Stutter every 30 sec or so

[AnhiMonkey]

Hello!

I just bought this game, after being interested in it for a very long time. But when I started up my very first game, and immediately put it on pause, I get a nasty stutter once every while. I have my FPS capped on 156 FPS, and according to Special K the low 0,1% of these stutters drops to like 16 fps. It doesn't matter if I scroll around, or just do nothing, it happens about once every 30 seconds.

Pc is a AMD 9800x3d, geforce 5080 and 64 GB ram. G-sync is off, messed around a bit in Special K but nothing seems to help.

I searched around a bit, but mostly find older topics about this. Is this a common problem? Because I'm not sure I want to commit to the game like this.

Thanks in advance!

[AnhiMonkey]

I don't see an edit button, so I'll make a new post because I tested some more. I'd really like to fix this >.<

When paused, the stutter seems to happen after 2:50 minutes (longer then I thought, I didn't time them before and went on feeling).

When I just let the game run without doing anything, the stutter seems to happen after about 1:40 minutes.

I started up another game (Satisfactory) and let it run for 5 min, no low 0,1% spikes there. 

I just let the PC idle for 5 min while monitoring the first CPU core (the one this game uses), and there are no strange sudden spikes in usage. These little tests tell me there is no program or windows background process fighting for control, and now I'm pretty sure the fault is not with my PC. Other games seem to run fine.

I put the game on "high priority" in Task Manager, disabled/enabled "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling", disabled/enabled V-Sync, tried capping the framerate to 120.. all to no avail.

[Gurgel]

There was some discussion about a similar issue a while ago. It is probably the garbage-collector. Maybe you should try capping your FPS at 60 or 75, it may drive gc frequency up as it is. There were other things you could try in that discussion, but since I do not have that issue, I do not really remember. 

[BLACKBERREST3]

Found the link for his issue. The problem magically went away when I ran his save on my laptop so it was machine dependent, bad garbage collection, etc.

 

[Topis]

On 6/21/2026 at 3:40 AM, AnhiMonkey said:

Hello!

I just bought this game, after being interested in it for a very long time. But when I started up my very first game, and immediately put it on pause, I get a nasty stutter once every while. I have my FPS capped on 156 FPS, and according to Special K the low 0,1% of these stutters drops to like 16 fps. It doesn't matter if I scroll around, or just do nothing, it happens about once every 30 seconds.

Damn, it’s ironic but reassuring to see someone else having almost the exact same issue and starting a thread. Like @BLACKBERREST3 said, I ran into this about a month ago (you can check out that thread for the full breakdown). I’m still playing at the same pace, and the problem is still happening. The stuttering is more frequent when I first launch the session, then becomes less frequent, but the impact is still just as bad. I sent a long ticket to Klei about it recently; didn't get the exact answer I wanted, but they hinted that they have performance-related plans.

I’ve got used to it, but honestly, it’s not just the stutters anymore because since I am on cycle 1300+, the overall low FPS is what's really annoying me. I can’t even get above 100 FPS anymore. Hopefully, they patch this soon.

[Shinkarr]

Did lowering fps to 60 help? It might also be onedrive sync issue. I don't remember if author of the first thread tried it. 

[AnhiMonkey]

Thanks for the replies!

@Gurgel@Shinkarr

I timed it some more, and I got different result today.. no idea why, I haven't changed anything. Now, paused on 60 fps (120hz refreshrate) didn't gave me any stutters after 10 minutes (I stopped testing after that) and paused on 156 fps (312hz refreshrate) gave me a stutter only after 8 min, but I gave up testing after that because watching a graph screen for 18 minutes got really boring haha.

When I just let the game play without doing anything, on 60 fps (120hz refreshrate) I get a stutter every 3:30 minutes. Same test on 156 fps (312hz refreshrate) gives me a stutter every 2:15 minutes. So while capping to 60 helps somewhat, it's not solved. I have onedrive disabled.

@BLACKBERREST3

Thanks for the link. 

@Topis

You are right, it is reassuring to know we are not alone haha. I'm still pretty sure it's a game related thing and not hardware/other software, but weird how not a lot of people seem to experience this. I'm not giving up just yet. The game running slower after playing for a while is one thing, but big stutters right when starting out is unacceptable to me. Strange that you mention the stutters become less frequent, though. 

[Shinkarr]

I'm pretty sure many experienced this but get "used" to it. I was on a verge dropping the game until I started using adaptive vsync. Probably not helping in your case. Maybe it's Win11. Or even Win10 intentionally broke things. Maybe it's game overusing new pathing where duplicants can fly/swim. Nobody used jetsuits year ago because of poor performance.

I hope Linux is not affected. My new super-duper PC will be free of Windows.

[AnhiMonkey]

@Shinkarr@Topis

I might have a solution! I added the following in launch options in Steam:

Quote

-gc.buffer 2048 -gc-max-time-slice 3

Supposedly this increases the buffer before it has to do a garbage disposal, and slices the garbage up in chunks so it won't cause a big stutter. But I have no further experience with the Unity engine, so maybe someone can tell me if this is a bad solution. Might cause problems later down the line.

I got this from the Google AI. I normally don't trust AI and only use it for suggestions, but gave this a try anyway.

Can use 4096 instead if you have 64GB ram like me. 

Tested twice with letting the game run for 10 minutes at 156 fps, no stutters so far!

[Gurgel]

Nice! You can also try to make that buffer far smaller (more, smaller GC runs), but I think what did it was the reduction in runtime for each GC run by the slicing.

[Topis]

11 hours ago, Shinkarr said:

Did lowering fps to 60 help? It might also be onedrive sync issue. I don't remember if author of the first thread tried it. 

No, I even tried capping the FPS at 30 but didn't notice any visible difference. I don't know if it changes after running the game for 1 or 2 hours, but a few minutes of testing was enough for me.

 

9 hours ago, AnhiMonkey said:

@Shinkarr@Topis

I might have a solution! I added the following in launch options in Steam:

Supposedly this increases the buffer before it has to do a garbage disposal, and slices the garbage up in chunks so it won't cause a big stutter. But I have no further experience with the Unity engine, so maybe someone can tell me if this is a bad solution. Might cause problems later down the line.

I got this from the Google AI. I normally don't trust AI and only use it for suggestions, but gave this a try anyway.

Can use 4096 instead if you have 64GB ram like me. 

Tested twice with letting the game run for 10 minutes at 156 fps, no stutters so far!

I also noticed the stuttering being more frequent at the start of the session and then becoming less frequent, but the idea of sitting there and staring at a graph for hours sounded too boring. The launch options you wrote might solve the problem, but it’s hard to guess how those options will perform once you get deep into the late-game and build a mega base. I'm a bit paranoid about these things. Trust me, the overall low FPS annoys me way more than the stutters.

At first, I thought this was an issue with Intel CPUs, but since you have an AMD CPU, it could mean that the problem isn't related to the CPU brand. Could you also test this stutter issue by going to the main area of your base and keeping the power overlay or other overlays open?

[Shinkarr]

@Topis If you worried about end-game FPS (like me) you could try save from this post. On my laptop I have 10-12 fps (before big performance update I had 2-3 lol). There were also benchmark threads. I'm very interested in your results. I have serious concerns about this game being able to handle it's own scale.

[Topis]

14 minutes ago, Shinkarr said:

@Topis If you worried about end-game FPS (like me) you could try save from this post. On my laptop I have 10-12 fps (before big performance update I had 2-3 lol). There were also benchmark threads. I'm very interested in your results. I have serious concerns about this game being able to handle it's own scale.

Alright, I will give it a shot and let you know. Thanks!

[AnhiMonkey]

5 hours ago, Topis said:

No, I even tried capping the FPS at 30 but didn't notice any visible difference. I don't know if it changes after running the game for 1 or 2 hours, but a few minutes of testing was enough for me.

 

I also noticed the stuttering being more frequent at the start of the session and then becoming less frequent, but the idea of sitting there and staring at a graph for hours sounded too boring. The launch options you wrote might solve the problem, but it’s hard to guess how those options will perform once you get deep into the late-game and build a mega base. I'm a bit paranoid about these things. Trust me, the overall low FPS annoys me way more than the stutters.

At first, I thought this was an issue with Intel CPUs, but since you have an AMD CPU, it could mean that the problem isn't related to the CPU brand. Could you also test this stutter issue by going to the main area of your base and keeping the power overlay or other overlays open?

I can't, because I don't have a base yet. I only tested from the very first cycle onward. If the game would keep stuttering without anything going on or anything build, then I don't think I would even dive in further.

I'm curious if you get your FPS fixed.

Edited 13 hours ago by AnhiMonkey