Big frame drop every 3-5s, even in main menu

[Wavygravy2]

Hi!

Recently come back to Stellaris after several years of not playing. It was playing fine and dandy for a week or so, locked at 144 fps and no appreciable slow-down or stuttering in the end-game.

Then, for the past week, I get a massive frame drop every 3-5s even in the main menu. This happens regardless of galaxy size, turn number etc. and happens in menus and when the game is paused. It's also accompanied by a change in frame brightness, slower than a flicker and more like a small pulse. Normal refresh rate is 144Hz and drops to at least 70Hz (the visual effect is much stronger and produces nasty stutter as the frame time jumps to around 150ms). If I limit the fps to 60Hz, it still happens. Tried running in full screen, windowed and borderless window with no effect.

There were no changes I knowingly made but have since done all Windows updates, a clean graphics driver install (24.5.1) and re-installed Stellaris itself. Game version is 3.12.2 - I've tried rolling back to earlier versions with no difference. GPU and CPU utilisation are under 50% and temperatures are not even 50 degrees on either CPU or GPU.

Have also dropped the GPU back to completely stock settings (from a mild undervolt) and not getting this problem in any other games.

System is:
Ryzen 5800X3d
Radeon RX7800 XT
16Gb DDR4 Ram @ 3200Hz
Gigabyte AB-350 Gaming 3 mainboard

This is making the game unplayable at the minute as panning is a horrible experience. Any ideas / suggestions greatly appreciated!

 

[AndrewT]

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere, and user empire designs.txt from /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ if you have made any custom empires or races.
- "uninstall" in Steam-Stellaris
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Stellaris AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folders - In particular you need to make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Stellaris or Documents Stellaris locations, before installing again.
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add stellaris.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.

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

THEN test with a new unmodded galaxy, not any existing one.

If that doesn'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.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log

 

[Wavygravy2]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response. I started with the easy stuff and either whitelisting in the AV (Avast) or disabling full screen optimisation has done the trick.

Vsync is still on and running at 144Hz nicely

Thank you!

 

[Nakkivene]

This voodoo trick helped me too. What do fullscreen optimizations do anyway?

 

[AndrewT]

How to Disable Fullscreen Optimizations Windows 10 - MiniTool

If you are looking for solutions to disable fullscreen optimizations, this post is what you need since it shows how to disable fullscreen optimizations.

www.minitool.com

Fullscreen optimization is a new Windows 10 feature designed to improve your PC’s performance during gaming sessions as well as run the game on a borderless full screen. When the fullscreen optimizations feature is enabled, it allows the operating system to optimize performance of games and apps when they are running in full screen mode. The fullscreen feature is enabled by default and it is available starting with Windows build 17093.

However, some users have noticed that this fullscreen optimization feature might not work properly and does not improve app performance as expected. Even worse, it causes a drop in framerate.

How MS figure that running in borderless windowed mode would ever be faster than real fullScreen, i do not know.

 

[Nakkivene]

How to Disable Fullscreen Optimizations Windows 10 - MiniTool

If you are looking for solutions to disable fullscreen optimizations, this post is what you need since it shows how to disable fullscreen optimizations.

www.minitool.com

How MS figure that running in borderless windowed mode would ever be faster than real fullScreen, i do not know.

Amazing. I will have to try this in some other games too.

 

[HFY]

How to Disable Fullscreen Optimizations Windows 10 - MiniTool

If you are looking for solutions to disable fullscreen optimizations, this post is what you need since it shows how to disable fullscreen optimizations.

www.minitool.com

How MS figure that running in borderless windowed mode would ever be faster than real fullScreen, i do not know.

I'm starting to get the impression that MS has so much poorly-written / undocumented legacy code, that they basically do experimental testing and report back results rather than deciding in advance what to code.

It might be an early form of Archaeo-engineering.