Screen temporarily freezes/hangs/stutters with no actual FPS drops during game play.

[A Man in Flames]

I started having this bizarre issue where during game play, the screen tends to freeze/hang/stutter for periods at a time, going for about a quarter second to maybe even more than a whole second. It's not FPS drops, I have been able to run the game at 1440p max settings, rarely ever dropping below 60 FPS.

Watch this screen recording I took just before posting this thread to see exactly what I mean:



My rig (relevant specs listed):

Intel core i5 6600K OCed to 4.4GHz
MSI Z170A Gaming M5 MOBO
AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB
16GB (2 x 8 ) of EVGA DDR4 2133MHz RAM (with XMP profile for 2800MHz enabled)
Samsung EVO 850 series 500 GB SSD
Windows 10 Home x64
(in case any one is wondering, CPU is water cooled by a Corsair H80i GT, and the PSU is a Corsair something 1000W)

Things I have tried to no avail (in order of troubleshooting):

- Reformatted my entire OS build along with clean install of drivers (I was planning to do this irregardless of PSO2 acting up, this was the nail in the coffin for that, but to no avail-- go figure.)
- Temporarily disabled my OC settings in the MOBO BIOS
- Temporarily disabled all Anti-virus protection just to see if maybe somehow it was interrupting read access to game files
- Deleted my user.pso2 settings file (I made a back up of course, and restored it once I quickly learned that didn't work)
- Ran the game at a lower resolution (dropped from 2560x1440 down to 1920x1080)

Other things of note:

- I run the game completely JP vanilla, no Tweaker use or any 3rd party patches.
- CPU temps under load while playing stays well within 40 degrees Celsius.
- GPU temps under load stay within the 80 degrees Celsius range (well below the 90 degree max the RX 480 runs at before thermal throttling).
- I tested various other games, none of them seem to exhibit these issues-- only PSO2.

Has anyone ever experienced this, and if so, were you able to fix it? Scratching my head here trying to figure out the root cause and how to fix, especially before Ep 5 releases! Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Flames

[jooozek]

since you are on win 10, disable xbox game dvr and game bar and game mode

[A Man in Flames]

since you are on win 10, disable xbox game dvr and game bar and game mode

I have always had Xbox Game DVR disabled, and only just recently disabled the Game Bar and Game Mode as well-- issue persists.

Upon some more testing, I can add that this issue occurs exclusively in PSO2 and only when running either Windowed or Virtual Fullscreen (which are the same as one another either way). If I run the game in Full Screen, the issue stops but then I am faced with the god awful screen tearing and of course, the horribly gimped Alt-tabbing coupled with the risk of the game crashing.

Even today, I tried re-installing PSO2, no dice.

I have made no progress on fixing this issue apart from isolating it to being an Windowed/Virtual Full Screen problem.

[Yomizawa]

I have the exact same issue. I'm using the same graphics card as yours. AMD RX 480 8GB.

[Kondibon]

I have the exact same issue. I'm using the same graphics card as yours. AMD RX 480 8GB.

I know this is a necro, but what do you have the detailed model count set to. The game stutters a lot while loading and unloading models. It usually only matters in the lobby, but If you have it below 12 then it can stutter a lot in MPA quests.

If you're in window mode, or virtual full screen, try doing normal full screen.

[Yomizawa]

I know this is a necro, but what do you have the detailed model count set to. The game stutters a lot while loading and unloading models. It usually only matters in the lobby, but If you have it below 12 then it can stutter a lot in MPA quests.

If you're in window mode, or virtual full screen, try doing normal full screen.

I have everything set at the highest. I know it's the exact same problem as the topic creator has because this didn't happen to me before, I just took a break from the game for awhile and got back to playing it today. It also gets fixed the same exact way (starting the game in Full Screen).

[Kondibon]

I have everything set at the highest. I know it's the exact same problem as the topic creator has because this didn't happen to me before, I just took a break from the game for awhile and got back to playing it today. It also gets fixed the same exact way (starting the game in Full Screen).

The game just runs poorly in window mode from what I can tell. It's probably an issue with the way the game is programmed, not your computer.