Constant Stuttering/Freezes

[NyxKitty]

As the title states, I'm experiencing near-constant stutters/hitches, regardless of what I'm doing in-game. The issue first occurred last night, but I dismissed it as just frame drops, as it first occurred in-mission while there was a lot going on. This morning I found out, to my dismay, that it is still happening.

In the orbiter, both the in-game statistics and the GeForce overlay show consistent 144fps and >6ms frametime, even in the midst of these stutters. In missions, depending on what's going on, both the in-game statistics and GeForce overlay show 90-144fps with 8-10ms frametime. This performance is normal for me, and I have not experienced these stutters before last night. The stutters occur every 2-3 seconds, in all display modes, beginning when I launch the game. The game is installed on a 1TB m.2 SSD with 400+ GB of free space, and the drive is not shared with the OS. I've been bashing my head against this problem for a few hours now and I'm completely at a loss here- I have tried everything I know to try, but the stutters are still there with no indication of a hardware/software issue on my end. Any help would be appreciated.

My specs are as follows;

GTX 1650 Super 4GB

Intel i5 10400F

16GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2666 RAM (2x8GB)

Windows 11 Home

 

So far, I have tried the following, with no effect;

• Disabled GPU overclock
• Restarted game
• Ended all nonessential background tasks
• Disabled G-Sync
• Switched between DX11 and DX12, and Enhanced/Classic graphics engines
• Lowered graphics settings
• Changed display modes and refresh rate/frame cap
• Restarted PC
• Deleted the Nvidia shader cache
• Updated graphics driver
• Restarted PC again following the last two steps
• Ran GPU benchmark and compared results with my baseline, benchmark scores were as expected
• Trimmed SSD
• Reinstalled the game to the same drive
• Ran defrags, and then installed the game to two different drives
• Ran full system diagnostics using built in BIOS utility, no issues found
• Tested RAM with a RAM tester, no issues found
• Swapped RAM with known good sticks (2x4GB sticks)

As you can see, I've gotten a bit desperate for a solution. I have already generated logs through the launcher, so if this last-ditch effort falls through, I'll contact official support channels.

Thanks for your time :)

Edited March 19, 2023 by NyxKitty
Slight edit for clarity

[Nekomian]

Is the stuttering like what's in this video here: 

There's a few things that could be causing this, and thankfully you've already done a bunch of different things so that helps narrow it down. One solution I saw was to remove various files in the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Warframe directory, namely any config files and long folder name paths; I'm unsure if uninstalling the game leaves these files, but you could try to remove them and see if it helps. It will reset your game settings here.

Did you also update / reinstall the GPU driver using DDU? I'd recommend doing that just to ensure it's not some weird configuration issue, though keep in mind it will reset your GPU settings as it acts as a clean install.

Could you also verify the temps of the system are all good? If it suddenly started to occur as of last night I don't think it's a game engine thing, since it was fine prior and the last "major" update  that could've affected anything was Wednesday. I'd also close any additional software / services (chrome, firefox, discord, any weird RGB software, etc.) and make sure nothing else might be conflicting.

Some additional recommendations would be to update your BIOS firmware & chipset drivers - normally this isn't regularly required, but it's a good practice to update them when something is broken to see if it's been patched or resolved with an update. I also wouldn't normally recommend this but, I have seen some users suggest disabling CFG (control flow guard) in windows exploit protection settings to resolve DirectX stutters; you can try it as a test just for Warframe, but I'd only do that if absolutely necessary since it's on by default for a reason.

Lemme know if any of this helps, and I'll try to assist further if you're still having issues; hopefully it's not hardware related, so we'll try everything up until that point I suppose!

[Hobie-wan]

What about the GPU preference setting in the launcher? Try Performance in case something somewhere is being dumb and trying to lower power allowances for the GPU.

[Bentgras]

me too, literally the exact same. All of it 😖

[NyxKitty]

10 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

Is the stuttering like what's in this video here: 

 

It's exactly like that video, yes. However, I'm now even more stumped than I was yesterday. After posting, I went back to troubleshooting- only to find that the game worked just fine, and continued to function fine even after starting Spotify, my RGB software and my web browser. Then, this morning, after making no changes past the ones I described, the game is actually even worse than it was yesterday. The stutters are now full-blown freezes, lasting 5-7 seconds at a time and occurring at about the same rate as before.

 

10 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

Did you also update / reinstall the GPU driver using DDU? I'd recommend doing that just to ensure it's not some weird configuration issue, though keep in mind it will reset your GPU settings as it acts as a clean install.

 

I have not tried this yet, and I can't believe it slipped my mind now that you mention it. I'll give it a shot next chance I get.

 

10 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

Could you also verify the temps of the system are all good? If it suddenly started to occur as of last night I don't think it's a game engine thing, since it was fine prior and the last "major" update  that could've affected anything was Wednesday. I'd also close any additional software / services (chrome, firefox, discord, any weird RGB software, etc.) and make sure nothing else might be conflicting.

Some additional recommendations would be to update your BIOS firmware & chipset drivers - normally this isn't regularly required, but it's a good practice to update them when something is broken to see if it's been patched or resolved with an update. I also wouldn't normally recommend this but, I have seen some users suggest disabling CFG (control flow guard) in windows exploit protection settings to resolve DirectX stutters; you can try it as a test just for Warframe, but I'd only do that if absolutely necessary since it's on by default for a reason.

 

Temps are all fine. I have a pretty aggressive fan curve set because it tends to get hot in my house. Temps stay around 60-70C under load. BIOS and chipset are up to date, and I did try disabling exploit protection as well, I found that suggestion in a Reddit thread and forgot to include it in my list.

 

10 hours ago, Naroxas44 said:

There's a few things that could be causing this, and thankfully you've already done a bunch of different things so that helps narrow it down. One solution I saw was to remove various files in the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Warframe directory, namely any config files and long folder name paths; I'm unsure if uninstalling the game leaves these files, but you could try to remove them and see if it helps. It will reset your game settings here.

 

I just tried this one, and it unfortunately didn't work. Afterwards, I tried uninstalling, then deleting the folders, then reinstalling. The freezes persisted through all steps, and made it impossible for me to even log back into the game. I'll try using DDU, though at this point I don't have very high hopes. Thanks anyway, and I'll update the thread after trying it.

 

9 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

What about the GPU preference setting in the launcher? Try Performance in case something somewhere is being dumb and trying to lower power allowances for the GPU.

 

I tried both "High Performance" and "Let Windows Decide", neither fixed the issue.

Edited March 20, 2023 by NyxKitty
Small spelling mistake

[Nekomian]

3 hours ago, NyxKitty said:

It's exactly like that video, yes. However, I'm now even more stumped than I was yesterday. After posting, I went back to troubleshooting- only to find that the game worked just fine, and continued to function fine even after starting Spotify, my RGB software and my web browser. Then, this morning, after making no changes past the ones I described, the game is actually even worse than it was yesterday. The stutters are now full-blown freezes, lasting 5-7 seconds at a time and occurring at about the same rate as before.

Do you think you could have task manager open (or some resource monitor, it's just the easiest to access) and screenshot / monitor it when these freezes occur? I'm mainly curious if it's some bizarre issue with clock speed or utilization throttling; I've had a system before have a weird bug where the CPU would force itself to clock down to 0.79Ghz and freeze up every few seconds, so I just wanna confirm it's nothing weird like that.

It might also help to generate logs from the launcher (in settings, the "get logs" button) immediately after a play session with the freezing occurring, to see if it's logging any specific issue or hang-up; if that doesn't have anything, Windows Event Viewer logs (either system or application) may have something too. You've already done a lot of troubleshooting thus far, so any log information that might indicate the issue would help greatly, since we're kind of running out of things it could be at this point haha.

[NyxKitty]

On 2023-03-20 at 9:54 AM, Naroxas44 said:

...

Welp, it seems to be a fully intermittent issue. I've reached out to support, so hopefully they'll be able to glean more information than me. It does seem to abate when I restart sometimes, so at least I have a semi-consistent workaround for the time being. Thanks so much for your help Naroxas, always nice to have an extra set of eyes when bashing my head against a problem, lol. 

[Bentgras]

This is a huge bummer. Being affected with the same issue and utilizing the same troubleshooting process has been nothing but turmoil. I've read some cases that have been experiencing this bug for over two years. It just doesn't make any sense. I played Veilbreaker & New War on the same computer I'm typing from now, but something about not playing for a little while has really jacked the game up. I wanna play so bad now and I just don't know what to do anymore :(

[Herz93]

im on the same boat now since around 5days... nothing change on my system and also tryed everything above

it doesnt make fun to play like this

[Bentgras]

4 hours ago, Herz93 said:

im on the same boat now since around 5days... nothing change on my system and also tryed everything above

it doesnt make fun to play like this

That's about how long it has been for me. Bit the bullet and reinstalled windows last night and it played smoothly for a bit, but then crapped out again. I wanna play Warframe :(

[Dregre]

Chiming into this, has anyone had any luck resolving it? I had the same issue starting around a week ago and nothing I have done seems to solve it

[unskilboon5]

Would be great to know the solution if it exists.

[Nekomian]

@NyxKittySorry to bother, but did support ever get back to you about this? I know they can be slow to respond given the volume of tickets they get, but I was curious.

24 minutes ago, unskilboon5 said:

Would be great to know the solution if it exists.

Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy solution or fix to this; everyone who has it seems to have different hardware, even the same hardware as someone who doesn't have these issues. Generally this leads me to believe it's hardware failure, but I try to avoid telling people to go out and get "new item X because yours is failing" because setups are so extremely varied that it's more of a process of diagnosis by elimination (as in, everything it can't be has been ruled out before we consider hardware failure).

This is where sending logs to DE via their support can help - they track what the evolution engine sees / how it interacts during runtime, have your system specs to compare to other users with the exact same issue, and more. It's extremely possible that some random software with one outdated library could be the culprit due to how it interacts with the game or with existing drivers, but without some sort of commonality between posts (other than the issue being it freezes / stutters) it's extremely difficult to make that inference. We can only recommend all the troubleshooting steps that Kitty went through and more, until the recommendation might get to "try a different GPU" or "try a different system", which some people may not have access to.

[KnuxTenma]

I started seeing this issue as well, immediately after replacing my GPU (moved from a GTX 1070 to an RTX 4070Ti, in case that ends up being somehow relevant). I found 3+ year old posts about this issue that recommended deleting Nvidia shader caches (%AppData%/Local/Nvidia/DXCache), which seemed to work for short periods, but would seemingly break again after a session of play or a restart, meaning I would need to clear my shader caches every time I wanted to play.

[unskilboon5]

7 часов назад, KnuxTenma сказал:

I started seeing this issue as well, immediately after replacing my GPU (moved from a GTX 1070 to an RTX 4070Ti, in case that ends up being somehow relevant). I found 3+ year old posts about this issue that recommended deleting Nvidia shader caches (%AppData%/Local/Nvidia/DXCache), which seemed to work for short periods, but would seemingly break again after a session of play or a restart, meaning I would need to clear my shader caches every time I wanted to play.

Sorry I don't have /Nvidia folder.

[Resaz]

For anyone with this problem:
I have been searching for a solution to this problem for days and it was the "Max Framerate" option of Warframe....

After disabling the option and using RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server as frame limiter instead, the game runs smooth as butter.

I hope I can help someone with it, because the stuttering have brought me almost to despair.

[Herz93]

vor 20 Stunden schrieb Resaz:

For anyone with this problem:
I have been searching for a solution to this problem for days and it was the "Max Framerate" option of Warframe....

After disabling the option and using RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server as frame limiter instead, the game runs smooth as butter.

I hope I can help someone with it, because the stuttering have brought me almost to despair.

doesnt work for me still plays like trash

here little sneak peak how it looks like

Spoiler

 

 

[hici2033]

I have the same issue but only on the first launch of the game.

If I restart the game then the issue is gone

Specs:

Ryzen 7 5800x

32 GB 3000 MHz RAM (4x8 GB)

RTX 3080 FE with an UV profile 1605MHz @ 0.731V

Game and OS on 2 separate NVMe SSDs

P.S:

I set up this fix, we'll see how it goes

On 2023-04-24 at 10:29 PM, Resaz said:

For anyone with this problem:
I have been searching for a solution to this problem for days and it was the "Max Framerate" option of Warframe....

After disabling the option and using RTSS Rivatuner Statistics Server as frame limiter instead, the game runs smooth as butter.

I hope I can help someone with it, because the stuttering have brought me almost to despair.

 

[AbtachaAboma]

I even tried RivaTuner because that's my go to. It fixed Path of Exile for me and so many games that don't have a framerate-limiter. 

I am literally working in IT support and can't fix this and it drives me nuts. Then I sometimes do a thing and it works on the first Earth mission, then back in orbiter it's stuttering. I am losing my mind. Currently trying to redownload Warframe because short of a reinstall that's the only thing that comes to mind.

Last time downgrading the AMD drivers helped, as well as disabling MPO. This time not so much alas :(

-- That did nothing. 
--- After talking to my colleague it now works. I am not sure for how long but what we did was this: Control, Shift, Windows Button and B => That restarts the graphics drivers. And another edit: That worked for exactly one mission.
---- Please, can anyone with persisting stutter-problems please open the task manager and check if the problem persists while the manager is open? That makes Warframe stutter free for me, but I can't figure out why yet. Virus scan is running but will take, I kid you not, another 12 hours.

Edited May 16, 2023 by AbtachaAboma
update

[AbtachaAboma]

Update: 
I fixed it. Well, Kapersky Pro did. Avira and Windows Defender did not find it but in my case it was a *coin mining trojan. 
 

[unskilboon5]

В 18.05.2023 в 11:03, AbtachaAboma сказал:

Update: 
I fixed it. Well, Kapersky Pro did. Avira and Windows Defender did not find it but in my case it was a *coin mining trojan. 
 

Thank you,I'll try Kaspersky out and if I don't reply today then it will mean that it didn't in my case.

[Darvahoya]

I've been fighting these stuttering problems for the past week and I've found some very weird things about it and have a work-around if not a cure. Of course, your issues may be based on completely different circumstances than mine but I hope this will help some people solve this problem. I have a fairly top-end gaming PC so it's not due to lack of computing resources (ROG Dark Hero MB, AMD 5900x, EVGA 3080ti ftw3 ultra, 60 gig RAM, 4 gig Samsung nvme (system & games) + 16 TB WD Black, water cooling, etc). Here are some of the things I found:

1. The stuttering is worse in the Mastery Test environments which I think is related to all the rectangles they have flying around in there. The MT environments in practice mode are better than regular missions for finding out if you've solved the stuttering problems.

2. None of the settings in options will make a difference in the stuttering including the port settings. For me, the stuttering also happens in the menus.

3. If you start a session (mission, test, etc) and it stutters, then the stuttering will never go away during that session.

4. If you start a session and it doesn't stutter then it will never start stuttering during that session.

5. Sessions started from the cockpit navigation station using 'X' will almost always result in stuttering for me.

6. Sessions started using navigation from the main menu never result in stuttering for me.

I'm a software developer and have done a lot of development on various game platforms in 2D, 3D & VR for PC & mobile and I think that what may be happening is that when a session is started from the cockpit navigation station that the system is loading that mission code on top of the orbiter code which is causing process/thread sync or blocking issue for some reason. When you start a session from the main menu, the orbiter code must not be loaded which prevents the stuttering from happening. I have no idea what Warframe's code looks like so this is just a guess but I think I'm right for the type of stuttering problem I've been fighting.

This isn't going to help if you have GPU power throttling, a trojan as described above or something else like that going on but I hope launching sessions from the main menu instead of the cockpit navigation station will help some Warframe users play the game without the stuttering problem.

[Nekomian]

5 hours ago, Darvahoya said:

I think that what may be happening is that when a session is started from the cockpit navigation station that the system is loading that mission code on top of the orbiter code which is causing process/thread sync or blocking issue for some reason. When you start a session from the main menu, the orbiter code must not be loaded which prevents the stuttering from happening.

If this were the case, I think the issue would be a lot more widespread since this would be hardware agnostic. I've only seen mostly RTX 3000 / 4000 series users as a common point, but even then it's difficult to troubleshoot because stuttering can occur for so many various reasons (malware, dying hardware, misconfigured drivers / system, thermal / power throttling, poorly performing / old hardware, etc.) outside of those GPUs too.

I think support or some of the devs need to have an isolated user (or their own systems) replicate the event and capture verbose data to really understand why any micro-stutters are occurring, there's too many uncontrolled variables or scenarios otherwise.

[JPCarl]

So this just started to happen to me about a month ago.  Not even really.  I haven't changed any hardware.  I did update to Windows 11 but the problem appeared prior to while I was still on Windows 10.  I have gone through every fix in the book.  It stopped stuttering for one play session then sure enough it just started again today.  I have updated my drivers, tried every fix that google has spit out.  Nothing seems to help.  Has anyone managed to figure this one out yet? 

Edited May 24, 2023 by JPCarl

[Darvahoya]

Yes, this started recently and was probably introduced with the first Duviri release. I also agree that it may not be affecting all hardware environments. I have an EVGA RTX 3080 ti which is consistent with it only affecting RTX 3000/4000 systems.

I'm a software developer and have done game development on Unity, Unreal and several other game platforms so I have a debug environment and can see the errors even though it's in assembler since I don't have access to the source code. It's definitely blocking on something which is probably a semaphore or mutex used to sync IO or multiple threads.

I have reported this to support and hope the devs will look into it.