stuttering Assassin's Creed Syndicate stuttering but my PC is good, help?

mansano28 · July 4, 2020

So I bought AC Syndicate and I started playing yesterday and for my surprise the game doesn't run very well on my rig and I'm pretty sure my PC is well capable of running this 2015 game just fine but it is not what's happening...

It doesn't matter how I set the graphics. Ultra, High, Low, etc. VSync on or off and full screen or not it doesn't makes a difference.

I've already done some research on it and I've already tried a lot of 'fixes' and none of them seem to work. My video card drivers are up to date (Adrenalin 20.5.1) and with the latest VBIOS, my game is up to date, my Windows, chipset drivers, as well. the only thing is not up to date my BIOS (I'm not confident on updating the BIOS because my mobo don't have a BIOS selector) and I'm bringing this subject of BIOS and Chipset drivers because a lot of people say that Ryzen is not well stable and even some RAM kits won't work with it. Also my Windows install don't have more than a month and a few days since I bought my new CPU and GPU last month and I've erased everything from my SSD and installed Windows with the SSD empty, so it was a fresh install.

This is my actual system:

Ryzen 7 3800x (stock).

Asus B450 Plus Gaming (BIOS v1820).

2x8 GB Patriot Viper Steel 3000 Mhz.

AsRock RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming.

SSD Kingston A400 480 GB.

XFX XT 500w.

Here's a video showing what exactly happen, as I've said changing graphics don't make a difference, I've downloaded RivaTuner to see whats going on with my hardware when the stuttering happen. In the video you can see the usage percentage of both my CPU and GPU drops when the stuttering occurs, I thought it could be the game runing on my slow HDD so I've moved the game to my SSD but it changed nothing.

Here's a video of how the game is running, and I've also attached some screenshots of my hardware on CPU-Z / GPU-Z.

Oh and just to add, the only other game that had this similar problem was RDR2 but changing the API from Vulkan to DX12 fixed the issue. But AC Syndicate don't give you the option to do that and with RDR2 only my GPU was going from high usage to low usage but with AC Syndicate both my CPU and GPU are doing that...

And also my RAM kit is a 3000 Mhz CL16 one, but I couldn't manage to boot the system with the default 3000 Mhz CL16 DOCP profile it would only boot with 2400 Mhz but I've used Ryzen DRAM calculator and manage to get a stable 3000 Mhz with CL14 and it indeed seems to be stable but I don't know if this is causing the problem, my knowledge in RAM isn't great...

I'm really lost with all of this, I took some screenshots and detailed my hardware parts so someone can say if there is a problem with my CPU and RAM or other kind of problem, I don't know.

If someone could help me I would be very thankful because I want to play this game but I can't, the stuttering is really bothering me... Thanks for your attention

btw if I've wrote something wrong I'm sorry, English is not my main language.

DylanJosh · July 4, 2020

Do you have any peripherals (other than KB/M) connected to your system? As weird as it may sound, I had this exact same issue in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and it would disappear when I disconnected my Xbox controller.

mansano28 · July 4, 2020

1 hour ago, DylanJosh said:

Do you have any peripherals (other than KB/M) connected to your system? As weird as it may sound, I had this exact same issue in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and it would disappear when I disconnected my Xbox controller.

Well weirdly enough, I had my Xbox controller plugged the whole time every time I wanted to play this game (I do prefer to play Assassin's Creed with the controller), so I tried to start the game without it and no stutter occurred... So I plugged the controller back on and the game freezed for about one second to recognise the device and so I started playing but for my surprise no stutter at all! The game was running smooth, but the weird thing is if I start the game with the controller already plugged the game starts to stutter... Who knows wtf is going on, but your tip seems to fix the problem somehow so thanks a lot!!

Ubisoft and their weird PC ports hahaha