Lag spikes while in fullscreen mode

Technical Support
1

Sort of an odd problem…I experience really really bad lag spikes every few seconds when I have the game in fullscreen mode. Windowed mode fixes these issues but I’m curious if someone knows what I can do to diagnose this issue? My computer is more than capable of running the game on the highest graphics settings otherwise

2

just started happening in windowed mode too…works perfectly fine for a while and then starts to spike

3

Hey there…

Please can you include the following files:

  1. Player.log - games debug file
  2. le_graphicsmanager.ini - game settings file
  3. output from a dxdiag report - snapshot of your system hardware & drivers (assuming you are using Windows).

There are previous reports of a similar nature but these all depended on very specific driver versions & GPU hardware and OS. So it hard to guess based on the info you have provided. Also… you only mention the windowed modes… does this occur on ANY map using ANY character or is it specific to a char/map in combination with the window mode?

A few points:

  1. LE is in Beta & unoptimised so its generally a good idea to be conservative with game settings to ensure a decent level of stability and prevent freezes, stuttering and fps spikes. This has less to do with hardware and more to do with the state of the game on the hardware it has to work with.

  2. Make sure that your GPU drivers are up to date and consider a clean safe mode driver installation - upgrades dont usually fix problem driver files or remove old files that could be causing issues. Also, confirm that you are not doing any driver level overrides that are affecting the game… These can have a huge impact on the game performance and stability.

  3. Make sure that your OS is patched and there are no failed or updates waiting for approval that could be causing issues.

  4. Verify that there isnt anything running in background that could be using system resources and potentially conflicting with the game… Just as a temporary test, do not run anything else while testing LE… doesnt matter how irrelevant you might think it is, just temporarily dont use it to test.

  5. If you are using Steam, do a game file verification to ensure the install is not corrupted in any way.

If you provide the files above, they might point to something more specific.

4

It appears that the problem occurs when I run anything in a browser at the same time as running the game. Happens in all areas, on all characters. The problem persists even on the lowest graphics settings.

dxdiag: dxdiag hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB
le_graphicsmanager.ini (482 Bytes)
Player.log (25.1 KB)

5

Ok…

Browser… well, if the browser has hardware accelleration enabled and you load a complex page (like Dammits Build Planner, or something doing hardware video decoding etc.) then it will obviously take GPU resources and this WILL impact the game.

Compound this with your in-game resolution of 3840x2160 and everything will be exponentially harder for the GPU to process. Even at the very low settings & 60fps framerate limits. The game is in beta & has known performance related instability if you push the settings and 2160p definitely falls into that category. Try the exact same test at 1080p (everything else as is) and see - I would expect the lag spike to be much less - if even noticeable at all.

The player.log is showing a few errors that the game is automatically recovering from - they are not enough to crash the game but could be temporarily affecting performance as it recovers… Its only a few so I doubt its the primary cause but based on this I would definitely suggest the Steam game file verification if you havent already done this…

Dxdiag - it has an export of the report to a txt file containing far more info… The screenshot doesnt give much to go on… However, the most obvious thing from the image is that you are using a GPU driver from the end of Jan… So thats almost 10 months old and there have been plenty of issues with drivers from before and around April this year… I recommend a clean safe mode driver installation… not an upgrade as this will not always fix problem drivers or remove older files that could be causing issues. If you dont know how to do that manually, you can use a utility like DDU.

6

Thanks for all the help. Unfortunately, none of the above fixed the issue. But I observed that this ONLY happens when I’m connected to my monitor via HDMI. I have no lagging issues when I am only on the laptop. I have tried several different HDMI cords so it’s not that. I’m very curious what part of the HDMI connection could be causing this interference or whatever. The computer is essentially new and there are no other HDMI issues apart from this game and occasionally some others (but not all of them).

7

Sorry… I totally missed that in the dxdiag image (probably would have seen it in the txt :wink: )… Laptop configs can get really complicated and add a whole extra level of things to check.

(aside, I am assuming Steam verficiation & Driver install)

Things to look at with laptops:

  1. Only playing on your laptop screen is reducing the resolution to 1080p - which will reduce the load on your system while playing significantly and your 2070 should have zero problems with the very low settings/60fps at 1080p. ( I play these settings on a 1060 without any hassles at all). Based on this, I am not sure if your problem is actually HDMI related/external or simply a performance issue. If you try 1080p on the external monitor do you still get the lag?

  2. GPU priorities - as you probably know, laptops switch between internal iGPUs (Intel UHD) and discreet GPUs (2070) to trade battery life and performance when needed… Unfortunately when playing games this can wreck havok with fps & stability. Other people playing LE have found that forcing the LE executable to ONLY run on the discreet GPU makes a HUGE difference to stability/performance. You can do this on Win 10 in 2 ways, in the driver config and in Windows Advanced Graphics settings. The key is to ensure that your laptop doesnt do something silly.

  3. Active Monitors… Issues sometimes arise if you try and use both the laptop internal monitor & external monitor at the same time. This depends on laptop but its something to test.

  4. HDMI cables… This is very tricky… There are definitely sub standard HDMI cables that say they support certain standards but dont… unfortunately its damn hard to test this as a normal user without having a “known perfect cable” to compare with… The other side of this is the interface between your monitor and laptop… I cannot tell what your monitor supports or what its configured to expect from the laptop in its own config… At your high resolution for the external monitor, the HDMI spec/handshake can have a noticeable difference vs just the 1080p of your internal monitor thats matched to the gpu. Pumping out 2160p pixels requries that things are playing nice together… Even Hz could play a part here - especially if the monitor is one of those dynamic ones… It might need a config change… This approach is really hard to test if you dont have additional monitors to test with to try and figure out what it going on… imho, I dont think that this is the main problem - provided there isnt some weird config setting in your monitor that is causing a problem.

  5. Fullscreen vs Maxed Window vs Window mode on laptops also doesnt behave properly. Players with issues have had to mess around quite a bit with these options - even at a driver level to find a setting that works properly for their hardware… Window mode has also had a performance impact for some - e.g. they get better fps in one mode than the other… The devs know about some issues with window mode (and did fix some in the last patch), but laptops tend to have outlier issues in this regard.

8

Thanks for the detailed reply!
0. Same issue @ 1080p, or even 720p

  1. Definitely already have it set to only be using the 2070 and not the intel.
  2. Always runs with no duplicate, Monitor = main and only display
  3. Yea unfortunately no other monitor to test this on!
  4. I did check all three options and have the problem with all three options.

Guess it could also be (as you said) a stability issue that has yet to be resolved on the server side too. But I would think that wouldn’t be the case since it runs perfectly fine without the HDMI.

9

Ok… if its still doing this on the external monitor even at 720p then I cannot possibly see how the issue is performance related. Thats fairly definitive for me as there should be absolutely zero lag of any kind at 720p with a 2070.

Logically this also seems to be less about LE (proven by the fact that its perfectly fine on your laptop screen - if it was only LE then the lag should happen on your laptop screen) and more about your specifc hardware setup.

So that means its either:

  1. On the monitor or HDMI side (and or how the laptop is handling the external monitor).

  2. Something else entirely…

Three more ideas:

  1. Your external monitor - do you hot-plug it when you use it? Or do you plug in the shutdown laptop first and then startup? Do you use a docking station or anything like that? Do you use sleep mode/hibernate between switching between internal external monitors? I recall someone having a problem with an external monitor depending on how he connected… i.e. if he didnt reboot after plugging in the external monitor, odd things happened… (not lag spikes specifically but window mode changes). Perhaps this is something you test various ways and see if it makes a difference.

  2. Other things installed - I can usually tell a little from the dxdiag report based on drivers, but what third party apps are you running on your system? I mentioned it in my first post above (about not running anything else)… but specifically what are you running? The reason I ask is that there might be something else influencing your setup in a very specific way… For example, Citrix & Unity (the game engine LE uses) do not play well together and this manifests as absymal and unexpected fps spike / performance issues that are only resolved by disabling Citrix before playing LE - even if you dont actually run the Citrix app, you still have to disable its services etc first. Perhaps there is something you are running or using that could be involved? Obviously with the problem only being on the external monitor this is likely to be a long shot, but maybe something is hijacking your HDMI in some way…

  3. Last one… Monitoring your GPU clock speeds… Do you notice anything odd about your GPU usage/clock speeds when the lag happens?

  4. EDIT: Last last one - is there any BIOS config that is related to the HDMI port or GPU? Long shot but might be worth a look.

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