I have resisted starting a topic as I was trying to figure this out on my own but I’m at my wits end. I recently upgraded my system and while fs2020 definitely runs smoother, I now have some horrible stuttering and at times the sim briefly freezes and no change that I make seems to alleviate it. The stutters themselves aren’t the worst part, but the sound gets crackly or cuts out when these stutters occur, which is really annoying. I never had these issues on my old system (7700k, 2080, 32GB, w10) though maybe they were less noticeable with a more heavily taxed system?
Specs
Windows 11 Pro
9800x3d
RTX 5070Ti
64GB RAM
Sim installed on nvme drive and community folder on separate nvme.
256GB rolling cache
The stutters seem to happen in any region regardless of scenery density or PG / Non-PG area. They appear to be related to scenery loading but seem constant throughout all the graphics presets. This issue is primarily with FS20. I have FS24 as well and while I do get stutters in that, they are far more sporadic.
I have tried-
HAGs on/off
Closing anything non essential in task manager
Different graphics presets
Adjusting objects settings
Adjusting LOD settings
Disabling IOMMU and SVM in bios
Defender exceptions
Recall disable
When viewing the dev mode frame rate counter I can see momentary spikes for the main counter, manipulators, and sometimes rdr, but they’re so brief I can’t read what the cause is. These usually correlate with a spike in my CPU usage. For FS20 my cpu usage is typically around 40-50% and same for the GPU usage. VRAM is around 8GB. I know other posts have said to try and max out your GPU but even at ultra settings that’s typically my usage.
Just a thought… turn off the rolling cache and delete the existing cache file and see if your stuttering stops. This was a common issue for me back when I used FS20, so maybe it will be helpful for you. Hope this helps.
Just some ideas I had when reading this:
Do you have issues in any other games?
Have you tried running some stress tests for CPU and GPU?
XMP enabled?
I think there is some sort of RAM stability test tool?
DDU and then reinstall the GPU driver. Maybe try an older version
Hello, I have a new PC with the above components and it runs both 2020 and 2024 very smoothly right out of the box. @TenPatrol has been helping me tweak settings so perhaps he can help you too, since your are stuck?
When I first built this machine I installed a bunch of Gigabyte and AMD software and I’m wondering if some of that could be causing issues. I know some backup application that got installed by Gigabyte GCC was doing weird stuff like forcing explorer to open only on my second monitor.
I have verified the NVMEs are in the correct slots and not sharing bandwidth with the GPU, and GPUZ shows full 16x for the GPU. I mentioned the FPS counter in my initial post, and disk usage is practically zero in task manager, RAM usage hovers around 8GB and CPU usually around 50% and spikes to 80-90% during a stutter, but again they’re so brief I don’t know that task manager in that moment is fully accurate.
I should add that when i initially built this system i was re-using a 2080 from my previous build, and noticed these stutters / pauses after I upgraded to the 5070Ti, or at least noticed them more. I did run DDU prior to installing the new card.
I can see exactly the same behaviour on FS2024 with i9-12900ks + 4090 + 64 GB + M2 disks + Win 11 24H2. This happens even with the lowest preset (so no quality at all) and also happens in non detailed areas (polar, desert, etc). As soon as you can´t mitigate it via settings it looks as a terrain/scenery loading problem at game core level. The reproduction of the same peaks at main thread & manipulators thread, followed by CPU trying to catch-up the extra load, points to that at least.
Either threads are getting out of sync or maybe too much is done during just a few frames on main thread (e.g: loading a lot of new scenery data while releasing a lot of old scenery from memory at the same time). What I can clearly see is that complete simulation, except sound playing, is momentary frozen during that process. I can also notice the sound cracks you describe, but from time to time only and short after the freezes are terminated.
In normal conditions those intense CPU peaks are only seen when loading a huge amount of data in one go, for instance during game loading or initial flight loading. They clearly shouldn´t happen during regular scenery updating, as that requires moderate CPU usage only. And in particular they shouldn´t happen at all while rendering flat polar or desert areas with the quality of graphical settings set to “lowest”, as there´s basically no significant workload to handle in such case.
I remember several patches ago, in FS2020 case, when a similar problem started to happen. The main difference I quickly noticed after updating at that time was that the flight start cinematics produced short freezes and severe FPS drops, that were never happening before that patch. Then I started to notice the scenery updating issue you describe too, which persisted till I quit using FS2020 by end of last year. The same freezes can be also seen in FS2024 now at the flight start cinematics and the same scenery updating issue as well. I have been using the same system with both games.
Interesting. In ‘24 I don’t see them very often whereas in ‘20 they’re constant. I also get these pauses when cruising way up at 30,000+ so it’s hard to believe scenery loading at that height can trigger a stutter, but it certainly does seem like it. With folks saying they aren’t seeing the same behavior I have to assume something else is up. I’m trying everything I can to avoid reinstalling Windows, but fortunately I have a USB with 23H2 so that’s my last resort.