Alex Battaglia: Stop saying your PC is fine! Demand better from developers to cut out frame stuttering on all PCs

cormack12

cormack12

Gold Member
Source: Purple asylum (archive.is)

Highlights
5 years ago he was raising the issues with stuttering



Often down to poor shader compilation
Leads to frame hitches causes freezing in the render pipeline
Can easily be in excess of 100ms on a 9800X3D
It will take one full magnitude of CPU performance upgrades over the 9800X3D until these frame-time hitches become "less obvious" when targeting 60 fps.
These hitches will be around for a decade or more probably in all games that have them.
Games can be smooth! We can let developers know that it can and SHOULD be done.

Closing
The truth of the matter is that frame-time hitches affect all PCs, but not every user notices them or cares. It is fine to not care. But you can passively help those WHO DO CARE. Maybe keep "this runs fine on my PC" to yourself?

Angry Season 4 GIF by The Office
 
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He's right. On the bright side this crusade against stuttering has led to an overall reduction in shader stuttering at least, and as the biggest shader stutter culprit, UE4, is no longer used, that should help as well.
 
At this point, just use AI to do shader compile programming for you or whatever, it can't be that hard riiiight???
 
But Alex also reviews how Games perform using one or two very similar setups. Yet he wants to tell everyone with vastly different set ups that they are wrong?
 
Saying, "This runs fine on my PC," isn't some kind of offensive slur. It's helpful to gauge scope. If everyone is in an echo chamber, that can make issues seem like they are worse than they actually are.
 
don't get me wrong but nearly half the stutters PC gamers are experiencing are caused by 8 GB VRAM. you know this too Alex. call out to NVIDIA instead, to stop them making 8 GB 4060s and 8 GB 5060s. this buffer is just not enough
 
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Shtof said:
It was a joke, but the problem is too common.
And comparably rare on console.
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Many games on console run at 30 fps, this makes potential stutters a lot less noticeable - not to mention these kinds of stutters tend to stand out more when moving the camera with a mouse.
 
lol Alex. Just get a better PC bro.

Also, stop testing stuff on Ryzen 5 3600. We're 2025 now, this is anything but mid-range.
 
Guilty_AI said:
Many games on console run at 30 fps, this makes potential stutters a lot less noticeable - not to mention these kinds of stutters tend to stand out more when moving the camera with a mouse.
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Most console games these days have a 60 fps mode, and some even 120.
 
Shtof said:
Most console games these days have a 60 fps mode, and some even 120.
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Yeah Im sure nearly every current gen game for the last 5 years has run at 60fps or a choice over 30 or 60 in the options. Can't think of any 30fps only games.

Also was alex wearing his skirt when he made this?
 
I agree with the premise that shader compilation stutter should be taken more seriously, since proven solutions to completely mitigate this exist. They just need to be implemented properly, and users should complain when this does not happen.

But in the end, gaming journalists are the first to ignore performance problems when evaluating games, when they should be the first to raise the issue and dock points from their reviews accordingly. And this applies to all platforms for all kind of performance or IQ problems.

There are plenty of examples of games with 90+ scores on MetaCritic that have severe performance or IQ problems. But since those games are considered good or because they come from well-liked studios, those problems are wholly ignored in the total evaluation of the game, which should not happen.

If that doesn't change, developers will not be pressured to deliver games with better performance than what's currently available. Making a post on a niche enthusiast forum complaining about this won't change anything. Maybe he should do something about his colleagues (who should be professionals) instead of complaining about the users who are just expressing their opinions.
 
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Shtof said:
Most console games these days have a 60 fps mode, and some even 120.
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Targeted 60 and 120 fps you mean. I remember how people needed to set up the ps4 version of elden ring on the ps5 if they wanted stable 60, many other games seem to struggle with this too.

Also, from my experience the worse stutters come from traversal, not shader comp (in fact i've found these to be comparatively rarer). Traversal stutter isn't a PC issue.
 
panda-zebra said:
Robin Williams What Year Is It GIF
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I'm being realistic, so far my experience with performance modes on consoles have been awful, and this is cohoborated by what i see online. Most of the time its better to just stick with quality mode as performance looks to be some form of compromise.

The stuff that does run properly at higher frames are usually indie or updated older games/remasters. Games normally outside of the scope of performance or fluidity complaints.
 
Guilty_AI said:
I'm being realistic, so far my experience with performance modes on consoles have been awful, and this is cohoborated by what i see online. Most of the time its better to just stick with quality mode as performance looks to be some form of compromise.

The stuff that does run properly at higher frames are usually indie or updated older games/remasters. Games normally outside of the scope of performance or fluidity complaints.
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Most games are 60FPS or higher on consoles, unless you're talking about Switch?
 
I like that he is pushing for this bullshit to be removed from PC gaming. PC gaming is far too huge to be suffering from this shit. UE4 / 5 can do one.
 
bitbydeath said:
Most games are 60FPS or higher on consoles, unless you're talking about Switch?
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Define "most games", because if you're including indies, AAs and remasters/patched older games then yeah.

I'm specifically refering to AAA games with high graphical fidelity. You know, the kinds of games where the issues presented in the OP are relevant to begin with. The Alan Wake 2's, Wukongs, Elden Ring's, etc.
 
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Guilty_AI said:
Define "most games", because if you're including indies, AAs and remasters/patched older games then yeah.

I'm specifically refering to AAA games with high graphical fidelity. You know, the kinds of games where the issues presented in the OP are relevant to begin with. The Alan Wake 2's, Wukongs, Elden Ring's, etc.
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Excluding indies, i'd say around 95-99% are 60 or higher. It's extremely rare to find any targeting a max of 30FPS.

Edit: This is almost a year old but you get the point.

 
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Things are getting a little better in modern releases, but trying to play games a little older is terrible and I don't see how that's getting fixed. I tried Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries recently and tapped out after 30 minutes, borderline unplayable due to constant stutter.
 
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bitbydeath said:
Excluding indies, i'd say around 95-99% are 60 or higher. It's extremely rare to find any targeting a max of 30FPS.
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If you're including AAs, patched older games and remasters, probably.

But again, those aren't the types of games being complained about in the OP.
 
cormack12 said:
It is fine to not care. But you can passively help those WHO DO CARE.
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Kind of reminds me of a classic cppconf moment.



Software is for making money and there's one point where the benefits of further optimization are no longer appreciated when considering the amount of effort you have to invest. "Some people don't notice, some people don't care", those are the majority and because of them is why we wait 30 seconds until Word loaded. As a developer, the more you optimize the more primitive your code becomes (not only in terms of readability but also tools, you ought to drop from C# to C++ to C to assembler) which makes both maintaining and debugging a real pain. So yes, the option is to get a fully optimized game in 5 years or a working game in one year, and remember that someone has to pay developers for those extra 4 years they spend optimizing.
 
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I've been playing The Last of Us and it's one of the most visually impressive games I have ever played, but it has some real ugly moments of stuttering or straight up freezing in areas.

In the sniper scenario where you run to the house my game was shitting it's framerate until eventually I died and the game just straight up froze. When I restarted the game's framerate was back to normal.

That port has been out for over a year and TLOU2 is out soon and they haven't updated the game in a hot minute. Really sad because otherwise it's again, just so damn pretty to play. They really did a good job on the Remaster regardless of how unnecessary it was.
 
Guilty_AI said:
Targeting 60 fps doesn't mean running at 60 fps.

Wukong has an option to target 60 fps on the ps5. It does not run at 60 fps even being generous.
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That would be too difficult to prove either way, so will leave it there. (As in, if that is great in number or not, as I doubt it's recorded at a high-level)
 
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Majority of games have shader compilation nowadays which minimizes shader compilation stutter.
Traversal stutter is more of the issue now, but it doesn't feel as bad as it only impacts fluidity in 'boring' areas whereas shader stutter often occurs during action or big set pieces where it is more infuriating.
 
bitbydeath said:
That would be too difficult to prove either way, so will leave it there. (As in, if that is great in number or not, as I doubt it's recorded at a high-level)
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It is not considering the games Battaglia complains about are a selective few. Again, we're of course talking about graphically demanding stuff, games where such fluidity and performance issues stand out like STALKER 2, not a Persona 3 R.
 
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