Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

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Contrary to popular belief, we are not all-knowing-all-seeing magical beings!

If you want help you're going to have to provide lots of info. Like what is your hardware, what is your operating system, what version of GZDoom/LZDoom/whatever you're using, what mods you're loading, how you're loading it, what you've already tried for fixing the problem, and anything else that is even remotely relevant to the problem.

We can't magically figure out what it is if you're going to be vague, and if we feel like you're just wasting our time with guessing games we will act like that's what you're really doing and won't help you.
spectral
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Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by spectral »

Hello

I experience short freezes with GZDoom on a PC with a Ryzen 5600X, a PNY Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB and 32 GB Ram. I'm using Windows 10. Latest drivers ...

I have this issue with both OpenGL and Vulkan

I also experience short freezes with Yamagi Quake (just saying)

Other (modern) Games work flawlessly without any freezes at all.

A friend of mine thinks it's CPU Culling/Swapping and persists in many oldschool games.

Is there anything I can do to prevent this to happen? I think it's really annoying and it's a sad thing to die cause of this.

I also asked in the steam forums about it but there is no help.

I've read about short freezes with Intel integrated graphics cards. But I have a 1060 GTX. My system should be powerful enough to not freeze sometimes.

I also realized this happens sometimes when the game seemingly seems to load in some stuff. But I am not sure about it.

It mostly happens like 1-2 times near the begging of play. After that I mostly don't have this problem anymore (but it might occur later on too I can't tell by now).

Help would be really appreciated.

Greetings

Spectral
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Rachael
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by Rachael »

spectral wrote: Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:03 pm My system should be powerful enough to not freeze sometimes.
This is quite the most common misconception ever, and actually believing it will prevent you from chasing down the true cause of the issues. A computer that is fast is simply faster than another computer, it is not immune to things like lag or being overburdened.

The two most common things that cause GZDoom problems the majority of the time are:

1) Background processes
2) Mods with intense effects that push the single core that GZDoom's game sim runs on to its very limits.


1) Background Processes

This includes the 200 or so game launchers that insist on starting themselves up on system startup (i.e. Origin, Battle.net, whatever Ubisoft uses, etc), also things like chat applications, such as Skype or Discord (Discord is a relatively minor culprit, but a culprit none the less), web browsers (especially people who have 200 tabs open on one), not restarting your system every few days at *least*, and especially and particularly snake oil anti virus solutions (Kaspersky, Norton, Avast, AVG, McAfee, etc, all are bad, just different gradients of badness, and they are almost guaranteed to be installed on a prebuilt system due to some "deal" of the present year between them and a system manufacturer for marketing purposes).

2) Mods with intense effects

This is another culprit that is grossly understated and misunderstood and it leads to a lot of complaints that GZDoom is unoptimized, when all GZDoom is doing is running the code in these stupidly silly mods and having to process for every single frame the grossly ridiculous numbers of blood and droplet actors that they spawn. They include Project Brutality, Brutal Doom, or pretty much any mod that gratuitously spawns effects everywhere to fill your screen with gore and violence for "fun".

These also include slaughter maps that have more than 6000 monsters per map, but there is a potential mitigation tool to help with that, which comes at the cost of some of the challenge of said maps (that mod simply reduces the activity and CPU cost of distant and less relevant monsters).



Addressing these two issues is almost guaranteed to greatly reduce the amount of "lag" complaints for GZDoom, especially on fairly modern systems such as that one.




Less common but still serious issues that cause GZDoom to run poorly:

3) Thermal throttling - make sure your system is properly cooled and you are not overtaxing it. Taking advantage of the vid_maxfps cvar to set a maximum frame rate slightly above your monitor's (most are 60 hz) will help to keep your system cool. If your system is not cool, thermal throttling will cause frame stutters and the overheating that it is trying to protect your system against will also cause long term damage to your system's components. You need to frequently get the dust out of your case (even if it is a laptop) and reapply thermal grease to the fan heat sink and processors. Look online for instructions on how to properly do this - there *IS* a wrong way to do it that can have devastating consequences! Also - this is not optional. A poorly cleaned system will have a much shorter life and fail/stutter much more often.

4) Windows 10/11's infamous "CompatTelRunner" (aka TiWorker.exe) - this one is really bad and I would argue one of the most unwelcome additions to Windows 10. It is especially bad if you are on a system that has any mechanical hard disks. You have to kill these processes and the spawner (which is CompatTelRunner.exe) whenever it is running in order to prevent this. This goes in line with the "background processes" thing but it is a relatively invisible process that Microsoft insists on having that the end-user is not able to disable. (Which is horrifically stupid, imo) The only way you'd know it's running is to recognize the same pattern of slowness that it causes or to witness it running yourself via the task manager. (Allegedly disabling diagnostic data turns this off, but in my experience that has not actually fixed the problem)

5) Power settings - Sometimes the way you have your system power set up might be an issue as well. Easiest way to check is to open the run window (win+R) and type "powercfg.cpl" - make sure you're on the high performance preset. (Again, this will not work if your system is not properly cooled, however)

6) Background updaters, including Windows Update - Windows Update is one of the least of your worries here, it's still an offender but a relatively minor one. Many updaters are poorly coded and hog system resources. The best way to mitigate this is to run with as few processes as possible on startup.
spectral
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by spectral »

Hello.

Thanks for your reply.

I just have steam running when starting the game cause I've got the game there. I can play other games without any freezing issue even while recording them or playing music or videos so I don't understand why GZDoom freezes sometimes. Like I said I have similar problems with Yamagi Quake, which is strange.

It seems the game loads in stuff at the very moment of the freeze.

I absolutely see what you mean though but most of it is true for older systems. We're in 2022 though (i mean with that that I can play other games fine even while recording them and playing music ore something without any significant performance issues or freezes) the only thing that could cause the freeze is maybe my virus scanner. I will try disabling it and see.

The other problems that might be an issue are not present. I checked for compat tel runner (which isn't running) as well as power settings (which is on high performance).

My system is very cool compared to other systems (75° is very good for a Ryzen 5600x when playing games) and my Graphic Card is very cool too.

The game itself is running at 200 fps (frame limit) most of the time. When it gets intense it drops up to 170 fps, but that's okay.

The strange thing about this is that other games don't shortly freeze at all and I've made the experience then when a game does it is mostly a game related thing (cause a friend experiences the exact same freeze at those very moments).

Still i am thankful for your reply and hope we can maybe determine what causes this. I will check again without any virus scanner running and will report back.

Don't you think this could be an Multicore Processor Issue?

Thanks again ...

Greetings

Spectral
Last edited by spectral on Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:25 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by Graf Zahl »

If it is related to loading data it may just be that the inevitable delay from that takes long enough to increase the current frame's time enough to notice.
The higher the frame rate the more pronounced it may be.

What kind of drive do you keep your games on? SSD or magnetic hard drive?

To narrow the cause down you should try running with VSync on and see how that goes.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by Rachael »

Sorry but 75 is high even for an AMD system. That's right about at the threshold where those start to break. I have an AMD RX 550 on one of my backup systems and I never let it get that high. It peaks out at 70.

You ideally want to keep it around 70, 60 would be better if possible but your existing cooling solutions may not allow that.

Try shooting vid_maxfps all the way down to 63 and see if it helps things. If you notice a big stutter when you do this it means your display refresh rate is higher - you may need to adjust accordingly.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by phantombeta »

Rachael wrote: Thu Sep 15, 2022 9:28 am Sorry but 75 is high even for an AMD system. That's right about at the threshold where those start to break. I have an AMD RX 550 on one of my backup systems and I never let it get that high. It peaks out at 70.

You ideally want to keep it around 70, 60 would be better if possible but your existing cooling solutions may not allow that.
75°C under load is perfectly normal for a factory-overclocked CPU like a 5600X, and the temperature limit for those is 95°C. I'd only be worried if it were running at 75°C idle.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by Rachael »

I lost a CPU at 95 C. So no, that's too high.

I was referencing a GPU though.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by phantombeta »

Rachael wrote: Thu Sep 15, 2022 10:30 am I lost a CPU at 95 C. So no, that's too high.
Yes, because that's the temperature limit. It also highly depends what CPU it is, too. 75°C is definitely not too hot, that's quite far from the limit. 70~80°C is fine, 80~85°C is a bit hot, 85~90°C demands caution and 90~95°C means you gotta get a better cooler or risk damaging your CPU. (or forced thermal throttling, if your computer isn't being stupid) Info online says the 5600X reaches ~82°C under load with its stock cooler, and I doubt AMD would ship a CPU with a cooler they knew would let the CPU damage itself by overheating. That would net them more than a couple lawsuits.
I was referencing a GPU though.
The OP said their CPU gets to 75°C under load :P
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by spectral »

Yes the Ryzen 5600X can get up to 95°C and still is okay ... The CPU was designed that way ... Just Google it ... 75°C under load is very ok ...

This is not true for other CPUs though ... Like other people stated it depends on the CPU how hot it can get without any issues ... Ryzen 5600X CPUs can get very hot without an issue ...

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... irloom-srp..

I tried frame limiting the game to 60 FPS but small freezes still appear ... :( I will try Vsync next but I don't like Vsync to be honest ...

Anyone knows other things I could try?
spectral
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by spectral »

Sorry for the double post

Tried Vsync and the small freezes are still happening

Is there something else I could do?
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by yum13241 »

My advice? Back everything important up, go to https://ameliorated.info/, and install the ISO on your computer and now you have a debloated, despooked Windows 10.


Then get clamwinav from clamav.com (it's free) and install that.


And start actually reading installers. If you don't trust me with the first piece of advice do a "Fresh Start" from Windows. This *almost* gets you debloated.

You might want to get better cooling too.

OR switch to Linux.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by wildweasel »

yum13241 wrote: Fri Oct 14, 2022 9:31 am My advice? Back everything important up, go to https://ameliorated.info/,
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS. The FAQ on this website claims that they had to remove the entire Windows Update system, which means you're not getting critical security updates.

Moreover, that (and "switch to Linux" for that matter) is overkill to resolve one problem with one game.
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by yum13241 »

I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS.
understandable.



If you really care for updates you could just do this instead. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... f2b48d275e.


Or get better cooling, uninstall stuff that you don't use, limit background processes, turn down graphics settings, change resolution, yadda yadda yadda/
spectral
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by spectral »

Other Games like Doom 2016 run without any freezing issues at all so what you suggested is very much overkill. I do not have any problems with my system. Thanks anyway.

Anyone has any real suggestions on what to do to make the freezing issue disappear?

I guess it's probably really a multi core problem....
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Re: Short Freezes with GZDoom (latest version)

Post by yum13241 »

Yeah it is overkill.

I'm out of ideas.

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