Stuttering problem

[Renemik]

Hello! I've had CKII for quite a while and have enjoyed it immensely. A while ago I upgraded from a laptop to PC and CKII ran much better and smoother with no stuttering on it for me. I had thought this computer would keep it running smoothly. However, over time it has gotten worse and I've been looking for solutions to stop this stuttering which happens when moving my camera, zooming, and without moving at all. The stuttering seems to worsen at higher speeds as well as time going by in the game. I have done clean re-installs (as I have seen advised on these forums) and removed trees from the settings but still it seems that I can't get rid of the stuttering. Europa Universalis IV also does this and it used to run much smoother as well (I've also lowered graphics settings in that game to no avail). So I have decided to come here to see if there is something I am missing.

My checksum is 2.3 BTOF

View attachment DxDiag Settings and System Log.txt

 

[AndrewT]

So on this same machine both games used to be fine, and have just started doing this? Did that happen at the same time for both games? Any change or update happen at that time?

Can you describe the stutter? is it while scrolling the map around, moving units, zooming in and out, the day-to-day movement of time... ?

Your sound driver is pretty old, you should check with realTEK for an update.

What anti-virus app do you have? Does disabling it help?

In Task Manager, are there NO apps running aside from Steam when you run the game? What about in Processes - anything there that might get in the way?

 

[Renemik]

I have noticed it getting worse but it has never been as bad as it is now. It seems to stutter quite a bit more on my game in year 905 more than my game in 790 to where it is very distracting. Yes both EUIV and CKII have slowed a bit. No real changes have been made that I noticed a difference after anything I've added to my computer so I'm not sure what is causing it.

The stuttering happens mostly when moving/zooming but I can also hear the music stutter when the camera is still in my 905 game. It doesn't stutter every day but it stutters frequently especially with lots of units on screen or when messages pop up.

I updated my sound driver and disabled my Avast antivirus but it hasn't helped. No other apps are running and no processes seem to be getting in the way.

 

[AndrewT]

Hmmm. Well if it's been getting steadily worse while the games have not changed, something is happening on this computer, it seems to me. Do you have access to another machine to test the games on?

What if you exit Steam and run just eu4.exe amd k2game.exe manually - does it still happen?

Is the problem identical on the two games?

If you turn music off entirely (settings.txt - master_volume=0) does that change the problem at all?

Can I get your complete dxdiag.txt please?


Please report the temperatures of your CPU and video (GPU)
1/ before starting the game up and
2/ after say 20 minutes' play. If your PC's vendor has given you no way of reading temperatures, install


GPU-Z http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
and

CPU-Z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

or
SPEEDFAN http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

 

[Renemik]

I have my old laptop which already had problems running CKII back before Old Gods but no other computer to test it on.

Running the .exe file without steam didn't help and turning music off didn't help either.

Before playing my GPU was 26C and after playing 20 minutes it was 29C. My CPU remained at 0C the whole time.

Another note while playing I noticed was that when paused the game ran smoothly, only when unpaused it stutters and gets worse with each increasing speed (1,2,3 ect).

View attachment DxDiag.txt

 

[AndrewT]

Before playing my GPU was 26C and after playing 20 minutes it was 29C. My CPU remained at 0C the whole time.

Those aren't really possible, especially 0c of course! Whichever app you used to read those temps, please try the other one.

I can see you have a lot of nero codecs installed. Can you get a codec analyser like Sherlock to check into this machine, and see if it sees any problems there. You might consider installing the k-lite codec pack to make sure you get good codecs; of course only download it from some reputable source like cnet!