I understand there is a huge stuttering troubleshooting thread already, but most of those people there are conflating many different issues together.
To be clear: this is not the kind of “stutter” which is causing second-long freezes, or the “permanent 4 FPS bug”, this is classic microstutter caused by uneven framepacing.
Basically my game will skip a frame every 1-2 minutes creating what feels like shader compilation stutter.
The problem with such an issue is most people on low or middle-end hardware won’t notice or care as they usually can’t lock their framerate to 120Hz or higher, however, on my 4090 I can clearly detect these issues.
Really bummed because it aggravates my OCD and makes it difficult to feel immersed.
What I’ve tried (with no success):
- Locking FPS via RTSS
- Locking FPS via NVCP
- Enabling/disabling various forms of G-Sync and V-Sync
- Running the game all on low (including shadows and textures) as well as at lower resolutions
- Updated nVidia drivers
- Various placebo fixes found on the forums and reddit
Really at a loss here and about to write this game off as another victim to the 2023 microstutter crisis.
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+1. Seems possibly related to resource load as it happens rarely if standing still not in a populated area, but happens when moving about.
Looking at stats with RTSS, the issue is very apparent in a frametime graph. It is mostly stable, but when traversing an area there will be frequent random and very short frametime spikes, possibly just a single delayed frame. But since the frametime spike is high, it is visually very noticeable.
I remember Diablo 3 at least at some point had this issue too, though it seems worse here.
Someone else had this issue and turned off browser acceleration in Bnet. (not sure why that would have done anything) Apparently the app was running at the desktop not minimized. I would actually recommend just exiting the app and see what that does.
I think that one is resolving a different kind of stutter for people:
To be clear: this is not the kind of “stutter” which is causing second-long freezes, or the “permanent 4 FPS bug”, this is classic microstutter caused by uneven framepacing.
I also tried this but did not notice any improvement, unfortunately:
I would actually recommend just exiting the app and see what that does.
+1. Had this issue as well with my 3070. I play on mostly high settings (including high texture) with shadows on lowest + a few like fog and clutter on medium at 1080p 144fps. It’s not that bad like the others like what OP mentioned. But the most common lag spike is when traversing the world, especially when on the mount, exactly like what OP described. It’s perfectly smooth in dungeons for me. No lag at all. So I wonder if is just “normal” to skip a frame as the new areas of the world is loading.
Currently the only thing that I can accept at best is to play with these settings:
NVCP:
Vsync: Adaptive Vsync
Pre render frames: Use the application settings
Max frame rate off.
IN-GAME:
Vsync: Off
Max foreground FPS: 400
Max background FPS: 144
DLSS: Off
Reflex: Disabled
Anyone else with possible fixes would be highly appreciated. Hopefully Blizzard does fix this soon.
I’m glad some people are actually having the issue and not just me
If you turn off RTSS and don’t think about it, you can kind of ignore it but still unpleasant
And like so many games in the past 2 years, the PS5 version runs flawlessly without these issues
PC games aren’t even made for PC anymore 
You can tell from the youtubers and streamers that most of their gameplay have some sort of lag in them especially what we just mentioned above. Some of them are even more choppy/laggy than mine. But somehow they can ignore it because i guess some people put emphasis on rushing the game and getting to lv 100 while others prefer to enjoy the game at slower pace and immerse in the game.
Yeah, its a shame, given that otherwise the game seems to run great. The average framerate overall is pretty stable, its just these short but big frametime spikes are very distracting.
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Are they precisely a fixed time apart? Or does it just feel like its every so often?
It could be transitional. As your VRAM maxes out, it could be a smaller interpretation of the same effect as traversing zones could cause. (when the screen announces you entering an area for example)
I know you have a monster card and all, but have you tried lowering the quality to High?
You can do that, but then increase scaling to compensate, like raising it to 125%, or 150%.
Just curious if it would lower the texture load size but maintain quality. A few have commented to say they can’t tell the difference between them. lol
Here, I’ll fix your stuttering problem instantly.
Close out the game.
Go into the Battle.net Launcher.
Go to: Settings>App>Advanced Features
Uncheck the box: “Use browser hardware acceleration”
Let me know how this works for you, it worked for me. Apparently it’s messing with the game itself.
Tried this and it didn’t work for me…
What are your system specs? CPU, GPU, RAM, and connection type?
If you had read the thread, I had actually already posted that suggestion.
And I don’t think every stuttering problem is going to be fixed by that suggestion. I would more likely to recommend just having the launcher exit when you play a game, vs changing that setting. Just an FYI.
Thanks,
Most of these issues (and I said it earlier) are revolving around the VRAM use, or issues with connection.
Right now, I don’t have any 1 fix for the stutter/FPS drop/Crashes/Out of memory errors that seem to occur with regards to the VRAM problem. Some suggestions help, and that’s great! As for the connection issues, I’m still gathering as much data as I can, which is why its important to run some tests on your connection.
Either way, we have the same problem. A whole bunch of players that cannot play the game at all or it plays poorly.
Looks like Digital Foundry has a video upcoming about this. They have it on their patreon, and I think release on youtube after some days.
It is called “Diablo 4 PC - DF Tech Review - A Great Game but VRAM/Textures Are Problematic” (can’t link due to forum restrictions).
Their summary of the video:
Blizzard’s Diablo 4 on PC is an excellent effort overall, with exceptional scalability and great performance. The only real issue concerns texture quality and VRAM requirements. Remarkably, only a 16GB GPU can match the visual quality of the PlayStation 5 version - a situation that’s clearly sub-optimal and needs to be addressed. Don Allen reports on this one!
Although I find even dropping all settings the stutters still occur when running about.
i9 9900k, 3090, 32gb ddr4, wired 1gb connection.
Yes for my case is related to traversal mainly. As I mentioned in dungeon, 0 lag perfectly smooth, no stutter. But mostly when I pass to new areas (especially more so when on a horse going in and out of the town entrance/exit). Also when the horse is at its highest speed going through the open area.
I’m playing high texture with a mix of high and low and medium settings on 1080p 72fps locked with adaptive vsync (half refresh rate) on my 3070. I should be able to play at 144fps no problem. If uncap I can get around 230-250fps without DLSS.
No one should really be uncapping their FPS anyway. All that does is make the GPU work hard as possible.
I typically cap about 5FPS above my monitor’s refresh rate, which currently is 144.
The only time its an advantage to over-run a monitor refresh may be for a game like an FPS where latency can be helped a tad. And these days, even then its not much of a gain. And I would still maintain it doesn’t need to be uncapped, even then. Just give it more than a 5FPS buffer.
All that doesn’t matter though here.
You must be getting some loading issues when transitioning to different areas. Possibly related to the VRAM problem everyone is seeing.
I have struggled with the exact same issues.
I have managed to solve this on my 60hz TV by just enabling vsync in game and disabling Nvidia Reflex. The reflex-setting is not a placebo for removing stutters in this scenario. When i got this running i understood that it’s not a texture streaming issue or a network-scenario that is causing the traversal stutters. It’s how the engine works with fps/hz timings.
However i also play on my 170hz 1440p desktop screen and on that i haven’t had as much luck despite trying a million different settings. Currently running vsync + 125fps cap in NVCP, but it’s far from perfect.
I honestly think this issue would just go away if we got a proper full screen mode. The current borderless window-mode does not play well with Gsync at all. It also should have a setting for Hz like in overwatch.
I am also seeing able to get rid of much of the stuttering by manually disabling g-sync and setting monitor at desired refresh rate (60, 100, etc) launching, with using rivatuner statistic-server to lock frame-rate and even out frame-time.
Quite inconvenient since then have to switch back the settings after leaving the game. Switching the settings while the game is open also causes the frame-rate to act erratic as well.
I tried Diablo 3 a month back on PC and had similar issues with G-Sync.
Yeah it might, or something else in the engine has issues. It had full screen in beta, but they removed it since it would crash on alt-tab frequently.
Hopefully they work on the g-sync issues.
I haven’t been having any problems with G-Sync. I have it enabled in Windows for both games and desktop, the monitor supports it at 144, and I use it in game, and I run V-Sync on as well, even though that sounds wrong.
Thing just works fine, all games. D2, D3, DI, D4, OW, whatever. Most games I have always ran Fullscreen Windowed anyway. I rarely use exclusive full screen anymore, especially with multi-monitor setups, though I haven’t had that set up yet on the new PC.