After installing - Steam VR, NVIDIA RTX 30xx Graphic Stutter for all games (not just VR)

[brandonx76]

Hey all - 

 

Is anyone else on these forums reporting / aware of NVIDIA graphic stuttering issues on all games after installing Steam VR?

 

This is a known issue that's been officially recognized by NVIDIA since at least Jan of this year.  A full thread of folks with similar problem reporting issue on official NVIDIA forum:

 

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/402768/valve-index-missing-dropped-frames-since-nvidia-d/

 

I don't think this problem is exclusive to Valve index users.  I'm using Oculus Quest 2 and Virtual Desktop, but again, the problem happens on non VR games as well.

 

Something seems to have happened after going from a 2080ti to the new 30xx cards.

 

I've done alot of testing and I have reinstalled windows 10 several times. I started creating backup images to see what incremental/OS changes cause an issue - and right now I've concluded that after installing Steam VR will cause framerate issues. I have an RTX 3070 (EVGA). I even upgraded cpu to i9 and replaced memory but no luck.

 

Also - I assume everyone is aware of NVIDIA's attempt to patch this via the 'hotfix' drivers? This is specifically what NVIDIA customer support advised to try. I installed the latest hotfix version , and I actually had Steam VR installed and the stuttering miraculously ceased....BUT then it came back, literally the next day. Also interesting, I just checked for latest hotfix driver from the link I had earlier, and it seems its not currently available site / link. Perhaps NVIDIA took it down: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/460007/announcing-geforce-hotfix-driver-47122-released-71/ This is quite disappointing and frustrating. They've been aware of the issue for almost a year - and I think they are working on it, but I don't think they've fully addressed it.

 

I'd be surprised if there's not more awareness and feedback on about this.  Perhaps its something Linus's Tech Tips may comment on?  I don't think this is a minor / limited issue. 

 

 

 

[RAS_3885]

Funny enough, I haven't yet fired my Index up after moving from a 1080 to a 3080 Ti (SteamVR is installed). But, I've played a bunch of other stuff and have yet to see stuttering or other issues of any sort.

 

Driver 471.68

[brandonx76]

Yeah, this is affecting all games for me,  not just the VR - so it's quite picky for me it seems...I did come across the following suggestion, that I'm going to try

 

"It is fixed. Lock your CPU and GPU to max power states and enjoy the buttery smooth stutter free VR. The problem is power state swaps on both the processors and graphics card. This is why VR runtimes like SteamVR will automatically set Intel CPUs to the High Performance power plan. Unfortunately no such thing exists for graphics cards, the closest you can get is the Prefer Maximum Performance power option in the Nvidia driver but this is not enough. It only pushes the card to 3D clocks, not max boost. Set a locked power state in MSI Afterburner by pressing Ctrl + F to open the frequency curve graph, selecting the point that represents your maximum boost frequency, hitting L to lock in that voltage point, and hitting apply in the main window to set the card to that exact frequency with no dynamic power state switching. This will resolve all random unjustified stutters I promise you. "

[RAS_3885]

13 minutes ago, brandonx76 said:

the closest you can get is the Prefer Maximum Performance power option in the Nvidia driver but this is not enough. It only pushes the card to 3D clocks, not max boost

Where'd that quote come from, because it doesn't make sense. The card has a core clock and a memory clock. I don't know what a 3D clock is.

 

15 minutes ago, brandonx76 said:

Set a locked power state in MSI Afterburner by pressing Ctrl + F to open the frequency curve graph, selecting the point that represents your maximum boost frequency, hitting L to lock in that voltage point, and hitting apply in the main window to set the card to that exact frequency with no dynamic power state switching

This just appears to be manually overriding GPU Boost, not unlocking some fancy max power state.

[brandonx76]

1 hour ago, RAS_3885 said:

Where'd that quote come from, because it doesn't make sense. The card has a core clock and a memory clock. I don't know what a 3D clock is.

A response from a user on the NVIDIA forum I posted earlier.  He was responding to an NVIDIA support person who is giving infrequent updates (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/402768/valve-index-missing-dropped-frames-since-nvidia-d/3127544/)

 

This is the first time I've heard about MSI - Afterburner.