[2023] Serious stuttering whilst panning the camera around.

Has this always happened ever since you've had the game? or is was okay up to some point?

Right click on stellaris.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, refresh rate 60.


If that does not help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .  

its.chloe567 said: whenever i launch the game in fullscreen mode the main menu is completely unresponsive and i have to alt-tab out and back in to fix it.

The "disable fullScreen optimisations" step I gave you should fix that. Have you done that?

its.chloe567 said: This has not always happened, been happening for at least 6 months though id say.

With this same hardware?

Please revert to the 3.4.5 game version in the Steam Betas tab for this game, which would have been the version in use back then. Rename the Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ folder for the time being, start a new test galaxy and see if you still get this problem. If you do then there is something outside the game causing this.


Also, back with the current version and Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ folder, In your Steam Library right-click on this game and choose Properties. In the Launch Options line, paste this in there:

-dx11

Is that any better?  

If you get this problem now in a game version you used 6 months ago that did not show the problem then, the problem must come from outside the game. How that gels with seeing it on two separate computers is hard to understand though!

As you have ticked the "disable fullScreen optimisations" box for stellaris.exe I cannot understand how you can have the fullScreen issue you describe. What if you run stellaris.exe by itself, does that still happen?

You mention mods; please disable or preferably unsubscribe from ALL mods while we work on this.

Do you actually see an fps rate of 60 or lower in the game? This is to confirm the settings we did have taken effect.  

its.chloe567 said: what do you mean by this? Run it by clicking on stellaris.exe in the folder it's kept in instead of the shortcut?

Double clicking on it in File Explorer, yes. That bypasses our launcher and Steam, and 100% ensures no mods are in effect.

its.chloe567 said: Enabling fullscreen, disabling Vsync and setting the framerate to 60 in the launcher I get an fps of 150ish at 4k on a 1000 star galaxy at the start of a game.

Okay, that is a problem! I haven't seen evidence of it before but ISTM that must be a game bug. I'll see if the anyone in the back streets knows about that, but it's probably worth making a new thread in Bug Reports on that; attach there your settings files, dxdiag.txt , and screenshots showing the actual rate you get. Thanks!

You mention the MSI app; please try unloading all components of that, and undo any overclocking you might have enabled. Any different?  

its.chloe567 said: Is the problem that I shouldn't be seeing fps above 60 with those settings?

Yes; with vsync off, fullScreen and RR cap of 60 you should never get fps over 60.

I'm not clear if you are saying running stellaris.exe directly had any effect on the stuttering issue though?

I am puzzled by your valious video/graphics anomalies though. I can only guess they are connected with the game problem, yes. Does galaxy size make a difference?


If you make a new Windows user and log into Windows as that, and start a new unmodded test galaxy, does the problem happen there too?  

its.chloe567 said: I also experienced some crazy coil whine from my gpu which I've never had before (along with framerates in the 800+ range)

Okay, we definitely have a refresh rate problem here. Why this is affecting your particular setup so badly I do not know, but please go ahead and report the failure to cap it as a bug, thank you.

Then you'd want to limit the refresh rate/fps by some other means, to prevent possible damage to your GPU. I'm not sure if GeForce Experience or the MSI apps have a way of doing that?  

its.chloe567 said: Whilst testing the frame limiter to make sure it had worked, i enabled some more statistics and saw that my fps lows were awful.
1% lows were 32fps
0.1% lows were a measly 5fps

the framerate dips massively whenever an in-game day passes, and it dips even more when an in-game month passes.

That seems to imply that the game's regular calculations, which of course are done by the CPU, are affecting your GPU somehow. It is hard to imagine what could possible cause this in modern hardware!

Please install and run the free utility Speccy.Send its output to a text file and attach that here, thanks.

I'm also now going to call in my colleague who is vastly more knowledgeable on hardware than I am - @jpd can you comment on what we are seeing here please?