Stuttering Caused by MSI Afterburner in Far Cry 4

[mgilbert]

I have an EVGA GTX-970-FTW+ video card, and have always used MSI Afterburner to overclock and monitor it. Recently, I started playing Far Cry 4, and quickly noticed that, exactly once a minute, my framerate would briefly drop to 30 FPS for about one second, then recover. I tried every in-game and Nvidia setting I could find, and even turned off my overclock, but all to no avail. The problem would not go away.

I finally figured out that RivaTuner was causing the problem. I switched from Afterburner to EVGA PrecisionX, and that solved the problem, but PrecisionX isn't nearly as versatile or configurable as Afterburner. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing RTSS to do this, and how to stop it?

 

[Kenrou]

The overlay causes issues in some games, turn it off ?

 

[mgilbert]

The overlay causes issues in some games, turn it off ?

Good suggestion... Unfortunately, it didn't help. I turned the overlay completely off in RTSS, ran the game for a while, then exited, and pulled up the framerate graph, and here's what it looks like...

I don't get this in Precision X.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Simply don't use Afterburner for that one game...

I assume your drivers and Afterburner are up to date?

 

[mgilbert]

Simply don't use Afterburner for that one game...

I assume your drivers and Afterburner are up to date?

Yes, everything is up to date. Of course, I could just run the game without Afterburner, but I would prefer to resolve the issue, and possibly learn something in the process. Besides, I like running either Afterburner or Precision X for the fan curve, so I can keep my card cooler. I also enjoy analyzing the graphs after gaming for a while.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Have you tried a different version of drivers and of Afterburner to see if the issue persists?

 

[mgilbert]

Have you tried a different version of drivers and of Afterburner to see if the issue persists?

I tried Afterburner 4.2, and 4.3 Beta. The problem has also persisted after the last Nvidia driver update just a few days ago. I don't I'm going to be able to solve this one. It's buried in the code somewhere. I'll probably just have to stick wtih Precision X.

 

[jaymz9350]

I can't even get the game to run with Afterburner. The game has always crashed almost immediately

 

[mgilbert]

I can't even get the game to run with Afterburner. The game has always crashed almost immediately

You're not the first to report that. Others have reported bad stuttering problems as well. I like how configurable Afterburner is, especially on a high PPI display, but if it isn't going to work right, I'll have to put up with Precision X.