[SOLVED] Frequent stutters, even when installed on SSD

[gercarst]

Hello everyone, I want to share one part of the solution to stutters (as there are many causes that seem to produce them).

 

My problem was random frequent stutters in the 3D world on any mission, aircraft, multiplayer, single player, theater, VR, non-VR, game settings, etc. (I had a small SSD used only for Win10. DCS was installed on another standard HDD).

Tried many suggested forum solutions (Windows Game mode, game bar, USB polling, NVidia settings, etc.) without success (at least for my system).

Lastly, I moved DCS to a new SSD drive (M.2) and although the loading times were a breeze (thankfully!) the stutters persisted.

 

Researching deeper, I found in Windows Task Manager > Performance tab that every stutter was in sync with an access to the old HDD. So I opened the Resource Monitor and found that DCS was reading/writing a .bin file to that HDD inside a Windows Temporary Folder.

 

So I closed DCS and opened in Windows the System Properties > Advanced System Settings > Advanced tab > Environment Variables...(button), then in "user variables" changed the drive letter of the TEMP (and/or TMP) variable to the SSD's drive letter.

 

Opened DCS and voila! That stutters were gone!

So I found two important things: 1) A SSD it's a must, and 2) Make sure your Windows Temp folder is also on a SSD.

 

Hope this helps someone!

 

Cheers,

Jerry C.

[Taz1004]

That is a good info. Many people forget about the temp folder altho I'd say your situation isn't common. Because it is ideal to put Windows on your fastest drive also. Which I'd recommend once you have time to reinstall Windows. But still a good thing to check for anyone having issues.

[Flappie]

Thank you for your feedback, gercarst! :)

[Gunfighter6]

Gercarst, where do you have your page file drive? The OS boot drive on C? or did you set up your page file on the new NVMe M.2 drive? or both?

my TEMP and TMP are already on an SSD of the boot drive just not on the new NVMe M.2 drive and I sill have stutter, plus it points to my AppData which is on C, so do I move my appdata to D where my new NVMe M.2 drive is?

 

thanks

[Vanguard]

Interesting. Nothing kills an SSD drive faster than putting your temp folder on it, but I do have about the best HDD drive, so perhaps that's why I don't witness your issue. If you're going to run this way, and that's fine, just ensure your pertinent data is not on the same drive, or 3 years from now you'll be posting here asking how to recover it.

[ignition22]

Interesting. Nothing kills an SSD drive faster than putting your temp folder on it, but I do have about the best HDD drive, so perhaps that's why I don't witness your issue. If you're going to run this way, and that's fine, just ensure your pertinent data is not on the same drive, or 3 years from now you'll be posting here asking how to recover it.

 

Its been normal for pcs to come with only SSD drives for many years and they definitely don't crap out the drives every three years

[gercarst]

Gercarst, where do you have your page file drive? The OS boot drive on C? or did you set up your page file on the new NVMe M.2 drive? or both?

my TEMP and TMP are already on an SSD of the boot drive just not on the new NVMe M.2 drive and I sill have stutter, plus it points to my AppData which is on C, so do I move my appdata to D where my new NVMe M.2 drive is?

 

thanks

 

My DCS setup is as follows:

SSD Partition 1: --- Boot disk, Only Win 10 and all AppData and User stuff

SSD Partition 2: --- Windows Temp folder. (Before it was used for X-Plane 11)

M.2 Only Partition: --- DCS, X-Plane and other Simul.

Other HDDs: --- All other kind of software and personal files, music, etc.

 

So basically all DCS files are in Solid State storage like yours, the only difference is that my Temps are not referenced to the boot partition (although its the same SSD physically).

By the way, my TEMP and TMP are referenced to the same folder.

Maybe your stutter has to do with something else then.

 

Regards,

gercarst