Everything lags and stutters

I was away from FAF since the first Steam link requirement. Now I tried and succeeded setting up FAF with GOG. 🤤 ☺

The issue:
Everything lags. Some things more than others. Some things lag/stutter more than last time I tried playing some years ago.

  • 1st, the client app, it's all right, I guess. No worse than trying to use the modern gmail webapp. Though, I can't fathom what could the client app possibly need so much system resources for.

  • 2nd, the game lobby, it takes several seconds longer to load than vanilla (which already takes a bit). I thought FAF's less flashy lobby UI would need less draining. But I guess this stems mostly from the game's underlying inefficiencies.

  • 3rd, the in game lag and occasional stutter is noticeably worse than vanilla's, especially the in-game UI - for example if, on a factory I press a unit build button (eg. an Engineer) multiple times in quick succession, about every second or third press is ignored, unlike in the game's vanilla version.

I already run the game on nearly the lowest video settings (the only thing I'm not compromising on is running full screen). I've ran through the forums and the mod vault but at a glance I haven't found anything that would make a noticeable difference.

Although my system is rather old (was barely middle end in 2010), it can run vanilla FA even with mods just fine with little to no lag (mostly the main menu & lobby stutters a bit). I have no idea what to try.

What are your computer specs?

Note that there is a 500 ms delay between you pressing a button and something happening in the simulation.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Can you record a few seconds to show us the lag?

Asus K52JR-SX059V (K52 Series notebook) :
Processor : Intel Core i3-350M 2 x 2.7 GHz
Graphics adapter : ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 - 1024 MB, Core: 750 MHz, Memory: 800 MHz, GDDR3, 8.14.10.0716
Memory ~ 4 GB - > upgraded with second RAM module = ~ 8 GB (motherboard can't support more)
Storage : 500 GB - 5400 rpm - > upgraded = ~ 1 TB similar rpm
Operating System : MS Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit

@magge said in Everything lags and stutters:

Can you record a few seconds to show us the lag?

I'll try as soon as I have some time (latest sometime Tuesday). What recorder should I use and where should I send/ attach the recording, here?

You can use OBS Studio, and upload it as an unlisted Youtube video.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

@zsombi buy i5 560m/580 or 640m and you will be fine.

I will recommend you to buy i5 560m. Cheap / perfomance. Used it too some days

@Jip @magge
I have tried making a short recording. Here is the video.

I used the default settings for prioritizing recording, but the video quality stutters much worse, so I doubt you can see what I saw 😞 I looked around for what to do but I am not knowledgeable enough to play around with recording, encoding, playback, etc. timings settings, which seems to be the cause for the super-jumpy playback.
I have only changed the resolution from 300 * something so the playback is not just a canvas-full of colorful blur.

@Eternal Thank you for the suggestion. 🙂
I will see what I can get once my finances stabilize enough.

Those are some odd stutters. That appears to be unrelated to FA - I think your system is just not equipped for it. FA is a bit more tasking on your system in comparison to the base game.

A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned

Thanks for the video. I am on the same page with Jip.

Maybe you can fix a bit of the stutter if you give it higher priority in task manager and make sure, that no other process is running which you do not need. You need every 1% of CPU you can squeeze out of your system.

Thermal paste degraded? The dedicated GPU is not used?

@zsombi said in Everything lags and stutters:

the only thing I'm not compromising on is running full screen

Try windowed mode.

Run some software such as aida64 to see if you are thermal throttling, this will determined if your thermal past has degraded or your vents are blocked.

Also if you are going to keep using this laptop upgrade to a 1TB ssd, they are quite cheap; However it really is time for either an upgrade or build a new PC.

Never Fear, A Geek is Here!