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[Eduardboon]

Right, OC'd my gpu with +200 core and +400 memory and +87mV. Stable in titanfall and gta and the benchmarks. Still have to put grass at high instead of very high because it still drops like crazy (to 53) at the sawmill.

Edit: this OC gives me an 10fps boost. But because I am scared of destroying my GPU (please enlighten me about he dangers of afterburner) I changed the clocks to +140 core and +250 memory. Still gives me +5-6 frames to keep me well above 60 (could drop to 59) with grass high and everything else ultra (msaa disabled and extended draw and high red shadows disabled). I'm actually pretty happy with this.
Unigine valley gives a score of 2901 with quality on ultra without AA and res at 2560x1440. (4519 at 1080p) I think with the heavier over lock it was around 3045. So not a big change and a safer oc I hope.

Could lock 60 with +240 core but I saw some artifacts in heaven benchmark and titanfall kept crashing.

 

[bbd23]

I only get that when vsync is turned off.

<3 thank you, fixed the problem.

 

[JB1981]

I have a GTX 660 w/ 8gb ram and i7. Should I get the game for PS4 or for PC?

 

[FakeWayne]

The Predicted Memory usage in game is completely off for me...

The game only predicts my card (970) to use 2600 or so MB. My actual usage is being reported at right around 3480 MB pretty consistently in GPU Z.

I'm running everything on Very High, with High Grass and Ultra Post FX. FXAA is on, and I'm Downsampling from 2103 x 1183 to my 1080p monitor.

 

[Eduardboon]

So guys. Is it safe to up the Mv core voltage in afterburner on a 970? Cause that locks my fps to 60 and without it it drops to 59 a lot. Temps are good, never above 55 Celsius because of forced 70 percent fan speed. Eagerly awaiting a response. Want to use this card for at least 3 years I guess so don't want to break it.

 

[chromatic9]

So guys. Is it safe to up the Mv core voltage in afterburner on a 970? Cause that locks my fps to 60 and without it it drops to 59 a lot. Temps are good, never above 55 Celsius because of forced 70 percent fan speed. Eagerly awaiting a response. Want to use this card for at least 3 years I guess so don't want to break it.

Yes its safe. The mv is not very large to begin with and usually the card will throttle back if you go too far. You'll need to flash the bios to do some damage.

You should put the power limit to the maximum 110 and then do your clocks and increase mv.

On my 970 I only need 10mv for a 140mhz OC with 450 on memory. All chips are different but make sure you're not using more mv than needed.

 

[Eduardboon]

Yes its safe. The mv is not vey large to begin with and usually the card will throttle back if you go too far. You'll need to flash the bios to do some damage.

Very good to know. Thanks. For other owners of the MSI 970 100ME Edition. My settings in afterburner are as follows:

Reached clocks: 1528 / 1951 (as shown in gpu-z)
Firestrike results: 10508

Core voltage +40 (lower decreases core clock to 1516 and higher does nothing, doesn't even increase voltage anymore according to gpu-z. Max is at 1.2560)
Core clock +200
Mem clock +400.

Could probably up the core even more, but why would I if I never drop under 60 in any game now. Had 1546 at +240 core and that gave me enough power to lock 60 with very high grass, but titanfall would cause driver crashes. On these levels everything is fine and runs very well. This clock gives me +10 fps in gta v and +13 in BF4. I'd say this is an awesome thing.

Btw; some people seem to like the ASIC number, so I'll post that as well: 65,8%.

Running an i5-4690K at stock speeds. Have tried 4.2Ghz but the temps increase to 75 from 58. So meh not really that interesting (this is with an aftermarket cooler). Was surprised to see that my b85 motherboard could do that so I tried, but as I've said; didn't notice a huge gain in games. (Benchmarks did have s very big gain though) and it wouldn't lock the voltage the way I wanted so no trust there.

So yeah. If you own a 970 and a 4690k gta v can be locked at 60 at good settings! Everything very high (grass at high, very high is possible but drops to 55 under certain lightning), soft shadows at softer and msaa off. In advanced extended shadows, high detail streaming and long shadows all turned on.

I hope I helped someone with this

 

[Iacobellis]

Has anyone's game been crashing more often since (I assume) the latest update from a couple weeks ago? I haven't tried SP in a while, but I can't stay in a MP session for about more than an hour before I'm back at the desktop.

I have been getting a zlib error, D3D error, and just a general "GTA V has stopped working..." message.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

This is my first time posting on here, and I'm glad a community like this exists; been a far-away admirer for a while now. I've finally decided to stop lurking on all of these places in my relentless pursuit to get this game running completely smooth. It has become an absolute obsession that I get this game working, but more importantly I'd like to make sure there's not something fundamental I'm missing in trying to tweak these games----as all of my games experience some form of stutter, but not nearly as pronounced as this game. I like to be totally visually immersed in the games that I play, and this persistent optimizing that I try to do each day has driven me to extreme irritation. I'm not sure why I've become so obsessed with getting the performance smooth in games all the time, but it just feels right. This'll be my attempt at hopefully, finally getting some closure on this shit. I won't feel competent, until I've gotten this under my belt, so any help on this matter would be much, much appreciated...as I'm still fairly uninformed with all of this stuff despite the amount of performance tweaks sites I trawl. I mean I search CONSTANTLY. I invest an inordinate amount of time in trying to fix this, but rarely actively partake in the discussions. My knowledge has been very piecemeal. Like with anything, there are a lot of varying opinions and contradictory information I see in regards to performance.

Bear in mind, I'm trying to ring out the optimal amount of performance with the least compromise in visual fidelity possible. Shouldn't I ---with my GTX 980 - be able to run the game with all of the bells and whistles on with the exclusion of MSAA, Shadows to High, Grass (which I've set to High), and turning off the Extended Distance Scaling and Extended Distance Shadows? Well, and Soft Shadows set to 'Soft' only. The juddering is NOT seemingly tied to lowering any other settings, as I've tried; remains the same.

And I should be clear here on what I mean by 'stuttering' in my case. Benchmarks all said I had good FPS, but I'm getting very visible slow-down and choppiness when I start picking up a lot of speed (particularly in the city) and especially when a car impacts. I've heard a lot of other people mention this, but I haven't seen anything specifically fix this yet. I guess you could say this more than exceeds micro-stuttering, assuming I have a firm understanding of what micro-stuttering actually is. And again, this horrible choppiness remains even despite lowering certain graphical options, although I'm not wanting to make many compromises at all in the settings.

I've gone through a whole laundry-list of things I've done, with little to no improvement gained:

-I've tried defragging.
-My drivers have been uninstalled and reinstalled.
-I've tried Borderless Windowed mode.
-Installed onto my SSD, with somewhat noticeable improvement. But, this did not tackle the problem.
-Made sure patches are all up to date.
-Tried dusting out my case and case fans.
-Did all of the usual NVCP tricks like set Triple Buffering to ON, put it to 'Single display performance mode', turned Shader Cache off (specifically for this game), Threaded optimization to ON, and Maximum pre-rendered frames to 2 (still on the fence as to whether setting the pre-rendered frames number does much at all for this game---seemingly not). I did not force Vsync through the control panel, as I've found the in-game Vsync to give me better performance for some reason, which is usually never the case.
-I've got RTSS capping the game at '144', but this is still something I've always been unclear about. Since the game will rarely exceed that number, should I have it capped it to something lower like 120, or half at 72? I've tried capping the FPS at both numbers, and neither seem to make much of a difference for this game. In general, as a rule of thumb, what number should I be capping my games at in RTSS?
-Tried changing the in-game input method to 'Direct input', from 'Raw input' and vice versa. Saw very little difference, but I am told mouse sensitivity is tied to FPS in this game. My mouse sensitivity is up very high.
-Disabled as many extraneous background processes as I could, and set GTA V launcher plus the Social Club process to 'Low'.
-Put GTAV.exe to 'High Priority'
-Made sure my fans were in working order.
-Disabled autoscan for in-game radio.
-Tried alt-tabbing out and back into the game, because I am told this works for some.
-Disabled and re-enabled in-game Vsync.
-Made sure I did not exceed the video memory limit.

My specs are: Nvidia GTX 980, Haswell i5-4670k @ 3.40ghz, 8 gigs of PNY RAM, adequate power supply, SSD and HDD, running Windows 7, with an ASUS VG428QE monitor @ 144hz.

GPU temps are normal when overclocking, and ramping up the values anymore won't do me any good. CPU temps are well below 60, so good. GPU overclocks are stable all the time, but it's also worth nothing that have the voltage at default. Will raising GPU voltage get me any more mileage out of my overclocks? That is, will it allow me to raise it a bit? Setting GPU back to stock values doesn't help either. Tried that. I doubt turning up fan speed in Afterburner would help much either. Edit: tried it. Nary a difference.

Here's what my GTA V settings currently are:

DirectX 11
Fullscreen
1920x1080
144Hz

FXAA on
MSAA off
NVIDIA TXAA off
Vsync (in-game):enabled
Pause Game On Focus Loss On

Population Density 100%
Population Variety 100%
Distance Scaling 100%

Texture Quality Very high
Shader Quality Very high
Shadow Quality High
Reflection Quality Ultra
Reflection MSAA: Off
Water Quality Very high
Particles Quality Very high
Grass Quality High
Soft Shadows Soft

Post FX Ultra
Motion Blur Strength 10%
In-Game Depth of Field Effects On
Anisotropic Filtering 16x
Ambient Occlusion High
Tesselation Very High
Long shadows On
High Resolution Shadows On
High Detail Streaming While Flying On
Extended Distance Scaling 0%
Extended Shadows Distance 0%


Right now I have an Nvidia GTX 980 4GB, so I have more than enough VRAM. I was expecting much more capability out of this GTX 980. Do I just need to bite the bullet and get a 2nd GTX 980 so that I have to worry less about this stuttering shit in games? Or would a Gsync module for my Asus VG248 greatly improve things? Gsync seems like such a costly investment for something that may or may not do much for me.

I play through DVI too. Is that known to lower performance? From what I can tell, shouldn't make a difference right?

I also don't know what adding 8 more gigs of RAM would do for me, but from what I've heard, it probably wouldn't do much. Or will making the jump to DirectX 12 - when it's out - improve any of this?

My biggest suspicion is that this is somehow directly related to the CPU. While I no longer have throttling (I made sure to fix that), I'm still pretty limited in my knowledge of overclocking. Right now I've overclocked my i5-4670k @ 3.4Ghz to 4.1ghz w/ a voltage of 1.2. This is what I've settled on for the time being, but I've tried incrementally upping the voltage and Ghz. 4.2ghz with a voltage of 1.248 seems to be about the most stable I can go, but I still don't really know what I'm doing. Perhaps this would be better suited for another thread, but would too little or too much voltage be the cause of this stutter? Upping both had little to no effect on the stuttering. Nor did lowering voltage, but I haven't fiddled around with that as extensively. Maybe I just need a better CPU altogether. It could very well just be that despite my overclocks, this i5 is bottlenecking performance. I also haven't ruled out the possibility that something is wrong with the CPU, like the thermal paste being poorly applied. I will deal with that if that's what it comes down to, but for some reason I feel like that's not so instrumental in all of this.

I'd like to be able to just tackle the root of the problem with something big, because it seems like each day I'm just pooling more and more energy into what essentially amounts to nothing. Each day is as fruitless as the last, or with so minute of a change that it hardly matters. I'll fully accept that it could just be the game, but I see this in lesser degrees in all of my games. Now, I know that most games these days are poorly optimized, but I still definitely feel like it's something on my end. I don't believe this is me being overly sensitive or overly perfectionist either (fortunately I don't believe there is such a thing in this community). Games are just not intended to be played that way. I will work closely with anyone who can help me with this. I've got most of the bases covered, but there's probably something glaring I'm missing here.

Sucks because this is such a beauty of a game. Same goes for my other games. They fall just short of completely immersing me, because of petty performance issues.

 

[Peterthumpa]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

You weren't kidding about that huh?

One question, have you tried to hook up your PC to a TV via HDMI (or trying it on a native 60Hz display device) and play the game capping it @ 60 or 30 FPS using Adaptative / Half - Adaptative and/or RTSS?

It looks like, at least IMO, that you've probably exausted your troubleshooting paths on this issue so far. Starting to think about maybe something related to your monitor and how it handles GTA V specifically.

Worth a shot, I guess.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

Haha, I know; I really wasn't.

Yep, I've tried capping it at both 60 and 30 while using just the HDMI cable. However, in order to do so I have to use an HDTV with bad input lag. Tried Adaptive Vsync and Adaptive Half on both monitors, with no improvement. Strangely, just the in-game Vsync gives me better results. Also tried capping at 60 on regular monitor after setting refresh rate from 144 to 60 on it.

 

[Peterthumpa]

Yep, I've tried capping it at both 60 and 30 using just the HDMI cable. However, in order to do so I have to use an HDTV with bad input lag. Tried Adaptive Vsync and Adaptive Half on both monitors, with no improvement. Strangely, just the in-game Vsync gives me better results.

It isn't clear to me if that solved the issue but introduced input lag. Usually input lag can be dealt with using the "Game" preset os most TVs, and IMO, GTA V shouldn't be very sensitive to input lag anyway.

EDIT - Another tip worth trying, leave everything on stock speeds. CPU, VGA, memory, whatever. Some games are way more sensitive about overclocking than others, not sure about GTA V though. Also, try your settings @ lower resolutions (although I believe you probably did it already).

 

[Allnamestakenlol]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

Hmmmm... Pretty sure I read your post completely, but I may have overlooked some things. I'm assuming you've shut down any unnecessary background programs, yea? Might also try dropping everything to low, verify whether the stutter is gone, then begin bumping your settings back up a few at a time until the problem comes back. Also, I've always gotten stutter any time my frames are below my monitor's refresh rate, either due to frame drops or limiting below native hz. I'd try as the above poster suggested and see how it works for you to play on a different monitor or tv.

 

[Windom Earle]

Not without modding the time cycle files unfortunately. I use the values (2.5) from this mod and it looks way better without any noticable performance impact http://gtaforums.com/topic/793112-vrel-increased-cascade-shadow-distance/

Ooooh. My main gripe with the game, besides this it runs pretty much perfect for me.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

It isn't clear to me if that solved the issue but introduced input lag. Usually input lag can be dealt with using the "Game" preset os most TVs, and IMO, GTA V shouldn't be very sensitive to input lag anyway.

Oh, no. Sorry, I should have been clearer. Did not solve the issue, and was in fact worse.

EDIT - Another tip worth trying, leave everything on stock speeds. CPU, VGA, memory, whatever. Some games are way more sensitive about overclocking than others, not sure about GTA V though. Also, try your settings @ lower resolutions (although I believe you probably did it already).

Very interesting. That's actually the one thing I haven't tried yet - putting my CPU values back to default, because I just assumed since overclocking my CPU was needed to get a boost out of my games, that I wouldn't need to. It's confusing me to though why this game would be more sensitive (in a bad way) to it than others, if that is in fact the problem here. Because I know it's a highly CPU-dependent game. This is worth a shot though.

The GPU, however, I did leave at stock values once or twice. The issue was still there.

 

[daninthemix]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

This won't be much help, but I only eliminated all stuttering by locking my fps to 45. I suspect something in my system was not able to maintain 60, and this lead to the game sometimes 'tripping over itself' - perhaps it's more of an issue when you drop frames while driving at high speed.

I also set GPU max buffered frames to 1 in NVCP and used borderless windowed mode.

So what I suggest is locking your frame rate at some lower level and seeing if that helps.

With your monitor, try 72 or 48 fps (make sure you use borderless windowed for the triple buffering). It's worth a shot.

 

[Valygar]

What solved my BSoD and crash problems was increasing virtual memory in windows. I had a limit of 6g , when I removed it the game used 8g of virtual + 4g of RAM.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

So what I suggest is locking your frame rate at some lower level and seeing if that helps.

With your monitor, try 72 or 48 fps (make sure you use borderless windowed for the triple buffering). It's worth a shot.

Yeah, I tried capping it at 72 before, and the stuttering was still there. However, I just did what you said and tried lowering below 60. There was just a very, very small improvement. Or that could have been placebic even.

I was actually running in borderless windowed before, but I had no idea that it had to be borderless for triple buffering to work. I have a question for you though: are you forcing Triple Buffering through NVCP or using D3DOverrider? I tried both, and neither seem to make a difference. However, I'm not sure if D3DOverrider is even working for this game--I heard no sounds to acknowledge that it was even being detected.

And another question.....this is something that I've always been in the dark about.....when you cap your framerate, should you adjust your refresh rate accordingly too? For example, if I were to cap at 72, should I make a custom refresh rate for '72' on my monitor, to sync up with the cap? I usually don't adjust the refresh rate.

 

[Philtastic]

<Snip>

I suspect a combination of vsync and not maintaining your capped framerate for whatever reason are the problems. A quick test for this is to just disable all forms of vsync and see how that feels. I found on my Radeon 280X that this was the only way to get rid of stuttering even if Afterburner seemed to show a constant 60 fps.

 

[daninthemix]

Yeah, I tried capping it at 72 before, and the stuttering was still there. However, I just did what you said and tried lowering below 60. There was just a very, very small improvement. Or that could have been placebic even.

I was actually running in borderless windowed before, but I had no idea that it had to be borderless for triple buffering to work. I have a question for you though: are you forcing Triple Buffering through NVCP or using D3DOverrider? I tried both, and neither seem to make a difference. However, I'm not sure if D3DOverrider is even working for this game--I heard no sounds to acknowledge that it was even being detected.

And another question.....this is something that I've always been in the dark about.....when you cap your framerate, should you adjust your refresh rate accordingly too? For example, if I were to cap at 72, should I make a custom refresh rate for '72' on my monitor, to sync up with the cap? I usually don't adjust the refresh rate.

D3DOverrider doesn't work with 64 bit games (including GTAV). NVCP triple buffering setting applies to OpenGL titles only, not Direct X. Borderless windowed mode, assuming you're using Windows Aero, enforces triple-buffered v-sync.

When I cap frame rate I don't touch refresh rate - I just leave it at native.

Don't ignore the max pre-rendered frames setting in NVCP - it can make a big difference with stuttering, and different number work different for different rigs, games etc. 1 for me was perfect.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

I suspect a combination of vsync and not maintaining your capped framerate for whatever reason are the problems. A quick test for this is to just disable all forms of vsync and see how that feels. I found on my Radeon 280X that this was the only way to get rid of stuttering even if Afterburner seemed to show a constant 60 fps.

I think at this point I've tried every possible combination of no Vsync and Vsync, via in-game or through the Nvidia Control Panel. For me, the game performs worse if I don't have Vsync enabled in-game.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

D3DOverrider doesn't work with 64 bit games (including GTAV). NVCP triple buffering setting applies to OpenGL titles only, not Direct X. Borderless windowed mode, assuming you're using Windows Aero, enforces triple-buffered v-sync.

Ahh, thank you. Very nice to know this. But as far as Windows Aero - no; I have no idea what that is actually. I've been using the default 'Borderless Windowed' mode through GTA V' settings. Will that make a difference?

Don't ignore the max pre-rendered frames setting in NVCP - it can make a big difference with stuttering, and different number work different for different rigs, games etc. 1 for me was perfect.

Indeed this has helped in other games for me. No effect on GTA V though. I've tried '1', '2', '3', and '4'.

 

[daninthemix]

Ahh, thank you. Very nice to know this. But as far as Windows Aero - no; I have no idea what that is actually. I've been using borderless windowed mode through GTA V' settings. Will that make a difference?

Aero is just the default Windows theme for 7 (and 8 I presume) that has all those fancy transparency effects. As long as you're not running the Windows 'Basic' theme you get triple buffering with all windows (including borderless windows...)

All I can do is echo my own experiences - when I was trying for 60fps, I'd get it most of the time but sometimes not, and I'd get these occasional hitches or pauses, particularly when driving at high speed. After I limited my fps to 45 (which I did in Nvidia Inspector, by the way), used triple buffering, max pre-rendered frames to 1, from there on out I got a constant, locked, zero stutter experience.

Looking at your settings, I ran all the standard settings at max, but TXAA off and MSAAx2 only (oh and grass on v high not ultra, shadows on soft). I had all advanced graphics options disabled except for streaming while flying.

This is definitely a game that appreciates a little headroom in your hardware. The only time I got crashes was when I was running MSAAx4 - in other words perhaps pushing my 970 a little far. And again, when I was trying for 60fps, that's when I'd get hitching.

Sorry I can't give more concrete advice.

Remember if you're going to lock frame rate it can't be an arbitrary number, it must be a valid fraction of the refresh rate. You can try 48 (a third of your refresh rate) or 36 (a quarter) if using triple buffering.

EDIT: and make sure GTAV is itself set to the correct refresh rate - 144Hz.

 

[Robert J. Sullivan]

Anyone else getting a white-ish square effect when using shadows on very high ? It disappeared when I switched back to high. At first I thought it was my graphic card giving me visual artifacts but maybe it's just settings interfering ?

Will try to post a vid soon.

edit : http://a.pomf.se/yptowz.webm
sorry for shit quality but looks noticeable enough

 

[CyanideFuse]

My stuttering was eliminated by setting the following:

• Fullscreen - (borderless window introduced a lot of stuttering for me)
• Vsync on in nVidia control panel (not adaptive)
• Max pre-rendered frames set to 1 in the control panel.
• No in-game vsync
• 60fps limit in Rivatuner
• Alt-tabbing out of game and back in when the game has loaded. This is a pain as I always have to set the Hz value from 59 to 60 and my DSR settings reset to 1080p.

It is now smooth. Frame rate drops occur as I have my settings on mostly maximum but I do not get the jarring stuttering.

The game seemed to stutter no matter what graphical / cpu intensive settings I set up but this has fixed it for me.

 

[Dries]

By now, I wonder if the Self Radio stuttering will ever get fixed

 

[antiloop]

Game is crashing for me. Like totally freeze with the sound going.

 

[LilJoka]

Game is crashing for me. Like totally freeze with the sound going.

That's likely a GPU crash if sound is looping. If sound is playing normally it's probavly to do with the memory leak, increase the page file size.

 

[Vuze]

Hm, experiencing sth strange since yesterday. I can't use my controllers left stick anymore as in push it in to go stealth mode / retract plane wheels. Keyboard equivalents still work. It's not that the controller is broken, I have a secondary Xbox One controller that I never used before and it doesn't work with that one either.

Not sure what's wrong, everything else is fine and it works in other games.

 

[antiloop]

That's likely a GPU crash if sound is looping. If sound is playing normally it's probavly to do with the memory leak, increase the page file size.

Noticed I had page file at 1024 MB max. Maybe it was that.

 

[bongpig]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post...

I know you must be totally fed up of trying everything under the sun. Here are some tips that always help games run better on my gaming laptop:-

- Do a clean windows boot before playing. This will boot windows with nothing but the essential windows processes running.
- Park your CPU cores using a tool like Park Control/Process Lasso.
- Disable hyper-threading. I know the game has a command line option to do this, but I personally achieve this using Process Lasso. It can also be done using task manager but Ive not tried.

The above three tweeks always do wonders for in-game stuttering for me on all games ive tried. As a reference, GTA5 runs at least 15fps higher with the above in-place without any heavy lurching/stuttering.

If you dont know how to do any of the above, let me know and i'll explain in a bit more depth.

 

[CarbonFire]

Noticed I had page file at 1024 MB max. Maybe it was that.

Absolutely could be that. This game really likes having large page files, even when you have sufficient RAM. I'm running with an 8GB page file, and the game has been quite stable for me.

 

[laxu]

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

I upgraded from 8 GB to 16 GB and GTA V definitely runs smoother so might be worth a try. That said, if you are getting stutters in other games too then it might be something else. Overclocking the CPU can make the system seem stable but it can still cause calculation errors that the CPU just corrects but it might hamper performance. You could try to see if it performs differently at stock speeds and if it does, then you may need to go with a more conservative overclock or higher voltages.

You could also check if removing any antivirus software you have running helps.

G-Sync can't do anything about stutters but helps make fps fluctuation less noticeable. DX12 won't do anything for DX11 games.

GTA V and other new open world games tend to have issues with data streaming at times. I run 970 SLI and I get the occasional stutter once in a while (usually when driving from the city to the countryside) but it's nothing that happens constantly.

Other than that, you could have Afterburner running and see what kind of graphs it outputs when you get stutters. Add the CPU usage graphs and various GPU limits to it from options. Then you might have a better chance to find the root problem.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

I know you must be totally fed up of trying everything under the sun. Here are some tips that always help games run better on my gaming laptop:-

- Do a clean windows boot before playing. This will boot windows with nothing but the essential windows processes running.
- Park your CPU cores using a tool like Park Control/Process Lasso.
- Disable hyper-threading. I know the game has a command line option to do this, but I personally achieve this using Process Lasso. It can also be done using task manager but Ive not tried.

For the longest time now I've had my cores unparked. I think I specifically did this for Far Cry 4 if I remember correctly. Could this be the problem---that I have them all unparked? I assumed it was better to have them unparked. If so, which cores should I specifically park?

Also, I tried to enable 'Avoid non-physical cores' in the Process Lasso program that you told me about so that I could disable hyperthreading for GTAV. The option was greyed out however. I'll try disabling it through task manager as you mentioned. I'm not even 100% I have hyperthreading on this processor; this is how out of the loop I am. I have an i5-4670k. Isn't this only for i7s?

 

[Christberg]

Does anybody know if the physical version just lets you copy all the cabs into an install folder? Looks like it does but thought I'd check

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

I upgraded from 8 GB to 16 GB and GTA V definitely runs smoother so might be worth a try. That said, if you are getting stutters in other games too then it might be something else. Overclocking the CPU can make the system seem stable but it can still cause calculation errors that the CPU just corrects but it might hamper performance. You could try to see if it performs differently at stock speeds and if it does, then you may need to go with a more conservative overclock or higher voltages.

Other than that, you could have Afterburner running and see what kind of graphs it outputs when you get stutters. Add the CPU usage graphs and various GPU limits to it from options. Then you might have a better chance to find the root problem.

Good, sounds like I'll be getting another 8gb then. Was the stutter exponentially better, or mildly improved?

As for Afterburner, I will start trying this now.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Hm, experiencing sth strange since yesterday. I can't use my controllers left stick anymore as in push it in to go stealth mode / retract plane wheels. Keyboard equivalents still work. It's not that the controller is broken, I have a secondary Xbox One controller that I never used before and it doesn't work with that one either.

Not sure what's wrong, everything else is fine and it works in other games.

First thing first. Remove/delete the drivers of the controller. You should be able to do it from Device Manager in Windows. Re-install and then report back. I had a buddy who had a similar issue and that seemed to fix it for him.

Sorry, but this might be a mammoth of a post.

Sucks because this is such a beauty of a game. Same goes for my other games. They fall just short of completely immersing me, because of petty performance issues.

That is strange bub. I have 8Gb of Ram and a 780 coupled with an i7-4770k @4.2Ghz so I doubt ram and gpu are the culprit. I can't speak for the i5 line of CPU's but they seem to be up to the task from the few benchmarks I've glanced at. I'd hate to say that your cpu is holding you back as I don't know much about it, but comparing your setup to mine(same ram, you have a better gpu) it's the only thing that stands out to me. Do you have a spare computer or a friend that has a spare computer that you could pop your ram/gpu in and see if you can eliminate them for sure from the equation? It sounds like you've gone through most of the steps anyone would go through too so I am unsure what else you'd do. Have you tried contacting R* support? I can't imagine they'd actually tell you anything useful but it is worth a shot.

 

[Philtastic]

For the longest time now I've had my cores unparked. I think I specifically did this for Far Cry 4 if I remember correctly. Could this be the problem---that I have them all unparked? I assumed it was better to have them unparked. If so, which cores should I specifically park?

Also, I tried to enable 'Avoid non-physical cores' in the Process Lasso program that you told me about so that I could disable hyperthreading for GTAV. The option was greyed out however. I'll try disabling it through task manager as you mentioned. I'm not even 100% I have hyperthreading on this processor; this is how out of the loop I am. I have an i5-4670k. Isn't this only for i7s?

In which case, I recommend putting everything to stock settings and clockspeeds. GTA V is particularly good at pushing systems enough that any instabilities seem to show up. It could be that, assuming that you're overclocking, you're at a point where you don't crash but your computer is experiencing many recoverable and small errors that lead to stutter.

 

[bongpig]

For the longest time now I've had my cores unparked. I think I specifically did this for Far Cry 4 if I remember correctly. Could this be the problem---that I have them all unparked? I assumed it was better to have them unparked. If so, which cores should I specifically park?

Also, I tried to enable 'Avoid non-physical cores' in the Process Lasso program that you told me about so that I could disable hyperthreading for GTAV. The option was greyed out however. I'll try disabling it through task manager as you mentioned. I'm not even 100% I have hyperthreading on this processor; this is how out of the loop I am. I have an i5-4670k. Isn't this only for i7s?

You need to disable core parking on all your cores. Cant say much regards an i5 as I have an i7.

Im sure i5's have hyper threading. Or at least, some of them do. Assuming you have 4 cores, you need to keep the 4 physical cores enabled, and disable the other 4. In my case its alternate; keep all even number cores ( 0,2,4,6 ) and disable the rest.

Ive been waiting for the day where having hyperthreading enabled actually benefits a game on my PC, but it's yet to happen.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

In which case, I recommend putting everything to stock settings and clockspeeds. GTA V is particularly good at pushing systems enough that any instabilities seem to show up. It could be that, assuming that you're overclocking, you're at a point where you don't crash but your computer is experiencing many recoverable and small errors that lead to stutter.

I can confirm that setting CPU clock speeds to normal did in fact help slightly. Emphasis on slightly. Still there, but it seems a little more tolerable now. Why this is, is still baffling to me, since overclocking the CPU has netted me improvements in almost every other game.

You need to disable core parking on all your cores. Cant say much regards an i5 as I have an i7.

Im sure i5's have hyper threading. Or at least, some of them do. Assuming you have 4 cores, you need to keep the 4 physical cores enabled, and disable the other 4. In my case its alternate; keep all even number cores ( 0,2,4,6 ) and disable the rest.

Yeah, my cores have been unparked for a while now if that's what you mean. Although, for the record, I was only able to unpark 3 cores. (I was using CPU Unpark)

But about the hyperthreading, how would I go about disabling this?

 

[nkarafo]

This game can't stay stable at 60fps for me with everything on "very high" including shadow quality and grass. However, i found that choosing 50hz instead of 60 and then normal vsync, makes the game run at mostly stable 50fps, which is much better than 30 and kinda makes the slowdowns look less severe than the 60hz option (in some places with too much foliage). Because i assume, dropping to 40-45 from 50 is less noticeable than dropping the same amount from 60.

So, if your monitor/TV supports 50hz, i would suggest using that instead of 60, if you have a lesser than GTX970 card. Besides, 50 vs 60 fps difference is minimal. The game still retains that smooth feel.

 

[knerl]

Seems to me that when and if the game stutters more noticeably it's due to the cpu usage reaching 100% on some or all cores. Should the game really utilize the cpu to 100%?
Do we know if this will be fixed?

 

[LilJoka]

Seems to me that when and if the game stutters more noticeably it's due to the cpu usage reaching 100% on some or all cores. Should the game really utilize the cpu to 100%?
Do we know if this will be fixed?

Well what cpu do you have and what GPU?

 

[bongpig]

Yeah, my cores have been unparked for a while now if that's what you mean. Although, for the record, I was only able to unpark 3 cores. (I was using CPU Unpark)

But about the hyperthreading, how would I go about disabling this?

Never used CPU unpark but it looks like it does the same thing.

As for hyperthreading, I personally use a tool called Process Lasso. But I saw in the command line options for GTA there is an option to disable hyper-threading:- https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/articles/202518358-Available-Command-Lines-for-GTAV-on-PC

The command is: -disableHyperthreading

Ive not tried the command line method or confirmed it works. Basically, after disabling hyperthreading you should only see activity on your physical cores when playing the game. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

This game can't stay stable at 60fps for me with everything on "very high" including shadow quality and grass. However, i found that choosing 50hz instead of 60 and then normal vsync, makes the game run at mostly stable 50fps, which is much better than 30 and kinda makes the slowdowns look less severe than the 60hz option (in some places with too much foliage). Because i assume, dropping to 40-45 from 50 is less noticeable than dropping the same amount from 60.

So, if your monitor/TV supports 50hz, i would suggest using that instead of 60, if you have a lesser than GTX970 card. Besides, 50 vs 60 fps difference is minimal. The game still retains that smooth feel.

This is how I run the game. I set my TV to 50hz and turn on vsync. Works a treat. Locked 50 is far better then fluctuating between 50 and 60.

 

[ktroopa]

Does this CPU Unpark program need to be run everytime I boot my PC, or one time run, unpark and then reboot. Is it saved to the registry until i park them?

 

[bongpig]

Does this CPU Unpark program need to be run everytime I boot my PC, or one time run, unpark and then reboot. Is it saved to the registry until i park them?

I know Park Control works without the need to reboot. Dont know about CPU Unpark.

 

[ktroopa]

I know Park Control works without the need to reboot. Dont know about CPU Unpark.

ok but does Park Control save the changes permanently to the registry?

 

[bongpig]

ok but does Park Control save the changes permanently to the registry?

I think it attaches parking properties to a particular power plan. So, if you disable parking on the "high performance" power plan ( for example ) then the cores will remain unparked whenever "high performance" is selected as the active plan. So yes, im assuming it makes changes to the registry.

 

[Dries]

Seems to me that when and if the game stutters more noticeably it's due to the cpu usage reaching 100% on some or all cores. Should the game really utilize the cpu to 100%?
Do we know if this will be fixed?

Yes, this is a thing. Especially with Self Radio.

 

[PC_Load_Letter]

The command is: -disableHyperthreading

Ive not tried the command line method or confirmed it works. Basically, after disabling hyperthreading you should only see activity on your physical cores when playing the game. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Alright, I gave this command line a try. Very, very small improvement. Hardly noticeable.

So as it stands, the stuttering was reduced slightly by restoring CPU clocks to default, and the hyperthreading barely did anything. After doing some reading, I'm not 100% convinced this isn't some kind of a memory management issue. I failed to mention my Pagefile settings earlier; my C drive (my SSD) is set to 'System managed' as per a suggestion from another GTA V performance-related thread. Could this be wrong and should I actually set it to some custom size? I should note that 'system managed' is only for my SSD. My HDD Pagefile is set to something like 20,000 for initial and maximum size....if that's even worth mentioning.

Still don't really understand these pagefile values. Somebody mentioned that setting their pagefile to their SSD cleared up their stutter. Does this mean that they just selected 'no paging file' for their HDD and put in arbitrary values for the SSD pagefile?