I solved the stuttering problem
I resetted the app and moved the game from the windows SSD to a storage SSD.
Thats the only things i effectively did, and it worked amazingly.
Hello,
How are things going for you otherwise? Good I hope.
I believe, after some internet research I’ve come across a working theory to what’s going on. For some, it won’t be good news as it’s very little you can do. But I will keep it brief.
If you have an AMD GPU with stuttering/hitching more then likely you may have a antivirus or other app conflict issue that you may need to resolve. Or perhaps reset IQ in game or something like that. More then likely there should be a way to resolve the issue.
If you have a Nviida GPU and you’ve tried everything under the sun then things aren’t looking good for a reason .
A lot of games that are also on console use async compute. Which also means that the game is multi threaded or multi core supported. In other words these games uses more then 1 or 2 Cores.
From what I’ve found out this goes against how the Geforce driver works. It’s specifically good at DX11 games and games that only use 1 or 2 Cores. It’s the nature of Geforce using its software scheduler. However console games and DX12/Vulkan games favor more parallel GPU Pipeline (multi threaded games) then serial GPU Pipeline computing (games that only use 1 or 2 Cores).
The gist is that the way the Geforce drivers work is it requires a few cpu cores. If the game also needs a few cpu cores that’s where the stuttering/hitching comes into play. There is a conflict of both wanting those cores causes stalling in the render pipeline.
Now this is a working theory. But if you have a Nvidia card and you’ve tried everything under the sun and you notice a trend of this happening on games that are DX12, console ported games or games that use async compute this is the theory as to why it’s happening.
This isn’t something that is limited to just Forza 7. There are threads on other gaming forums saying the exact same thing “Stuttering problems”.
Here is another example. If you can’t fix the stuttering in Forza 7 it’s very likely that you get smooth gaming performance from Pcars 1/2, for example. From what I’ve been told pCars works in serial in the gpu pipeline.
So, one way to change this behavior is to make the game less CPU dependent and more GPU dependent. Use high IQ settings that impact the GPU or increase the resolution are ways to do that. By doing so should reduce the stuttering. Although it may never remove it completely.
I also suggest using an monitoring app that tells you of GPU/CPU usage.
From my view FM7 is something “special” performance wise. I’m gaming on PC since late 1990s and never experienced this kind of an issue.
I guess it was quite hard to port FM7 from xone to pc, duo too the architecutral differences. Like in XOne they used many relatively low clocking cpu cores, with a very unusual way to connect the 8GB DDR3-RAM through 32MB ESRAM and the sharing of this 8GB RAM over all system components.
I guess they optimized quite a lot for Scorpio too, because FM7 was the showcase of Scorpios performance.
Let’s take things that we actual know:
- Some had problems duo to third party AV
- Some duo to residence of game files
- Many having issues with Win10 Versions >1703 or 1607? (Some ppl are using version numbers that never existed like 1704, 1604, 1603)
- Some had issues duo to third party system monitoring tools, outdated drivers, miss-configured systems or too high graphic settings
- A hole new set of perf problems were added after FM7 September Update.
For the first three issues, it could be down to read/write operations on SSD/HDD.
AV lowers throughput and IOPs and increases response times because its adding “filter drivers” to the kernel to be able to inspect every file that is accessed.
Location of game files is a bit tricky, because different people had different “solutions”. Some moved from HDD → SSD, from SSD->HDD, from OS-SSD → Data-SSD, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Only thing we can say, they moved they’re game files and we only can presume that its also related to Disk Throughput, IOPS or response time. So the game is somewhat sensitive to disk performance which is quite logical if we remember the resources of an xbox one stated above.
So whats significantly changed between the Win 10 versions regarding game performance?
With 1607 they added “fullscreen optimization”, in this forum you can find hints about disabling this feature. This is also a common recommendation you find quite often.
With 1703 they added “Game Mode”, many ppl on reddit etc. complained about lower FPS, which is quite awkward because Game Mode is responsible for freeing up unused resources and reserve resource for games (or fullscreen applications in general).
With 1709 they tried to optimize the way “Game Mode” works. But some ppl had to disable game bar and game dvr. Reports suggesting that game performance is equal or better than 1607.
With 1803 they did nothing special “official” besides a new designed Game Bar. Reports in different forums says that they have now the same problems as in 1703.
What they also changed with every version is the WDDM. They added new features like device removal, stereoscopic rendering for AR,VR,MR, native support of dual graphics (integrated + dedicated gpu) and some stuff for virtualization platforms like IOMMU and para-virtualization and they added support for monitoring options (like API support for perfmon/tskmgr, thats the reason one can see gpu usage in task-manager).
And there’s the Spectre/Meltdown patch thingy which applies to every of the above versions.
Without Hardware Support of some new CPU instructions the overall performance was reduced significantly after applying the patches.
Thats said, with an actual AMD Processor (like Ryzen) or with updated Intel microcode(mainly BIOS Update, but its now delivered over windows update) there shouldn’t be much impact left for gaming scenarios as benchmarks indicating ± 6% difference in real world scenarios between unpatched and fully patched systems.
Conclusions:
There are problems between Windows Versions, mainly between 1607 and 1703 upwards. For me this is irrelevant because I’ve started to play the game with 1803.
There are recent problems with performance AND online connectivity which were introduced in the latest two major Updates (August + September).
The game had performance issues on PC from head on, as you can read in this forum or via reviewer websites, indicating that the pc port is quite poor performance wise.
I guess one could make a quite long list of things someone should or could try to increase stability and fps of the game.
However, some issues wouldn’t be resolved after implement these steps, because the issues could be down to a unlucky combination of bad console porting + windows 10 issues + hardware.
But for all of that, one could not deny that for some of us the issues started with the recent game updates.
Plus they changed something in the major September update which is linked to game engine modifications:
I guess this is at least some indication.
It’s really disappointing that they launched their official support website and you cannot find any information regarding FM7.
It isn’t even in the list of “old games”. Hell even if there are no kb articles, even FM 1-5 are listed as games.
Really seems that they launched the whole thing only for FH4, and I fear that now that the focus moved over to FH4 the issues of FM7 (like most of the “known issues”) will persist for some time if not forever.
My last hope is with the announced changes for removing the loot boxes. May they just gather some other major time intensive game changes in one big update which will solve most of the known issues.
I think the focus here is stuttering and not general issues that have been fixed or yet to be fixed via patch. As noted some are resolving their problems through chipset driver updates, changing hard drives, removing utility type applications, etc.
However my post, in particular, was focused on those who tried “everything under the sun” and nothing works. When you’ve exhausted the OS, the game other hardware, etc and still cannot find a fix I believe IMO it time to look at drivers and video card. Which is noted in my prior post.
In the beginning of this thread I too complained of stuttering and I too found a fix and Forza 7 has been smooth ever since. Even after several Forza 7 updates.
Again, there are threads in other gaming forums with similar problems (Stuttering) however, most important, is the one in Geforce forum:
All games stuttering with FPS drops since Windows 10 Creators Update
It is one of the biggest threads regarding stutter (in nearly all games, including Forza 7) in it’s existence as far as I know. Something we cannot ignore when trying to troubleshoot solutions to this.
Therefore, if you haven’t been able to resolve your stuttering yet I sympathize with you. However, as said earlier, if all else fails one should consider my prior post as a possible avenue.
ok…Ive been having the stuttering and freezing issues and have had them disappear then come back again…so I uninstalled it for a while…then decided to pick it up again…well now its just sits there in the load screen when you first start it…I uninstalled and then reinstalled it…same thing…uninstalled again…did a fresh in stall of my nvidia driver and still the same thing(also having trouble with Assassins Creed Origins crashing)…so decided to try again…reinstalled after I updated the driver to the new one that came out today…worked great with no stutter…then just crashed in the race menus and now does the exact same thing…seems before that big win 10 update it was working fine and ZERO issues…now the damn thing is completely unplayable…Im wanting to get FH 4 but if this is going to happen why the hell should I(FYI FH3 works perfectly and has a higher min and rec specs than FM 7)…
My comp specs:
Alienware 17R3 laptop
Model : Intel(R) Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
Logical cores : 8
GPU1
Display device : GeForce GTX 970M on GM204-A GPU
Display driver : 411.70
16 Gigs of RAM
Friendly reminder to check your antivirus everyone.
If you go on page 8 you will see some videos I posted prior to fixing my stuttering, it is horrible!
I had Avira AV and I decided to give it a whirl and uninstall it days ago and I have not had any stuttering since
I feel like it is a problem with Avira causing the stutter because after I uninstalled it. I used Avast and Kaspersky AV and both of those caused no stutter. I have since fell back onto Windows Defender so nothing with conflict with me and my setup anymore.
STUTTERING PROBLEM SOLVED!!!
Before, I had the game in a ssd with the operating system (win 10). I reinstalled the game in another storage hard disk (not ssd) and the stuttering has completely disappeared. Everything works perfectly.
I’m convinced those who believe this is a memory leak issue (or similar by nature) are correct. The symptoms I’ve seen are an increasingly common, increasingly detrimental periodic pause of the game. Starts at about 0.2 seconds of pause every 20 seconds of play, then gets worse. Video settings do not make a difference; HDD / SDD location or isolation does not make a difference. What DOES make a difference is restarting the game. Restart the entire client between each race and it’s stutter free.
I’ve asked for a refund.
I have not stuttering in any game. Maybe it’s because I have all my games installed in a storage HD and not in the main SSD with OS. I repeat, if you can, install the game in a second HD (where there isn’t the operating system). It works perfectly for me. Stuttering has COMPLETELY disappeared
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I really appreciate anyone who’s trying to contribute anything to this issue.
Sadly for some of us location of game files doesn’t change anything. My files are on a storage HDD from head on, cuz my OS SSD would be too small (120GB) to host the game files(close to 100GB).
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Agreed. Seems there’s a variety of root causes to the problem and various people have found the bottle necks on their systems, be it rogue AV software, overlays, monitoring tools, hard drive performance or video settings. I’m still searching for the magic bullet for my machine. I upgraded my 2nd drive to an SSD (wanted to anyway) and it made zero difference (well, loading is a lot faster, but zero difference to the stutter!)
I posted my fix a while back but I’ve now fined tuned it a bit. What has worked for me and has still worked to this day is the following:
Reset your IQ settings and exit out of Forza 7
Restart Forza 7
Set Render Quality to either Recommended or Ultra (depending on PC)
Set your Resolution. If you experience 100% CPU Usage at 1080p then set the Resolution Scaling to 110%-120%.
Unlimited FPS
2xAA or 4XAA
16XAF
Set all other IQ settings to Dynamic. There’s something up with using IQ settings on Ultra/High and Dynamic fixes that, including the stuttering.
Exit out of Forza 7 and then restart Forza 7.
Exit out of any On Screen Display apps, utility applications, and anything that might run while you gaming in Forza 7. This also includes setting whitelist or exclusions for your antivirus apps or simply exit out of them.
For those that get stuttering and hitching no matter what your try (and you notice your cpu close to 90%) I suggest increasing the resolution scaling in game to 120%.
There is a thread about the issues using IQ settings here:
https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postst123174_Horrible-LOD-issues-on-PC-and-flags-flickering-----STILL.aspx
This has worked for me since 2 months ago or so.
https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postsm937517_Forza-7-PC-stuttering.aspx#post_937517
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Hey Sniper,
The Resolution option did seem to help, it seems to smooth out the stutters somewhat, and I got 3 races in back to back with your settings which was a record. But, then it all went downhill as usual. The only thing that reliably prevents stuttering is restarting the game. Thanks for the ideas though, it was worth a try, and did help somewhat.
I’ve got it running on a dedicated SSD at the moment, have tried it with dynamic settings, fixed AA settings, recommended settings, everything set to absolute minimal and lowest screen format, and tried the resolution at min, max, and just about everywhere in between. Regardless, after no more than 3 races, the game begins to stutter for half a second every half dozen seconds or so.
I’m running a gen 7 i7 w/16gb RAM and a 2Gb AMD radeon, fresh Win10 install. Thrustmaster 300 wheel + gear shift. Bog standard windows defender for AV. Looking forward to seeing what brilliant troubleshooting MS wants me to do in response to the support ticket I opened 
Yes, I’ve turned it off and on again!
Cheers
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2 Things I would suggest
Part 1
Do you have Forza 7 in the Exclusion list for Windows Defender?
Go to Start > Settings > Updates & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection > Virus & threat protection settings > Add or remove exclusions.
Then add Forza 7 to the list.
If you cannot find Forza 7 then disable Defender (it will re-enable itself on reboot).
Open the Start menu > Click Settings > Click Update & Security > Click Windows Security.
Click Virus & threat protection. > Click Virus & threat protection settings > Toggle off ″Real-time protection
Part 2
Start Forza 7 and start your Single Player Race.
While at Pit Lane (IE: Just before selecting “Start Race”)
Hit the window key to go back to desktop. Or however way you can get back to desktop with Forza 7 still running.
Use an App called RamMap: RAMMap - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn (Create a Shortcut Icon on the Desktop for easy of use)
Select Empty (Upper Left Corner) > Select Empty Standby List >Wait a few seconds > Select File > Refresh
Then exit out of RamMap
Re-enter Forza 7 and begin race
Note:
By 3rd race repeat steps to open RamMap. If lite blue bar looks like this (or close to this):
Then Empty StandBy list again. And re-enter race.
I am curious to know what graphics card you are using?
The game got off my daily playlist a long while ago, but I did notice the new stutter that was not present before starting a few months ago. I thought that was my PC as it was kinda toasty. Last week I did a big refresh. New SSD, new OS install, cleaned my whole rig, changed the stock intel CPU cooling with a good one, adds more fan etc. Temps are great now but the stutter persist, so here I am in this thread. I also got the “disable and re-enable network to connect online” issue that must be done after every race too… Lame, especially since it ran great after the first month, but whatever happened 3 month ago killed this game. Even today’s update doesn’t help. Not gonna bother installing the October OS update on day 1 lest I get some other bugs instead.
Rig: i7-4790, GTX980, 16GB, OS on SSD but game installed on HDD.
EDIT: I read the whole thread from the start and saw the Avira thing, whaddayaknow, I use that. Uninstalled Avira, stutter gone. So now only the network issue remains…
Hm. This antivirus software could be a clue. Im using Windows Defender. I will add game to exclusion. Whole Windows App folder.
But crazy thing is that stutter is much more visible when racing with AI. I have i7 CPU (8700K and 8086K) so it should be fast enough.
Trims happen especially when traces are created on asphalt. During slips… At least I get such the impression.
Hi people
So im reposting this cuz you are still trying to find answers that have no real answer , i took time to read some NEW POSTS and i saw HDD and AVIRA new “reasons for” stuttering .
Im posting this again because this SOLVES the PROBLEM … you need to FORMAT and INSTALL OLDER WINDOWS VERSION but thats the ONLY WAY !!! My PC PROVES IT cuz ive been playing it like this since 2 months ago ! I hope i help someone again so here it is :
#126 Posted : 2 months ago
Good Afternoon
So , and because im a stuborn person im BACK and for the LAST TIME im going to post here until or Microsoft or Forza Team START WORKING on this PROBLEM ONCE and FOR ALL
MY specs first :
I7 7700k TURBO MODE to 4.5GHz
16GB DDR4
GeForce 1080 Ti
NO OVERCLOCKS
Last drivers and ( EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ) Windows version 1709 with all updates till today, but WITHOUT 1809 UPDATE (blocked for 365 days)
So all other things are THE SAME LAST TIME I POSTED HERE (go an read my earlier posts, if you must)
And HAS i writted so many dam times :
THIS IS WINDOWS 1803 and is MAJOR PROBLEMS
My game is a 4K ALL MAXED OUT with 150% ( 1080ti goes berserk with 200% starting to drop from 60 to 40 and its NOT STUTTERING ) and at 60FPS ALL THE TIME
So for those still trying to say that this is limited to some machines , drivers , cpu , drivatar, SSD , HDD , etc IT´S NOT !!! IT´S WINDOWS 1809
but HEY if are FREE to keept trying to solve something that is not your problem or your machine fault
SO THANKS , BUT NO THANKS and YES im talking to YOU MICROSOFT and FORZA TEAM , try to make PEACE beetwen each other and FIX THIS GAME and FIX the WINDOWS ONCE AND FOR ALL
Thanks FOR ALL YOUR TIME
Edited by user 2 months ago
ENJOY your DAILY FIX
Warri69r, Yes you tried the best…for me it was a SIMPLE situation of just NOT using SLI & having my other card doing other.
For FM7 with the last update & me doing a fresh instal on PC i don’t remember what settings i had but i do NOT have ANY stutter using my cards NON sli.
for FH4 it doesn’t matter from what i see using sli or not, all is well with fm7 disable sli…NE#XT upgrade i am getting **80 or what ever **80 is>>> NO to titan you losers !!!
I want to reply to some of you:
@ The Sniper 8U
I tried your settings for the “IQ settings issue” you’ve mentioned. I did exactly what you’ve written. And it was somewhat a bit more stable than fixed settings. With fixed settings the degradation started after 2 online races and with your settings after 3-4 races. I also found that using fixed 60fps (no vsync, no one likes inputlag) is more stable than using unlimited.
While starting on around 120 fps on unlimited, it degrades a lot faster (I only take into account if fps drops <60)
Still the performance while racing online is noticeable worse than single player.
I’ve also tried RAMMap, which I thought would be a good idea if its truly some memory-leak issue.
But it doesnt changed anything. I tried using it after any race, but also tried using it after performance was degraded down to 20fps.
And this is new:
A workaround I used to recover bad performance is to go from 1080p fullscreen to 720p window mode. Wait some seconds until screen transition are fast and snappy again and change back to 1080p fullscreen.
With this I was able to stretch the degradation from 2-4 races to 4-7 races.
I guess its really some kind of memory leak in vram. Because my 1080p->720p ‘workaround’ and the “camera view change workaround”, which also works in some occasions. Both methods alter the loaded textures in vram.
But, where there is light, there must be shadow:
I’ve upgraded to 1809 before microsoft withdraw the upgrade from windows update and alongside with the performance degradation (which is still 100% exclusive to FM7 on my system) Now I have freezes if playing on 1080p (resolution scale doesnt matters). Easy reproducible by switching to 1080p and swipe around in main menu for around a minute (could also happen in races and other menus if you’re fast). Music still plays, graphics and inputs freezing. I’m still able to open task manager or in general tab out the game. From there I can see that gpu usage dropped to 0% (normally in menus its 95-100% all the time) and I have to kill the fm7 process.
Now I’m only able to play on 720p low settings to be able to race 2-4 online races. For me with 1809 everything got worse in fm7.
Other games like Assetto Corsa (and Competizione), F1 2018, CSGO and PUBG are performing just like before.
My last conclusion is, that since the XBONE is also Win 10 based, they are using some very deep hard-coded Windows Kernel or driver framework APIs to “optimize” their game to perform quite good on the old XBONE. And maybe, just maybe with every new Windows 10 Version some Kernel behaviors are changing. While not affecting any other program or game engine that doesn’t use this hard-coded optimization, it really fcks up fm7 to a point where it seems u need at least some 970GTX 4GB or 1060GTX 6GB or equivalent as minimum system requirement.
I really liked the lower input lag and higher fps /smoother game-play on PC vs XBONE, but since this is play anywhere I’m eager to drop the PC Version and connect my XBONE to some lower latency monitor (my LED TV has quite high latency…).
I suppose I should just post in this thread. After the latest update on Oct 3, 2018 performance on PC has tanked heavily. The biggest issue I have is the menus and the main loading screen. Before the update this all went reasonable fast and was loaded ~30seconds. Now I am waiting 3-5 minutes. The game freezes very often when going between menus/cars/etc. In multiplayer the lobbies load sometimes and other i have to tab out and back in for them to actually load. In game used to run at 4k ~80fps uncapped on dynamic Ultra settings. I7 6950x and SLI 1080s. Here’s to hoping devs are still working on the PC version of this game as each update appears to bring more issues to the PC version.