Topic on Talk:Final Fantasy XIII

See my posts here http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=142971910&postcount=6815 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=142958764&postcount=6809

There are absolutely no drops for me really at all when locked in this manner. Compared to unlocked or 60hz vsync, the game doesn't even reach 60FPS. It sits at 58/59 and there is a TON of microstuttering and framerate drops in battle (look at the video in one of my links above)

You don't need v-sync and frame limiter. Use only the first if you are really sensible to tearing.. otherwise just RTSS if you want to stabilize framerate.

Anyway... you don't have microstutter because frametime varies a bit. You feel it only when there are massive frame drops. And this could even affect just little fractions of time (overlay refreshes only every second by default, remember)

Since CPU, nor GPU seems to be stressed when game stutters (which is evident during fight) my first theory would be: hdd access lag (that's the most common and simple cause, imo).

Though if you could check the exact framerate timeline (in MSI afterburner nvm, for example) it would be interesting to survey every frame one by one

FWIW it doesn't seem to be disk access either - I moved XIII+-2 back and forth on a high speed SSD and a regular HD and it made 0 difference. That said in FFXIII I get a solid 60 with my newest rig (G1G 970, Xeon 1231v3), but that's overkill for this app. I can't get a solid 60 on FFXIII-2 - amazingly, it is miles worse than FFXIII (DOF+DAI issues and additional forced inefficient post-processing). FWIW from a lot of hours of messing around it seems to revolve around said framing pacing and limiter issues and what your base GPU speed is at what the broken frame limiter decides to stick at. This may explain why overclocked GPUs can actually result in lower framerates. Just a theory like everyone else though.

You don't seem to understand what frame times are about. If those frames aren't delivered at the correct rate. This is microstuttering. Frames aren't being pushed out as fast or as slow as needed (which is supposed to be a flat 16.6) Thus the image isn't smooth. You don't have to be having framerate drops to be getting microstuttering.

Look at the panning in my shot, as it stutters along.

Where for "correct rate" I think ±25% could even be accepted: but the problem in your shot (which is no longer available btw) is that frametime is sampled only once for second. That hides completely every issue with single frames that may happen.

The game may actually be requesting a frame every 16.6ms... but if one drops.. (and we can't be sure due to aforementioned reasons) then you would have to wait 33.3 ms.. and that's a big difference.
Nothing like that 2ms differences you seem to be worried of (and that really, I can't understand how could be perceived by humans)

Frametime polling rate isn't 1 second. It's ~500ms. Setting it to 100ms instead doesn't make much of a difference.

The video is recorded without vsync,changing the polling period to 100ms instead even with vsync the times are super variable (+- 2ms via OSD) But the variation is less so than without Vsync and there is little to no stuttering INFACT, with 60Hz vsync forced from Nvidia Inspector, there is far less microstuttering, but frame drops during battle still occur.

But then, look at this

Just look at how crazy this is, polling period 100ms, capped to 60FPS externally every so many frames one takes ~33ms to be shot out and this is just standing still. http://i.minus.com/iA76Sv5ksWOUt.png

Now look at the same with a game like Killing Floor Capped to 60FPS externally, flat line with spikes because i'm playing in windowed mode, which results in stuttering http://i.minus.com/iIpwzyJruGU6m.png

http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/frame_time_analysis,1.html http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer-cat138 http://techreport.com/review/24553/inside-the-second-with-nvidia-frame-capture-tools

https://web.archive.org/web/20150621142845/http://forums.eu.square-enix.com/showthread.php?t=149223&page=5#post2096444
http://www.pcgamer.com/final-fantasy-xiii-and-xiii-2-port-analysis-durantes-verdict/

It's just a bug with game then. As I said, it doesn't make sense that limiting the framerate -thus actual expressed horsepower in moment X- is going to produce better result for frame X+1 (assuming software/drivers are not flawed of course)

Other fix to try

https://github.com/Kaldaien/SpecialK/releases/tag/ffxiii_fix