[TM2] PERFORMANCE: Sudden lag

[metoxys]

What is the Bug? Canyon (maybe Stadium, too, didn't test it yet) has sudden lag spikes over and over. Image frezees for a split second, even how the car is positioned resets (as in, giant turn to the left, I keep holding accelerate and turn left, car visibly alters during lag spikes)
How can I reproduce it? Come to Germany, ask to sit on my chair for a few minutes, launch Canyon, play any map
What is my expectation of this bug? A fluid performance without any sudden lag spikes

I pulled out my cellphone and made a miserable recording of my screen to illustrate the problem. The problem persists on all graphic settings and even if I slow down the game speed, this is one of the reasons why I almost never play TM²
Please note that no other... not just game, any kind of application on my laptop behaves like this, not even at 95% of RAM usage or 100°C of CPU core temperature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gVsH_QTZbA

The lag is not caused by the recording since I use an external device for that. Also note the FPS counter in the top left corner in the 2nd half of the video. Lags also keep being there during the outro.

Hardware: i7 740QM, 6 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, nVidia GeForce GT435M
System: Win7

[metoxys]

Downloading new GPU drivers right now, even though I don't think that they are at fault.

[Pedal]

I have the exact same thing in stadium. I initially thought it was my fps/gpu-program (evga prescision) as it also reads gpu-usage, temps and fan-speed, But it's the same running the game with prescision off.

I have also tried with no AV-running, but no change.

As the OP, this happens only in Tm2 stadium, all my other games run without any problems.

Spec: X58, i7 950, 12gb ddr3, 2x GTX 580 in sli.

[metoxys]

Bug's been there for a long time and I can't take it anymore. I'm hoping for a quick fix.

[TMarc]

Does it happen anytime, anywhere, e.g. solo mode, editor track validation or test run?
Or is it only when driving in multiplayer on servers?

Propably needless to say, but this is a generic hint:
Please check the power management settings of Windows. If it is balanced, try to set to maximum performance for a try.
Also check the video driver settings if ManiaPlanet is setup properly there, and if the GPU has maximum performance for the game instead of Adaptive (you can still keep Adaptive for generic 3D settings!)

Adddtional observation from my own system:
Especially when driving Canyon and Stadium maps with Evening or Night mood, the system is quite loaded.
Then anything little can lead to lags or stuttering, e.g. downloads, virus scanner activity, windows disk swappping, etc.
But: this happens only if I forget to set the Asus EPU tool from automatic mode to full performance mode, because then there is no stuttering anymore, lags are nearly not noticeable.

[zarexz]

Holy Moly, that's really horrible. I used to have it that bad in TMUF when there was a lot of .bik activity in either avatars, signs or stadium walls.

With Canyon I have a freeze every now and then, I just made a post about it too.
Maybe you can read this (dutch) post and generate some logs yourself.

[metoxys]

Does it happen anytime, anywhere, e.g. solo mode, editor track validation or test run?
Or is it only when driving in multiplayer on servers?

Propably needless to say, but this is a generic hint:
Please check the power management settings of Windows. If it is balanced, try to set to maximum performance for a try.
Also check the video driver settings if ManiaPlanet is setup properly there, and if the GPU has maximum performance for the game instead of Adaptive (you can still keep Adaptive for generic 3D settings!)

Adddtional observation from my own system:
Especially when driving Canyon and Stadium maps with Evening or Night mood, the system is quite loaded.
Then anything little can lead to lags or stuttering, e.g. downloads, virus scanner activity, windows disk swappping, etc.
But: this happens only if I forget to set the Asus EPU tool from automatic mode to full performance mode, because then there is no stuttering anymore, lags are nearly not noticeable.

Anytime, always. I don't do multiplayer.
I just changed things to maximum performance twice, I'll give things a test run later.

EDIT: Things are as terrible as ever. Undoing previous changes. I need a REAL solution here.

[Pedal]

it is the same for me, it occurs in any situation, SP, MP and in any mood (Daylight, night etc) and or in any mod the track may have.

It has been like this since the launch.

First i thought it was my performance-tracker that caused it, when it updates the data it can take a lot of Resources, but it's the same running the game without one and it's the same using evga prescision and fraps.

I then thought i may be linked to the poor sli-support we saw in the gpu-drivers, but now with updated drivers from nvidia it's not that neither. Also the OP is on single gpu.

Other more high-demanding games like far cry 3 and crysis 3 run fluently on my machine so i doubt it is my hardware causing this.

Also now, since this is both in Canyon and stadium i Believe it is caused by the Engine and not the individual title.

[TMarc]

Did you both try to delete Default.Config.Gbx and let the game create it new with the actual settings?
I don't know what is all hidden in this file aside the configuration you can select, but it already showed for others that a deletion fixed some unusual behavior.

[Pedal]

Thanks for the tip, i just tried it but unfortunately it doesn't fix the problem, for me at least.