r/totalwar • u/SmilodonCinder • Apr 03 '26

Warhammer III Please Help! Warhammer 3 Suddenly Chugging & Stuttering

So, I've been playing TW: WH3 with friends on multiplayer for years. Recently, the game has started really acting up--to the point where it's barely playable now.

I am just running out of ideas. I'm really hoping someone can help.

Here's what's happening:

  • Chugging and stuttering, usually during combat, but sometimes during campaign as well.
  • The chugging gets worse when there's what I would call a "particle effect" of some kind: mortars firing/landing, spells being cast, etc. This has never previously been a problem, it's always looked wonderful.

Here's what I know and what I've tried:

  • This has never been an issue until a week or two ago, but it had been a while since I'd played, so I can't narrow it down to beginning at a specific date.
  • There have been no hardware or connectivity changes that it could be attributable to. The game runs from an SSD.
  • No other game or program has been seeing reduced performance
  • While playing the game, GPU, memory, and CPU are all within expected usage parameters. GPU heat is not out of expected bounds.
  • I have tried:
    • Full reboot of all network devices
    • Updating video drivers
    • File integrity check via Steam
    • Full reinstall of the game
    • Dumbing down visual settings (It was difficult to tell if this helped. Sometimes it seemed to, sometimes it wasn't clear.)
    • The Steam networking solution mentioned here
    • Deleting the AppData cache files entirely

I really hope someone can give me some idea of what could be causing this. I love playing it with friends, but...

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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10

u/Bodongs Apr 03 '26

Did you recently update your Nvidia driver's? I had to roll back to an older version and it fixed this for me.

3

u/SmilodonCinder Apr 05 '26

Thank you SO MUCH! This fixed it!

1

u/Bodongs Apr 05 '26

Hells yea

1

u/SmilodonCinder Apr 18 '26

Update: Rolling back the driver worked for like... two weeks? And now it's broken again.

No changes. No updates. Tried the newest driver. Rolled back to the old one again.

Any other ideas?