# Games not smooth despite 60+ FPS when vsync is off!



## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 19, 2015)

When i bought my PC and installed a windows 8.1 for the first time games worked perfect vsync on or off. Then i got my HDD (Had SSD only before) and reinstalled windows 8.1 on SSD. When running games with vsync off they looks terrible. My fps is showing 60-120 (in most cases 80) fps, but games are not smooth at all. But when i vsync is on and games are capped on 60fps its smooth as butter! I dont mind playing at 60fps but demanding games as Dying Light , Far Cry 4 get those small fps drops to 57-58 that drives me crazy. My fps on these games is always around 80fps at ultra but does not feel smooth at all with that vsync disabled.

What could cause these problems?
My drivers are updated , Windows 8.1 is up to date as well. I dont have a virus.

PC :

GTX 970 4gb OC
i5 4690k
8gb of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Gigabyte Z97 Gaming 3 Motherboard
Corsair x600m
Samsung Evo SSD 120GB
Barracuda HDD 1TB


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## Aquinus (Mar 19, 2015)

That's called tearing. When V-Sync is off, the scene can get cut off before it's fully rendered, so in reality you're seeing parts of two rendered scenes. V-Sync makes it so that doesn't happen and it does this by using a buffer to hold on to a frame or two so it can easily put an entire cohesive scene on the screen, one at a time. I personally feel that there is no reason to not use V-Sync on a properly configured computer unless you can't maintain 60FPS. G-Sync and FreeSync are supposed to be better solutions to V-Sync with regard to this particular problem.


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## AsRock (Mar 19, 2015)

I play Dying Light @ 3200x1800 without issue without vsync, although with it feels a little odd although totally playable still i have enjoyed it much more with it off.

As for what FPS i am getting i have no idea but it feels like 40+. I keep meaning to try another app other than AB but never get around to it as it's played perfectly fine for me.

And tbh to complain of it dropping 3 fps max i cannot help  to say get over it lol.  Which is another reason i have not installed another fps monitor as it just gets in the way of just enjoying a game.

EDIT: tell ya what turn the nVidia option on to run it at a higher resolution than your monitor does that will cut the fps down some so if tearing is your issue it should be problem solved.


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## Aquinus (Mar 19, 2015)

AsRock said:


> And tbh to complain of it dropping 3 fps max i cannot help to say get over it lol. Which is another reason i have not installed another fps monitor as it just gets in the way of just enjoying a game.


8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application starts using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgraded from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.

So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.


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## MrGenius (Mar 19, 2015)

This^


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## Devon68 (Mar 19, 2015)

Did you have the hard drive connected while you reinstalled the Win 8.1 on your SSD?


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## MrGenius (Mar 19, 2015)

And/or are you using the HDD for your swap file instead of the SSD? Dumb question...I know.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 19, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> That's called tearing. When V-Sync is off, the scene can get cut off before it's fully rendered, so in reality you're seeing parts of two rendered scenes. V-Sync makes it so that doesn't happen and it does this by using a buffer to hold on to a frame or two so it can easily put an entire cohesive scene on the screen, one at a time. I personally feel that there is no reason to not use V-Sync on a properly configured computer unless you can't maintain 60FPS. G-Sync and FreeSync are supposed to be better solutions to V-Sync with regard to this particular problem.



Just to make clear. I know the difference between screen tearing and when game is not smooth. Im fine with screen tearing and of course that i get it when i disable vsync but choppy gameplay did not existed before. Also i should mention that when i disable vsync in games and limit the fps to 60 in dxtory i get that choppy gameplay again even when fps is limited at 60. So it has to do something with that vsync. 

Thanks for trying to help me.



Aquinus said:


> 8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application starts using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgraded from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.
> 
> So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.



Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)



Devon68 said:


> Did you have the hard drive connected while you reinstalled the Win 8.1 on your SSD?



First i had a Windows 8.1 on SSD only (had no HDD then) Then i bought HDD , mounted it on PC before installing the Windows (just to move important files) Then i installed a Windows on SDD when HDD was in PC and working.


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## AsRock (Mar 19, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> 8GB of ram maybe? It's possible that Windows could be doing a little bit of swapping if the application stats using a lot of memory and if there are other background services or applications. I upgrade from my Phenom II 940 because 8GB of DDR2 wasn't cutting it anymore.
> 
> So maybe keeping an eye on CPU and memory usage when the OP is gaming would be a good plan to see if anything stands out.



I have noticed after playing Dyinglight windows cache jumps from 4GB to 9-10GB with about 6GB used.

So i guess it could be windows making more space for the game to be cached maybe but putting it in to the pagefile.

CPU usage is pretty low at around 50%.


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## Aquinus (Mar 19, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Just to make clear. I know the difference between screen tearing and when game is not smooth. Im fine with screen tearing and of course that i get it when i disable vsync but choppy gameplay did not existed before. Also i should mention that when i disable vsync in games and limit the fps to 60 in dxtory i get that choppy gameplay again even when fps is limited at 60. So it has to do something with that vsync.


Yes, but limiting to 60FPS without V-Sync is not the same because you're not using the graphics card driver to buffer the scenes, so you'll still get tearing. You can get tearing under 60FPS too, the difference is that it's much less likely to happen. The issue is that V-Sync does exactly that, it keeps the output of the frames synchronized to the refresh rate of the display, so if a frame isn't ready for one reason or another, it won't display the frame until the beginning of the next refresh cycle (stutter), whereas without V-Sync, it will start displaying it on the next frame which is already being drawn (tearing). So it's more of a function of how the operation of displaying a frame changes, not the frame rate itself. I just wanted to makes sure that clarification was put in there because V-Sync isn't simply a limited frame rate, it's a frame rending scheme that's locked to the refresh rate.


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Thanks for trying to help me.


That's why we're here. 


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)


After Effects can use a lot of memory, so can Windows itself. If you're closing applications and memory usage isn't dropping, that means either the application are taking up hardly any memory or that the memory they are consuming are swapped out and are in the page file, not in active memory. If this happens regularly, I would suggest considering a 16GB set. It probably would solve a lot of these problems.

Short term, I would find out what's eating up so much memory when it occurs by using the task manager and checking the peak working set size on all processes. Sorting by this column will be very enlightening.

For example, I turned my tower on and haven't done much more than open Chrome. This is what I see (with a lot of columns being displayed, not all are defaults.)





So for your case, your worst offenders (with respect to memory usage) should be square at the top of this list.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 20, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Yes, but limiting to 60FPS without V-Sync is not the same because you're not using the graphics card driver to buffer the scenes, so you'll still get tearing. You can get tearing under 60FPS too, the difference is that it's much less likely to happen. The issue is that V-Sync does exactly that, it keeps the output of the frames synchronized to the refresh rate of the display, so if a frame isn't ready for one reason or another, it won't display the frame until the beginning of the next refresh cycle (stutter), whereas without V-Sync, it will start displaying it on the next frame which is already being drawn (tearing). So it's more of a function of how the operation of displaying a frame changes, not the frame rate itself. I just wanted to makes sure that clarification was put in there because V-Sync isn't simply a limited frame rate, it's a frame rending scheme that's locked to the refresh rate.
> 
> That's why we're here.
> 
> ...



Task manager shows no apps that use so much memory when memory usage is high.


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## Aquinus (Mar 20, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Task manager shows no apps that use so much memory when memory usage is high.


Make sure to click "Show processes from all users" and make sure you've added the "Peak working set (Memory)" column as it's not there by default. The regular working set doesn't actually describe the maximum the application has used from active memory. It also may not be one, but the combination of several services or applications that could eat up memory. You won't both have full memory usage but nothing taking up much memory with respect to Peak Working Set, they are dependent on each other to some extent but remains large even when it's been swapped out to a page file.


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## Mussels (Mar 20, 2015)

use MSI afterburner with rivatuner statistics server.


Disable Vsync and cap your in-game FPS - i use 70, but to avoid tearing and issues i suggest 59 or 60

(framerate limit, right middle)





Dying light is terribly optimised, runs like crap for me too even on all settings low, with medium textures. Still looks nice, but FPS dips ahoy capn.


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## qubit (Mar 20, 2015)

@Brokencarr00t1

The answer to your question is in your OP, although you don't appear to realize it.

The _only_ way you get buttery smooth gameplay is if vsync is on and there are no dropped frames. That's it. Anything else will produce some combination of stutter and tearing.

The exact details of how it looks and how severe it is vary, but it's never, ever smooth as butter with vsync off since the GPU output isn't synced to the constant refresh rate of the monitor. It looks like changing something on your system affected this, but it doesn't really matter since it was there already even though you didn't realise it.

Just leave vsync on and be happy. 

The only other way of getting smooth animation is something like FreeSync / G-Sync where the monitor syncs to the graphics card rather than displaying a fixed framerate.


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## Misaki (Mar 20, 2015)

Of course it's not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing


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## kn00tcn (Mar 20, 2015)

the thing is, some engines are quite stuttery as we have seen in fcat charts, i dont know how fc4 is but when fc3 came out (& for months after), people complained about stutters across all kinds of cards, settings, framerates

dying light? chrome engine... in dead island was a bit awkard, the biggest problem in dead island was keyboard input that was done incorrectly, resulting in stutters as you hold the W key for example, even though the fps would be 60 vsync (& mouse aim was perfectly smooth), so i wouldnt expect dying light to be a great example of a smooth game

but if OP says this ONLY started happening when switching from SSD to HDD, then.... it's probably the streaming of assets by the game along with the way windows handles the page file or other things

(yes tearing was my first guess but let's not be so quick to assume the answer)


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## Mussels (Mar 20, 2015)

not wanting to sound like a broken record, but the fix i posted above with the frame rate cap solved my stuttering issues in all those titles. dead island, far cry, skyrim - 59FPS (or 60) solves a lot of engine related micro stutter, without needing Vsync (which some games like dead space were broken)


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## DinaAngel (Mar 20, 2015)

vsync causes frame by frame delay and stutters but generally if you have enough vram and bandwidth and speed then it shouldnt be an issue. 4k has stutter issues because we lack the bandwidth and the speed and vram and panel controllers that's on par with 4k. It's serious input lagg on most 4k ips solutions atm.

the 390x is 4k focused and should take it like a champ.

Also I don't recommend anyone buying non g-sync or free-sync 4k monitor because stuttering. The gsync or freesync seems to fix it

This issue was common more back in the day for me on 1080p with 5870s


I know op didn't use a 4k but this is still under the same vsync and suppose in certain cases it's lots of stuttering. 
I get stutters and tearing with vsync on but much less than with it off


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## qubit (Mar 20, 2015)

DinaAngel said:


> I get stutters and tearing with vsync on but much less than with it off


You can get stutters with vsync on, but how can you get tearing? By definition, turning on vsync is the one thing it fixes.

The only thing I can think of is the situation where a bug somewhere ignores the vsync setting and doesn't actually turn it on. I've seen that particular one several times over the years, especially when it comes to running old games on new hardware and software.


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## BiggieShady (Mar 20, 2015)

This happened to me couple of times with games that didn't stress my 970 enough ... gpu was changing power states while playing game instead off staying constantly at max power state. You can try different drivers, custom driver profile with forced power state setting or bump up the anti aliasing to create more work for the gpu.
I believe Nv needs to work out some issues in the drivers for the 900 series, because majority of lower powered games don't have this issue.


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## DinaAngel (Mar 20, 2015)

qubit said:


> You can get stutters with vsync on, but how can you get tearing? By definition, turning on vsync is the one thing it fixes.
> 
> The only thing I can think of is the situation where a bug somewhere ignores the vsync setting and doesn't actually turn it on. I've seen that particular one several times over the years, especially when it comes to running old games on new hardware and software.


if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
might happen since i only have 3gb vram


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## qubit (Mar 20, 2015)

DinaAngel said:


> if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
> might happen since i only have 3gb vram


vsync eliminates tearing, but it won't remove stutters if the system drops frames. I reckon the OP's system was always dropping below 60fps momentarily like he describes, but he just didn't notice because vsync was off. Especially with Far Cry 4, where it doesn't run all that fast anyway.


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## Aquinus (Mar 20, 2015)

DinaAngel said:


> if u have drops and peaks thats very severe, then vsync wont be able to remove tearing.
> might happen since i only have 3gb vram


You're talking about standard stuttering. Micro-stuttering is a crossfire/SLi problem solved by using frame pacing. Tearing is when the next frame is getting rendered before the scene is done being displayed and V-Sync completely resolves this particular issue. What you're describing is an occasional stutter due to rendering not occuring within 0.01667s (the time of one frame at 60Hz) time block allowed by v-sync.

Once again, I think the recommendations here are good, but the elephant in the room is probably being ignored.


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> 8gb of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz





Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)


You've all read the thread, right? This is a pretty big thing to miss.


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## qubit (Mar 20, 2015)

@Aquinus "You've all read the thread, right? This is a pretty big thing to miss."

Well spotted. Well, I confess to missing it  as I didn't really read that post. This sounds like a memory leak by some program and hell yeah will screw with the game and everything else. This now changes the whole troubleshooting direction of the thread to finding that leak.

I've deliberately maxed out the memory on my PC before to see how it behaves. I used MSCONFIG to give it just 512MB (out of 16GB) and loaded up a ton of stuff. It predictably slowed to a crawl (heck, just booting was real slow) but the memory usage never went above 95% or so in Task Manager, presumably because Windows is keeping some in reserve will swapping the rest out to disc. Interestingly, doing the same thing with an SSD also takes a serious performance hit, but the system remains much more usable than with my old HDD and makes the PC significantly easier to control in that situation.

@Brokencarr00t1 As a starting point, when you next see this problem, start Task Manager and have the Processes tab active, then sort by memory usage and see what's using the most. Let us know what you see and we'll take from there. 

If you want a Task Manager on steroids, grab the free Process Explorer: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396


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## DinaAngel (Mar 20, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> You're talking about standard stuttering. Micro-stuttering is a crossfire/SLi problem solved by using frame pacing. Tearing is when the next frame is getting rendered before the scene is done being displayed and V-Sync completely resolves this particular issue. What you're describing is an occasional stutter due to rendering not occuring within 0.01667s (the time of one frame at 60Hz) time block allowed by v-sync.
> 
> Once again, I think the recommendations here are good, but the elephant in the room is probably being ignored.
> 
> ...


i know what tearing and stutter is. but when half the screen gets not lined up with eachother with vsync on in games like dragon age 3 and shadow of mordor id call it tearing

i have it force enabled in control panel on adaptive, i have tried all the settings.
turning vsync on doesnt remove it totally but it helps.

so total removal of it is false

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/520049/adaptive-vsync-is-a-big-fat-lie/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/17410/discussions/0/828935672437751579/

https://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-22847.html

alot of people have this issue, just google, i could link all day maybe all week about people who has this issue.

and having stuttering with vsync on is alot of people who have this issue

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...posts-will-be-deleted-vsync-stutter-discussi/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum...tearing-vsync-regular-stuttering-vsync-gtx260

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368060

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26218785/fixed-timestep-stuttering-with-vsync-on

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1215767


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## Aquinus (Mar 20, 2015)

DinaAngel said:


> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26218785/fixed-timestep-stuttering-with-vsync-on



You're describing, once again, studdering. If the screen is tearing, then V-Sync probably isn't actually on because there are plenty of driver level settings that override what you and the application wants. It does introduce studder (not tearing) though. If you read that 2nd to last link you provided, the guy even edited his StackOverflow question to say that it appeared that scenes were getting rendered multiple times, so while the output was synchronized the actual rendering that altered the frame-buffer was not. Therefore the "changes" that actually occurred were happening slower than the frame rate.

This is the result of *bad programming not bad v-sync*.

This guy's question was answered:


			
				StackOverflow said:
			
		

> It seems like you're not synchronizing your 60Hz frame loop with the GPU's 60Hz VSync. Yes, you have enabled Vsync in Nvidia but that only causes Nvidia to use a back-buffer which is swapped on the Vsync.
> 
> You need to set the swap interval to 1 and perform a glFinish() to wait for the Vsync.



Once again, look above. He has a physical memory problem which could very well be the problem (an occasional memory swap WILL drop a frame) and discussion of ours is only a tangent.

Edit: Adaptive v-sync isn't really pure v-sync.


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## ...PACMAN... (Mar 20, 2015)

It's understandable the OP is miffed as when he first had everything installed everything worked fine. Introduce a fresh install on an SSD and it's suddenly different? Some people will be like, it's user fault blah blah blah. But tbh I've had the same experience and managed to fix it. I had to reinstall again and basically methodically eliminate stuff that I thought could be the source of the issue.

This involved a different combination of chipset drivers, installing graphics drivers without all the excess stuff like physx, geforce experience etc. I then slowly introduced stuff back again one by one and eventually found a very smooth combination for my particular system.

Don't lose heart OP and don't get annoyed, just try the process of elimination and take things slowly. Even removing and reinstalling the same graphics driver can sometimes miraculously resolve issues. Some games work great on some drivers, some have issues and need frame caps (as mentioned by Mussels). It's a learning curve and what I tend to do is keep a record of what games worked well on what driver just so in the future I know for sure that the graphics driver worked well with it and that something else must be affecting it's performance. Something I may have possibly introduced to the system.


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## BiggieShady (Mar 20, 2015)

It wouldn't hurt to run GPU-Z or afterburner sensor graphs in background while the stuttering occurs, then review the graph history to rule out any gpu/driver issues and by the way to monitor memory consumption.


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## AsRock (Mar 20, 2015)

BiggieShady said:


> It wouldn't hurt to run GPU-Z or afterburner sensor graphs in background while the stuttering occurs, then review the graph history to rule out any gpu/driver issues and by the way to monitor memory consumption.



Which GPU memory could be it, as i have seen the game hit 3.6GB of video ram but that's at 3200x1800.

Forgot to say i have my GPU down clocked to 724 and game still runs perfectly.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Mar 20, 2015)

Devon68 said:


> Did you have the hard drive connected while you reinstalled the Win 8.1 on your SSD?





MrGenius said:


> And/or are you using the HDD for your swap file instead of the SSD? Dumb question...I know.


This. The hdd was installed when windows was installed when windows was installed to the ssd. Your swap file is on the hdd instead of the ssd. default for windows install when a hdd is present when doing a os install on a ssd. Always just have the os drive hooked up when doing the os install, no other drives. Install those after the os install.


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## MrGenius (Mar 20, 2015)

Yeah, you'd be surprised how much of a difference it _*can*_ make. Since the speed of the drive with the page file = the speed of the "virtual memory". Particularly the random read/write speeds. I just thought it was a dumb thing to ask because I assume everybody knows that. And/or knows how important that is when the pagefile is being stored on a HDD or SSD.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 20, 2015)

Alright. I did all you said and did not help it. Now i can confirm that i have some issue whit PC. Its nothing to do with 60hz Monitor. 

So ive just lowered resolution to low to all games and games become smooth as butter again with disabled vsync.
So it seems that fps software do not recognize fps drop and showing high fps when game is not smooth. Now i tried different fps softwares like fraps , dxtory but still is the same.


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## Schmuckley (Mar 20, 2015)

Do you have an extra 2gb RAM stick laying around?


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 21, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> Do you have an extra 2gb RAM stick laying around?



No i dont , why ?


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## Schmuckley (Mar 21, 2015)

You might be running out of RAM
How many GB do you have installed?
There's other things you can do, too..
Like set the affinity for the game to only 2 cores maybe..


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 21, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> You might be running out of RAM
> How many GB do you have installed?
> There's other things you can do, too..
> Like set the affinity for the game to only 2 cores maybe..



i have 8gb.

How do i do that?


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## AsRock (Mar 21, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> You're describing, once again, studdering. If the screen is tearing, then V-Sync probably isn't actually on because there are plenty of driver level settings that override what you and the application wants. It does introduce studder (not tearing) though. If you read that 2nd to last link you provided, the guy even edited his StackOverflow question to say that it appeared that scenes were getting rendered multiple times, so while the output was synchronized the actual rendering that altered the frame-buffer was not. Therefore the "changes" that actually occurred were happening slower than the frame rate.
> 
> This is the result of *bad programming not bad v-sync*.
> 
> ...



I have all so read that changing the frames read ahead from default 3 to 4 has helped some people with nVidia cards.  Not used a nVidia card for many years now and it used to be the other way around but hey maybe it will help in this case.

run app\game in question and open Task Manager and right click the task and select Set Affinity


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## Schmuckley (Mar 21, 2015)

ctrl+alt+del while game is running..
find game in task manager..
untick all but 2 threads. (1st 2)
I'm not familiar with what game you're playing..
If your CPU has hyperthreading,use thread 0 and 2.


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## Aquinus (Mar 21, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> ctrl+alt+del while game is running..
> find game in task manager..
> untick all but 2 threads. (1st 2)
> I'm not familiar with what game you're playing..
> If your CPU has hyperthreading,use thread 0 and 2.


He has a devil's canyon i5, it's in the OP's first post.


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> GTX 970 4gb OC
> i5 4690k
> 8gb of Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
> Gigabyte Z97 Gaming 3 Motherboard
> ...



When you have a CPU without HyperThreading, changing the core affinity doesn't really do a whole lot. Once again, I think the hick-ups the OP is experiencing is due to Windows swapping pages out of physical memory. We really should focus on that issue first as it's the biggest and has the most potential to cause issues as the OP did say he was getting low on memory.

Changing the priority will help on if whatever else is taking time if another process is taking time. If the machine is swapping, this won't do you any good.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 21, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> He has a devil's canyon i5, it's in the OP's first post.
> 
> 
> When you have a CPU without HyperThreading, changing the core affinity doesn't really do a whole lot. Once again, I think the hick-ups the OP is experiencing is due to Windows swapping pages out of physical memory. We really should focus on that issue first as it's the biggest and has the most potential to cause issues as the OP did say he was getting low on memory.
> ...



What do you mean by swapping?  I wish that i could find the solution to this instead of plaining to buy windows 7 and try with that :/


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## xfia (Mar 21, 2015)

down grading to win 7 really only helps with older games.. they have tested the games you mentioned with win 8.

there is a few good suggestions here but i dont know what exactly to make of it. jump on the gsync boat!  

swapping is referring to windows page file on a hdd/ssd and the system ram.. if what your doing is using more vram than what your gpu has it can use the resources with a performance penalty.


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## MrGenius (Mar 21, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> What do you mean by swapping?  I wish that i could find the solution to this instead of plaining to buy windows 7 and try with that :/


Using the swap file/page file/virtual memory. Which means your available RAM/physical memory is low, or none, and the CPU is swapping pages stored in the virtual memory(the page file on your HDD or SSD) to substitute for what it can't fit/find in the RAM.

So maybe you didn't fix that if you didn't understand why you should. I highly recommend you do. As in, set no paging file for the HDD, and instead use the SSD for that. If you don't know how to set the amount of virtual memory manually, google it.

I also highly recommend you try the Windows 10 Pro Technical Preview. Which works very well on my system with the latest build. Especially for gaming. And, if you end up liking it, it's going to be a free upgrade from 7 or 8 when it's released. So it's definitely worth trying first, since the preview is also free.


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## Aquinus (Mar 21, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> What do you mean by swapping?


I mean that you're running out of physical memory and that Windows is needing to "swap" memory pages to the page file on the hard drive. This takes time and is anything but fast which is why I say that poor performance could be caused by this. It's entirely possible that you had enough memory free before starting the game, but then after you started playing it may needed to have put some system files or background service's memory into swap space (virtual memory, hard drive space that acts as system memory.)

Re-installing Windows might solve the problem if it's bloatware or a memory leak but, if it's because of all the services you run on your computer plus applications like after effects, then it makes more sense (IMHO) to upgrade to 16GB of memory. That all depends on your time constraints and budget though. I know that it takes me a little bit of time before i get my tower back to where I want it after a re-install, so I tend to be a little more conservative on the re-installs then I have in the past.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 21, 2015)

Or just permanently set the page file to use your ssd and never to use the hdd it Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life. 
By that I mean I used a revo x2 120gb for five years like that and because it was a small sdd I don't care now its dead because I got my moneys worth of speedy use and for five years ,Now a 120 is worth little and so it will be in three years for your ssd.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 21, 2015)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Or just permanently set the page file to use your ssd and never to use the hdd it Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life.
> By that I mean I used a revo x2 120gb for five years like that and because it was a small sdd I don't care now its dead because I got my moneys worth of speedy use and for five years ,Now a 120 is worth little and so it will be in three years for your ssd.



Okey but how do i do that?


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## MrGenius (Mar 21, 2015)

See here http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-8&faq=133


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 21, 2015)

hers a screeny of the steps taken on mine ,you can see i have it set now.


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## newconroer (Mar 22, 2015)

qubit said:


> vsync eliminates tearing, but it won't remove stutters if the system drops frames. I reckon the OP's system was always dropping below 60fps momentarily like he describes, but he just didn't notice because vsync was off. Especially with Far Cry 4, where it doesn't run all that fast anyway.



You would still notice it. 


This has nothing to do with OS version, hard disks or even hardware components.

The cause of the stutter/lack of smoothness is inconsistent frame latency. Going from 60-120 and back all the time, will be very noticeable with wildly fluctuating frame times.

Mussels hit you with the most simplistic solution, which is to cap the frames to something you can achieve at all times. Radeon Pro can also do this.
This method is a quick way to also tackle that issue where a game like Far Cry 4 dips to 57,58,56 FPS. Cap it at 55 and the problem is solved.

You can then leave Vsync off and the tearing should be minimal.

An alternative option (which works out better depending on the game engine), is to set a custom refresh rate for your monitor that matches your sustainable FPS. i.e. 70
Then you can use a program like Radeon Pro and lock the game's FPS to the refresh rate.
Again, Vsync would be optional.

This method works particularly well when you have a situation where the game is simply too demanding and 60fps is unattainable. Dying light is like this for me. 40-50 is the best average I get when moving about the city.
I made a custom 40hz resolution and then locked the game to the refresh rate. It holds the same frame latency for 100% of the time and feels smoother than when I have it bouncing back and forth from 40-50, with the occasional 80+ spike while staring at a wall or the sky.


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## Aquinus (Mar 22, 2015)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Will wear the ssd out quicker but it wont reduce much of its useful life.


That depends on how often the machine is thrashing. The harder it thrashes the more stress it puts on the SSD, so if it gets to the point where gigabytes of memory are getting swapped, you'll be reducing the longevity of that drive pretty quickly. It also don't solve the problem that the OP very well might be running out of physical memory. I would call this a band-aid, not a solution.


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## newconroer (Mar 22, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Once again, I think the recommendations here are good, but the elephant in the room is probably being ignored.



It may explain why he sees some variation in 'general' performance vs. his previous installation and setup.

The stutter issue he describes is something separate.


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## Aquinus (Mar 22, 2015)

newconroer said:


> It may explain why he sees some variation in 'general' performance vs. his previous installation and setup.
> 
> The stutter issue he describes is something separate.


Actually I think it could explain both. A lot of thrashing would kill performance but, an occasional thrash could cause hick-ups in the time it takes to render just one or two frames until performance normalizes back out (when the trashing stops.) The memory usage problem is a glaring problem and I don't see how anyone can avoid it as it could be the source most of the OP's issues as the frame latency could be directly impacted by how often the machine needs to swap pages. It's also entirely possible there is a background process that's causing the windows scheduler to not give the game the same amount of CPU time for every frame that gets rendered.

Something causes frame latency spikes and I'm trying to address the cause of that, not hide the symptom as you suggest because I think there is a problem here that needs to be addressed before determining if the frame latency could use more improvement from tweaking settings. The simple fact is that memory seems to be in short supply on his system and rectifying that problem could solve this problem in its entirety.


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## newconroer (Mar 22, 2015)

I would agree with you, but if THAT amount of memory leak/issue was being observed, I would imagine the 'stutters' he experienced would be more akin to something you'd get with hard drive thrashing - several seconds of painful intermittent performance.

If it's simply a case of hitching or juddering that his eyes can sense when in motion, then it sounds more like he needs to address frame latency as the culprit.
And really, every one has frame latency that needs addressing, but they don't know what it is. Any time you see 'oh my game stutters' and then someone says 'it's probably micro stutter!'  - you just know the conversation is going to devolve into myths, hearsay and ridiculous suggestions that won't solve the problem.

For that reason I will disagree that his memory usage is the sole root of his gaming concerns.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 22, 2015)

I pointed to the fix I mentioned because it makes sense given the op that his hdd could be being used as a sole page file.
I have messed with such things and I noted that the stuttering I saw was much less evident with a faster page file.

On longevity I could have mentioned that the same Ocz (alleged shit brand too)
Revo x2 did 5 years as a main Os drive , pagefile and also folded 24/7 for a lot of that 5 years so wear is off my radar on ssds as they are better now not worse.

Might not be his sole issue but I would expect it to help.
As for why when vsync is off well if his memory is over utilised turning vsync off will generate more fps hitting its frame buffer and more load on main memory wouldn't it.


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## ShiBDiB (Mar 22, 2015)

Wait... isn't the answer to just turn on V-Sync? That's why it exists...


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## Aquinus (Mar 22, 2015)

ShiBDiB said:


> Wait... isn't the answer to just turn on V-Sync? That's why it exists...


Frame latency isn't perfectly consistent with v-sync on. That's the complaint.



newconroer said:


> I would agree with you, but if THAT amount of memory leak/issue was being observed, I would imagine the 'stutters' he experienced would be more akin to something you'd get with hard drive thrashing - several seconds of painful intermittent performance.
> 
> If it's simply a case of hitching or juddering that his eyes can sense when in motion, then it sounds more like he needs to address frame latency as the culprit.
> And really, every one has frame latency that needs addressing, but they don't know what it is. Any time you see 'oh my game stutters' and then someone says 'it's probably micro stutter!'  - you just know the conversation is going to devolve into myths, hearsay and ridiculous suggestions that won't solve the problem.
> ...


You know, the OP hasn't gotten back to out about the page file though. It's entirely possible that the page file already is on the SSD and that these little blips in frame latency is the SSD chugging away with the page swaps. As @theoneandonlymrk said earlier:


theoneandonlymrk said:


> I have messed with such things and I noted that the stuttering I saw was much less evident with a faster page file.


So it's not unrealistic to assume that Windows may have been installed properly and that the swap file is indeed already on the SSD and that these blips are those swaps.

All I'm saying is the this behavior very well could be a result of memory. There is one fact here that is not in dispute where just about everything else is speculation:


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)



How does that not scream a memory capacity issue if you don't mind me asking? It could be a background process causing issues or an application not actually closing. Either way, the OP did say this is a problem and without resolving it, I don't think we can say much about the state of the rest of the computer.


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## MrGenius (Mar 22, 2015)

I might as well clarify myself too. Since everyone else is.

First, I agree in full with Wat, wait(wtf?), Aquinus, sorry.

Second, I have also experienced a similar issue as the OP that was resolved by using a faster paging file. In fact, I'm using it right now. Via my SATA 3.0 WD Black HDD, with 16GB of USB 3.0 ReadyBoost installed. In case you were wondering.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 23, 2015)

Nothing of this fixed my problem. And stop telling that this is because my monitor and this is the way it should be without vsync on , cause it  WASNT like that before! If you want to help me futher tell me how to install windows 8 properly. Cause i did it once but did not fixed the problem.


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## Schmuckley (Mar 23, 2015)

Win 8 might be the problem 
Could be GPU drivers, too.
or lack of RAM.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 23, 2015)

Same copy of windows 8.1 worked perfectly fine before. Ive tried different gpu drivers as well


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## Schmuckley (Mar 23, 2015)

try disabling page file
if that doesn't work..
DL this: https://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk/
Make a 1236 MB RAMdisk,format it to NTFS WITH the program..
then set a 1024MB pagefile on the RAMdisk.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 23, 2015)

Nothing of this helped me. Ive noticed that i feel that non smoothness when i turn , then i notice that my fps goes from 90 to about 70.  Still not the fps that should provide that akward choppy gameplay....


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## Schmuckley (Mar 24, 2015)

70 fps is choppy?
Break yoself an buy a compatible RAM stick..that is my recommendation.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 24, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> 70 fps is choppy?
> Break yoself an buy a compatible RAM stick..that is my recommendation.



Dude i have 8gb of corsair ,  brand new. Last time ive checked 8 was plenty  for gaming. And yes i get 70 fps,  but it feels like it drop to 40,  im a hardcore gamer så i know whats smooth and what is not.  Anyway thank you for trying to help me.


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## MrGenius (Mar 24, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Dude i have 8gb of corsair ,  brand new. Last time ive checked 8 was plenty  for gaming.


Are you serious? 

Check again.

IMO, 8GB is the minimum for a decent gaming experience these days. And the more the merrier.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 24, 2015)

MrGenius said:


> Are you serious?
> 
> Check again.
> 
> IMO, 8GB is the minimum for a decent gaming experience these days. And the more the merrier.



That feeling when im on tech forum looking for an answer and it turns out that those who should provide it need it more than me. 
Dude please tell me,  which game use more than 6gb of ram?


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## MrGenius (Mar 24, 2015)

Just one? Try Assetto Corsa. And I'm sure there's plenty more.


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## Aquinus (Mar 24, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Nothing of this helped me. Ive noticed that i feel that non smoothness when i turn , then i notice that my fps goes from 90 to about 70.  Still not the fps that should provide that akward choppy gameplay....





Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Dude i have 8gb of corsair ,  brand new. Last time ive checked 8 was plenty  for gaming. And yes i get 70 fps,  but it feels like it drop to 40,  im a hardcore gamer så i know whats smooth and what is not.  Anyway thank you for trying to help me.





Brokencarr00t1 said:


> That feeling when im on tech forum looking for an answer and it turns out that those who should provide it need it more than me.
> Dude please tell me,  which game use more than 6gb of ram?



Then what the heck do you think this means?


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Gosh , i should mention that sometime (very often actually) a my memory usage goes up to 94% after about one hour when playing some game or working on After Effects. Even when i turn off After Effects or game memory usage does not get back to normal. It stays to 94% until i restart PC. Sometimes i get terrible lag as well that force me to restart PC (This not happening very often)



That screams at me that you *are running out of memory* based on the information you gave us. I asked you to verify this and if you did to get more memory but, you seemed to ignore me... All I saw was a post says "I didn't see it," which is a fast way of saying you probably didn't look hard enough or didn't bother looking at all because what I said would show all memory usage. The simple fact is that I don't really care what you *think* is good enough. I'm telling you what I see and what I think is going on and I think you're running low on resources which is what a tech forum tends to give you.

Also, a game doesn't need to use 8GB alone to hammer your computer because other things like the OS and background services are in memory as well. I turn my computer on and it's instantly using 2.5GB of memory. All it takes is a browser or two and maybe something else and you're already chewing through half of your memory. Then you run a game that uses 5GB, then it has to swap 1GB out of physical memory (actually more to ensure some space is available after.) So now the game is running "in memory" but everything else is now running from a page file and every time something needs to happen in the background that requires that swap space, you get a performance hit.

I've explained why this is probably happening several times but, we can't help you if you're not willing to help yourself.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 24, 2015)

Im sorry , im overreacted a bit. But please understand me , its killing me that i spend so much money on pc and turns out that i cant even proper gaming.

I want to update you a little bit. I was messing with a lot of things and that choppy gameplay is a bit better.  Any other fix you could suggest?


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## AsRock (Mar 24, 2015)

If i get the time later i will remove 8GB of ram see if the game plays worse for me.

Just make sure you don't have your pagefile on your HDD as that can course the issue too  along with the game being installed on one.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 24, 2015)

AsRock said:


> If i get the time later i will remove 8GB of ram see if the game plays worse for me.
> 
> Just make sure you don't have your pagefile on your HDD as that can course the issue too  along with the game being installed on one.



Alright , i was installed windows 8.1 again without hdd plugged in. When install was done i plugged in HDD . Can you explain me exactly how do i check if i have pagefile on HDD? 
Also to mention i have same results when i plug off hdd and play games.


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## Schmuckley (Mar 24, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> *That feeling when im on tech forum looking for an answer and it turns out that those who should provide it need it more than me.
> Dude please tell me,  which game use more than 6gb of ram?*



AC4 for one..



Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Alright , i was installed windows 8.1 again without hdd plugged in. When install was done i plugged in HDD . *Can you explain me exactly how do i check if i have pagefile on HDD? *
> Also to mention i have same results when i plug off hdd and play games.



You don't even know how to set your computer up for gaming.
To answer your question: Control Panel>System>Advanced>Performance>Settings>Advanced>Virtual Memory..
PS:I bet you have a 12-16 GB pagefile,and that is your problem right there.

Also:
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/black-vipers-windows-8-1-service-configurations/


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## MrGenius (Mar 24, 2015)

We are being rather kind...considering.


Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Okey but how do i do that?





MrGenius said:


> See here http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=faq-Windows-8&faq=133


That we seem to be going around in circles endlessly here.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 24, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> AC4 for one..
> 
> 
> 
> ...



AC4 worked fine on my 8gb ram , did not even used 5gb (always have msiafterburner when i gaming). Played almost on ultra settings smoothly. Dont ever dare to try it now.

Anyway , this is how my paging thing looks like , what do i need to change?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfccr5i926vhv0c/Untitled.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/704z4ocfl2ii386/Untitled2.png?dl=0




Really , appriciate that you trying to help me , even if im a bit rude , but trying to fix this 3 days now....


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 24, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> That feeling when im on tech forum looking for an answer and it turns out that those who should provide it need it more than me.
> Dude please tell me,  which game use more than 6gb of ram?



Modded minecraft.... Had 8GB and it would eat up all but .3 so I changed to 12GB


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 24, 2015)

MrGenius said:


> Just one? Try Assetto Corsa. And I'm sure there's plenty more.



I play Assetto Corsa with 8gb. I speak from experience, 8gb is fine for that game. My experience in that game is smooth as can be.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 24, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> AC4 for one..
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I dont even touch my page file, never really have or needed too, and my gameplay is perfectly fine to my eyes. Depending on how much RAM your system has, the page file isn't used all that much.


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## MrGenius (Mar 24, 2015)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> I play Assetto Corsa with 8gb. I speak from experience, 8gb is fine for that game. My experience in that game is smooth as can be.


I don't doubt it. But try playing it with 6GB. I couldn't get anything near smooth with 6. Until I readyboosted 16GB, which allows the page file to be accessed much quicker. All 6GB+ of it(on top of the nearly 6GB of RAM being used). Which is why you might want a page file that big(1-1.5x the RAM), in the first place. It can actually be used, by certain apps. Even quite effectively at times. And how, I'll go so far as to claim it will use at least 6GB of RAM(even though I can't prove it...yet)

Do me a favor. Run it and log how many GBs it uses with 8GB installed. Then we'll put that to bed for good. You'll have to wait if I have to prove it myself. I don't get paid for another week.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

MrGenius said:


> I don't doubt it. But try playing it with 6GB. I couldn't get anything near smooth with 6. Until I readyboosted 16GB, which allows the page file to be accessed much quicker. All 6GB+ of it(on top of the nearly 6GB of RAM being used). Which is why you might want a page file that big(1-1.5x the RAM), in the first place. It can actually be used, by certain apps. Even quite effectively at times. And how, I'll go so far as to claim it will use at least 6GB of RAM(even though I can't prove it...yet)
> 
> Do me a favor. Run it and log how many GBs it uses with 8GB installed. Then we'll put that to bed for good. You'll have to wait if I have to prove it myself. I don't get paid for another week.



at 16gb i doubt your page file is even touched.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2015)

If you reinstalled windows fresh with the ssd and hdd attached windows likes to put boot files on the second drive (the hdd)


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## Schmuckley (Mar 25, 2015)

set..
on C:
min 2048Mb
max 2048Mb


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> set..
> on C:
> min 2048Mb
> max 2048Mb


Prevents expanding and contracting


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## qubit (Mar 25, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> I've explained why this is probably happening several times but, we can't help you if you're not willing to help yourself.


Sheesh, I can't believe this thread is continuing to lurch on. I'd actually unsubbed from it early on, but I keep seeing it pop up on the leaderboard.

Yeah, he ignored me too, lol. People like yourself are giving really decent, quality advice such as in this quoted post, but the OP point blank refuses to listen to any of it and is making the whole thing go round and round in circles. It's effectively an epic troll on TPU through the unintended consequence of his stupidity. Heck, he's even wondering why an fps of 70 looks choppy!  70fps on a 60Hz monitor is gonna look like shit every single time and it's really obvious why - the numbers don't divide evenly. *Duh, it needs to be synchronized to the monitor refresh with vsync like I explained to you and rendered with no dropped frames!!!!* Anything else doesn't look smooth. Ever. That you claim it does look smooth without vsync doesn't change the fact that it actually doesn't. Stuttering and screen tearing are the inevitable consequence of turning it off.

Also, this 94% memory usage. I haven't seen him use any diagnostics, even simple ones like Task Manager to even try to find out what's causing it. Yeah, filling up the RAM will cause the PC to run like shit. What's new? Get rid of the memory hog or leak and problem solved.

I'm not going to waste my time giving any more quality advice to this character and I don't think anyone else should do either.

*He'd be much better off with a console where it's all preset and he can't change it even when it doesn't look right.*


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

eidairaman1 said:


> If you reinstalled windows fresh with the ssd and hdd attached windows likes to put boot files on the second drive (the hdd)



That literally has zero to do with the problem at hand.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Considering he is having problems starting after he added the drive and started fresh yes. I guess I was lucky with mine since i have a ssd and a raptor. I had a SSHD but seagate didnt provide firmware boot disk or even win software to turn off APM to prevent head parking.


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## xfia (Mar 25, 2015)

idk about some of the suggested tweaks.. I dont mess with services or pagefile and all my games run fine. there is a few things I do after a few years of reading mostly useless guides though. 
1. install windows uefi cus legacy is outdated.. not sure what dell and acer do but all the boards from msi, asus..etc have been uefi for some time and it is pretty mature. 
2. turn off core parking witch has in fact helped countless people including me with stuttering crap. 
that is really about it.. I mean I have amd gpu's and there has a few games that dont like optimized tessellation and surface format optimization but that is all a easy click away. 




can actually show core parking in power options with a fast registry tweak. I have it written down somewhere that I cant find atm for ya. I would not use that dumb park control software.. just asking for problems.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 25, 2015)

qubit said:


> @Brokencarr00t1
> 
> The answer to your question is in your OP, although you don't appear to realize it.
> 
> ...



So you are telling me to just go over and accept that my new PC (which i paid alot for) should work like this? You are the one who is stupid here and needs to read posts , im sorry. 
How many time do i need to say that this never happened before , and that i did everything that mentioned above. And stop telling its a damn monitor when is not. I do understand that i cant expirience very smooth gamplay with 
vsync disabled, but dude im droping fps i can feel it , despite that high fps that showed in left corner! 

Please , i would appriciate if you dont reply on this thread anymore , cause you are not helping. 



Schmuckley said:


> set..
> on C:
> min 2048Mb
> max 2048Mb



I did this , but still expirience stuttering. 
I found that changing fps in game drastically makes that unsmooth feel. For example when im on like 95 fps i dont have that stuttering, but when fps drops to 70 it feels choppy for a bit. Is the same feel when you drop from 60 to 45 , only that my pc doing this with high frame rate. And like i say before , when i lower setting to low i have very smooth gameplay , just like i had before.


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## Schmuckley (Mar 25, 2015)

Disable pagefile then.
I'm not sure if you're literate enough to make a pagefile on a RAMdrive...
although I provided instructions on how to do it already.
Get another stick of RAM.
OC your CPU.
Disablepagingexecutive. <Google that.


http://lmgtfy.com/?q=disablepagingexecutive


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## qubit (Mar 25, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> So you are telling me to just go over and accept that my new PC (which i paid alot for) should work like this? You are the one who is stupid here and needs to read posts , im sorry.
> How many time do i need to say that this never happened before , and that i did everything that mentioned above. And stop telling its a damn monitor when is not. I do understand that i cant expirience very smooth gamplay with
> vsync disabled, but dude im droping fps i can feel it , despite that high fps that showed in left corner!
> 
> Please , i would appriciate if you dont reply on this thread anymore , cause you are not helping.


You really haven't a clue have you?  This whole thread has turned into a train wreck because you refuse to take good advice.

I'll bet you haven't tried my advice in the later posts I made about finding out what's hogging all your memory, have you? Running out of RAM will definitely make your PC run like shit (especially big dips in framerate) regardless of spec, so this is what you need to focus on. Also, I wasn't the only one who pointed this out to you. All this stuff about adjusting the page file is a waste of time as it's not the problem. Just leave it on auto for all drives.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 25, 2015)

qubit said:


> You really haven't a clue have you?  This whole thread has turned into a train wreck because you refuse to take good advice.
> 
> I'll bet you haven't tried my advice in the later posts I made about finding out what's hogging all your memory, have you? Running out of RAM will definitely make your PC run like shit (especially big dips in framerate) regardless of spec, so this is what you need to focus on. Also, I wasn't the only one who pointed this out to you. All this stuff about adjusting the page file is a waste of time as it's not the problem. Just leave it on auto for all drives.



I missed that one about memory you wrote , there is a lot of people responding in short time and i was at work , so could not read it carefully. Im sorry about that .

Anyway , i dont have anymore issue whit ram memory being used at 90+ %  after i reinstalled windows. 

I dont know but it doesn seem like software problem. Maybe trying to fix some things in bios? I mean if reinstalling windows did not helped then it shouldnt be software problem...


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## qubit (Mar 25, 2015)

Ok, I'm at work now, so I'll come back to you later sometime. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.

btw, please fill out your system specs in the forum profile as it makes it much easier for members to help you.

 And it looks kinda cool too.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> Disable pagefile then.
> I'm not sure if you're literate enough to make a pagefile on a RAMdrive...
> although I provided instructions on how to do it already.
> Get another stick of RAM.
> ...


Jesus stop, that's not going to do anything!!!!!


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Do not be calling anyone stupid here. Go back and read the fair use policy. Honestly i think for your case since you spent gobs of money you can afford a technicians bill to diagnose the problem for you.



Brokencarr00t1 said:


> So you are telling me to just go over and accept that my new PC (which i paid alot for) should work like this? You are the one who is stupid here and needs to read posts , im sorry.
> How many time do i need to say that this never happened before , and that i did everything that mentioned above. And stop telling its a damn monitor when is not. I do understand that i cant expirience very smooth gamplay with
> vsync disabled, but dude im droping fps i can feel it , despite that high fps that showed in left corner!
> 
> ...


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## Schmuckley (Mar 25, 2015)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> Jesus stop, that's not going to do anything!!!!!


Getting more RAM and OCing CPU will not change anything?
You sure about that?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> Getting more RAM and OCing CPU will not change anything?
> You sure about that?



The thing is, no one should have to OC today's processors to resolve his kind of issues.


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## RejZoR (Mar 25, 2015)

I've seen this phenomenon in Natural Selection 2 and no once could explain it to me. Framerate counter and MSI Afterburner were showing 100+ fps, but the game felt like it's hardly 30fps. And then there are other games that feel silky smooth at way lower framerates. I really don't know why that happens with some games. Not even dev community could explain it to me.


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## MrGenius (Mar 25, 2015)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> at 16gb i doubt your page file is even touched.


There's a page file, and it's always being touched. To the effect of around 6GB being used when I play Assetto Corsa. Where the CPU is keeping the page file might not be entirely(or even partially) on my HDD. And I'm well aware of that. But does my 16GB USB 3.0 flash drive = 16GB of RAM? I wish. It does seem to make quite a difference though.


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## qubit (Mar 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> I've seen this phenomenon in Natural Selection 2 and no once could explain it to me. Framerate counter and MSI Afterburner were showing 100+ fps, but the game felt like it's hardly 30fps. And then there are other games that feel silky smooth at way lower framerates. I really don't know why that happens with some games. Not even dev community could explain it to me.


I reckon it's frame pacing and other timing issues within the game. Or in other words they're using crap game engines.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Alright , ive decided to install my old windows 7 instead , and to completely format both SSD and HDD. I would like to set all at factory settings , like  it was when i builded up this PC.

Can you tell me how to do this ? Should i just format SSD and HDD when installing the windows on the page it asks me where to install windows or there is some better way to wipe out everything like it was when i bought iT?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Alright , ive decided to install my old windows 7 instead , and to completely format both SSD and HDD. I would like to set all at factory settings , like  it was when i builded up this PC.
> 
> Can you tell me how to do this ? Should i just format SSD and HDD when installing the windows on the page it asks me where to install windows or there is some better way to wipe out everything like it was when i bought iT?


unplug the data cable from the hdd. Install windows too the ssd, when its installed go into disk manager, and make your hdd a new volume, and format. Remember to plug the data cable back in once windows is installed.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 25, 2015)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> unplug the data cable from the hdd. Install windows too the ssd, when its installed go into disk manager, and make your hdd a new volume, and format. Remember to plug the data cable back in once windows is installed.



Is it good if i format HDD right now ? Cause i was thinking maybe is something in my hdd like virus or something that causing this...

Also whats your opinion on Windows 7 for gaming . Im plaining on playing GTA V , AC and so on...


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## Schmuckley (Mar 25, 2015)

Whatever;Just make sure it's unplugged when you install Windows.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Ive read that there is a way to completely wipe out any data on ssd or hard drive. How do i do that , is there are easy way to do it ?


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## Tatty_One (Mar 25, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Ive read that there is a way to completely wipe out any data on ssd or hard drive. How do i do that , is there are easy way to do it ?


Re-format it?


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 25, 2015)

To wipe the data completely off of a drive that has an OS on it, you will need to

Option 1: Boot to your windows installation media, and when it gets to the point to choose what drive/partition to install windows too, go to advanced or options, and format it.

Option 2: Put the drive in another system and go through the Disk Management utility in windows to format the drive.

Option 1 being the easiest, and this is the standard way of reinstalling windows cleanly. MUST BOOT TO THE WINDOWS INSTALL MEDIA

To wipe data off other drives in the system that don't have windows on them

Go to My Computer or This PC (Windows 8/8.1) right click the drive you want to format (Not local C, that is your windows drive) and just hit format.

NOTE: You cannot format/wipe data of the drive that has windows installed on it from windows. That is why you have to do it in another system, or boot to the Windows installation.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2015)

Before installing the os disconnect the hdd sata cable first then install the os on the ssd. 



Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Alright , ive decided to install my old windows 7 instead , and to completely format both SSD and HDD. I would like to set all at factory settings , like  it was when i builded up this PC.
> 
> Can you tell me how to do this ? Should i just format SSD and HDD when installing the windows on the page it asks me where to install windows or there is some better way to wipe out everything like it was when i bought iT?


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## qubit (Mar 25, 2015)

@Brokencarr00t1 Note that while there's nothing wrong with wiping a HDD or SSD clean of all data first if you fancy it, it's not actually necessary for a perfectly good, clean Windows install. This is because while the unused sectors will contain data (and remnants of data) on a used drive, they will never be referenced by the filing system until it comes to writing data to them, at which point all that old data is erased. Therefore the existence of the old data is completely irrelevant to Windows's operation.

Also, there are utilities to erase unused sectors on the system drive. These are handy if you want to get rid of all trace of confidential data for example, to protect against physical theft of the computer or HDD/SSD. Tracks Eraser is one utility, but there are many others around, too.

The way I install Windows, is to boot off the installation disc, delete all partitions using the installer program and then install Windows on the blank HDD/SSD. I don't care what was on there before.

Once Windows installed and patched, I then partition the HDD/SSD using Hard Disc Manager if it needs it.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 26, 2015)

Installed Windows 7 as you told me to. Formated HDD first , then unpluged from PC , installed Windows 7 from usb to the SSD. Now installing Dying Light , will see if that stuttering is gone.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 26, 2015)

Brokencarr00t1 said:


> Installed Windows 7 as you told me to. Formated HDD first , then unpluged from PC , installed Windows 7 from usb to the SSD. Now installing Dying Light , will see if that stuttering is gone.


dying light does have some CPU optimization issues, or at least it did,so that's probably why you are getting stuttering a little bit. Try other games too, not just 1.


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## Iceni (Mar 26, 2015)

I've experienced this exact problem in FC4.

It's not the page file or ram or anything like that.

It's memory usage on the GTX970.

The effect your getting feels like a frame rate drop, The game feels like it's chugging, But the framerate still looks good. In effect  you should be seeing tearing because your over framing the monitor, but the game is rough.

Do me a favor, Boot up FC4 with your settings and play for a bit with GPUz of similar logging in the background. Play until it starts to chug then give it 30 seconds chugging and alt tab out.

I guarantee you your hitting the 3.5Gb limit on the card and it's using the slower 500Mb memory block. The effect of that slow sector is the GPU stalls and switches between memory segments, and as it does so it micro stutters.

The fix is rather simple turn off a few settings till the game no longer saturates the 970's memory. Nvidia need to release a driver that disables the slower memory segment.

FC4 and DL are both games that will saturate your memory if you let it at your resolution.

I would also put money on FC4 plays fine for a while, Then after you've done some running about it will suddenly start. And if you restart the game it's gone for a short while. What that is is FC4  not dropping used textures from the memory. It keeps saving them to memory, adding more and more the more you play... Most games don't suffer like FC4 does as most games have some form of texture reset when you load levels or go back to the main menu. Skyrim doesn't suffer because the engine saturates at about 3GB. So not all open world games are equal.

Also FC4 will always do it till we get a driver lockout. Even on low settings it will horde those textures till the memory eventually saturates. The solution is to free up more base memory using FXAA rather than MSAA, and to drop a few settings lower like draw distance and object distance so your not picking up as many textures by simply flying over stuff.


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## qubit (Mar 26, 2015)

@Iceni lol, we're now talking about saturating 3.5GB of RAM and only just over a year ago I got a 780 Ti and was sitting pretty with "just" 3GB RAM.  I guess the problem would be worse on my card then, with no ramgate scandal.

Note that the slow 0.5GB on the 970 is still a lot faster than swapping to system RAM.


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## Iceni (Mar 26, 2015)

qubit said:


> @Iceni lol, we're now talking about saturating 3.5GB of RAM and only just over a year ago I got a 780 Ti and was sitting pretty with "just" 3GB RAM.  I guess the problem would be worse on my card then, with no ramgate scandal.
> 
> Note that the slow 0.5GB on the 970 is still a lot faster than swapping to system RAM.



If the 970 only had 3.5GB of ram it wouldn't be a problem. And filling up the whole of that ram isn't a problem. The problem is that last 500Mb, And the effect like I said when it switches is micro stutter.

I could show you right now in game if you were sat beside me. And you would be shocked. The performance drop on the 970 isn't a linear FPS drop, It's a choppy mess while still hitting reasonable frame rates.

As for the saturation of 3.5Gb or ram look at the 2 titles the OP uses. Both are capable of memory saturation, and both are designed to hold onto as much information as possible before they go to page file. And then they expand into that pagefile.

You have a 780ti. Go play some FC4 with it on ultra with GPUz running for a few hours and look at your memory usage and pagefile usage. You will be well into pagefile space. And the card will be at 100% of that 3GB.


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## newconroer (Mar 26, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> You know, the OP hasn't gotten back to out about the page file though. It's entirely possible that the page file already is on the SSD and that these little blips in frame latency is the SSD chugging away with the page swaps. As [



I have my page file on my SSD. It hasn't caused me problems ..

Hmm


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## AsRock (Mar 26, 2015)

Schmuckley said:


> Disable pagefile then.
> I'm not sure if you're literate enough to make a pagefile on a RAMdrive...
> although I provided instructions on how to do it already.
> Get another stick of RAM.
> ...




He cannot disable pagefile if he wants to play that game at all, as minutes in i got this







And with pagefile on my SSD there was a odd lag when zombies were about to attack but seemed just fine other wise.

As i play 3200x1800 res the vid memory is around 3.5-3.7GB


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## Aquinus (Mar 26, 2015)

Two pages later and there is still bickering going on about how to fix the problem. There really is a simple solution as I did the same thing (granted I needed to upgrade my entire platform to do it,) which is to upgrade to 16GB of memory.


MxPhenom 216 said:


> I dont even touch my page file, never really have or needed too, and my gameplay is perfectly fine to my eyes. Depending on how much RAM your system has, the page file isn't used all that much.


This is it. The simple fact is that with more memory, the number of hard faults (page swaps) goes down and fewer hard faults results in more stable performance as it doesn't have to read or write to/from storage to do whatever it's doing. Having more memory for good performance is about always having enough to do everything you need to do, not having just enough for it to work.

I personally don't have a page file in my tower as 16GB is enough for me to do everything is physical memory, but I personally would rather know that I ran out so I know that I need to upgrade to 32GB whenever that ends up happening.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Mar 26, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Two pages later and there is still bickering going on about how to fix the problem. There really is a simple solution as I did the same thing (granted I needed to upgrade my entire platform to do it,) which is to upgrade to 16GB of memory.
> 
> This is it. The simple fact is that with more memory, the number of hard faults (page swaps) goes down and fewer hard faults results in more stable performance as it doesn't have to read or write to/from storage to do whatever it's doing. Having more memory for good performance is about always having enough to do everything you need to do, not having just enough for it to work.
> 
> I personally don't have a page file in my tower as 16GB is enough for me to do everything is physical memory, but I personally would rather know that I ran out so I know that I need to upgrade to 32GB whenever that ends up happening.



Agreed. I was also reading some KB articles on Microsofts website on page file, and it did indeed say the more physical memory you have the less the page file is needed. Granted it was a KB article from Windows XP times, but I do not think things have changed much since then.

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/889654



> The 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP can support more RAM than the 32-bit versions of these products. When lots of memory is added to a computer, a paging file may not be required. When you use the *Pages/sec* counter to measure paging file use, the value that is returned may not be accurate. To obtain an accurate measurement of paging file use, you must also use other performance counters. You can use System Monitor measurements to calculate the size of the paging file that your computer requires.



Seems like Dying light does use a lot of memory.


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## Vayra86 (Mar 26, 2015)

I also run Dying Light on 8GB and have never gotten stutters, even with a well used pagefile. Dying Light and many other console ports do tax RAM on systems a bit more than earlier games though, and an upgrade to 16GB is very high on my list. It makes sense. But I am still on a GTX 770, so overall my system may be more balanced than those who run a 970. Higher fps counts will probably increase the amount of swapping every frame and make the issue visible to the naked eye.

Mind you my Dying Light does run between 50-60 fps on ultra 1080p with a capped draw distance, but I use a frame limiter standard on every game. I have learned to configurate Vsync *per game* (instead of globally through Nv panel), and some games also don't like frame limiting too much, or need a slightly different value. Setting frame limits to 59 or 60 fps will solve much of OP's problems no doubt - I have also seen games running at higher fps than my monitor refresh rate return very choppy or have a 'ghosting' effect to them, while others actually just improve in responsiveness and smoothness without showing tear. Not every game engine handles high fps equally. Another example is Space Engineers which I run at 180 fps to achieve a stable and smooth 60 fps equivalent experience (the game engine updates 1/3rd of the real frames...).

If you do intend to churn out more fps than your monitor can handle, always take a set fraction of your monitors refresh rate. Play with this using your frame limiter to see noticeable differences in the location of your screen tear: a 66 fps cap will produce one tear every ten frames, for example, while 72 fps may eliminate it for game A and will make it worse for game B. It really is a case-by-case difference. However when I aim for a 120 fps cap (2x monitor refresh), the vast majority of games feels far more responsive while have little to no screen tear, and the ones that do appear are extremely hard to notice. Set it to 80 and the same game becomes unplayable and feels 'stuttery'.

One stutter is not similar to the other, investigate the cause and deal with it where it needs to be dealt with. If you run against memory limits, increase capacity. If you have syncing issues, play with fps limits and try Vsync per game.

Last but not least: frame limiting is the best way to reduce GPU load and thus noise/heat. Vsync usually takes more horsepower. Another issue that seems to be overlooked in this thread is that Vsync can also increase input lag. If you game frequently, this is definitely noticeable even in non-twitchy games. Adaptive Vsync generally eliminates most of that again.


PS. who dug up the 3.5GB 970 issue? It is completely irrelevant to this thread...


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 26, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> That depends on how often the machine is thrashing. The harder it thrashes the more stress it puts on the SSD, so if it gets to the point where gigabytes of memory are getting swapped, you'll be reducing the longevity of that drive pretty quickly. It also don't solve the problem that the OP very well might be running out of physical memory. I would call this a band-aid, not a solution.



I would have called it a measureable way to check if its the page files access speed being the issue. 
It worked initially satisfactorily off a ssd .
He added a hdd and it started occasionally stuttering.
We all know vsync off = more memory use.

If that had of resolved the issue temporary I would then have advised further but yall jumped in the ssd wear.

You can change page file location size and management so easy it Is silly not to mess.


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## Aquinus (Mar 27, 2015)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> I would have called it a measureable way to check if its the page files access speed being the issue.
> It worked initially satisfactorily off a ssd .
> He added a hdd and it started occasionally stuttering.


Yes, but Windows doesn't automagically put the page file on to another disk because it shows up. Until the OP actually shows us a screenshot of his virtual memory settings, I'm not going to assume it's due to a page file suddenly showing up on the slower disk and mysteriously getting disabled on the SSD.


theoneandonlymrk said:


> We all know vsync off = more memory use.


Disabling V-Sync makes the game hit whatever bottleneck gets touched first because it runs full tilt. So I would argue that it uses more GPU and CPU times, memory get impacted by quality settings and maybe resolution (although it's probably insignificant.)

This could be settled very quickly. The Performance Monitor in Administrative Tools can graph hard faults per second. That would tell us if the page file is to blame very quickly.


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## Brokencarr00t1 (Mar 27, 2015)

Guys sorry for im being quet and do not update you with news on new windows 7 install. I was testing games i have , i want to test it all and then comeback to you with repport.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 27, 2015)

Aquinus said:


> Yes, but Windows doesn't automagically put the page file on to another disk because it shows up. Until the OP actually shows us a screenshot of his virtual memory settings, I'm not going to assume it's due to a page file suddenly showing up on the slower disk and mysteriously getting disabled on the SSD.
> 
> Disabling V-Sync makes the game hit whatever bottleneck gets touched first because it runs full tilt. So I would argue that it uses more GPU and CPU times, memory get impacted by quality settings and maybe resolution (although it's probably insignificant.)
> 
> This could be settled very quickly. The Performance Monitor in Administrative Tools can graph hard faults per second. That would tell us if the page file is to blame very quickly.


I know all that and somewhat agree however as I suggest so have I done.

Changing pagefile settings and rebooting takes minutes thats why I use it as a check.
 verses wipe and install win7 at a few hours ,updates inc  = not the best advice imho im sorry but step analytical fault diagnosis is pretty much wot I do All day at work and there's no sledgehammer In my tool shiz

Hence rule 1 

Rebooot


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