Weird fix for 7970m "microstuttering" in certain games

Apparently some games, like D3, suffer from "microstuttering," which is where you have 60 fps, but it still doesn't fully look smooth. Not sure exactly why certain games do this, but I figured out a fix for it by random settings tweaking. After some reading on other sites, I found out that this is only an issue with AMD cards.

Some of you may not have this problem or this may not work for you, but it's worth a try:

1) open CCC (Catalyst Control Center for those even less familiar with AMD than I am) to 3D application settings and make sure Triple Buffering is enabled. By default, at least on my machine, it was not.

2) here's the weird part. After you click apply, you can't close CCC; it can only be minimized, or the microstuttering comes back. The difference is night and day - you can toggle Triple Buffering on and off to see the difference.

I might just be an AMD noob, but it doesn't seem like closing CCC should disable any settings - so it's either a driver issue currently, or a stupid design on AMD's part.

I'm not sure how many other games will benefit from this, but I can't imagine it would hurt anything.

Hope this fixes some people's issues with D3, at least.

 

Wow, that's interesting. I will have to remember that trick. Thank you for sharing it. It might be helpful to a bunch of people.

 

That would be weird since the triple buffering is only OpenGL and by default most games, if you have vsync on, it's using triple buffering for Direct3D.

And it would be even more weird if it helps you considering your micro-stuttering is from CF.

 

I noticed this jitter problem in D3, I will look into this later thanks for the tip.

 

Yep.

Even weirder, after I've messed with stuff a bit more to see exactly when this happens; apparently after it's "fixed" by enabling triple buffering, if you disable triple buffering and click apply, but leave CCC open, the microstuttering is still gone, but if you close CCC, it comes back...

I have no idea what kind of weird programming mojo must be going on there, but it makes no sense to me =p. All I know is that it works for me, and hopefully for others.

 

What if you just force vSync with D3DOverrider?

 

For me, I just turn the vsync in the game (D3) and the micro-stutter is gone. In CCC, the triple buffering has always been on. Whether the application is opened, minimized or closed, the micro-stutter is there if I don't turn the vsync on in the game.

And while I install all of my applications and games on my secondary drive (regular plate), I installed D3 in my main drive (SSD).

Another thing I did was I right clicked on my drive, went to properties, and under the general tab, I unchecked "Allow files on this drive to have contents..." The dialog that pops up after that, I chose C:\ only. I did this for both my drives.

D3 is buttery smooth for me.

 

Interesting. I enabled vsync in game and it looked the same no matter what settings I changed =p, before I changed to triple buffering in CCC. Not sure how our setups differ to make this happen.

I assume forcing vsync through that other tool would probably work then, but isn't that part of RivaTuner? I haven't used that in years.

 

soxamaca are you running D3 in full screen mode or windowed mode?

 

Full screen.

 

Are you experiencing this with any other games? Right now I'm placing all of the blame on Blizzard. This is a known problem with Diablo 3 for pretty much any AMD video card. I'm hoping Blizzard will have an upcoming patch that fixes this. If you google diablo 3 microstuttering, you will be sure to see plenty of posts from the blizzard diablo 3 forums. I'm experiencing the same problem with my 7970m to a VERY VERY small degree (barely noticeable), as does my friend with a desktop 7970 (was very noticeable), and another friend with a desktop amd 59xx. There seem to be a lot of solutions out there. One of my friends with a desktop AMD card noticed a huge improvement when he changed over to a SSD. I saw the difference too, couldn't believe it at first because I thought it had to be video card/driver related.


I'm going to try the triple buff thing later, see if that helps.

 

Yea. When I was googling for solutions last night, I found a big thread with a few "fixes" in it. None of them worked for me, so I kept looking. I think it's possible Blizzard is at fault (then again, they're at fault for a lot with D3 =p), but I don't know for sure.

 

I've read some of those forum posts and regarding the SSD, they say that it's because Diablo 3 loads on the fly. That doesn't make much sense to me. I understand it's an online-only game but SSD or regular HDD shouldn't matter in theory. Regardless, I played it safe by uninstalling D3 from my HDD and reinstalled it on my SSD. The registry pointing to the wrong drive and the "unknown" icon on my taskbar was a pain to fix, but I finally got everything working.

 

I've seen plenty of unexplainable things. The effect may have nothing to do with OpenGL or triple buffering... may just be something with CCC or the display drivers that leaving CCC open and in a state of limbo affects something else. No way to know for sure, but if it works it that's a good thing.