Graphics Cards

[Nytevizion]

I'm getting way too many application frame drops/skips when using Steam VR. They are averaging about 1 or multiple drops every 5-10 seconds. I want to be clear that I am NOT talking about a reduction in frame rate. These are dropped frames which cause microstutter. My available overhead ranges consistently between 50% and 70% when these frame drops occur. It happens in the Steam VR home, Squadrons, Alyx.

Tried lowest resolutions and settings. I've tried all previous versions of the drivers. Reinstalled windows. Reverted to a earlier BIOS. Overclocking/underclocking/stock. Every trick or hack I've found on the internet.

Same issue with my 5700XT

Using Link with native Oculus games work fine and do not drop frames when playing. Virtual Desktop is worse.

AMD 6800XT--Z390.9700K--16gb 3200mhz--NVMe SSD

[CaTaPulT]

Hello.

If you are using any of the March Adrenaline drivers (21.3.1 or 21.3.2), get the new April drivers (21.4.1), if this still doesn't fix your problems, then try the last Feb driver (21.2.3) the last Feb driver is probably the best for VR, the April one seems to be doing well also, the March ones are horrible for VR.

Regards: Jack

[Nytevizion]

I thought I replied to this already but here goes. I have tried all the drivers but decided to give 21.2.3 another go, per your suggestion. The frame drops 100X worse. Not even really playable. So I will be installing 21.4.1 again.

If AMD doesn't address this quickly, I will be selling this card and switching to Nvidia permanently. I prefer the the underdog, and competition but I'm not waiting 6 months to use something I just paid over a grand for. (I'm not even sure they will fix the problem at all because my 5700xt did the same thing, never got fixed and it's older. ) This card is a beast but it doesn't work right. I'm really tired of spending more time trying to get things to work correctly rather than using what I paid for.

Thanks for you reply.

Come on AMD!!!!

[CaTaPulT]

Hello.

That is odd especially with 21.2.3 drivers. If you are using a AMD CPU, with a X570 motherboard, have you recently updated the "Chipset" drivers. Also Motherboard BIOS since AMD seems to be working on the micro code a lot.
Also, there was one Windows 10 update recently that was very buggy, check your Windows 10 updates and see if "KB5001330" was installed, if so.... uninstall it.
This had installed on mine and I uninstalled it tight away, saw this on a YT video.
I'm running a XFX branded 6900xt (reference model), 5600x on a Aorus Elite Wifi motherboard, 32 gigs of 3200mhz ram, with a Kingston Nvme boot drive.
I am not having the problems you are describing, everything here is running nice and smooth. Also, are your stutters in just one game or in general, the problem with VR is there are many games out there that are poorly optimized so no matter how good your hardware is, the game is just badly coded.

I hope you can find joy soon but I do understand your frustration.

Regards: Jack

PS: also make sure your Oculus PC software is V28 and same with the Quest-2 itself (V28), there was some serious issues with V27 with the Quest-2.

[Nytevizion]

Weird results now. After reinstalling the 21.4.1 drivers I was getting very poor performance like the 21.2.3. This was after a DDU uninstall/reinstall. Puzzled, I then just reinstalled the drivers again, quickly without DDU and even without a factory reset.

Now the performance is at least what it was before I really broke it. Strange that the drivers would install differently.

Bios, chipset and everything is the latest I can find. 

I did uninstall the KB5001330 update a few days back. Not sure if it really made a difference.

The frame drops happen randomly, and sometimes predictably in VR across the board when using the PC. Some games are worse than others. I'm was wondering what is considered normal in VR but I'm assuming that you see zero or close to zero frame drops when gaming as long as GPU overhead is available?

[CaTaPulT]

Hello.

One thing you can try, in the Adrenaline software, somewhere, there is a option to clear the shader cache, maybe try this and see what happens, the first few times you play a game after clearing the cache, it might have stutters until it re-writes the new shaders to the new cache, after that, it should be smooth. It is very odd how you had to re-install the new driver a 2nd time for it to clue in, I think AMD still need to do a lot of work on these drivers, maybe they should concentrate less on new features and more on getting what they have running properly.

Other things that can affect VR performance is if you have the resolution in the Oculus PC software (Super Sampling) set too high or Super Sampling in SteamVR set too high, try using 100% in both and see if things get better, if so, start raising the SS until you start getting stutters again and then back it off a bit. Stutters can also be caused by some apps running in the background that use up a lot of system resources when they kick in, maybe see how much stuff is running in the background and disable anything you don't really need. I'm just offering suggestion, chances are you already tried all this stuff, I'm grasping at straws like you are to try getting your VR experience to be a pleasant one. LOL

Regards: Jack

[Nytevizion]

I would like to say I appreciate the replies and I would also like to apologize for popping off about selling the card. I realized I'm used to purchasing GPUs that have been available for a while with more time to work out the kinks. I remember playing Dirt Rally 2 and how the performance and fluidity improved drastically after a few driver releases.

The Frustration got the better of me. The card really is a beast.

I play with the super sampling often and reset the shader cache almost religiously. The games are totally playable, they just have this annoying hitch and I know it can be fixed.

[CaTaPulT]

No worries my friend, I know how frustrating things can get when something just isn't right.... To quote "The Matrix" movie.... "it's like a splinter in your mind" LOL

I too am impressed with my 6900xt, I'm just taking the attitude of wait and see as to how much more performance newer drivers might be able to squeeze out of these GPUs. I always make sure I keep older driver install files handy in case a new driver breaks VR like both March drivers did.

The other thing I just thought of, have you tried enabling or disabling SAM to see if that made any differences in the micro stutters?..... Also, if you have  mismatch between the CPU and Ram speed that could cause a slow down, I set that up for my 5600x using Ryzen Master. The CPU is now set to run the RAM at it's default speed of 3200mhz. It wasn't at default settings.

As all AMD stuff matures (chipset drivers, MB Bios microcode and GPU drivers) I am hoping to see better and better performance, so far since late december when I bought this new stuff, it has improved.

I do hope you get to the source of your stutters, chances are it's something really silly that we are all overlooking (as is often the case LOL).

Regards: Jack

[TheMuss]

Hi Nytevizion

I am having what I think is the exact same issue as you with a 6800 and 3700x

I have tried every setting under the sun and scoured the net for the last week trying to resolve this (quest 2, VD, steam VR)

I wont go through my massive amount of troubleshooting steps but at this point I believe Ive narrowed it down to the graphics card. (I can see the dropped frame / glitches on the monitor feed aswell) In the Steam VR frametime overlay it shows red lines quite often which correspond with the glitches.

Games are playable as with you but I notice this when panning around with my hands in front of my face and you can see the jitters very clearly Its massively annoying as I know my rig should be able to play anything currently at good FPS.

Did you make any headway with this? Ill be sure to post my findings if I ever get to the bottom of it.

[Nytevizion]

Hi there,

I haven't solved the issue and my results are random. It's worse on some days vs others? Strange I know. The games I'm playing currently are Squadrons and HL Alyx which are probably the two most demanding games I own other than Project Wingman. (Project Wingman is in a class of it's own. It destroys my system in VR when I turn up the super sampling. It doesn't even look that good but that's another issue.)

In Squadrons I'm seeing a lot of drive activity, especially after first load up. I'm watching it use about 200megabytes a second of disk activity for around 4 minutes while you are in the menu screens. This continues if you start a round and seems to cause excessive stuttering. The game smooths out after a while and plays better the second time around but still not perfect; however still very enjoyable. In all my years of gaming, drive activity almost always causes some stutter. It was more noticeable with spinning platters but in VR a micro stutter is like an earthquake. Just an observation. In my opinion, once the game is loaded, no drive activity should be happening especially when I have plenty of ram.

I swear it seems to run smoother the more I push the card. For example I already set the Oculus SS to 5408x2736 at 90hz and my rendering resolution width is 3664 at 300Mbits per second. So last night I upped Squadrons in game sampling from 100% to 106% and it ran smoother? After an oculus reboot and game restart. If I lower the width or bitrate it seems to stutter more? Again, strange results. Keep in mind the game is running at 90FPS solid and ASW is not activating. The card still shows 35-60% overhead available depending on the action.

In Half Life I notice the lateral judder/glitching much more but because of the type of game it is, I'm not bothered too terribly by it.

I will say things seem smoother at 90hz. Not sure if it's just because it's 90hz or it's helping with latency? Like I said, it seems like things run smoother when the card is utilized more. I can't confirm this, it's just a feeling. LOL

I did get Airlink working and it's impressive. Depends on local interference. Again, runs better at 90hz across the board. I'm disappointed that AMD bitrate is limited to 100 but in time I'm sure that will be an option. 

I will mention to absolutely to set your FOV tangent multiplier (FOV mirror in OTT)  to 0.72 for horizontal and vertical. Very good boost in FPS without being able to notice the edge of screen. You can see the edge if you pull the HMD down and look up at an angle through the lens. Otherwise when playing it's undetectable and free horsepower. This is a game changer since Virtual Desktop does not allow (to my knowledge) changing the FOV multiplier but you can do this with Airlink.

Here are my every day settings for oculus. Also, I get better results when I don't max out the overclock on my GPU. I keep it just higher than stock 2300min 2400max 1050 voltage 10% over power. I will post more later.

[drgfx]

Just to confirm: Yes it runs better on a 6000 GPU if you put more demanding settings. This has to be a driver problem - agressive downclocking with less demanding games (DX11). My 6900 XT it is that bored of Beat Sabers demand (via Virtual Desktop), it clocks to 2D clock for some ms (70MHz, 0MHz, 70Mhz, 2540 MHz, 70MHz) - while running 120fps in ~2500x2500) (!). This leads to crashes (driver timeout) on my card and stutters a lot when not crashing. If I crank it up to 300% supersampling the game runs perfectly smooth and it won't crash (or way less if I set 200% SS).

I reported this in detail via bug-tool and in another thread in this community, but no response so far. Even if it won't crash the card . It's easy to reproduce. Just see/feel the stutters while downclocking in games with low supersampling. Then force more resolution till its running nicely. This happens on 21.2.1 / 21.3.2 / 21.4.1 / 21.5.1.
My system is 12h Timespy GT2 loop stable, played Hitman 1-3 without a single crash. Simple Unity-Engine games seem to be good candidates to reproduce that.

[Nytevizion]

120hz magically showed up in my link menu. Weird because it didn't update to a new version and I've been waiting. Anyhow, seems that I can't increase the encode resolution width past 2912 without ghosting and it's not from frame rate dropping below the line. I'm still crushing 120fps but the ghosting looks like ASW is activating. I was running okay with link cable at 3664 and now that's a problem regardless of my refresh rate.

Other than that, airlink and link both perform better at 120hz but only with encode at 2912 plus or minus. (using OTT) Latency is reduced quite a bit at 120hz and it does look smooth other than the frame drops.

Using the latest 5.2 drivers didn't seem to change much but didn't hurt anything either.

[drgfx]

Try virtual desktop (new beta for streamer and app) again. Set a low bitrate - just for testing (35 Mbit, if it works you can raise it later on) Driver 21.3.1 and h.264 encoding first (you can try HEVC later on but there seems to be issues with 5700).
There seems to be problems with newer drivers and 5000 series if it needs to encode while playing. Best case for VD is a exclusive wifi AP just for the Quest.

I feel your pain, its frustrating and hard to troubleshoot. The above setup helped some 5700 owners.
For VD you can get great support on their discord, this is a huge plus. 

Good luck

[Nytevizion]

VD was great for what it was but it's somewhat irrelevant to me now because of the performance hit. ( I noticed a huge drop in overhead just using VD vs Link with the SS and quality at similar levels. Plus, the ability to reduce the FOV multiplier is a game changer for Airlink and Quest 2. These two factors put VD on the back burner. I'm impressed with Airlink so far but I still use the cable whenever possible for stationary or sit down games.

The encode resolution width issue boggles me. Stuck at 2912. Used to run at 3664 without issue. Maybe it really WASN'T running at 3664? I'm not sure how to check if it's actually changing anything but I notice the judder/ghosting if I change that setting on Air or Cable. Background seems okay, it's hands and objects (text is the worst) close up that ghost/judder.

[CaTaPulT]

Hi everyone.

Unfortunately, I've not had much time for VR lately, I heard the Quest-2 now has 120hz capabilities but to be honest, this is a feature which is pretty much useless to me (I really can't see or feel the difference between 90 and 120hz on my Index). I did try AirLink for a short time and it seems to be just as good as VD but still getting hickups due to wifi and I am using a wifi-6 router.

I don't use the Quest-2 on my 5600x / 6900xt system, this is the system I use my Valve Index with (sim racing and other VR stuff), the Quest-2 is used on my upstairs computer (i7 4790k with a RTX-2070) and that's good enough for what I use it for on that system. Occasionally, I will bring the Quest-2 downstairs to test on that system, but rarely, I much prefer my Index over the Quest-2.
I've not updated to the May drivers since they are optional drivers and not certified, with the frequency of driver updates, I've decided that once I find a driver that works well for me, I'll stick with it until the next "certified" driver comes out, then I'll try that.

I hope you guys find the problem you are having with micro stutters.

Take care

Regards: Jack