Micro Stuttering from running a balanced power plan! (TEMP FIX HERE)

[LiveOrDie]

There seem to be a problem with x99 and using a balanced power plan it produces Micro Stutters in some games i can't say how many games get this problem but Bioshock Infinite is one of them, After comparing both balanced and High Performance you can clearly see the problem, And seeing my 3770K runs a balanced power plan fine with no stuttering i can only put it down to the chipset?

Games Affected/Tested so far

Bioshock Infinite
Borderlands 2
Borderlands The Pre-Sequel


EDIT 03/02/15 TEMP FIX

This problem seems to be related to the unreal engine and X99 chipset there is no hard fix for this problem but you can download this handy tray program called Full Throttle Override
and add all unreal engine games to its games list this will set a High Performance power plan when starting the game.

[Avenger411]

LiveOrDie wrote:
I tested without sli also if you think its FPS lag turn on shadow play so it renders a fps counter and maybe try at a lower res as the stuttering isn't GPU related so res shouldn't matter, no tools you can just tell by watching how smooth the camera pans accross the screen watch it on each test on each power plan and if there's a difference you will see it.

Hey!

Ok i tested it a bunch of times. My findings are like yours but it is somewhat hard to spot but i can see "a little" stuttering when on balanced power plan but it is not obvious AT ALL. It could be because of the fact that the UE4 demo isn't well optimized or am i wrong ?. Still it looks like there's stuttering when you look for it.

thanks

Max

[LiveOrDie]

Avenger411 wrote:
Hey!

Ok i tested it a bunch of times. My findings are like yours but it is somewhat hard to spot but i can see "a little" stuttering when on balanced power plan but it is not obvious AT ALL. It could be because of the fact that the UE4 demo isn't well optimized or am i wrong ?. Still it looks like there's stuttering when you look for it.

thanks

Max

The UT4 engine should be well optimized so should the UT3 engine which has the same problems as well with X99, The stuttering mite show more depending on resolution as I'm on 2560x1440 ill have to test the demo out on 1080p but from what i recall when playing borderlands Pre-squeal changing the resolution didn't affect the stuttering at all.

[dimension]

I have run the ue4 demo several times, and Im sure i can see more stuttering with a balanced power profile rather than min CPU forced to 100%. I only really see it in the first half of the demo when panning in the scene. The FPS is steady at 1500fps on both profiles.


I do not have any of the games you have listed to test in game.

[LiveOrDie]

dimension wrote:
I have run the ue4 demo several times, and Im sure i can see more stuttering with a balanced power profile rather than min CPU forced to 100%. I only really see it in the first half of the demo when panning in the scene. The FPS is steady at 1500fps on both profiles.


I do not have any of the games you have listed to test in game.

1500FPS is that a typo? The stuttering won't affect FPS my frame rate stays the same as well on both plans at lest i know now its a problem related to the chipset and the unreal engine the UE4 demo runs on the new UT4 engine as well. Thanks for the feedback.

[dimension]

Oops I was looking at memory usage rather than FPS.

FPS on balanced jumps between 51 and 54, on high power it jumps between 61 and 62, so more FPS and less jitter.

First run on balanced, the second run was with the power profile set to high power

ue4_demo_fps

[Avenger411]

Hey!

Chino/praz/raja , you guys have been able to replicate this issue ?

Max

[LiveOrDie]

Yer it a lot hard to see after the pillar part of the demo but its is still there i would see like to find out why on X99 has the problem on balanced mode / adaptive CPU frequency , I played through Borderlands with this problem i through it was my GPUs until i start testing things out.

[odysseas_nemo]

Just for information I have noticed the same in Dragon age inquisition and middle earth shadow of Mordor.
Games runs significantly smoother with no adaptive voltage.

Running them on 1080p, 690gtx, 5960x, rampage V.

[Kosmosagamemnon]

Hmm I too experience heavy stutter, games freezing for maybe 1/2 a second and resuming like nothing happened every few minutes. I am using the latest drivers and I am running a High Performance Power plan. I run games at 1080p and have 2 GeForce Titan's in SLI x16 Link speed for both cards and a SoundBlaster ZxR PCIe Soundcard. The system has 3 Samsung 840Pro SSD's and 16GB of G.Skill F4-3000-C15 RAM, I also have an Intel 5960X CPU (due to other issues I do not run an overclock). In my case the difference from the original poster is that I have 'Above 4G Decoding' enabled in BIOS. But Stutter is not limited to his machine others are experiencing it too.

[jonstatt]

Kosmosagamemnon wrote:
Hmm I too experience heavy stutter, games freezing for maybe 1/2 a second and resuming like nothing happened every few minutes. I am using the latest drivers and I am running a High Performance Power plan. I run games at 1080p and have 2 GeForce Titan's in SLI x16 Link speed for both cards and a SoundBlaster ZxR PCIe Soundcard. The system has 3 Samsung 840Pro SSD's and 16GB of G.Skill F4-3000-C15 RAM, I also have an Intel 5960X CPU (due to other issues I do not run an overclock). In my case the difference from the original poster is that I have 'Above 4G Decoding' enabled in BIOS. But Stutter is not limited to his machine others are experiencing it too.

That is not the micro-stuttering that the OP was referring to though which is really quite subtle and has minimal effects on benchmarks. A 1/2 second freeze is a full-on stutter. I doubt it's anything to do with the MB or power plan. It is more likely to do with GPU drivers or the SoundBlaster. In your situation I would pull the SoundBlaster and see if it has any effect. I would also switch off SLI temporarily in the NVidia control panel and check for behavioural changes.

NVidia have had problems with recent drivers, particularly with the 970, but not confined soley to that card as I see reports of similar issues with Titans and 980s. This is theory right now but part of the issue seems to stem from the fact that the latest driver iterations try and harmonise different cards more effectively. So say for example you have a 970 from MSI that is not overclocked at all, and another 970 from Palit that is...in the past this was not recommended at all. Now the drivers attempt to sync the two cards clocks. As a result the voltage may drop on one of the cards (even if they are identical due to the fact one card may be slightly more efficient than the other - this can be found by checking ASIC value in GPU-Z), and this appears to be causing some weird effects such as one of the cards down-clocking temporarily as it thinks its going into power save when it shouldn't be.