my game just randomly stutters in game. it shows consistant fps at ~92 but when it stutters it jumps to ~40 for a split second. i hadn't played LFS in a while, and i used to get no stutter whatsoever. because of this i don feel my specs are very important. my audio also crackles a little bit at the same time it stutters. i play many other games and they run fine. any help would be appreciated

Are you playing window'd or full screen?

full screen

LFS is very CPU intensive. Something is eating up cycles is what I am thinking.
You don't happen to be using Mozilla Thunderbird for your email do you? I know that sometimes when running LFS, Thunderbird will for some reason start sucking all the CPU cycles and LFS starts stuttering really bad. If I shut down Thunderbird, the problem goes away in LFS instantly.

If not that, I would guess you have some other app or malware that is sucking up CPU time.

i ran enditall to kill everything and it still happens... i run spyware and virus searches on a regular basis.

fixed. i disabled my antivirus instead of killing it and it seems to work find. thanks for all the responses

Quote from JMacari :

fixed. i disabled my antivirus instead of killing it and it seems to work find. thanks for all the responses

Is your antivirus Norton?

back when this thread was alive i noticed this problem wasn't actually gone, but i wasn't really playing often enough to bother with it anymore. recently i've been playing quite a bit again. lfs is one of the least taxing games i play, yet it has this stutter while others (cs:s, n2003) have no problems at all. the game looks great, and i get better fps than the other games i mentioned. however, this stutter happens several times a lap and is very annoying and sometimes causes me to miss my marks. it does not happen at specific points on the track. i close out of everything from task manager that is not needed so i have minimal memory and cpu usage. i'm really lost as to why this is happening. i have uninstalled and reinstalled with no luck. thanks for any help.

bump

do you run any instant messengers thats what happens when i run those types of programs!

i thought that too, so i tried exiting it and it seemed to make no difference.

are you running any temperature monitoring software or anything like that which may be writing logs to the hard drive. If these truly are random glitches and not happening at regular intervals its not likely but perhaps worth a quick check

Try turning skins off for awhile. I get stutter when a new skin is downloaded. I thought skins were supposed to wait until you were stopped or in the pits.
I get skins downloading while raceing which induces stutter. Sometimes at the worst time like a high speed corner.

Also can you clairify if it is one stutter, or a bunch all together like when the Anti virus kicks in.

I get stuttering everytime a new person joins the server and leaves the pits. I just thought it was down to the skin download.

Quote from StableX :

I get stuttering everytime a new person joins the server and leaves the pits. I just thought it was down to the skin download.

Yup, me too.

well, it happens offline as well.

When I started getting it, I tracked it down to be HDD related because it was at the same corner every lap (and offline too but not the same corner), kept defragmenting until drive died some time later. Got a new one and left a dedicated HDD for LFS... but I getting it again, not as bad as before but it's there...sooo, it's not HDD related as I was advicing others before.
Didn't think about the skin downlading process, in my case this could be, in yours, try speeding up the HDD (by defragmenting and increasing the virtual memory)

EDIT: just found out this, it maybe help us all: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=37803

this is getting very frustrating

it was installed on my external, so i tried installing it on my normal hard drive but there is no difference.

Do you have vsync lock on?

If your fps drops to a level close to the vsync rate due to current in game demands it can half your fps. If you have vsync on make sure your fps NEVER drops below the vsync or thjis is a common symptom.

Also how much rame does your GFX card have. If its only 64, keep an eye on the memory usage. You can check this on one of the options screen. If you have setting that require too much of your GPU it could cause huge slow downs.

HTH

i do not have vsync on. i have experimented with it but the problem still occurs. same with setting a max fps.

i have a 6600gt w 128 mb of memory. where is this option to view its memory usage? at first i thought it was something using the cpu, but i closed everything... what might cause the gpu memory to be used? because i have good fps and it'll flash down ~25 fps just for an instant when it stutters, i feel as though it probably is something external using up memory or something like that but i have no idea how to determine what that might be.

You said you thought you'd solved it by disabling your antivirus.
What anti-virus, spyware or internet security programs are you using?

The game is running fine on a 6600GT with 128mb on a AMD 3500. I usually had 80-130fps alone.

So, What CPU do you have and how much RAM?

Before i Upgraded I had a 6600 and 6800 GT and this happened sometimes. You are absolutley you have not other prgrams running at same time? Mine was down to windows media player as I liked to play music as I drive. weird thing was some songs would cause lfs to fps drop, dunno ifIi was imagining it though. But Windows media play does lag LFS for sure.

I also have the same problem , but my game only stutters if someone joins the race or server . Tried doing all those things with vsync and what not , but it still the same . I also tried different resolutions at 60hz-85hz but no change . The thing is i never had probs with LFS until patch Y , but oh well , nothing is perfect

Quote from BYN :

You said you thought you'd solved it by disabling your antivirus.
What anti-virus, spyware or internet security programs are you using?

i disable all these and turn them off before playing any games now... there is no process related to them remaining in task manager.

Quote from Takumi_lfs :

The game is running fine on a 6600GT with 128mb on a AMD 3500. I usually had 80-130fps alone.

So, What CPU do you have and how much RAM?

amd 3000+ 2.0 ghz w 1 gb of ram. i get the same fps you mentioned but with the stutter.

Quote from lil chris :

Before i Upgraded I had a 6600 and 6800 GT and this happened sometimes. You are absolutley you have not other prgrams running at same time? Mine was down to windows media player as I liked to play music as I drive. weird thing was some songs would cause lfs to fps drop, dunno ifIi was imagining it though. But Windows media play does lag LFS for sure.

there are a couple processes i don't know what they are in task manager, but as far as i know everything that would take cycles is closed.

Quote from W1ldPort75 :

I also have the same problem , but my game only stutters if someone joins the race or server . Tried doing all those things with vsync and what not , but it still the same . I also tried different resolutions at 60hz-85hz but no change . The thing is i never had probs with LFS until patch Y , but oh well , nothing is perfect

I'm assuming you've played around with the skin downloading settings too, then. That's the only thing I can think of.