Unexplained lag spikes/choppiness every few seconds on nice system

Black Mesa Archive In-game Issues (Mod)
#1

It happens both in game, and even on the menu screen before the game. I play many other games (even Source ones), and none have any issues like this.

My system:
i7 860
8gb ram
GTX 480

I have the latest drivers from nvidia (306.23), and am running Windows 7 x64.

I have tampered with the various graphics settings (even setting them all the way to low) and the problem persists.

Here’s a video of what it’s like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTH8G6UqHRM

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

#2

Same thing happens to me but it’s like permanent LOL. And it always seems to unfreeze when I Ctrl-Alt-Dlt. But then it’ll just start up again. It’s really annoying. It’s a beautiful game but it’s difficult to enjoy it when it does this :frowning:

#3

hey mate,

got some similar problem with an i7 3770k and HD6870, not like this but im getting (mostly very small) micro lags.
It cant be the nvidia grafic card and it should not be ur cpu :smiley:

i think it has something to do with the sound (caching or device).
could you disable ur audio device (in windows!) and try again…
let me know if that fixes ur problem.

greetz

#4

I’m having a VERY similar issue, but it doesn’t happen as often nor as long on my system. It lasts about 1/4 of a second.

Also, It’s at its worst on the tram.

Specs:

Win 7 64-bit
AMD PhenomII X4
ATI Radeon HD 5770
8 GB RAM
Running at 1920x1080

#5

This is probably also the fact that it only uses one core of your processor.
https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=12660 for a possible fix.

#6

I searched and tried your fix before I even posted.

Didn’t fix the problem for me.

#7

Here is a reproduction of the problem I’m having (this was posted by someone else, not me):

See 0:46 of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx9TrETRg9c

#8

Here is fix …enjoy

https://forums.blackmesasource.com/showthread.php?t=13209

#9

Bump.

#10

Well, it’s obviously your system chokes on something and stuck on it for some time. Most probable potentional candidates are: sound driver issues or game assets/sounds loading too slow from the data storage device. Try moving your steam installation to another drive (fast SSD would be a good choice), if you have such possibility.
And try placing the following commands into \steamapps\sourcemods\BMS\cfg\autoexec.cfg file:

cl_showfps 2
mem_max_heapsize 3000
mat_alphacoverage 1
mat_compressedtextures 1
mat_queue_mode 0
r_threaded_particles 1
r_threaded_renderables 1
snd_mix_async "1
snd_async_fullyasync "1"
cl_predict 1
cl_smooth 1
dsp_slow_cpu 1
cl_forcepreload 1
sv_forcepreload 1

Then restart the game and try again.
Also you could try to use one of following sets of command line parameters to check if the problem is with your sound card/drivers:
“-nosound”
“-wavonly”

And while you’re there, adding “-preload” to the command line parameters won’t hurt (while it should do pretty much the same as sv_forcepreload/cl_forcepreload do). And, yeah, update the drivers of your soundcard and/or try temporarily disable it in Windows Control Panel -> Audio Devices dialog or in System Device Manager.

The idea is that you first have to pinpoint what is causing stutters and only then you’d be able to finaly fix it. Stutters like seen on your video looks similar to those people get when they have problems with their sound card drivers.

#11

^tried, didn’t work.

/bump

#12

So you get just the same microfreezes when run the game with sound turned off? I.e. with “-nosound” switch?

What’s about enabling budget panel displaying and trying to spot which bar spikes at the moment you get the microstutter happening?

What else to try:
a) start up the game with “-wavonly” command line switch;
b) start up the game with “-primarysound” command line switch;

Also could you please take a screenshot on the Windows control panel -> Sound -> Playback devices and post it here.
Then, out of curiosity, do you have any other applications running at the background when you playing BM? First things to suspect as a problem cause: torrent clients, audio/music players, download managers, web browser and even Steam client itself. Make sure you have absolutely minimal amount of processes executing at background on your system when you play BM. Having considerably small amount of microstutters like you have is OK in general but in case you have a lot of them (i.e. more than one per - say - half an hour of the gameplay) - there’s something wrong with your system, most probably related to storage system throughput - preventing the engine to read back the data it wants in a timely fashion.

#13

Yet another thing to try: quit the game and remove folder /steamapps/sourcemods/BMS/maps/soundcache and file /steamapps/sourcemods/BMS/modelsounds.cache and let the game to rebuild models and sound cache on the next startup.

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