What exactly IS "micro-stutter"?

[Hal900x]

I've posted in another forum about my struggles to resolve micro-stutter, but I'm not exactly sure that's what I have. When I move a high-DPI mouse very slowly, and in very small increments horizontally, it's almost like I can see the refresh flashing, bright to dark, bright to dark. It is pretty much imperceptible with long, natural movements of the mouse in normal gameplay UNLESS you have HDR turned on. Then, it's blatantly obvious and intolerable. I do notice I get headaches and more fatigue in general than I would expect, even with HDR off. I have tried many things to resolve this, including but not limiied to: installing OSR, installing Oblivion Display Tweaks, various combinations of settings within those two, messing with BethINI, creating custom resolutions with various timings, updating my drivers, limited frame rate, disabling vsync, disabling freesync and going back to vanilla. Maybe it's not micro-stutter after all, and this is something else?

[z929669]

microstutter is just very fast, small-increment lag. Arguably, most people experience it to some degree no matter the system.

Always enable vsync

Always cap your frame rate to your monitor refresh rate (this only matters if your system is mid-high end with 'high' display settings).

There are simple ways to minimize stutter and video anomalies as explained in some recent posts. It has to do with all of the settings you mention. There are redundancies. You need to establish a baseline with all settings OFF and only default INI settings. Then make incremental changes to single settings and examine results. Iterate over and over until you find the optimal for your system.

Begin with all display driver settings and mod display settings set to default or off. Use BethINI to set mid/high/ultra. Then tweak individual settings. It takes a while.

[Hal900x]

  On 3/4/2021 at 1:01 AM, z929669 said:

microstutter is just very fast, small-increment lag. Arguably, most people experience it to some degree no matter the system.

Always enable vsync

Always cap your frame rate to your monitor refresh rate (this only matters if your system is mid-high end with 'high' display settings).

There are simple ways to minimize stutter and video anomalies as explained in some recent posts. It has to do with all of the settings you mention. There are redundancies. You need to establish a baseline with all settings OFF and only default INI settings. Then make incremental changes to single settings and examine results. Iterate over and over until you find the optimal for your system.

Begin with all display driver settings and mod display settings set to default or off. Use BethINI to set mid/high/ultra. Then tweak individual settings. It takes a while.

Expand  

"Lag", eh. Well if by lag is meant delay, I have none that I can perceive. It's more that I can almost "see" the refresh when I pan very slowly. flashflashflashflash, as I very slowly move the mouse side to side. With HDR it's a very noticeable "shimmer" effect that doesn't look right at all, and it's a lot easier to see even with smooth movements in broader arcs. The lighting will scintillate or flash. Hard to describe precisely. It's still there with HDR off, just easier to spot with it on I think.

 

edit: I will try vsync,  since I have freesync and Radeon Enhanced Sync as options (both of which I turned off for troubleshooting), I never use it.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Hal900x

[DoubleYou]

Can you capture a video of it?

[z929669]

What you are describing then is not stutter. it's GFX anomolies that could be due to any number of things. yes, stutter is  essentially rendering 'lag'. Vsync with FPS caps minimizes as well as increased GPU RAM and clock. If you use radeon, they you should probably try adaptive sync or 'freesync'. See this post for some ideas