Game freezes randomly for a few seconds

Game mode: Single-player
Type of issue: Bug
Server type: PvE
Region: -


Sound starts to bug out, as if the PC is overloaded and can’t keep up with the replay. This freezes the game. CPU drops to ~10% usage, GPU to 0%. The freeze holds for a few seconds then the game recovers.

This happened mostly in menus. This includes the character inventory, skill/feat menu, inventories of machines or NPCs. It does also happen when running around, fighting or gathering.

The bug happens regularly, sometimes with a few seconds in between two occurences, sometimes it doesn’t occur for up to five minutes.

The bug occurs with and without mods.
The bug occurs in current stable and testlive.

Specs:
CPU: AMD FX8320 Eight-Core Processor 3.5 GHz
GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070
Mobo: Gigabyte 970a-ds3
OS: Windows 10

Drivers for sound, graphics, etc.pp. are all up to date.
Game is stored on an NVME SSD. There is no disc I/O recorded in the performance view of the task manager when the bug occurs.

I’ve already tried the following:

  • Disabling Nvidia audio outputs
  • Disabling Nvidia overlay
  • Disabling Steam overlay
  • Low graphic settings
  • Disabling sound (this is often said to be a working workaround - it doesn’t work for me)
  • Setting CPU core affinity (tried two cores, four cores and six cores in varying sets)

Screenshots of the performance graphs of the task manager:
CPU: https://i.imgur.com/4SjrNLw.png
GPU: https://i.imgur.com/zKUTW0R.png


There is no discernable trigger for the bug to occur.

2 Likes

I’ve been fiddling around with the engine settings. Seting MaxChannels in the Section Audio in ‘Conan Exiles/Engine/Config/BaseEngine.ini’ to 16 solves this issue for me.

Setting it to 0 still causes stuttering and weird hall-like sound. 32 is the default that causes issues for me. 16 has been giving me a stable experience so far with little to no stuttering or lags.

It does still lag minimally from time to time - though not even nearly like it was lagging/stuttering when MaxChannels was set to 0 or 32. The sounds still sound have a hall-like effect to them sometimes. I’ll fiddle around with the value a bit more and capture the performance graphs.

I’ve found a thread on reddit and while turning the sound down/disabling did not help the suggested fix in this comment did help.

With that change there are only some lags every now and then, but at least it doesn’t freeze the game anymore. When it does lag the CPU and GPU still drop, but only to ~25% and 15% respectively, while using roughly 60% and 50% respectively when its running smoothly.
It still takes roughly the same amount (six to eight seconds) to recover from lag to smooth gameplay.

I also did a clean reinstall and only applied that fix to confirm that this fixes it without any other changes.

The lags are still an issue, they only trigger in a few circumstances, listed in order of severeness:

  • Elephants attack
  • Fighting multiple enemies
  • Fighting in/around water
  • Fighting in a sandstorm

The CPU/GPU usage and drop are similar to my first post, roughly 50%/60% usage respectively continually and then dropping to nothing. The duration however is a lot shorter - about one second.

The mini lags with drops to 25%/15% respectively are still occurring.

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