Fix game stutter on Win 10 1703-1809

Interesting, so seems windows updates aren't cleaning out older reg lines if that is right.
I don't run Vsync on so maybe that is why I never see what others report on "bad" drivers and stuttering.

 

After doing a clean install with a new NVMe drive and using the most up to date drivers, I was still having issues with stutters and terrible Vsync behavior. I set out to find the source and it ended up being game client overlays. Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy and Uplay in my case. Just turn them off and games run butter smooth, which I will gladly accept while having to Alt+Tab accept invites and stuff. Just to be clear, I did also turn of all MSIAB/RTSS stuff during all of my testing, but it never made a difference in game smoothness one way or the other so I keep it on.

 

Yes, I have all game clients overlays off (Steam, Origin), I do have MSI running but I do limit the polling rate and how many sensors I have enabled.

 

For the Steam overlay at least it just turns invisible but it still runs (EDIT: Renaming the .dll file is required for fully removing it.), though it shouldn't be the more compatible of the bunch of different clients and Origin seems to be on the other end of the spectrum and not too friendly with other software.
Microsoft Game DVR and it's functionality via Game Mode though that can be a bit of a hit & miss problem trying to use full screen optimization and enhancing borderless and windowed mode behavior but not entirely issue free and smooth though it seems to be improving...in RedStone 5 in a few months. Yay.

Next driver from NVIDIA should also fix G-Sync behavior in windowed or borderless situations so that should help if the OS is trying to use it's optimizations if you haven't toggled those or the entire Game Mode functionality off.
(Right clicking on the game exe in question and disabling these, assuming you're on Windows 10 of course.)

Though if VSync is always off that shouldn't be an issue in the first place or at least not that part of the whole chain of things.

 

I've never heard about Steam overlay and having to rename a .dll before. Are you sure unchecking the box in Steam settings doesn't disable it? That is the only thing I change right now for GTAV, Dying Light and PCARS 2 and they go from terrible messes of a game to as smooth as butter. The Windows 10 stuff like Game Mode and fullscreen optimizations don't really make a difference being on or off for my current setup of 1080Ti and Win 10 1709.

On another note, I did in fact try both the slow ring and fast ring builds last week before going back to 1709 again. Neither of them fixed the other issues I've been having since 1803 so I don't really have a choice right now as to what OS version I'm on. Thanks for the feedback.

 

Yes, you can still see it loading by the creation and contents of GameOverlay.log in the Steam install folder. It's vital for functionality related to Steam input handling (And it's numerous overrides now for various controller types and API's.) and some other things you can also see it hooking in said log file. Disabling the option only stops it from drawing on the screen but it's still very much loaded so any compatibility testing requires renaming either the 32 or 64 bit .dll file manually to fully prevent it from loading.

And then naming it back since it will otherwise force Steam to do a full file re-check and download it again if it detects any missing content so it's best to remember to rename it back again after testing.
It's overall fairly compatible with most other software though and Steam game specific issues are instead often down to the game itself and it's use of the API or misuse in a few cases.

 

I don't have any stuttering issues with game bar enabled and this new FS mode, I did a inline update from rs3 to rs4 leak then later to full rs4, still all ok with latest monthly update.

Guess those that have reg issues had something else going on.

 

Make sure Focus assist is turned off. I was recently experiencing this issue in one specific program (MPC-QT) and my friend suggested to check that setting.

I had turned it off in the past but it had turned itself back on after some Windows update. Turning it off again sorted out that delay for me.

 

wow thanks! my alt tabbing was so freaking slow on this game i played called paladins. setting When I'm playing a game to off fixed it.

 

Can’t you just disable memory compression instead?

 

These should not be directly related. However, I have it disabled with 32Gb RAM + auto-size pagefile (which usually results in ~2Gb). I never liked the compressed RAM concept (always had it disabled on Linux, though I also refuse to use any kind of swap on Linux).

 

how do you do that? moreover, standby memory also can't be turned off, disabling windows indexing and superfetch doesn't cut.

 

Admin PowerShell:
Disable-MMAgent -mc

If you could completely turn off standby memory, I imagine a lot of random issues would pop up (certain things are probably designed around the assumption that the page cache is always there, no matter what). It would be far more intrusive than disabling the pagefile.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/mmagent/disable-mmagent?view=win10-ps

 

ok, got it. page file should be active no matter what and disabling it useless anyways... but I did not know that standby memory actually holds something important. yet, its in the ram and microsoft does a bad job managing it, it'd be better if its in virtual memory.

 

The page cache has been around for ages on most Operating Systems. They usually all handle it the same way: they aim to fill up ~all the free memory but readily make it ~all available for a process when needed.
If something is wrong with the Windows page cache now, it's not the mere existence or the sheer size but some issue around how and when it's freed (I couldn't know but may be it takes too many and/or too long locks, or eats too much CPU time, whatever...).

Sorry if it's confusing that I called standby memory = page cache. That's actually the Linux nomenclature. I deliberately mix it up to point out Linux does pretty much the same thing with memory, so it's not some "stupid Microsoft cancer".
And the page cache is not the same as the page file. The page file is different but most people very well know what the pagefile.sys is. (It's the equivalent of the swapfile or swap partiton on Linux and you can easily control it from the Windows GUI.)

 

Virtual memory is an abstraction. Each process in OS has its own (isolated) virtual linear continuous memory space (size depends on OS edition and CPU architecture). Virtual memory for process is allocated in pages. And those allocated pages of virtual memory are mapped to physical installed RAM. I.e. virtual memory is backed up by physical memory (which is RAM and page file when RAM is insufficient).
Just in case.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ti...-windows-memory-management-revealed-part-one/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ti...-windows-memory-management-revealed-part-two/

 

So did they fix standby list memory leaking to full and not clearing properly yet? Looks like that's a big NO! Microsoft needs to get this crap fixed. https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/9ca27q/standby_memory_emptystandbylistexe_why/

 

It's not leaking, it's meant to be full (Edit to be more specific: It's meant to fill up if you use memory, and due to mapped files (reading and writing files by mapping their contents to virtual memory), you are likely to use large portions of it, so you should expect it to fill eventually).

It's freed memory and is reallocated as requested just like any other free memory.

 

Whatever argue the semantics, it's not meant to be broken, I have no such framedrops on 1607 ltsb. This is still an issue since 7/11/2017, memory management is actually broken and won't clear space automatically like 1607 ltsb does. Maybe they'll have it fixed for 1809.