The gumbo of stutters, pauses, freeze and other ingredients

[Pudgie]

Update:

I went into the Windows registry yesterday when I got home after work (to relieve some stress and relax..... ) and looked up all instances of ULPS in the AMD driver stack\Windows registry....there are 17 of these that I found as follows:
ControlSet1:
Class
(4D36E968)
0000--1
Video
(EDE98AF)
0000--2
0001--3
0002--4
0003--5
0004--6
0005--7
Services
amdkmdag--8

ControlSet2:
Class
(4D36E968)
0000--9
Services
amdkmdag--10

CurrentControlSet:
Class
(4D36E968)
0000--11
Video
(EDE98AF)
0000--12
0001--13
0002--14
0003--15
0004--16
0005--17

I then tested this using MSI AB to disable ULPS (which is supposed to disable ZeroCore as well) then checked the registry afterwards and found that the software doesn't disable all instances present....only the instances listed under the Video (EDE98AF) strings in ControlSet1, ControlSet2 & CurrentControlSet. Not the ones listed under the Class (4D36E968) strings OR more importantly, the ones listed under Services amdkmdag (AMD External Events Utility....the service that enables all AMD Radeon Settings functionality in the AMD driver stack) which is also under ControlSet1 and ControlSet2. So MSI Afterburner will not effectively shut down ALL instances of ULPS (or ZeroCore). Don't know about any other software but my hunch is that they won't either.

Reading up on all this afterwards I found that most tweakers recommended to modify all instances that start w\ 0000 to disable ULPS. This coincides w\ what I saw from using MSI AB but this doesn't do anything to disable ULPS\ZeroCore at the Services level or Class level.

So I went into the registry to test this and disabled ULPS (hopefully ZeroCore as well) at ALL levels modifying the D-WORD string "EnableUlps" by changing the value from 1 to 0, but NOT the D-WORD string "EnableUlps_NA"....left this 1 alone and have been running tests since. The Crimson drivers are working just fine and so far.........knock on wood.........I haven't witnessed a screen pause yet. So here's hoping.........again.

Here's a snippet of my box running AHIII Patch 15 Dx11 this morning provided below.

Note how clean the GPU frametime graph line is now even though the GPU usage % is still swinging as before and still dropping down to 0% fairly frequently.

Continuing w\ testing...................... ...

 

PS---Here is a snippet of the graphs that I took after the initial changes were made yesterday evening for comparison.

[Pudgie]

Update:

After this evening I may have solved the screen pauses on my end.

I went back into the registry and rechecked for any traces of ULPS again and found a 3rd amdkmdag (under CurrentControlSet) instance that I had missed prior so there was 18 instances in all. Had ran a search on "amdkmdag" and found that this is the AMD driver kernel....the other instances (all others that were listed as 0000, 0001, etc) were associated w\ AMD's Crossfire so disabling these did my Fury X no good as it isn't in a Crossfire configuration but the 3 instances at the driver kernel "amdkmdag" should as this is at the heart of the driver so I reset all the others back to default (enabled) then disabled ULPS at all 3 instances of amdkmdag.

Then went into Radeon Settings and disabled AMD FRTC (so only FreeSynch enabled) then went into MSI AB and disabled custom fan speed adjust (to allow Radeon WattMan full control of my Fury X....read up that the WattMan control issues are w\ the AMD R9 2xx\3xx cards, not w\ the R9 Fury series) so MSI AB will monitor GPU only. Then went up after upgrading to AHIII Patch 16 Dx11...........

I immediately noted a difference in how the Fury X was running after all this was done....for the better. Appears that the frequent GPU cycling was due to AMD's FRTC interfering w\ the v-synch controls. GPU still cycles but not near as severe as before and in much better symmetry. Game ran fantastic w\ clean GPU frametime graph line to go w\ clean GPU FPS graph line........snippet provided below.

Note the GPU usage pattern change..............

So far I haven't witnessed a screen pause running AHIII Dx11 to date.

Will continue testing this......................

 

[Condor]

Glad it works for you. For most of us messing with the registry would be a disaster.

[Chalenge]

I think the stutter issue has Microsoft as the primary cause. I think if you keep messing around you are only going to drive yourself nuts.

The same exact problem that I have with "petit-freeze" in AH3 is also hitting every single DX12 title that I own. Why it affects some DX11 title and not others is still a mystery, but it does happen.

[N95KF]

I have found that driver 375.70 is the most stable and causes me zero stutters in AH3.  It's from late October, 2016 and I reverted back to it after the update.  I haven't updated since and have the best and most fluid game play.  8xAA, 16xAF, all sliders jacked up in AH3.  Try it out.

[Pudgie]

Here is a technical understanding provided by Microsoft as to the cause of a typical graphical screen freeze\pause\flicker that we're seeing:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ff570087(v=vs.80).aspx

This applies to all Windows OS's from MS Vista to the present Win 10................

FYI....................

 

[Condor]

Nice explanation. It would be nice if they provided a fix.

[Pudgie]

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/ff557263(v=vs.85).aspx

In this link Microsoft gives some information on the potential causes that set off GPU TDR events..............

Essentially what MS is stating is that the GPU is taking too long to execute a task (DirectX GPU scheduler is giving a GPU a max of 2 secs to complete a graphics thread task from initiation at the CPU to execution at the GPU (across the DMA buffer path from CPU L3 cache to system mem cache then from system mem cache across the PCI-E bus to GPU, all handled by the DMA controller\mem controller)....if this doesn't happen within this allotted time the GPU scheduler will preempt (isolate) the task and start the TDR timer to wait for this task to complete....usually for the same 2 secs. If it does then the GPU scheduler will release the GPU back to the driver to resume normal graphics operation after the buffer is flushed (the screen freeze\pause\flicker), if it doesn't then the OS will initiate a bug check, force the driver\GPU to reset and restart (the warning that you usually should see "Display Driver "amdkmdag (or the Nvidia equivalent)" stopped responding and has successfully recovered") which sometimes will crash the app\game as well.

The potential causes given leaves no one item\cause out of the equasion or points to any 1 single item as the primary cause so be aware......

 

[JimmyD3]

Here is video of my in game pauses

[JimmyD3]

Here is the video mpg file

[Pollock]

We are all not in IT or have time to fix something the game maker should be working on.
I have been a loyal Aces high subscriber since beta of the original version back in 1999. In my opinion AH3 is still in beta and they should be discounting subscribers until it works consistently.

 I started to think it was my pc until I started reading this long thread full replies and requests for every tweak and twerk and dx this and dx that or whatever.  I just upgraded my graphics card to gtx1060 to see all the nice eye candy.
It looks great it really does just fix the friggin freezing stutters already!

[100Coogn]

We are all not in IT or have time to fix something the game maker should be working on.
I have been a loyal Aces high subscriber since beta of the original version back in 1999. In my opinion AH3 is still in beta and they should be discounting subscribers until it works consistently.

 I started to think it was my pc until I started reading this long thread full replies and requests for every tweak and twerk and dx this and dx that or whatever.  I just upgraded my graphics card to gtx1060 to see all the nice eye candy.
It looks great it really does just fix the friggin freezing stutters already!

I think the purpose of this thread is to isolate and fix the problem.

Coogan 

[DaddyAce]

I think the purpose of this thread is to isolate and fix the problem.

Coogan 

This   

Personally am happy to help in any way I can if it helps develop this unique game.

-DaddyAce

[JimmyD3]

This   

Personally am happy to help in any way I can if it helps develop this unique game.

-DaddyAce

You can't fix what you can't find! Hitech and crew have been very up front on this issue, that have not been able to isolate it down to any specific issue.

[Randy1]

I do wonder if it is mostly a W10 problem and HTC does not have a pc on W10?  We all known how much Skuzzy hates W10.