CPU Stutters Every 2 Seconds Exactly

User Support Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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Recently I noticed that the sim would sort of judder during gameplay, but unlike the normal random stuttering you might expect when flying this one was very regular happening exactly every 2 seconds and strangely happens even when the game is paused. Turning Terrain and Object LOD down doesn’t seem to have any effect but the stutter seems bigger during CPU heavy situations such as flying near a large city or flying a more complex aircraft such as the FBW a32NX, but it still happens in the default c152.

Example of the stutter during flight
Example of the stutter during flight1920×1080 144 KB

I capped my frame rate using the in-game vsync setting at 48 fps (33% refresh rate) since my pc can maintain that pretty smoothly apart from the aforementioned stutter, although the stutter happens with vsync on or off and any frame rate cap.

Example showing the evenly spaced stutters 2 seconds apart using MSI Afterburner Framerate and frametime graph
Example showing the evenly spaced stutters 2 seconds apart using MSI Afterburner Framerate and frametime graph1920×1080 119 KB

Example of stutter with vsync off, the framerate uncapped, and the sim paused.
Example of stutter with vsync off, the framerate uncapped, and the sim paused.1920×1080 146 KB

Things I’ve already tried to troubleshoot that haven’t worked:

  • Restarting the sim/PC
  • Clearing Rolling Cache
  • Emptying community folder
  • Reinstalling Flight Simulator
  • Turning off photogrammetry
  • Turning all setting down to low including LODs down to 10
  • Using default settings
  • Trying both DX11 and DX12
  • Trying windowed mode
  • Running the sim in completely offline mode with the ethernet cable unplugged and the PC completely disconnected from the internet
  • Windows clean boot where all non-Microsoft processes are disabled (apart from Steam and the sim obv.)
  • Unplugged mouse/keyboard/flightstick and used a more simple MnK that doesn’t want it’s own software to function properly
  • Running various malware scans/turning off windows defender completely when sim is running
  • Disabling Steam + GeForce overlays although this was covered by Windows Clean Boot
  • Making sure GPU drivers/sim/windows is fully up to date
  • Turning Gsync on/off
  • Capping the frame rate using Nvidia Control Panel

Most of these I tried with a clean boot to try to make sure 3rd party apps weren’t interfering.

PC Specs:
CPU - i7-11700F @ 2.50GHz
GPU - EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
RAM - 16GB DDR4 3000mhz
1TB WD SN550 NVME SSD ← sim and OS both installed here
Seagate Barracuda 2TB
Windows 10 home ver. 10.0.19045
144Hz 1080p monitor

I don’t know when it started happening, only that I noticed it a few weeks ago. That way that it happens with such regular timing and even when the sim is paused makes me think it might be something with the PC itself rather than the sim, like some process tying up the main thread for a very short period of time every 2 secs, although I can’t replicate this stutter on any other game. I’m finding it difficult trying to track down what might be causing it using task manager/resource monitor since the stutter happens too quickly for it to show what’s using the CPU when it happens.

I’ve only found a small handful of other posts that I think may be the same issue and they all had different causes, and none of their solutions worked for me. Also It’s kind of hard to search for specifically as “every 2 seconds” is usually just shorthand for “very often”.

It’s not unplayable or anything but I’m slightly concerned it may be a symptom of something else wrong with the PC that only really shows up with the sim’s sort of unusual CPU usage style for lack of better words. If will probably try reinstalling windows soon If I can’t track down what’s causing it first, but 1. It’s a bit of a hassle to redownload and reinstall everything and 2. If that fixes it then It doesn’t reveal specifically what the problem was in the first place other than like a corrupted windows install or something.

Sorry for the long post about a problem that might not even be the sim’s fault but I don’t know where else to look for help. Any Suggestions of things to try or ways of finding what may be causing it appreciated!

2

I’ve been having a similar issue for several months, but less jarring. I have a ‘freeze’ every 73 seconds. What? I’ve spent over 80 hours troubleshooting, doing a lot of the same things, including upgrading my entire system except for the motherboard and M.2 drives. It’s definitely network related for me. I’m using XPlane now to troubleshoot, because I can remove the ethernet cable and it will still keep running. When I do that, the freeze goes away. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s ethernet or wifi connected. So it’s something either in the modem/router, or in cabling to the modem, or an Xfinity network issue. 73 seconds - bizarre.

I feel for you - looking at that list sets off PTSD from all that I’ve done over a couple of months with no results. I finally convinced the cable company to send a network technician out here with some test equipment tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll make some progress. I’m thinking it’s the modem - a very expensive modem recommended by them to handle the higher bandwidth and network protocols they are putting in place. Also with resource monitor, with heavy GPU apps, I see a large spike down in utilization, and a big spike down and then up in network send/receive. CPU is harder to see as there’s too much other stuff going on in a short period of time.

Anyway - I wish you luck. If you haven’t already I would suggest testing on other streaming apps to see if it’s just MSFS or system wide. For me it happens all the time, but its only detectable with apps where there’s lots of movement.

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Thanks for the reply. I somehow doubt it’s internet related for me, though. To try to rule it out as a possible cause I:

  1. Set online functionality data setting in the sim to off
  2. Set Steam to offline mode so it doesn’t need to verify online to be able to launch the games
  3. Unplug the ethernet cable/turn wifi off and make sure the PC has no internet connection at least as far as I can tell
  4. Launch MSFS and play offline with the autogenerated scenery

The stutter still persisted after doing this, however.

Incidentally I found turning the online functionality off in MSFS settings seems to cut my initial loading time from 3 mins down to something like 30 seconds, probably because my internet’s a bit slow and it doesn’t have to load stuff like the marketplace this way, so I usually turn it off before quitting and then turn it back on next time I play after reaching the main menu screen.

Anyway, good luck on solving your issue also!

4

In the end tried resetting Windows and that seems to have solved the stuttering - I haven’t noticed any after playing for a few hours. I didn’t test playing with the new update without resetting widows because I reset windows after the SU11 dropped and also I didn’t feel like downloading 117GB of data twice over my slow internet just to check to see if the update itself solved it. Somehow I doubt it was the update anyway since it was such a specific and rare problem. It’s a shame It wasn’t something specific that I could track down but maybe that was just the nature of the issue this time.

So, solved by reinstalling Windows!

5

Actually my problem turned out to be my HP Printer. Disconnecting it from the router fixed it.

6

I had the same issue on a brand new laptop with a 13th-gen i9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU.

The solution was to turn off the Nvidia in-game overlay from inside the GeForce Experience settings.