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Graphics Cards

Stuttering in Valorant. Possibly related to shader cache?

Over the last year, I upgraded a GTX 1070 to an RX 6600, for a short time.

More recently I upgraded by RTX 3060 TI to an RX 6950 XT.

Big performance gains on both, but the performance in Valorant puzzles me for both machines.

Increases frame-rate in all games, but I get stuttering in Valorant. Given the fast TTK in a game like Valorant, a stutter, can quickly mean death.

I believe it's related the shader cache building, because its really bad, unplayable for the first night after a driver update. Greatly alleviated if I go to the shooting range for 15 minutes and run through all agent abilities. But the stuttering never goes away completely. Which is probably due to the large catalogue of guns people own, and their unique animations that occur.

(No stuttering at all with Nvidia. Even on an older card like the GTX 1070.)

But I notice every night when I go to play, abilities still set off stutters for a few rounds. Then it smooths out with hiccups here and there.

If I were to just keep the framerate graph up, somebody might say I'm just being dramatic. "You dropped from 250 fps (limit set), to 230 fps. Big deal. You don't actually notice that."

But that's not the case. It's not really a lower steady framerate, its a skip in 10-15 consecutive frames. It becomes very clear to spot these stutters by keeping the graph "CPU Wait GPU Time" graph up.

This was from the first 12 matches of Swiftplay after a driver update.

These are 6 days later of playing. These are from the opening rounds. Abilities causing stutters. It does smooth out soon after (unlike fresh driver install).

Specs

  • Ryzen 7700X

  • ASRock X670E PG Lightning

  • 32 GB GSkill RAM @ 6000 w/EXPO On.

  • XFX RX 6950 XT

  • Windows 11

(The RX6600 machine was Windows 10, no TPM, because I know that gets blamed sometimes)

I'm curious if everybody with AMD video cards has this issue? If not, maybe give that "CPU Wait GPU Time" graph a check, and see if you then notice something you missed.

If not... what I am doing wrong? Any settings that help resolve this? I feel like I've tried everything in AMD Adrenaline and Valorant settings.

I remember messing around with settings on the Nvidia machine, and I recalled seeing a "CPU Wait GPU Time"... but it was like a 3ms steady delay. Not spikes. That was when Reflex + Boost was off. AMD doesn't have that, so maybe this game is just heavily optimized for Nvidia.

Additional Note: I noticed this issue with the RX 6600 early this year, so its not a recent driver or game update issue. It's been ongoing for AMD cards. I also tried disabling "DXNavi" for DX11 which reverts back to how AMD card functioned back in early 2022. I don't want to revert drivers to before 22.5 since I play new games also. Also disabled MPO. Resizable BAR is enabled.

8 Replies
LiDAF
Adept II

I was searching and found this thread. So its not just me. i have the same issue, I'm getting killed even before i see the enemy using 6700 XT+ Ryzen 7 5800x. I'm at this point very frustrated. No fix from amd its been happening for year now. I'm going to plug back my GTX 1080 and sell this **bleep** card off.

AMD seems to be shooting themselves in the foot here.

Valorant isn't some game that launches strong, and then nobody plays it 2 months later.

It's a popular game that's been going strong for years. People are buying AMD GPUs, and then returning or selling them to go back to Nvidia. AMD should really show some love to optimizing this game the way they did with Counter Strike 2. That ran even worse when it launched, but within a couple weeks AMD had better drivers out and it ran smooth.

It's like Riot needs to relaunch Valorant so it gets some attention because AMD has moved on and they're not looking to optimize Valorant at this point.

0 Likes
rodfelvarona
Journeyman III

im having the same promblem gbut i dont know how to fix it

After reaching out to both AMD and Riot, they both tried to tell me it was not a widespread problem and just something wrong with my computer setup.

I provided dozens of links with people claiming to have this issue on different forums.

They then shifted to blame the other party. AMD say its Riot. Riot say it's AMD. So I expect no movement since they simply blame something else.

Best thing you can do to play Valorant in disable DXNavi in DX11. Still not perfect, but improves the issue.

Maybe some day Valorant will switch to DX12 and that could resolve the issue.

Best solution i recently found is. clean installing Adrenalin 23.10.1. This is the same update amd removed from their website as well due to CS2 players getting banned. You can download this update from techpowerup its still there. As long as you don't play cs2 this update is the best. This update def did something that matters to cs2 to work smooth so does this works well for Valorant. But they removed this off website replaced with 23.10.2 which is **bleep**.

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Those Anti-Lag+ drivers can get you banned from more than just Counter Strike.

I'd rather not touch it. (Even though my RX 6950 XT wasn't compatible with Anti-Lag+ anyway. Still not touching those drivers anyway.)  I play more than just Valorant. I will need updated drivers for newer games.

Riot and AMD just need to fix their work.

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I just upgraded from GTX 1080 to RX6700 and I ve noticed that too. Its rly annoying

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I can show you weird things happening in Valorant with Radeon cards other than lagging. take a look at this and imagine this happens when you try to swing or clear angles.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxYCXUZnwuDjVakgKU7Gn-vyWOkdcH1VWI?si=bHX71-IBaiC9gYkC

Anyway i don't care about this issue anymore since i'm using my GTX 1080 now.