I've just recently got into PC gaming so I don't have quite the library of games that I do on my xbox, but I've noticed varying amounts of stutter in certain games. Here's a list of what I own so far and how they perform:
Batman Arkham City: Fair amount of hitching and stuttering when gliding around the city and sometimes when walking around. Fighting sections are actually very smooth. Doesn't seem to matter whether I'm in DX9 or DX11, and the graphics setting seem to have no effect on limiting the stuttering. It's playable but annoying,
Metro 2033: 98% of the time the game feels perfect playing on DX11 with tessellation and DOF disabled. The problem, again, is the little hiccups and skipped frames that happen every 10 seconds or so. Very very frustrating. Like Batman, no amount of tweaking the settings seems to help. It actually seems to make it worse, oddly enough.
I started tracking the framerate when these hitches occur and they are very minor in raw numbers. On DX11 with DOF and Tessellation disabled on Normal Settings and AAA I get a solid 120 FPS. These minor but noticable fraction of a second long stutters bring it from 120 to about 118. I tried limiting the framerate to 60 to see if that would help but to no avail.
Crysis 3: Actually very smooth when I turn down the settings a bit, though I do occasionally experience some brief freezing when shotgunning enemies from point blank range while cloaked. I want to reiterate that the micro-freezing is very different from what I experienced in Metro and AC, and seems to be completely eliminated once I turn down the settings from high to medium.
Bioshock Infinite: Most of the stutter I experience occurs at specific areas in the game and can be reproduced by walking through them again. However I have noticed some slowdown / lag during really intense parts of the game. I've had absolutely zero in the way of hitching though - just plain old stutter.
Hitman Absolution: Haven't played this game much but seems completely smooth once I turn down the settings a bit, otherwise gets a little jittery when panning the camera.
Saints Row 3: Runs perfectly.
It's worth noting that I can run benchmarks like Unigine Heaven, Unigine Tropic, Unigine Valley, and 3d mark absolutely perfectly on the highest settings. They all look beautiful and run extremely smooth from start to finish.
I know some of these games like Arkham City and Metro have gotten a lot of criticism for being poorly ported console games, but it appears a lot of people running with much weaker hardware than mine are getting a smooth experience, which leaves me baffled. My framerates are consistently high in all of these games and for the most part they all run perfectly smooth except for the occasional hiccup. Metro in particular plays amazingly well inbetween hitches. So why am I getting them?
Smoothness is by far the most important thing to me when gaming. Once I notice a game performing sub-optimally in that area it really bothers me and hurts my enjoyment of the game. I would be okay with lowering the settings even if others with similar hardware can run it smoothly maxed out, but when tinkering with the settings does nothing then I am at a loss.
Quick list of my specs:
Sapphire 7970 OC
i 3570k
ASRock Extreme 4 MoBo
8GB Corsair Ram (1600 mhz)
Corsair TX850 PSU
Batman Arkham City: Fair amount of hitching and stuttering when gliding around the city and sometimes when walking around. Fighting sections are actually very smooth. Doesn't seem to matter whether I'm in DX9 or DX11, and the graphics setting seem to have no effect on limiting the stuttering. It's playable but annoying,
Metro 2033: 98% of the time the game feels perfect playing on DX11 with tessellation and DOF disabled. The problem, again, is the little hiccups and skipped frames that happen every 10 seconds or so. Very very frustrating. Like Batman, no amount of tweaking the settings seems to help. It actually seems to make it worse, oddly enough.
I started tracking the framerate when these hitches occur and they are very minor in raw numbers. On DX11 with DOF and Tessellation disabled on Normal Settings and AAA I get a solid 120 FPS. These minor but noticable fraction of a second long stutters bring it from 120 to about 118. I tried limiting the framerate to 60 to see if that would help but to no avail.
Crysis 3: Actually very smooth when I turn down the settings a bit, though I do occasionally experience some brief freezing when shotgunning enemies from point blank range while cloaked. I want to reiterate that the micro-freezing is very different from what I experienced in Metro and AC, and seems to be completely eliminated once I turn down the settings from high to medium.
Bioshock Infinite: Most of the stutter I experience occurs at specific areas in the game and can be reproduced by walking through them again. However I have noticed some slowdown / lag during really intense parts of the game. I've had absolutely zero in the way of hitching though - just plain old stutter.
Hitman Absolution: Haven't played this game much but seems completely smooth once I turn down the settings a bit, otherwise gets a little jittery when panning the camera.
Saints Row 3: Runs perfectly.
It's worth noting that I can run benchmarks like Unigine Heaven, Unigine Tropic, Unigine Valley, and 3d mark absolutely perfectly on the highest settings. They all look beautiful and run extremely smooth from start to finish.
I know some of these games like Arkham City and Metro have gotten a lot of criticism for being poorly ported console games, but it appears a lot of people running with much weaker hardware than mine are getting a smooth experience, which leaves me baffled. My framerates are consistently high in all of these games and for the most part they all run perfectly smooth except for the occasional hiccup. Metro in particular plays amazingly well inbetween hitches. So why am I getting them?
Smoothness is by far the most important thing to me when gaming. Once I notice a game performing sub-optimally in that area it really bothers me and hurts my enjoyment of the game. I would be okay with lowering the settings even if others with similar hardware can run it smoothly maxed out, but when tinkering with the settings does nothing then I am at a loss.
Quick list of my specs:
Sapphire 7970 OC
i 3570k
ASRock Extreme 4 MoBo
8GB Corsair Ram (1600 mhz)
Corsair TX850 PSU
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram