Stutter every couple of seconds

[rkman]

Stock KSP 1.0, just simple probe sitting on the pad: the ingame clock flickers yellow every 10 to 30 seconds.

When driving around with a rover, movement briefly stops and there a brief audio crackle.

2.5GHz quad core

8GB RAM

AMD HD7800 series gr card

Win7

[vexx32]

Moved to Support.

Something you may want to try is to fiddle with the Max Physics Delta Time slider in the Settings. Its basic function is to limit the amount of time that can pass before the game forces the video card to draw a new frame (if it hasn't already, of course), sometimes waiting for it to catch up, if need be. I'd suggest trying it on lowest setting and then highest setting, and seeing which is more like the gameplay you want, and then fiddling with it a little more to see if you can find a sweet spot.

[rkman]

I had Max Physics Delta all the way to the right (0.03).

Now i have it all the way to the left (0.12) and the ingame clock stays green, but the stutter and audio glitch is still there and seems more severe.

[rkman]

To be clear, neither is the gameplay that i want and i can't find a sweet spot where it is better.

[SilverWarior]

Is this a steam or standalone version of KSP?

Also can you please use Process Explorer (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) to monitor CPU, Memory and GPU usage during your gameplay.

Some time ago I help a guy which was expiriencing similar problems but with different game.

In that case the cause was the fact that for some reason games textures were saved into GPU Shared Memory (part of system ram that was made available for graphics card in order to extend its memory capabilities) instead into dedicated GPU Memory (the actual physical memory of the graphics card). This was then causing the slowdowns due the fact that graphics card Access to shared GPU memory is much slower that Access to Dedicated GPU Memory due the fact that when graphics card is accessing the Shared GPU Memory the data must go through two controllers (RAM controller and PCI Express controller).

Also Process Explorer could give you nice idea of your computer utilization so you can quickly see what might be causing the slowdowns in your games (CPU, GPU, memory controller - I/O handle, high HDD utilization, etc.).

I use this all the time to keep my computer running at peak eficienty by indetifying the programs that might be using most of my system resources so that I can then go and search for their alternatives when possible.

[rkman]

It is standalone, though i do have steam running.

There are a million options in that tool. Which should i enable to get useful information about KSP performance?

BTW i do not have these stutters with any of the other games i play, so it seems unlikely that the cause is at system level.

Edited April 29, 2015 by rkman

[rkman]

I think i have found evidence that this issue is a bug rather than a support issue:

  Quote

Unity stutters, and it's not the game.

HarvesteR

May 19, 2011

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-stutters-and-its-not-the-game.89900/

...not a steady framerate drop, it's more like every 100th frame taking 10x longer to finish than the others, which leads to a really annoying stuttering...

...

It's definitely some internal problem in Unity... maybe it's a 3.3 bug...

HarvesteR, May 20, 2011

Stuttering issue on Unity 4.2

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/stuttering-issue-on-unity-4-2.203552/

Oct 3, 2013

(last post on march 10 2015, the problem persists in Unity 4.5)

So it is a known and long-standing problem with Unity, and there is not much of a chance this will be resolved by means of support on these here forums.

Maybe the reason why it does not manifest equally for all players is that many rigs are well over Unity/KSP's minimum specs.

Other references:

http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/motion-has-hiccups-slash-stutters-on-portable-devices

http://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1j842u/technical_sound_stuttering_visualized/

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/530

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/4051

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/107494-stuttering-performance

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/93096-micro-stutter-freezing

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/106523-Slight-freeze-every-5-seconds-%28or-so%29

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/108935-That-stutter-every-x-seconds