I’m so done with trying to troubleshoot this, hopefully someone here can help me out…
My setup:
Rtx 2080 Super connected via eGPU to a 16" macbook pro, connected to a 75hz ultrawide external monitor. Bootcamped w/ up-to-date Windows 10 and all drivers are up to date. Issue exists whether or not the laptop screen is also on.
The issue:
When playing hots, every ~5 seconds my frames will dip drastically, causing micro stutters and general unstable gameplay. Opening task manager shows dips in both the CPU and GPU charts every time I get these stutters. I’ve also turned off freesync / vsync / all that jazz and let it go uncapped to see how many frames exactly I’m losing - even when the game is paused, I go from ~400fps to ~250 and then back to ~400, again every 5 seconds or so. Doesn’t seem like a big issue since its still pushing frames past my refresh rate, but the fact that the stutter is still noticeable even when locked to the refresh rate is why it’s so frustrating.
This happens in every game mode, including Try Mode, so it isn’t a network issue. Also doesn’t happen in any of my other games. If I switch graphics cards to my built-in AMD radeon 5500m card and run it off that, I don’t see the issue, which makes me think it’s an Nvidia issue. I’ve also tried disabling the amd card and running just the rtx, no dice there either. Did a clean install of windows, DDU’d all my graphics drivers, reinstalled hots, etc. Did basically everything everything under the sun, and I can’t seem to fix the issue.
Wasn’t having this issue until about a month / month and a half ago. Not sure what changed but something did.
Any help would be awesome cause I’m about to tear my hair out. Thanks!
Sounds network related to me. If there is an unreliable connection between you and the BattleNet servers then every time a packet is lost or delayed the game has to pause (CPU and GPU mostly idle), wait until the response packets arrive, fast forward to catch up (high CPU and GPU workload, low frame rate) and then resume normal play.
This issue is fairly common when playing using WiFi or other forms of wireless network such as cellular network. Wireless communications are not perfectly reliable so the packet loss or delay can frequently occur. Due to such problems being statistically unlikely for any individual packet, the overall connection can have a high transmission rate and reliably transmit bulk data, but the connection latency can be unreliable with high worst case times. Games depend on reliable and low connection latency as they do not move much data and latency determines how responsive the player actions are in the game.
Like the topic Vemware linked says your CPU is being throttled.
Running at 400fps puts huge stress on your CPU, there is no need to do that when your screen refresh rate is 75hz and can only display 75 frames per second.
After turning on vsync or installing a Windows update to limit frames the thermal throttling of the CPU stops too.
Should not be an issue for modern CPUs. Due to the old threading model the StarCraft II engine is, it should not cause a CPU to use more than 20 Watts of power or so, which is well below the TDP of the package. Pretty much 1 core at max,
GPU is another matter, with it still making modern GPUs run quite toasty or with a lot of power.
I know, I just meant cpu usage rather than wattage. Even in benchmarks, top CPU’s go near 100% cpu usage when you set framerate to unlimited (regardless of the graphics card used) . When you limit to 60 or 120fps it drops to 40-50%.
Though I never understood why people want to run a game at like 560fps if their monitor is 75hz or 120hz. All those extra frames are wasted.
I don’t know if there are even any mainstream gaming monitors that go beyond 240hz, so anything beyond 240fps is wasted even on those.
The HotS engine will not be able to hit 100% usage on modern CPUs as it is not threaded enough. For example it shows in task manager as using under 10% of a Ryzen 9 3900X with no frame rate cap.
It is about reducing worst case total system latency. Due to how frames are displayed it is possible to end up with a latency of nearly 1 frame, after any pipelining, on what is being shown. This would be the case that the next frame is rendered and ready for present just after the previous frame was presented. This is where higher than refresh rate helps since during that time it could render a more up-to-date image that will be displayed next present, and hence reduce total system latency.
Technologies like variable refresh rate help with this to some extent, but they still suffer the same potential for almost a 1 frame latency should the next frame finish being drawn just after the previous frame is presented. I suspect Nvidia and their latency optimisation framework they are pushing aims to reduce this latency by trying to sync up everything so drawing ends just before the next present occurs. However this is purely speculation.
For games like Heroes of the Storm the latency matters a lot less since the game runs at 16 updates per second anyway. Already with 60 frames per second the worst case total system latency is likely to be much lower than that 16 updates per second so there will likely be few gains from running at higher refresh rates, let alone above display refresh rate.