A strange micro stutter in Windows 11

[JonP01 112]

I am new to Windows 11, having soldiered on with an offline Windows 7 for my flight simming (and a legacy race sim - Race 07) for many years. I am noticing a strange (and admittedly not show stopping but annoying) issue where whenever I am running P3D, my legacy racing sim (Race07) and my "fool around for fun" first person shooter (Serious Sam Fusion), I am getting ocassional stutters that seem to last somewhere between a tiny fraction of a second to maybe half a second - and then everything is perfect again.

This did not happen under Windows 7 though to be fair, although I am using the same mainboard, the CPU is now a Ryzen 5700X versus the Ryzen 2700X I ran under Windows 7. But I saw this stutter happening with the only changes being the operating system and the CPU. Every other component remained unchanged and all the latest firmware, BIOSes and drivers were installed.

To me this seems like a specific Windows 11 problem since it never happened under Windows 7 even though I am running the same applications at the same settings (except for P3D which is new for Windows 11). It is as if something is using a significant resource for a fraction of a second every few minutes or so. The first thing I thought of was the infamous AMD fTPM problem, but I have a new BIOS dated May this year - and this problem was supposed to have been solved two years ago. I am not sure if there is a way to be sure it has been fixed though, since all I can do is use the latest BIOS, the latest chipset drivers. I cannot turn off fTPM in the BIOS since that is required for Windows 11.

I then wondered if it had something to to with the Xbox gamebar but in the current versions of Windows 11, there does not seem to be any way to completely get rid of it - the interface has changed and the options have now changed or gone altogether and even if you kill the service, it just starts back up again within a minute or so.

As I say, this is not a show stopper because the stutters are not that frequent but they still take the shine off the experience, especially since the lesser hardware had no troubles with my applications under Windows 7 (I was not running P3D though under Windows 7, I was running FSX under Windows 7 so I cannot make a comparison there).

Has anyone else run into these strange random stutters and found a solution that involved changing something in Windows 11, since I am sure that is where the problem is coming from? Unfortunately although there are many guides to resolving game stutters under Windows 11, Windows 11 changes so frequently that they are all out of date pretty quickly.

 

[SierraHotel 1,001]

3 hours ago, JonP01 said:

I am new to Windows 11, having soldiered on with an offline Windows 7 for my flight simming (and a legacy race sim - Race 07) for many years. I am noticing a strange (and admittedly not show stopping but annoying) issue where whenever I am running P3D, my legacy racing sim (Race07) and my "fool around for fun" first person shooter (Serious Sam Fusion), I am getting ocassional stutters that seem to last somewhere between a tiny fraction of a second to maybe half a second - and then everything is perfect again.

This did not happen under Windows 7 though to be fair, although I am using the same mainboard, the CPU is now a Ryzen 5700X versus the Ryzen 2700X I ran under Windows 7. But I saw this stutter happening with the only changes being the operating system and the CPU. Every other component remained unchanged and all the latest firmware, BIOSes and drivers were installed.

To me this seems like a specific Windows 11 problem since it never happened under Windows 7 even though I am running the same applications at the same settings (except for P3D which is new for Windows 11). It is as if something is using a significant resource for a fraction of a second every few minutes or so. The first thing I thought of was the infamous AMD fTPM problem, but I have a new BIOS dated May this year - and this problem was supposed to have been solved two years ago. I am not sure if there is a way to be sure it has been fixed though, since all I can do is use the latest BIOS, the latest chipset drivers. I cannot turn off fTPM in the BIOS since that is required for Windows 11.

I then wondered if it had something to to with the Xbox gamebar but in the current versions of Windows 11, there does not seem to be any way to completely get rid of it - the interface has changed and the options have now changed or gone altogether and even if you kill the service, it just starts back up again within a minute or so.

As I say, this is not a show stopper because the stutters are not that frequent but they still take the shine off the experience, especially since the lesser hardware had no troubles with my applications under Windows 7 (I was not running P3D though under Windows 7, I was running FSX under Windows 7 so I cannot make a comparison there).

Has anyone else run into these strange random stutters and found a solution that involved changing something in Windows 11, since I am sure that is where the problem is coming from? Unfortunately although there are many guides to resolving game stutters under Windows 11, Windows 11 changes so frequently that they are all out of date pretty quickly.

 

Game Bar off, Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling on, check that rBar is enabled and setup properly and if you are running an Nvidia GPU lower than 4080 I recommend using the Frame Gen mod. Also check that you have the latest DLSS 3.1.1 installed.

[JonP01 112]

How do I check the rBar is enabled apart from the BIOS setting and the confirmation via the Nvidia control panel (which both say yes as I checked that when installing Windows 11 - I have an RTX4080 Super btw). But is there anything I have to do specifically to have it functioning in the actual applications themselves, since I see a field in Nvidia Inspector for it but I would have thought it is either on or off regardless? I did enable it in Nvidia Inspector but I would have thought there was something "official" in the Nvidia control panel (but I couldn't find anything).

I think the game bar is now off as I do not see it appearing in the list of processes anymore.

I am suspecting this might actually end up being the same issue I actually had in Windows 7 and that is some applications need the primary core (or all cores) to not run threaded on the virtual cores (in other words only on one core per physical core). I have just tried this with P3D for instance and the stutter problem appears to have gone away. If that is the case, nothing has changed from Windows 7 to 11 in that respect - I installed Windows 11 on the premise that I could just leave it and not have to tweak things like I had to with Windows 7!

[SierraHotel 1,001]

Unfortunatly tweaking seems to be at the top of the list when it comes to all the simulators I have used, I'm hoping 2024 will be the exception, but that remains to be seen. In answer to your question, yes, rBar needs to be switched on in profile Inspector and check that DLSS file, use DLSS swapper it's a fantastic little tool.

[JonP01 112]

Thank you. I thought my tweaking days were over when moving from Windows 7 to Windows 11 and that I wouldn't have to get under the bonnet (or hood) in either Windows 11 or P3D (or anything else). I remember when setting up the old Windows 7 installation I had to muck around a lot with Prio to make sure anything that stuttered using virtual cores only used physical ones. Looks like nothing has changed! I have already set up an affinity mask now for P3D which has totally eliminated the stutters and will probably have to check what I did for the other apps I run - and will probably need to do the same with them as well. The reason for not setting it up for physical core processing only in the BIOS is because I run a couple of applications that do benefit from using virtual cores.

Edited Friday at 02:05 PM by JonP01