Question Stutters/hiccups on a pretty good machine

[ghostmerder]

Disclaimer: I understand this program is the opposite of optimized; single core performance, blah blah.

So I'm having a problem with the odd chug here and there when I'm screen recording timeline animations. Maybe every 10-20 seconds, the playback will pause for about a half second and resume. I want to note that the framerate otherwise hovers in the mid 30s while I'm running the timeline animation, but well above 100 at idle. The framerate is fine for what I'm doing, but these intermittent pauses are just annoying and a pain to edit out. Here's a list of things I've tried/specs/conditions present:

I've tried:
-Pretty much everything in this thread: https://hub.virtamate.com/resources/improving-fps-in-vam.445/ (hair, clothing, light settings, sim disabled, all physics off)
-I animate without ANY collisions turned on
-I render at 1.25 scale but that's gpu and everything I've read says the cpu is always the bottleneck.
-I've attached a screenshot of the settings I use for screen recording animations.
-I've tried the physics everywhere between 1-3 and 30-72hz, doesn't seem to make much difference.
-I've tried streamlab OBS and Multicam for capture, but this happens without any recoring going on.
-I have even tried slowing down the animation speed (local and global, both atoms, both plugins), but the same stutters happen.

Conditions:
-Never more than 2 people, and they are the only atoms moving at any given time.
-Typically 3 spot lights at low range, 2 if I can get away with it.
-I do size-change stuff, but it happens whether an atom's scale is currently changing or not.
-I use the simplest entities I can find for environments (no active movement or inbuilt mechanics)

Specs:
-5800X, Auto overclocked to 4100Mhz
-32GB 3200mhz ram 16CL
-6800XT Factory OC'ed to 2439Mhz

I mean, if this is normal during a timeline animation, then it is what it is. I just kind of feel like I'm missing some kind of setting here because this rig will run scenes with much more going on than mine, in VR, with no stutter at all. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MacGruber]

That's what we got the benchmark scene for now:

Benchmark - Plugins + Scripts -

Why? What is this? As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but barely anybody...

hub.virtamate.com

See if you can find someone with a similar setup and compare:

Benchmark Result Discussion

This thread is intended to share and discuss result from the MacGruber Benchmark plugin. As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but...

hub.virtamate.com

From the description I would suspect a temperature problem. Ryzen 5th generation get's extremely hot, even without overclocking. You may be running in either temperature or power limit, causing the CPU to throttle down for a moment, which you see as those half a second freezes. Pretty much emergency shutdown to protect the hardware.

You may also want to check out the Performance FAQ on above resource page. I got the same CPU, despite spending over 100€ on probably one of the best air coolers available (Noctua NH-D15) and having about the best possible setup for air cooling in my chassis, under full load it still runs into the 90°C limit quickly and throttles down. Undervolting the CPU did lower the temps enough for me though, so it does not happen anymore.

I would recommend to check whether its faster without the overclock.

 

[ghostmerder]

That's what we got the benchmark scene for now:

Benchmark - Plugins + Scripts -

Why? What is this? As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but barely anybody...

hub.virtamate.com

See if you can find someone with a similar setup and compare:

Benchmark Result Discussion

This thread is intended to share and discuss result from the MacGruber Benchmark plugin. As a side project, I was looking at PC components for upgrading my old machine. That made me browse through various forum threads on the Hub discussing FPS in VaM. Everyone is posting random FPS values, but...

hub.virtamate.com

From the description I would suspect a temperature problem. Ryzen 5th generation get's extremely hot, even without overclocking. You may be running in either temperature or power limit, causing the CPU to throttle down for a moment, which you see as those half a second freezes. Pretty much emergency shutdown to protect the hardware.

You may also want to check out the Performance FAQ on above resource page. I got the same CPU, despite spending over 100€ on probably one of the best air coolers available (Noctua NH-D15) and having about the best possible setup for air cooling in my chassis, under full load it still runs into the 90°C limit quickly and throttles down. Undervolting the CPU did lower the temps enough for me though, so it does not happen anymore.

I would recommend to check whether its faster without the overclock.

Thank you for responding. So I think my problem is the opposite to yours. I never observed my single core clock beyond 2500 mhz, despite the max settings clearly being well above that. I run a liquid cooler as well so temps have always been well under control. This is very strange, I'll have to run some benchmarks in other programs to see if this problem is exclusive to VAM...

 

[MacGruber]

The 5800X has a base clock rate of 3.8GHz, even when idling it should not go below that. Stock boost clock rate is 4.7GHz. You may want to try reverting your overclock settings to default and see what it does. There seems to be something very wrong.

For comparison, here is mine running at the same resolution as you, although my display only supports 60Hz. Note that your graphics card is faster.

 

[ghostmerder]

Update: So I messed with the PPO settings, set them to PPT 105 TDC 70 EDC 90 and now the average single core clock in the benchmark is a little higher and occasionally spikes to 3000 Mhz. My OC is just the automatic motherboard setting for dummies like me, set at 4100 Mhz. I guess I'll try monitoring the clocks and temps while my timeline animations are running and see if anything changes, from there I guess I'll need to learn how to manually OC and dial this thing in for VAM.

But first I'll try the factory defaults like you're recommending.

 

[ghostmerder]

Also, this might be a lot to ask, but I notice you also run an asus board. Could I trouble you to take some pictures of your bios settings? No worries if it's too much of an inconvenience.

 

[MacGruber]

An idea....maybe you have an "old" mainboard? The AM4 socket is around for a long time. Possibly it needs a BIOS update to recognize the CPU, possibly its just running at some safe defaults?

I think my BIOS settings are at defaults, except:

• Activated the XMP memory profile for my RAM modules. ASUS calls this "D.O.C.P." for some reason. Without this RAM modules run at 2133MHz instead of 3200, 3600 or whatever modules you have.
• Undervolting the CPU to reduce temperatures, but this changes performance only very little and mostly only when all cores are needed.
• Tweaked the fan speed settings. If your temps are fine, this isn't the problem either.

 

[ghostmerder]

Interesting, Currently running Cinebench R23 single core and the one core is happily pegged at the 4100 OC that it was set at. So I need to figure out how to revert to stock settings to let the boost clock do its thing at 4.7. But still, this shows that VAM is underutilizing the few cores it uses, for some reason. It seems your settings aren't too complex or anything.

Also, the board is relatively new, but I'll double check the bios.

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ROG-Motherboard-Lighting-Heatsinks/dp/B07SW8DQVL/ref=asc_df_B07SW8DQVL/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=366315306136&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16146265081742619546&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1013549&hvtargid=pla-783145749259&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=75347436639&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=366315306136&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16146265081742619546&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1013549&hvtargid=pla-783145749259

The Ram hums along at 3200 though. I'll do some more tweaking and check back, maybe I need to fresh reinstall VAM or something. I appreciate you taking time to help me figure this out.

 

[MacGruber]

ASUS site says you need at least BIOS 2606 or newer to support 5800X. That's like a year old. Your board could have sit on some storage shelve for that time.

ROG Strix X570-E Gaming | Motherboards | ROG Global

AMD Ryzen 3000 series ATX motherboard with Aura Sync, WiFi 6(802.11ax), 2.5G LAN, Intel 1G LAN, Dual PCIe 4.0 M.2 with heatsinks, SupremeFX and USB 3.2 Gen 2

rog.asus.com

 

[ghostmerder]

Sorry for the delay. So, basically, the bios update and return to stock settings did wonders for Cinebench. But VAM is still underutilizing both cores. I'm at a loss here, honestly.

 

[TToby]

Both cores? the 5800 should have 8 of them?
OK, so you have set the bios to stock settings: did you use the auto OC feature in the ASUS bios? For my newish board it has a big red icon at the front page and says something like "system optimized blabla" ...
This auto-OC will set a fixed CPU speed multiplier (was it 42?) and most of the time it hinders your CPU from boosting higher than a fixed 4100/4200 MHz.
It is good for simply boosting the speed for all cores, but not ideal for boosting single core speed.
Get rid of this and instead of that use the PBO again. Set everything to Auto should do fine, too.
Popular settings are for instance PPT 200 TDC 140 EDC 180 for the 5800x. If you want to lower the temperature a bit, maybe try: PPT 85 TDC 60 EDC 90.
Though, I have set my own PBO back to Auto again and it is nearly giving the very same results.
Mind that you have a second PBO entry in the ASUS OC settings on the next tab. set this to Enabled or AUTO, too, untill you exactly know what you are doing. There should be some Youtube guides for the 5800x on Google search.

Keep doing until you will get a CPU_Z bench rating of 650 /6500 or higher ;-)
I have a 5800x and a 6900xt, too.

GPU_Z: https://valid.x86.fr/b5m93r

 

[ghostmerder]

That's actually helpful. The hardest part was finding the second setting buried in the advanced settings. The one in ai tweaker wouldn't let me adjust anything and I was ready to chuck this thing out the window. Between that, docp, bios, and upgrading to version 2 benchmark, I'm pretty much same for same with Macs benchmark. I appreciate it guys.

 

[ghostmerder]

<3

 

[TToby]

That's actually helpful. The hardest part was finding the second setting buried in the advanced settings. The one in ai tweaker wouldn't let me adjust anything and I was ready to chuck this thing out the window. Between that, docp, bios, and upgrading to version 2 benchmark, I'm pretty much same for same with Macs benchmark. I appreciate it guys.

That looks great. "Buried in the advanced settings" is the right word, and I exactly know how you feel with "chuck this thing out of the window". It was the same for me last weekend. Coming from an old Intel CPU, I had just simply clicked the Auto-OC, too. AMD is great, so much available settings... but also somewhat complicated. Without this great benchmark (I can't praise it high enough), I still would drive my PC with the handbrake on.

Please mind to take a look at your AMD Adrenaline driver settings, too. As you may know, with the advanced graphic settings, you can push up the graphic quality a bit, but also loose a lot of FPS. You may want to take a look if all of them are set to the lowest value, off, and "set by application". If you want to feel a moment of happiness, set Tesselation to 8x and run the VaM benchmark. Then put it back to AMD optimized... Otherwise you will only have half the hair volume in VaM. Mind that you have to close and restart VaM everytime you have changed a setting, to see the effect.

Edit: By the way, as Mac Gruber said, don't forget to keep an eye on your temperatures, too. It is not only because they might slowly destroy your componets, but the CPU and GPU will automatically throttle down from a certain temperature on. I found GPU_z (not CPU-z) very handy to watch them during a stress test.

 

[HolySchmidt]

You have stuttering using VaM in general? I owned the 6800XT as well, nearly a year ago. I tested VaM and recognized micro stuttering on a regular basis, bought an 3080 after that and it was gone. Of course the drivers were from that date as well. But I would take that in consideration as the problem. Temperature is not the problem I'd say, especially not with liquid cooling and especially not if those breaks come up on a regular basis. But of course you should know what your temperatures are.

I could imagine some RAM problems, wrong BIOS settings or whatever. You have enough cache space on your drive? You got an SSD?
Is this the only game you have problems with? What about other VR games?

First I would set all VaM settings at a minimum, VR resolution to scale 1 and the Refresh rate in VaM to "auto".
Check driver updates as well. If that doesn't help remove all overclocking from everything and load your RAM XMP profile. Ryzen 5000 series has a lot of problems with various RAM plus high Temperature.
Maybe reset BIOS to standard settings as well or update your BIOS, but updating should be the last thing to do if everything else works fine.

By the way: VaM is not always bottlenecked by the CPU, depends on what happens in the scene.

 

[TToby]

@HolySchmidt I don't want to hear about those Big Navi micro stutters in VR. *press my hands on my ears*
I have bought my 6900xt Big Navi GPU because I couldn't get a reasonably priced 3080, and right after this, I had installed a water cooling, so the warranty was instantly lost. I have read about that micro stuttering, too, and now I live in constant fear. With every little stuttering I think "oh no, it is THAT thing".
May it be real or not.

Some facts about that for whom it may concern:
- Big Navi has more, but slower VRAM modules and a slower VRAM data bus. Therefore it has a larger cache to compensate it. It MAY be at high resolution/big textures, that the data transfer is not that fast as with a 3080. There were some tests about this, but with no clear outcome.
- There were some driver issues at start, like always. By the way, the 3080/3090 had similar issues back then. Reddit was full of angry postings about both brands. Those driver issues should be fixed by now, according to some internet-people.
- There were big issues with SteamVR! For instance, there was an ugly issue, where everytime your SteamVR Chaperon (boundary-detection) blends in, you've got some severe stuttering. This should be fixed by now, but it took a pretty long time. 3080/90 had other issues with SteamVR back then, too, according to some forum-people. This was about Steam not reacting to issues with both brands "quick enough".
- Big Navi is rumored to have a nasty power saving function. Sometimes it boosts up and then it drops down again for power saving, resulting in stuttering. I don't know if this is the fact or if it is already fixed. To be on the save side, I have set not only a maximum GPU frequency, but also a minimum frequency, so that it can't drop that deep.

I am VERY happy with my 6900xt that I have got for the original AMD price, being much cheaper as a unreasonably priced 3080 at that time.... If there weren't those irrational doubts about that damnd rumored stuttering.


EDIT: Before I will get some very bad ratings: I tried to write this as objective as I could. This is not about "my football team is better than yours". The sources for those "facts" were mainly people discussing their issues at Reddit and the Steam forum. There were only very few "offcial" statements about that from both manufacturers. With both brands, there were many people having no issues at all. IMHO it was expectable to have issues with a brand new GPU generation.

 

[HolySchmidt]

No offense from my side

You're just posting experiences and facts, shouldn't be a problem to no one. All I was saying is: AMD GPU + Drivers + VR could be a problem. Also AMD CPUs are known for some problems, especially with RAM. Another keyword: whea-error. But that's another story. I really wanted to keep my 6800XT (XFX speedster merc by the way, for 999€, now at 1349€, the most beautiful piece of hardware I ever owned).

Anyway, my guess it's RAM settings, BIOS settings, driver settings, or maybe even VaM settings. Temperature, I don't think so, but I maybe wrong.