Far Cry 2: cure to stuttering

This was not found by me, but by a fellow called Dashes (first I saw of it in any case) in the Guru3D forums.

I have a 4870 and have very good benchmark results in the game, max everything (I play at a measly 1280x1024 BTW), however, no matter the attempted solution, I experienced a very aggravating stuttering regularly. FRAPS made it clear this was not due to a super dip in frames.

I honestly figured I'd have to just live with it, or wait for a new driver set from ATI, which is pure BS after plunking down $50 on this game. Unlike Stalker where the reviews clearly warned about the bugs, this issue caught me on the blindside.

Anyhow, DASHES said to open the console in-game, and to type "gfx_maxfps 30". Well, movies go that fast, and I had nothing to lose. Miracle of miracles! Silky smooth action! I tested 35 and 40 just out of curiosity, and no problems. Not slow in any perceivable way, and killed the issue dead.

there were some people having this problem with call of duty 4 on 4870X2's, and doing a framerate cap fixed it!

Good to know!

I did the following and it's MUCH smoother on my 4870X2:

Vsync ON
Mouse Smoothing ON
*** In the CCC make sure the AA is set to Application Specified AND box. I had it on Edge Detect (still with Application Specified) and got "lag". With the AA set to box it was MUCH smoother.

Good to know, thanks OP!

Chameleoki said:

I did the following and it's MUCH smoother on my 4870X2:

Vsync ON
Mouse Smoothing ON
*** In the CCC make sure the AA is set to Application Specified AND box. I had it on Edge Detect (still with Application Specified) and got "lag". With the AA set to box it was MUCH smoother.

Click to expand...

Edge detect is more taxing than box AA in shader intensive games, which I'm going to assume Far Cry 2 is one of. This means that if you turn Edge off and just have Box you're probably going to see an increase in performance, better frames, and therefore less stuttering, regardless of what's causing the stuttering to begin with.

On a side note, I've tried capping the max frame rate at anywhere between 40-60 and it seems to reduce the stuttering significantly. I don't know if Vsync also applies to this because it technically does cap your frames as well.

The weird thing was that I played during night time with Vsync capping my frames at 60 and got no stuttering and my framerate hardly ever dropped below 59. However once day time started and my framerate would drop to around 40, the stuttering started again even though there weren't huge dips in framerate when it was happening, ie. it could stutter even when my frames were like a constant 50. However, when I manually set the cap to 40, and my frames always stayed at 40 it again got rid of the stuttering. It seems to be that it occurs when ever there is any kind of small drop in framerate, the game stutters like crazy. The only way to fix this is to cap it so that your frames always stay stable at the cap.

far cry now runs MUCH better! awesome find OP

This is an excellent find. Things are a lot smoother now and the mouse does not feel sluggish except for in the menu.

Ok... no matter what I do, I cant get the console to open up. I wonder if it's because when I click the ~ button I get a `. I have to press shift+~ to get the tilde to come out... but then the console doesn't open.

Is there a way to set this preference in an ini file or something?

Fixed... turns I had to unplug my Media Center remote receiver... now the tilde key works just fine.

strange, im running a 4870 1gb @ 1680x1050 with 4xAA (edge detect) and 16x AF. i also think ive got adaptive AF on too.

but i think that i typically get ~30-35fps in heavy fire fights with fire everywhere and stuff blowing up.

maybe the extra 512mb of ram helps my single card, IDK, or maybe it's the lower resolution.

xappie said:

Fixed... turns I had to unplug my Media Center remote receiver... now the tilde key works just fine.

Click to expand...

wow, i hope that fix works for me, i havent been able to use my tilde key since when i was at a LAN party.

though it makes sense, because i dont bring that with me.

we'll see what happens.

sparky1_2007 said:

wow, i hope that fix works for me, i havent been able to use my tilde key since when i was at a LAN party.

though it makes sense, because i dont bring that with me.

we'll see what happens.

Click to expand...

ya let me know... ive been wondering for a few years now why my tilde key never works in games... didn't solve it until last night.

xappie said:

ya let me know... ive been wondering for a few years now why my tilde key never works in games... didn't solve it until last night.

Click to expand...

yea, it fixed my issues, lol

ive always wondered why it worked when i went to lan partys and such, lol

i thought it was just because i un-plugged it and such.

I actually found another fix on the logitech forums that fixed it for me as well, but still allows me to leave the remote plugged in:

1. Go into Device Manager -> Keyboards.

2. Right-click "Microsoft eHome MCIR 109 Keyboard", choose "Update Driver" ("Update Driver Software" on Vista).

3. Choose "Browse my computer for software" (XP users tell it not to install automatically and say you'll specify the location, then when it asks you where you would like it to search for drivers choose the option to choose from a list) then "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer".

4. Make sure "show compatible hardware" is checked, then select "HID-compliant device" and click next. Click any remaining "OK" or "Finish" buttons after Windows has installed the driver.

There's an interesting trade off

According to the benchmark, Direct X 10 runs 10 fps faster than Direct X 9 using the same settings (1280x1024 2x aa, very high settings) (50 vs. 40 fps)

But Directx 10 has stuttering. So to cure the stuttering you have to limit the fps to about 35. So then overall you have a lower framerate than if you'd just used Directx 9.

But since Dx 10 has a higher overall framerate, you'll get overall better performance, even with the max framerate limited, during firefights and such.

Too bad Dx 10 doesn't just work like it should, so then you wouldn't have to limit the max framerate.