Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - Enhanced Edition micro stutter/hiccup only in combat!? Pls help :(

Hey all, I am new here and hope to find some sort of solution for my problem in this game. I am really at a loss here..

The Issue

When I am in combat/battle (does not matter how long) I occasionally get a micro stutter or hiccup (like 1 sec delay) when i hit an enemy or when an explosion goes off. The weird thing is somethimes i can get let explosions go off after each other without a problem and then all of a sudden later in the fight or in a new fight i experience this hiccup, whenever i hit an enemy or even when i use lightning bolt and the stun comes up. Everything else runs fine outside combat.

Now I did a lot of google on this issue, read a lot of forum posts.. but could not find something 100% related.

My specs:

I7 6700K
Geforce 980Ti
16 gb RAM
windows on 1 SDD
Steam and the game run on another SSD
Both drives optimized and far from full.
Windows 10
BenQXL2420T (120 hrz)

Things I tried:

- Disable texture streaming
- checked my temps... my CPU wont get above 36 and my GPU wont get above 65 celsius. The rest is fine as well.
- Set pre-rendered frames to 1 in the nvidia control panel
- Reinstall Windows and the game
- Switch in my bios memory between XMP and auto.
- Enable and disable hypertheading.
- set the processor affinity in taskmanager with 0 and 1 out
- set the processor priority in taskmanager to higher vs normal
- Exclude the Eco.exe from the Windows Defender
- Disable secure boot and turn DEP(data execution prevention) off
- enable fullscreen in the game, enable fake fullscreen in the game
- Play arround with the frame limits.
- tried running the exe as windows 7
- set all settings in the game to lowest possible.
- disabled all privacy stuff in windows 10 (that apps can make use of this or that)
- combinations of listed above tried as well.
- Turn of V-synch ingame and force it with Nvidia control panel.

One time i enabled the EVGA precision xoc. (program that came with my graphics card) What I noticed that, during combat when i had those hiccups. I seen the framerate drop from 120 to like 102 or lower (that program shows your ingame fps). But ONLY when hitting an enemy or they hitting me or an explosion or freeze/curse and not all the time, just from time to time.

I am really at a loss why those frames are just dropped sometimes and so randomly? When I run a game like FFXIV and I am in a Raid or dungeon, or when i play Ori and the black forest i get non-stop 120FPS.
The only game that seems to show the same issue sometimes is Pillars of eternity. Now this is a same sort of game but dunno what that has to do with it.

Anyone got an idea what is causing this? Are there more people experiencing this? If it is game-related I might as well let it rest, but a friend plays on a lower system compared to be and does not seem to have the issue...

Help/tips would be really really appreciated.

Did the FPS cap, or anything else, make a difference in the frequency this would happen?

Unfortunately I don't recall anyone else reporting this problem, and the things that were close you've already tried the relevant troubleshooting.


Try doing a clean boot and then test the game (maybe create a new Windows administrator user account, and log in to that account after rebooting). Click Start, or hit WinKey-R, type in msconfig and hit enter; in the General tab, click Selective Startup, uncheck Load startup items (if required) and leave Load system services and Use original boot configuration options checked. Next, Click on the Services tab, check the box to Hide all Microsoft services, then click the Disable All button, then click OK and reboot the computer.
Run msconfig again to switch back to the normal boot configuration.

Thanks for the response, I appreciate you taking time to look at it. This is gonna be another long post of me but perhaps the information in it could bring up new ideas.

To answer your question first. No the issue happens very randomly. So I could not really notice an effect in the frequence of it. It does seem to appear a bit more the longer a battle goes on. However I also do have battles where the hiccup does not appear at all, yet then the next battle it could. Also seems to happen a bit more when letters/text come up in combat like critical/frozen/weak etc etc.

Example:

When I hit an enemy that has poison with fire weapons you get these explosions. I can hit the enemy for like 4-5 times with the explosion going off directly every time I hit. Yet in the same battle another enemy is in a poison cloud. So I throw a flare in to let the cloud explode, and it can go like this little delay/stutter/hiccup i do not know how to call it, but it is really noticable. it is not like BOOM but B..O..OM. The example can happen the other way arround as well.

At that very moment I see the FPS counter drop from 120 to like 101 for just 1 second and instantly back to 120 again. When I am exploring areas (lets take the crowded cyseal town) it is constant 120 fps, so it is only in battle. Camera movement is smooth as well. So again it happens only in combat even when I keep my screen steady and just watch the battle go on.


Now I do have another assumption since i tried so many things already. Could it be a combination with the sound (perhaps my motherboard or bad sound drivers?) and stuff going off in battle (like the characters saying something when they crit) and the crit text flying in? Reason why I think of sound is that I had a location (I think it was luculla forest at spiders north) all sound in combat like just went out... like pop all gone. So I alt-tabbed to check if others sounds still worked and they did.
Eventually the sound did came back after the battle was over.

I will try the suggestion you did with a clean boot and the other user account later today.

As extra info about the sound... I am in the treasure room of boreas just picking up items and all of a sudden the music is gone.. and it is not because it came to the end of the track in middle just out.. it tried to play another track a bit later but quit instantly.. Only hearing the buzzing sound in the room and oddly when i move items arround in the inventory i sometimes hear that sound and sometimes not. FPS is fine though.

I made an ingame screenshot of the same battle to show what happens, sadly i cannot make a video atm. The fps is top left corner.

I shoot a stun cloud arrow and the fps drops
I shoot another stun cloud arrow and no fps drop....
Both moves I do direclty after each other so nothing else happened in between.

arrow one.
https://s21.postimg.org/6nlvyq0l3/first_arrow_and_stun.png

arrow two.
https://s15.postimg.org/qmb6evhcb/second_arrow_and_stun.png

I really do not get this...

update it gets even worse!
Killed an enemy with a flare.... giant drop from 120 to 97...
https://s15.postimg.org/w2bts54nv/373420_20161128161113_1.png

Same thing killing enemy with flare but no drop!?
https://s22.postimg.org/paanpfda9/373420_20161128162543_1.png

I can also add to the list that I forced 60 FPS and I still get random drops to 20-40 etc... Also like to add that if I make something explode like poison outside combat I NEVER get that drop as in combat, no matter how many things are on the screen.