Game speed pulsing

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A long time ago when I got my first dual core PC with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+, I noticed an odd sort of problem with many games.  It would start out fine, but over time they would start to "pulse", worse and worse until it was totally unplayable.  Rebooting would fix the issue, but only for a while.  This was odd for two reasons: one, the pulsing itself, and two, because of the way the problem would "fade in".  In this topic I'm only interested in the fact it happens.

 

After much searching and experimenting, I discovered that if I set the games to only use one core by using "set affinity" in task manager, the problem went away and they would run properly... it was a real life saver.  However, that only works well when the game was designed with single core CPUs in mind.  Today's games often use up to or even more than 4 threads, and so trying to force them all onto one core would totally kill the performance, and is thus not an option, regardless of whether or not it would fix the issue (which tbh I don't know).

 

I bring it up because, despite thinking the problem was long gone (I haven't noticed it on any other PC ever) I don't believe it is.  I recently witnessed it on my sandy bridge laptop, and so I thought that it might be interesting to dig this up once more, all these years later in a knowledgeable community.  I'd be very curious to hear what anyone has to say about what they think might be causing it, how to fix it, and their experiences, if applicable, with this issue.

 

What is that issue?  Well, I said "pulsing", but I need to explain more clearly.  Basically, it's like the game loses the ability to control or understand time, and it starts running as fast as it can, such that in easier to render areas, it doesn't just push up the FPS, but the game actually runs faster.  Think NFS Rivals, but instead of it being locked in at double the normal speed, it fluctuates randomly, just as FPS would without vsync on.  You can imagine how ridiculously unplayable this makes things when it's bad, but even when it's just subtle it's really annoying.

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

A long time ago when I got my first dual core PC with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+, I noticed an odd sort of problem with many games.  It would start out fine, but over time they would start to "pulse", worse and worse until it was totally unplayable.  Rebooting would fix the issue, but only for a while.  This was odd for two reasons: one, the pulsing itself, and two, because of the way the problem would "fade in".  In this topic I'm only interested in the fact it happens.

 

After much searching and experimenting, I discovered that if I set the games to only use one core by using "set affinity" in task manager, the problem went away and they would run properly... it was a real life saver.  However, that only works well when the game was designed with single core CPUs in mind.  Today's games often use up to or even more than 4 threads, and so trying to force them all onto one core would totally kill the performance, and is thus not an option, regardless of whether or not it would fix the issue (which tbh I don't know).

 

I bring it up because, despite thinking the problem was long gone (I haven't noticed it on any other PC ever) I don't believe it is.  I recently witnessed it on my sandy bridge laptop, and so I thought that it might be interesting to dig this up once more, all these years later in a knowledgeable community.  I'd be very curious to hear what anyone has to say about what they think might be causing it, how to fix it, and their experiences, if applicable, with this issue.

 

What is that issue?  Well, I said "pulsing", but I need to explain more clearly.  Basically, it's like the game loses the ability to control or understand time, and it starts running as fast as it can, such that in easier to render areas, it doesn't just push up the FPS, but the game actually runs faster.  Think NFS Rivals, but instead of it being locked in at double the normal speed, it fluctuates randomly, just as FPS would without vsync on.  You can imagine how ridiculously unplayable this makes things when it's bad, but even when it's just subtle it's really annoying.

So kind of like what happens in OG Skyrim if you uncap the FPS since physics was tied to FPS?

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5 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

So kind of like what happens in OG Skyrim if you uncap the FPS since physics was tied to FPS?

No, I've done that and iirc it was a very different experience.

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1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

No, I've done that and iirc it was a very different experience.

I just meant in the sense of the game speeding up everything.

[RadiatingLight]

Crazily enough, I saw this happening literally a week ago on a PC I built for a friend.

I was running unigne superposition (1080p Extreme) on it to see if everything was alright, and started pulsing. the FPS counter was going crazy. the benchmark said minimums and maximums were at 24-30ish, but I clearly saw the FPS counter go all the way up to more than 50, and down to 10. the FPS counter looked like a garbled string of numbers with no correlation to the actual FPS.

it was also pulsing, where it slowed down, and then seemed to render all the frames it was behind on. this happened about 2-3 times a second.

 

a DDU and Reinstall fixed this for a while, but then I saw it happen again. a restart fixed it, and I ran heaven on a loop for 2 hours and the problem didn't come back, so I thought it was done for good.

now you've just made me paranoid.

 

specs of the system I built:

Ryzen 5 1400

GTX 1070

16GB Trident Z 3000Mhz running at 2133

A320 motherboard

CX450 PSU

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2 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

I just meant in the sense of the game speeding up everything.

Hm, I seem to recall it only causing objects and creatures to glitch out and fly into the air, I don't recall it speeding up everything, but if that's what happened, then yes, just imagine that, but the amount it's sped up by varying randomly from none to like 10x

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10 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Hm, I seem to recall it only causing objects and creatures to glitch out and fly into the air, I don't recall it speeding up everything, but if that's what happened, then yes, just imagine that, but the amount it's sped up by varying randomly from none to like 10x

Sounds similar, if your FPS got high enough it made you run at like light speed lol

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Just now, DeadEyePsycho said:

Sounds similar, if your FPS got high enough it made you run at like light speed lol

yeah that sounds like this.  problem is the speed will fluctuate by a little bit (or sometimes a lot) many times per second, making things really annoying or even unplayable