Stuttering while playing D4

[Slingschlong]

Hello community,

 

My PC would randomly stutter and would have low fluctuating fps while playing diablo 4 on low settings with FSR 1 enabled. This is performed on a win10 2560x1440 resolution.

I dont recall having any of those problems while playing ffxix, league of legends, diablo 2, diablo 3 or genshin impact, but i saw online that every game has a different engine, so differentiating them wouldnt be representitive. I assume D4 would have a bigger load because it's the newest game out of all the ones ive mentioned.

 

During the stuttering in D4, i noticed that my taskmanager would display 100% CPU and GPU. I tried changing the resolution to 1920x1080, but the problem still remained.

The game would take up 70% of the 100% CPU load. Occasionally, it would be sharing the load with google chrome, which has the second highest load. I tried closing that to see if it relieves the load while gaming, but only slightly.

I also checked this in MSI Afterburner and saw on the monitor that my GPU usage would spike down to 0 during the stuttering. The CPU usage and all the cores would remain the same during that time.

I figured this might be a cpu bottleneck, but i'm afraid of making an amateur judgement and would regret upgrading my cpu when that actually wouldnt solve the problem. Pls help ? 

 

My gear is as followed:

CPU: i5-4460

GPU: Asus GTX 970 Strix

RAM: 16gb 1333MHz

Mobo: MSI Z97

 

Game is installed on the same ssd as the OS (which still has 1.44TB free space if thats relevant to know)

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

23 minutes ago, Slingschlong said:

During the stuttering in D4, i noticed that my taskmanager would display 100% CPU and GPU. I tried changing the resolution to 1920x1080, but the problem still remained.

If your performance is limited by the CPU, lowering resolution is the opposite of what you want to do. A 100% CPU load sounds very much like the CPU is the limiting factor.

 

Lowering the resolution will only reduce load on the GPU. But if the CPU isn't able to work any faster, it means the GPU will now simply be starved for stuff to work on (because the CPU can't keep up with handing it work), so you don't see any increased performance from that. Instead all you will see is lowered GPU usage. You might want to double check this with something like Afterburner, to see (per-core) CPU and GPU load.

[Slingschlong]

7 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

If your performance is limited by the CPU, lowering resolution is the opposite of what you want to do. A 100% CPU load sounds very much like the CPU is the limiting factor.

 

Lowering the resolution will only reduce load on the GPU. But if the CPU isn't able to work any faster, it means the GPU will now simply be starved for stuff to work on, so you don't see any increased performance from that. Instead all you will see is lowered GPU usage. You might want to double check this with something like Afterburner, to see (per-core) CPU and GPU load.

I see. I did think that lowering the resolution would reduce the load on the GPU, but i assumed it would reduce the amount of data the GPU would need from my CPU. I must rephrase that my GPU load is not 100% atm. It's currently around 30-45% while running around in town. CPU remains 100%. I believe the GPU would go higher when i travel somewhere and fight.

 

I already mentioned that during the stutter, that the GPU usage in MSI Afterburner would spike down to 0 while my CPU (+cores) usage are stable (refer to the attached photo)

[Eigenvektor]

1 minute ago, Slingschlong said:

I must rephrase that my GPU load is not 100% atm. It's currently around 30-45% while running around in town. CPU remains 100%. I believe the GPU would go higher when i travel somewhere and fight.

That sounds very much like a CPU limit then. For Afterburner you typically want to use the in-game overlay, but screenshot essentially confirms it already. Your CPU is at its limit, while the GPU is starved for work.

 

The amount of work the CPU has to send to the GPU doesn't change when you lower the resolution. Only the number of pixels the GPU has to render as a result changes.

 

Imagine it like asking someone to draw you a picture. To you the amount of information you have to give them doesn't change, whether they're drawing it onto a stamp or a cinema screen. But the amount of work they have to do increases with the amount of pixels they have to fill. They faster they complete their work, the more often you have to be able to give them more work to do, else they'll be idle. Which is exactly what you're seeing here. The CPU is so busy with other things (e.g. running the game simulation), it can't keep the GPU fed with stuff to work on. So a faster CPU is in order.

[overbuilt_gaming]

Of course it stutters.  Your CPU barely meets the minimum requirements.  By 4% in single core, and 7% in multi-core.  Minimum specs just mean it will run, not that you will have a good gameplay experience.  Let alone at 1440p.  

 

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_4460-vs-intel_core_i5_2500k

 

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/251518

 

Set the in-game resolution to 1920x1080, and the render resolution down to 720p, even then to only expect to maintain 30fps, maybe a little higher.  Close chrome completely, and ALL it's background processes, along with everything else that you don't need to have open. 

[Slingschlong]

I see. Thank you for confirming it men. I was considering on upgrading my i5-4460 to a i7-4790k, which is a better CPU option with the same socket  I hope that CPU would be enough to play D4.

[overbuilt_gaming]

That would help some, but also upgrading your memory speed would also help.  1866 is the sweet spot for DDR3.  IMO you're throwing money away for minimal gains.   That would take you barely over the medium recommendations.  

[Slingschlong]

17 hours ago, overbuilt_gaming said:

That would help some, but also upgrading your memory speed would also help.  1866 is the sweet spot for DDR3.  IMO you're throwing money away for minimal gains.   That would take you barely over the medium recommendations.  

I'm following your advise and wait with the upgrade  I assumed the extra 4 threads on the 4790k would be significant, but probably not because it has the same amount of cores. Especially if i compared it with LGA 1700 which has 15-25~ cores.

 

I also read that people who wants to do small upgrades should wait, because the end of support on Win10 is in 2 years from now. Not entirely sure how that would impact my upgrading choices, but the news seemed to be true... I'm guessing the price on certain hardware would drop

 

I also managed to pull off 50-120fps while playing D4 on 1440p. I had to disconnect my second screen to get a more stable framerate. Changing the screen res to 1080p works as well, but ill use that res once the stuttering gets worse ^^ I will definitely look into upgrading my ram as well. 

[overbuilt_gaming]

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_4460-vs-intel_core_i7_4790k

 

They are plentiful on ebay depending on your country but I see them from $65-$99usd buy it now.  I see 16gb 1866mhz kits for around $25.  Both prices do not include any shipping.  I see a new xbox is $300usd at best buy.  To give you an idea how fast the modern xbox's are, you would need a Ryzen 7 3700x CPU and a RX 5700XT GPU just to equal the performance of a modern xbox:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_4460-vs-amd_ryzen_7_3700x

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-AMD-RX-5700-XT/2577vs4045

 

So yeah, with that it's not worth doing anything with your old pc for minimal gains.  D4 runs great on an xbox but you will have to buy the game again (blizz sux0r) but once you login then with your bnet account you'll be able to pick right up where you left off.