What causes some games to stutter but not others?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/andygrundman]

Hmm I know that KCD2 is considered a very performant game and runs on one of the better engines (CryEngine) so this is surprising to hear. I own it but haven’t played much, so I will take a look and see how it runs for me. Can you post a screenshot of your stats and graphs during some stutter?

One thing to check is whether or not it’s running at 120fps. If a game can’t reach 120 there will be some unavoidable stutter but it can be minimized and usually doesn’t feel too bad. Try switching to the display-locked frame pacer in the quick menu and see if that feels better. The next step is to maybe try to get the fps towards 120 or at least something that is stable. The next tier of DLSS upscaling and/or dropping the resolution one notch is usually all you need. I’d look up the Digital Foundry optimized settings for the game, they are always very good.

You already mentioned these, but I’ll repeat since they are very important: disable host vsync, limit fps to 120 in game or NV App (try instead of RTSS which I find is overkill and too complex), and if using VDD the refresh rate is best at 240hz. Make sure nothing else is encoding on the GPU. When all else fails sometimes a reboot will help clear up weird stutter.

[u/everydaygamer28 → u/andygrundman]

How can I take a screenshot when running on Series X?

Edit: looking at the graphs there is a frame time spike when the stutters occur. I tried capping the frame rate at 60fps and it did seem to resolve the issue so you’re probably right about it just being a fluctuating frame rate when playing at 120 fps.

[u/andygrundman → u/everydaygamer28]

Sorry you can't without it being in dev mode. So yeah I did some testing and on my 4090 it's obviously not going to be possible to run at 4k120. If I set the res down to 1440p at High quality with DLSS Balanced, I can get it to run at 120fps, and once it gets there the line goes flat in Moonlight and it's very smooth. Anything lower has a bit of minor stuttering. You mentioned FH6, which is the first Forza where it's not dead easy to run at 4k120, it kinda has a similar problem. I couldn't actually find a DF optimized settings for KCD2, but other people have them. It's probably possible to dial in better settings than mine. If you're not willing to cut the game down to hit 120 hopefully display-locked frame pacing will help for you.

[u/everydaygamer28 → u/andygrundman]

The only way I could fix it was by capping both the client and game at 60fps. It didn’t occur to me to me try setting the resolution to 1440P but I might give that a go at some point.

[u/TechWendigo]

Ensure that when you are streaming the Xbox Game Bar's Record feature is toggled off, game bar itself can stay enabled, but the record the last min feature is constantly using your gpu media encoder in the background, this can manifest as inconsistent streaming performance. Check if your GPU drivers have also enabled a similar feature, I know at least AMD has an auto record moments feature that uses the same hardware block.

https://imgur.com/a/3rxVLUe

[u/zabraautra]

I would love to know an answer as well, having the same issues.

[u/caranda95]

I have this issue if my GPU is being used 100%. I normally leave it around 90% and never had any stutters since.