MSI Afterburner causing stutters!

[Jon-Slow]

So ever since Doom Eternal came out I was obssesed with how well it could run and how high my FPS was at all times getting almost full 144hz 1440p with my rtx 2080 and 9900k. That was over 2 years ago now. Even then I had this suspesion that everytime MSI Afterburner and RTSS are running I'm getting stutters in game, never bothered to check and invistigate. For a while I just skiped Afterburner+RTSS while playing the game because it was running well and I though if I suspect it, why let them run!

 

Now I've been doing my 3rd run of the game and in the meantime switched from a 3090 to a 4070ti, and a whole new DDR5 machine with a 13900kf. Finally, I've decided to sit down and do analysis on if this is actually the case since it was happeneing on an entirely new machine as well( OS was changed at least 5 times with fresh installs going from win 10 to win 11). So I did using CapframeX. And yes, MSI Afterburner positively causes stutters, and I ran this test on the same area of the game doing the same fighting section over and over again maybe 30 times. I have screenshoted and edited the result to let you guys see and say what you think. Maybe someone else could try and see if this is the case for them as well. ( RTSS seems to not be causing any issues)

 

My copy of the game is running through the Steam version, I have played the non-Steam version too and had the same result. Steam overlay was disabled at all times.

 

Thoughts? Maybe someone else could do a similar test and let me know.

[Gokul_P]

Just now, Jon-Slow said:

So ever since Doom Eternal came out I was obssesed with how well it could run and how high my FPS was at all times getting almost full 144hz 1440p with my rtx 2080 and 9900k. That was over 2 years ago now. Even then I had this suspesion that everytime MSI Afterburner and RTSS are running I'm getting stutters in game, never bothered to check and invistigate. For a while I just skiped Afterburner+RTSS while playing the game because it was running well and I though if I suspect it, why let them run!

 

Now I've been doing my 3rd run of the game and in the meantime switched from a 3090 to a 4070ti, and a whole new DDR5 machine with a 13900kf. Finally, I've decided to sit down and do analysis on if this is actually the case since it was happeneing on an entirely new machine as well( OS was changed at least 5 times with fresh installs going from win 10 to win 11). So I did using CapframeX. And yes, MSI Afterburner positively causes stutters, and I ran this test on the same area of the game doing the same fighting section over and over again maybe 30 times. I have screenshoted and edited the result to let you guys see and say what you think. Maybe someone else could try and see if this is the case for them as well. ( RTSS seems to not be causing any issues)

 

My copy of the game is running through the Steam version, I have played the non-Steam version too and had the same result. Steam overlay was disabled at all times.

 

Thoughts? Maybe someone else could do a similar test and let me know.

Sadly MSI afterburner devolepers are based in russia and msi cant pay them so the app isnt updated anymore that is why newest hardware and games has issues with MSI afterburner you have to ditch Afterburner for something that is getting updated or hope msi finds some way to pay them and they update the app. 

[DonGirses]

1 minute ago, Gokul_P said:

Sadly MSI afterburner devolepers are based in russia and msi cant pay them so the app isnt updated anymore that is why newest hardware and games has issues with MSI afterburner you have to ditch Afterburner for something that is getting updated or hope msi finds some way to pay them and they update the app. 

Or run RTSS by itself with its own plugins, see if that makes a difference

[Gokul_P]

Just now, DonGirses said:

Or run RTSS by itself with its own plugins, see if that makes a difference

I think RTSS devs are also from russia but dont quote me on that one iam not sure 

[RONOTHAN##]

6 minutes ago, Gokul_P said:

Sadly MSI afterburner devolepers are based in russia and msi cant pay them so the app isnt updated anymore that is why newest hardware and games has issues with MSI afterburner you have to ditch Afterburner for something that is getting updated or hope msi finds some way to pay them and they update the app. 

A new beta of MSI Afterburner was released less than 2 weeks ago, about a week after that story broke, so it seems to have resolved itself. 

[Gokul_P]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

A new beta of MSI Afterburner was released less than 2 weeks ago, about a week after that story broke, so it seems to have resolved itself. 

is the public version updated. 

[Levent]

1 minute ago, Gokul_P said:

is the public version updated. 

Beta is publicly available.

 

OP: setting hardware polling way too fast can result in increased CPU load.

[DonGirses]

Just now, Levent said:

[...] OP: setting hardware polling way too fast can result in increased CPU load.

I always have everything on 2000ms except for FPS at 1000ms if possible, with a real-time frametime graph.

[Jon-Slow]

14 minutes ago, Gokul_P said:

Sadly MSI afterburner devolepers are based in russia and msi cant pay them so the app isnt updated anymore that is why newest hardware and games has issues with MSI afterburner you have to ditch Afterburner for something that is getting updated or hope msi finds some way to pay them and they update the app. 

I've heared that before and I am going to find a replacement. But This was an issue I've encoutred when Doom Eternal released as well.

 

13 minutes ago, DonGirses said:

Or run RTSS by itself with its own plugins, see if that makes a difference

As mentioned in my post, I did do that. RTSS works fine.

 

 

[Gokul_P]

Just now, Jon-Slow said:

I've heared that before and I am going to find a replacement. But This was an issue I've encoutred when Doom Eternal released as well.

nah MSI find new devs or paid the old people so the afterburner is still getting updates from last week on according to the posts in this thread so that is nolonger a issue 

[Jon-Slow]

4 minutes ago, Gokul_P said:

nah MSI find new devs or paid the old people so the afterburner is still getting updates from last week on according to the posts in this thread so that is nolonger a issue 

Well regardless of that, if this issue can happen in Doom Eternal I woudn't want to risk it with other games. I have now realized that my other games that have been stuttering may have had an issue with Afterburner too, but it's a bit silly to assume that no one else has had this issue or reported it. But then again, I have now tested this issue over many many months, 2 entirely different PCs, several different OS, and 3 different graphics cards.

 

I will definitely be running more tests on other games when I have the chance, but still waiting for someone else to test it with Doom Eternal and report back here. That would be awesome.

[Gokul_P]

1 minute ago, Jon-Slow said:

2 entirely different PCs, several different OS, and 3 different graphics cards.

 

You could try lowering the settings on RTSS and check if that fixes it 

12 minutes ago, DonGirses said:

I always have everything on 2000ms except for FPS at 1000ms if possible, with a real-time frametime graph.

 

14 minutes ago, Levent said:

 setting hardware polling way too fast can result in increased CPU load.

 

[AI_Must_Di3]

8 minutes ago, Gokul_P said:

nah MSI find new devs or paid the old people so the afterburner is still getting updates from last week on according to the posts in this thread so that is nolonger a issue 

+1...... While its True that MSI hasnt paid the programmer of Afterburner in over a year, Unwinder the owner, has kept up with it so far anyway expecting that hiim and MSI can fix the issues. I believe he actually lives in Ukraine and with all thats gone on the payment systems are screwed up. MSI said they were addressing it so well see what happens. RTSS and Afterburner, which is really Rivatuner, are both his software, no one else will be programming it ever unless he says so.

[Jon-Slow]

1 minute ago, Gokul_P said:

You could try lowering the settings on RTSS and check if that fixes it 

Well I have done that, if you're refering to the polling rate. And to say it again, RTSS works fine, the overlay works fine, RTSS works fine with CapFrameX. This issue only happens when MSI afterburner is simply running, even when all overlay is turned off(CapFrameX does that automatically actually). I'm really just interested to see results from anyone who can do a similar test to what I did. But I'm not going to get my hopes up.

[Fendrick]

Don't use it then.

[Jon-Slow]

14 hours ago, Fendrick said:

Don't use it then.

Yeah I've decided not to anymore, I will be running other tests tho. I'm going to go with Asus GPU tweak which I've used before. I was kinda hoping someone would do similar tests with Doom Eternals and see if they get the same results but I don't think anyone would.

[DonGirses]

7 hours ago, Jon-Slow said:

Yeah I've decided not to anymore, I will be running other tests tho. I'm going to go with Asus GPU tweak which I've used before. I was kinda hoping someone would do similar tests with Doom Eternals and see if they get the same results but I don't think anyone would.

I have over 200(?) hours in Doom Eternal, 99% of which were with Afterburner running, 50%+ with the RTSS overlay enabled and I don't recall ever suffering from stutters or slowdowns. This was with an R9 390 + i7-4790K at first, then Vega 56 + R5 5600X. No experience with Nvidia GPUs.