mode and fullscreen.
• installed the game on SSD, m.2, and hard disks.
• disabled all antivirus and firewalls, and tried multiple different AV/FW solutions.
• disabled windows indexer (cortana)
• disabled every single telemetry system in wondows 10

I don't know what else can be tested. This has to be an engine issue, possibility related to how it interacts with the CPU.
Sorry for the long read AndrewT, just wanted to outline what's happened to see if someone in the future can look at this with the same problem and possibly solve it.


Here are my PC specs for the sake of future readers:
Intel Core i9 9900K Octa Core LGA 1151 3.60GHz Unlocked CPU Processor
MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio 11GB
Samsung 860 QVO 1TB 2.5" SATA III 6GB/s 4-Bit MLC V-NAND SSD MZ-76Q1T0BW
WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe M.2 (2280) PCIe 3x4 3D NAND SSD
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x 16GB) DDR4 3200MHz Memory
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI LGA 1151 ATX Motherboard
Corsair RM850x 850W 80 Plus V2 Gold Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

[LoiteringAround]

UPDATE: My friend reports major stuttering from the save I gave him. I had to make a separate save for him as he does not have all the DLCs like me. How is that possible ? Does this mean its an engine issue ?

 

[AndrewT]

It was last working on the current patch, but I have tried reverting to other patches to no success.

Ah, so clearly some local problem then, something has changed in your system to cause this for you. Quite what I do not know, we've seen no clues to point to ny particular area of Windows or hardware!

Does this mean its an engine issue ?

How could that be if you had the same game version and thus engine version when it ran okay? But you could test with Crusader Kings 2, which is free to play onSteam now and uses an older version of the same engine.

 

[LoiteringAround]

I'm downloading CK2 now to test it. My friend stuttering in his game with the save I gave him is not as significant as I thought ?

 

[AndrewT]

I'm downloading CK2 now to test it. My friend stuttering in his game with the save I gave him is not as significant as I thought ?

It has significance, but is not decisive evidence in its own right.

You raised a theory that the game engine is at fault so I'm assuming you want that investigated, that's what we're doing now. As I say it seems unlikely as if that were the issue every user would get this problem, AND you say you did not get the problem using the identical game and engine versions previously. If you no longer wish to pursue that angle that's fine by me, just let me know!

 

[LoiteringAround]

You raised a theory that the game engine is at fault so I'm assuming you want that investigated, that's what we're doing now.

thank you

So I tested Ck2 and I can report that there is stuttering there as well. Panning the camera around results in stuttering while the game is running. I also tried playing stellaris outside of steam through GOG, but I also encountered stuttering.

 

[AndrewT]

Well we didn't think Steam was causing it!

In any case it seems something has happened to your system or Windows installation to cause this with our games, hard to see exactly what though. Install and run the free utility Speccy; send its output to a text file and attach that here please.

 

[LoiteringAround]

Well we didn't think Steam was causing it!

You're right, I just wanted to tick it off the list.

Here is the text file. I'm not sure why it reports that I only have 3071MB memory for my RTX 2080ti. Task manager reports the correct amount of memory.