Can't figure out frame drops/microstutter

4/27 update #2: Started the game up this evening and the microstutters have returned Nothing about my setup has changed since last night.

4/27 update: I resolved this issue by doing a GPU driver clean install. See full details here: Can't figure out frame drops/microstutter

I've been experiencing frame drops/microstutters and have had zero luck trying to fix it. I've tried different frame rate caps (Nvidia control panel), v sync on/off, g sync on/off, high/med/low settings and every combination in between. I just can't seem to hold a steady fps.

These stutters happen if I'm racing against AI or on track alone and hot lapping. It happens pretty often and seems to be the worst when I'm mid-corner/exiting. If I'm capped at 120 I'll see drops down to 109 and sometimes lower.

Game is running on a 3080, 2600x, SSD, and 1440p 165Hz monitor. I know my cpu is a bit old, but the fact the stuttering happens even when I'm solo hotlapping and have the frame rate capped to 60 leads me the believe it's not a CPU bottleneck.

Anyone have ideas on how I can fix this? Not sure what else I can try at this point.

 

The stutters happen once every few seconds while on the move. Playing fullscreen or borderless windowed don't seem to really differ in my setup. Graphics settings are pretty high but I've tested on low/medium settings with capped frame rate and the stutter persists. Just doesn't make sense when I'm running this game with a 3080.

Windows and AMS2 are on separate SSDs if that matters. I don't think I'm experiencing throttling due to high temps. I have HW monitor open anytime I'm gaming and both CPU and GPU temps are stable and never really go that far past 70C under load. I'll get up to 75C at worst and that's probably just from random spikes, not a constant temp.

In regards to ram and background processes, I think I should be fine here since the only things I ever have open while playing AMS2 are hw monitor, crew chief, and sometimes discord for voice chat.

I do have another app that's always open and that's Beacn. It's a companion app for a physical audio mixer that I use in my setup. I have noticed that my CPU temp will spike about 5C to 8C then come back down when my pc is idling with the Beacn app on. The software is definitely still in it's early stages of dev and there's something going on where it makes the CPU kind of "rev up" every few seconds even without audio playing. Very weird but would definitely be worth my time to try playing AMS2 without this app running.

 

This recurant issue is there since AMS2 start, i have tryed thousend of combinations to no real result.
One thing that did help was to cap the FPS to 60, but even so its still happens, but much less.
Lets hope this desapear maybe with futures updates.

 

I have really good performance with my 3070 laptop since the last update. Even during night time with headlights behind and also with weather changes. But I still do get the odd half second freeze every so often. I think it's when other cars collide it at least it seems to be.

 

I get those micro-freezes too generally in braking zones when I'm downshifting.

 

Got rid of the microstutters by rolling back my Nvidia driver to version 511.65 (Feb 1 release). I also made sure to do a clean install of this driver. I'm not sure which of those two actually fixed the issue or if it was a combination of both. Don't really want to experiment with other cases since I got it running smoothly now, lol.

For what it's worth, the person on Reddit that suggested the clean install said that they've never had a "bad" driver update that forced them to go back to an older version. Any issues that occurred with a driver would usually be resolved by doing a clean install.

Part of my testing after the rollback was running the game in a worst case scenario: Uncapped frame rate, very high quality settings, full grid, thunderstorm weather setting, 60x time. Definitely wasn't holding or getting close to 165 fps in this case (which is expected with a full grid). I was maybe closer to 120 with drops down to 75, but regardless of the frame rate the stutters have disappeared! Game continued to run smooth even with the frame rate fluctuating.

 

Bad news, the microstutters have returned... Just doesn't make any sense. Nothing about my setup has changed since I did the clean driver install last night. I played for about 3 hours after doing that and the game ran perfectly as I mentioned in my last post. Not sure if file integrity check through steam will make any difference but at this point I'm trying all possible solutions. Unfortunate that the stuttering just seems to be part of the game for so many people...

 

For a second i had my hopes high !
too bad, looks like we will stay with this micro-freeze for more.

 

This is a long shot but have you tried testing under the same conditions but with time progression set to none ?
If you don't mind just give it a go and report back . Thanks .

 

Yes Aza, i will test that, thanks

 

I am getting stutters and random freezes in online races. I am sure its only ranked races as well as i am in a league which does 22 laps none ranked race every week which i have no trouble
Random freezes

 

I went to options, time progression was allready on "real time" so its not "time progression" that gives micro-freeze, too bad we still have to try, i suspect the PC configuration could be the prob.

EDIT micro-freeze seems to be connected with collisions and call to pit, i noticed lately.

 

Perhaps there was a setting within Nvidia control panel that I changed without realizing. My guess is low latency mode was enabled and I never went back to turn it off. I spent a few hours fiddling with in game settings again before I decided to just do another clean install of driver 511.65.

After the install, I rebooted then capped my frame rate to 120. I made sure not to touch anything else in the control panel. G-sync is enabled by default. I launched the game and ran several different scenarios with a full grid (extreme weather, night races, 60x time, etc). Microstutters were gone again. I rebooted my computer a few times just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. I played for about three hours straight without any issues. I think this was on Monday that I last played.

As of last night I no longer have the 2600x in my pc and have since upgraded to a 5600x. This was already planned and wasn't a desperate attempt to find a fix for the microstutters, lol. I haven't had a chance to launch AMS2 with this upgrade but will try to do that in the next day or two. I'll report back to see what sort of results I get.

I've attached some photos of my in game settings

 

Thanks Man, for your tips. after the last update (1.5.3) i started also to suffering with micro-shuttering (never see it before). with your setting as a base, i (hope to) resolved it.
My thought are that with my graphics card, reduce the track, grass details had a great impact on it. also re-cap the framerate to 120.