Help with extreme stuttering getting worse the last couple months

[Makay Scribe]

- Been fighting extreme stuttering when panning side to side for months and have tried everything from vsync to gsync and all the Nvidia options on/off plus in game settings. Sometimes changing a few settings will work and it becomes super smooth for a day or two and then the choppiness comes back out of nowhere. It doesn't matter if I'm alone in a sandbox or in a busy club. It tends to be less active when I'm high up in a sky box alone but it's still present. I've never experienced it this bad until about February/March and it's getting worse. I'm on new computer with a 4080 and Intel9-13 - 240hz monitor. I've run out of ideas and tested with Alchemy, FS and SL viewer. I have no idea where the issue stems from. I've reinstalled Viewers on Cdrive and secondary drive testing, cleared cache, deleted graphics driver and reinstalled, changed power settings factory reset computer, tried on another gaming computer but now need some guidance. Here is what i see, but normally it's even worse than this and it rubber bands/hitches and glitches constantly when moving. I've tried capping fps with both Nvidia and MSI to even 30fps but it's still there. Ive been filming for a year but I cant anymore with the choppiness of both the camera controls and flycam (flycam is just a mess, in all directions). Here is a light example of what i see under the best conditions 

- https://gyazo.com/c7f1a52f1f5f8c694064ad10c24c49c5

 

 - Here are my settings from the sl viewer i grabbed while testing. 

Second Life Release 7.1.5.8443591509 (64bit) Release Notes

Second Life Server 2024-03-18.8333615376 Release Notes

CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13980HX (2419.2 MHz)

Memory: 32387 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10/11 64-bit (Build 22631.3447)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 31.0.15.5222 OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 552.22

Window size: 2560x1566 Font Size Adjustment: 96pt UI Scaling: 1 Draw distance: 128m Bandwidth: 3000kbit/s LOD factor: 1.75 Render quality: 5 Texture memory: 11229MB Disk cache: Max size 1638.4 MB (26.8% used) J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.4 Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.02.13 Dullahan: 1.14.0.202310131404 CEF: 118.4.1+g3dd6078+chromium-118.0.5993.54 Chromium: 118.0.5993.54 LibVLC Version: 3.0.16 Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.10.0000.32327.5fc3fe7c.399bd0e Packets Lost: 30/169,606 (0.0%) April 22 2024 23:02:28

 

- Any help is very much appreciated. Im on a 2024 Asus ROG G18 with an Nvidia 4080 and i9-13 - my internet speeds are 3-3.5gps 

 

Edit. Possibly solved 

Edit 2. Looks like Nvidias Latest game ready/ Studio drivers plus Vulcan setting on auto after the Nvidia update may have been culprits. Still testing but performing better as for the last hour after rolling back to a 2023 driver.

Edited April 25 by Makay Scribe
possibly solved

[AmeliaJ08]

Would a 120fps (half monitor refresh) cap help maybe?

Your video card is more than capable of a locked 120fps, I would say set the frame limiter in the Nvidia control panel rather than Firestorm since my experience is that it is broken.

 

Edited April 24 by AmeliaJ08

[Aishagain]

@Makay Scribe :Have you Whitelisted the viewer in you antivirus at all?  The viewer .exe, cache and settings folder at least indeed all the .exe files preferable (dullahan-host, llplugin and vivox).

What you describe sounds like the AV software aggressively scanning the viewer's operation.

[Makay Scribe]

13 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Would a 120fps (half monitor refresh) cap help maybe?

Your video card is more than capable of a locked 120fps, I would say set the frame limiter in the Nvidia control panel rather than Firestorm since my experience is that it is broken.

One computer is an Asus with a 3060 and a144hz monitor from '23 and the other is Asus with a 4080 and 240hz from '24.  Same Issue on both, One is AMD3800 and the other is i9. Factory reset both computers and thought I nailed the problem down to a Vulcan setting in Nvidia CC which seemed to tame the frantic FPS, but after testing all day it helped the problem a little but did not solve it. And trying to screen capture is out the window. I have tried the Nvidia and MSI frame limiter a dozen times from 120fs, 60, 50 right down to 30fps and its still stuttering, ill post a video frame capped i did yesterday but because i reset both my computers right after I forgot my password to gyazo atm. Ive put hundreds of hours into trying to figure this out over the last two months since my Hobby in SL is filming High Def videos but after a year of doing these Im at a standstill. I really think this has to do with LL changing things and I use v7 viewer, I cant do these movies in FS because of the color table I use which is more vivid on Alchemy, though I do have FS installed as well. Thank you for the suggestion

 

Edited April 25 by Monty Linden
Removed mistaken quoting

[Makay Scribe]

 

8 hours ago, Aishagain said:

@Makay Scribe :Have you Whitelisted the viewer in you antivirus at all?  The viewer .exe, cache and settings folder at least indeed all the .exe files preferable (dullahan-host, llplugin and vivox).

What you describe sounds like the AV software aggressively scanning the viewer's operation.

I use no antivirus at all, and right from factory reset today Im experiencing this.  Thought I nailed the problem to a Vulcan setting, but it only tamed the issue but didnt solve it. Thank you for your suggestion.

[Makay Scribe]

Here I'm capped at 30fps and its an utter mess still, its like the sidewalls are stretched and it rubber bands and stutters consistently. Mind the spinning, it was just for my own test at the time so I had record

https://gyazo.com/817f5971841106f358f301cbeec42eb8

[Aishagain]

15 hours ago, Makay Scribe said:

I use no antivirus at all

If you use Windows as your OS then you will have Windows Defender as your antivirus, it is automatically activated when you re-installed your software.  You DO need to whitelist your viewer.

If you use another OS I can offer no insight.

[Henri Beauchamp]

On 4/24/2024 at 8:32 AM, Makay Scribe said:

Here is a light example of what i see under the best conditions 

I do not see any stuttering in your video... Just FPS rates variations depending on the camera FOV and the amount of objects to render in it, which is perfectly normal.

On 4/24/2024 at 8:32 AM, Makay Scribe said:

but normally it's even worse than this and it rubber bands/hitches and glitches constantly when moving.

Watch the texture console (CTRL SHIFT 3) and look at the VRAM usage. It is likely that, when a lot of textures are around and you move or cam around, LL's viewer fails to keep everything in the VRAM (the console will then report 0MB free in VRAM), forcing the driver to start and spill GL textures and vertex buffers into the RAM, causing stutters, freezes, etc...

Sadly, your only option is to switch to a TPV, since LL removed from their PBR viewer the possibility to adjust yourself the VRAM usage.

Also, most TPVs offer a frame rate limiter, which you might want to use, to avoid FPS yo-yo and useless heating (and fan noise) of your GPU when it renders way above your monitor native Vsync rate (which is perfectly useless).

If you are not adverse to the v1 UI, have a try at the Cool VL Viewer: I spent a lot of time (both programming and testing) to optimize it and prevent VRAM usage overshoots; it also got a ”smart” frame rate limiter which uses the ”free time” between frames to rez meshes and textures faster.

Edited April 25 by Henri Beauchamp

[Jackson Redstar]

in Windows I remember there is a 'game mode' in the settings - I cannot recall the exact thing, but I had a newer system and was having alot the same issues and it turned out to be something to do with game mode settings. It is a bit fuzzy for me but I seem to remember also i had to turn off (I think) Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. In any case, sometimes in crowded sims, SL still does the stutter and I can visually see it in the task manager monitoring the GPU graph 

If you are seeing this recording, at least in OBS, you can monitor to see if you are getting rendering lag or encoding lag. Lately, for some reason, I been getting at random times extreme encoding lag even though nothing has changed in my hardware, software or settings. I also use the FPS limiter in FS set to 32

Edited April 25 by Jackson Redstar

[Makay Scribe]

 

11 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

in Windows I remember there is a 'game mode' in the settings - I cannot recall the exact thing, but I had a newer system and was having alot the same issues and it turned out to be something to do with game mode settings. It is a bit fuzzy for me but I seem to remember also i had to turn off (I think) Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling. In any case, sometimes in crowded sims, SL still does the stutter and I can visually see it in the task manager monitoring the GPU graph 

If you are seeing this recording, at least in OBS, you can monitor to see if you are getting rendering lag or encoding lag. Lately, for some reason, I been getting at random times extreme encoding lag even though nothing has changed in my hardware, software or settings. I also use the FPS limiter in FS set to 32

Yea I was getting bad hiccups on OBS and my eyes could just tell the frame time was off because i film at 120fps. Those acceleration settings are terrible yes, Ive had those off for a year. So I nailed it down to the new Nvidia game ready / studio AI driver for RTX and the Vulcan swapchain setting!! Went back to pre AI driver and forced some settings in CC on the older Control Panel without auto super video resolution and now once again at a steady 200+ fps sitting in a narrow 20fps window and under a second rez time time for avatars.  Thank you for your time to help.

Edited April 26 by Makay Scribe