Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

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xensid
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Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by xensid » 01 Oct 2020, 11:45

ARRGH!

It has happened twice now!! First off I wrote for too long and the site timed out when I went to submit, so I lost it, lesson learnt I would copy and paste before the second attempt, the second time I had just added a YouTube link and wanted to preview to make sure it looked okay for when I posted it... IT LOGGED ME OUT AGAIN!!! ARGH!! I had just copy and pasted the YouTube link... I didn't copy the text as I didn't know the preview would need me to authenticate again... argh!! lesson learnt again D':

Any how, this is going to be super brief as I wrote far too much both other times, hopefully this will be enough for people to help me with.


I have an issue where my mouse seems to jitter or vibrate as I am playing games (I am assuming polling rate vs refresh rate isn't playing nicely with one another) and pan a camera around, it causes the game to look like it nearly has SLI stutter when I am playing a game, the video doens't quite show it off properly but that is mostly due to uploading to YouTube and also the specific thing I recorded for showing you all but suffice to say a game like Escape from Tarkov is impossible to play, it is actually nauseating to play Tarkov, I play night time maps to get around it, Destiny 2 renders at a high frame rate so it looks better but the issue is still present.

So if you look at this video (The video stutters at the beginning because I started recording too, that isn't normally happening, look at the frame time graph and you will see it gets super erratic when I pressed record) at about 0:05 you will see me move my mouse up and to the right and you will see the stuttering effect I am talking about, set the video to 0.25 if you need to see it more clearly, the video got smoothed out in the upload/recording process annoyingly, I set my mouse DPI to 125 for this test to try and highlight the issue, this happens all the time and it is harder to show in a video than I thought it would be.

On the hardware troubleshooting, assume I have swapped out every bit of hardware with a replacement (as I have), different USB ports used, different monitors, different mouse/mouse pads, different storage with different OS builds on it, different BIOS different everything basically, I have even used a UPS with power smoothing and now have an EMI filtered powerboard to rule out that as the possible fault.

On the settings I have used I have used the guides on this site to no avail (in the past they had worked though but this is going a year or so now I run GSync on or OFF, VSync on or off etc and it still happens, so far the best I can get is to set a fixed refresh rate and cap games to that, this doesn't work for Tarkov as it will have a frame rate any where from 75 to 120 in the same game, I can turn on the spot and have it go through that.

The thing that has screwed me is the fact that it happens to two machines even after a fresh rebuild. I have no idea what is causing it but am stuck and need help as I have gone as far as I can investigating hardware issues (I sent the hardware to be looked at under warranty with no faults found so it is somethign my end).

Let me know if you can help. Ask me any and everything. This is still half of what I wrote either of the other two times and it is still getting a bit long. Hopefully someone reads through this far. Thanks.

Monitor: LG 27GL850-b
GPU: RTX2080, GTX1050, RX570
Mouse: Logitech G502, Razor Deathadder v2, misc generic mouse HP Acer etc

Alpha
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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by Alpha » 02 Oct 2020, 14:47

When you run userbench or latencymon how does that look? When you say fresh rebuild are you referring to new image or hardware? Have you tried setting your bios to default, loading optimized only and testing again?

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xensid
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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by xensid » 02 Oct 2020, 23:28

Hi, thanks for responding.

Fresh rebuild has meant a few things, either formatting and reinstalling windows, using a different disk and installing windows, using different versions of the OS, I went back to 1903 as the earliest attempt at fixing things, I have also tried BIOS versions from mid last year to the most current version which is about a month old now.

Hardware I could say is new in that I have tried every piece of hardware with at least three alternatives bar the CPU and mobo as I only have one Intel CPU and MOBO and one AMD Cpu and MOBO but I have tried four GPU's for example, all new peripherals, many monitors etc

Here is the userbench results https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/33692811

And here is a couple of screenshots of the LatencyMon, I assume you would just want to see the default LatencyMon settings https://imgur.com/a/J9tlexA

I am about to reset all of my settings to default and load up destiny or similar and see what it looks like, I will send an update if anything changes or I notice anything. Annoyingly I cannot rebuild at the moment as I am visiting my folks and don't have the ability to do so without having to redownload 150gb of data.

Thanks,

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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 03 Oct 2020, 00:40

xensid wrote:
01 Oct 2020, 11:45
I didn't know the preview would need me to authenticate again... argh!! lesson learnt again D':
That shouldn't happen, though I know some adblockers/cookieblockers have sometimes caused this issue, and Icognito Mode will often conveniently "forget" the checkbox quickly.

Try clearing your cache/cookies for the Forum website. Then it should no longer log you out (hopefully) after you log in for the first time with the checkbox. You can do a test post in the Support forum.

P.S. After a few new-member posts, your posts no longer goes to moderation queue, and you can do infinite edits to your forum posts in perpetuity, so you can post you first draft publicly, then retroactively edit to add more info / videos / etc. Not worrying about losing the text.
xensid wrote:
01 Oct 2020, 11:45
I have an issue where my mouse seems to jitter or vibrate as I am playing games (I am assuming polling rate vs refresh rate isn't playing nicely with one another) and pan a camera around, it causes the game to look like it nearly has SLI stutter when I am playing a game
Mouse DPI too low issue?
First, do you have the same stutter problem with other movements such as strafing?

Next, have you tried higher DPI + lower in-game sensitivity? Low DPI can sabotage game framerate during slower mouse movements. Every time you double DPI in your mouse drivers, halve the in-game sensitivity setting (keep Windows sensitivity at default setting). Try 1600dpi and 3200dpi settings. If you were at 400dpi going to 1600dpi, reduce in-game sensitivity to 1/4th its original setting.

Most esports tell you to use 400dpi or 800dpi, but that's too low in the refresh rate to retina refresh rates, and low mouse dpi sabotages framerates during mouse slowturns. (400dpi moving 1/8inch per second = 50 mouse positions per second = 50 turn positions per second = steppy steppy jitter jitter feel).

Forget about the cursor being too fast in Windows, you can simply use mouse software or DPI-switcher, to slow cursor in Windows, but make games turn jitter-free. High DPI is the only way to get mouseturns to go jitter free.

G-SYNC misconfiguration?
To force a game to properly framepace G-SYNC without tearing/stutters for the entire VRR range, the usual best way to configure G-SYNC is to use VSYNC OFF in the game menus, but VSYNC ON in NVIDIA Control Panel. Occasionally you need to use this diametrically opposite settings for the only way to coax a game to framepace G-SYNC well. This is game-dependant though.
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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by Alpha » 04 Oct 2020, 09:39

xensid wrote:
02 Oct 2020, 23:28
Hi, thanks for responding.

Fresh rebuild has meant a few things, either formatting and reinstalling windows, using a different disk and installing windows, using different versions of the OS, I went back to 1903 as the earliest attempt at fixing things, I have also tried BIOS versions from mid last year to the most current version which is about a month old now.

Hardware I could say is new in that I have tried every piece of hardware with at least three alternatives bar the CPU and mobo as I only have one Intel CPU and MOBO and one AMD Cpu and MOBO but I have tried four GPU's for example, all new peripherals, many monitors etc

Here is the userbench results https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/33692811

And here is a couple of screenshots of the LatencyMon, I assume you would just want to see the default LatencyMon settings https://imgur.com/a/J9tlexA

I am about to reset all of my settings to default and load up destiny or similar and see what it looks like, I will send an update if anything changes or I notice anything. Annoyingly I cannot rebuild at the moment as I am visiting my folks and don't have the ability to do so without having to redownload 150gb of data.

Thanks,

Holy shit UserBench is a mess man. Try Chief's suggestion first. Are you trying to run Raid? This looks like your disk management is misconfigured in the Bios and your CPU is overheating lol. Here is what I would do. REMOVE anything software related to Samsung, optimize\trim your NVME and test again.

Nuclear version,

Make sure the USB is not defective you're using to load windows. Load latest chipset, NIC, audio, any controllers for your PC, and GPU drivers on a USB drive. Literally only the essentials. Unhook everything from SATA. I would double check and make sure anything related to virtualization is disabled in Bios. It makes so much more sense to start over than beat on something for hours and days.

1) Update latest Bios.
2) Load Optmized Defaults.
3) Unplug NIC (legit critical).
4) Install Windows 10 64, 2004 from a USB you grabbed the latest version of from Microsofts website.
5) Install ONLY the required necessary drivers and monitor CPU temps while doing this.
6) Once rebooted, plug in NIC.
7) Check Windows for updates.
8) Personally I would enable Game Mode, make sure you are on the correct Power Plan and install Destiny.
9) Test that game.
10) If this is good, I would plug in SSD, test again, good, plug in HDD test again.

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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by xensid » 06 Oct 2020, 00:42

Hi guys,

Apologies for the delays in responding, I had been visiting the folks and travelling back home and a few things slowed me down.

Hopefully I don't miss any thing here but:

Mouse polling and DPI: I gave this a whirl, I had my polling at 1000 already but set the DPI to 1600, 3200 and then went really extreme to 10,000 and lowered in game sensitivity to keep aim approximately the same which I think it made things look a little nicer but not enough that I would say it is fixed. It could even have been a placebo for all I know, it only seemed to be effective in Destiny (120+fps)), Tarkov (60-80fps) was much the same, although very briefly I thought it had helped but the usual symptoms occurred the more I looked. I will keep playing with this though and see what happens, I will leave it high DPI and low in game for now.
Occasionally you need to use this diametrically opposite settings for the only way to coax a game to frame pace G-SYNC well
I didn't read this thoroughly enough, I will have to check but I am fairly sure I have tested that indirectly but I will confirm and report back, I believe I have the correct GSync settings generally but have been flittering around between different settings to try and find a fix. Tarkov uses VSync ON in the menu to unlock the frame cap the game puts on it for instance, this might make me put settings incorrect somewhere else which causes the particular poor performance in that game in particular also the low frame rate.
Holy shit UserBench is a mess man.
I am not sure what you are referring to here, it there more details on that page that I cannot see? My CPU isn't overheating nor am I running raid, I plugged extra hard disks in to watch a movie or three that is all the extra hard disks are, the problems occur with or without them in though as the first few days the machine only had one drive and did the same thing.

On the Samsung NVME side of things do you recommend a different driver or keep the Samsung one? I have seen some people state issues with the drivers on Windows 10 and suggest using the Microsoft or AMD drivers, which I tried (I am not in front of the machine to tell you which I tried) but I tried one of the other two and it didn't help.
USB is not defective
what sort of test would I need for this? I assume you mean the flash drive itself doesn't have any faults, which as far as I am aware it does not but also I have tried multiple flash drives indirectly as I used one from work and one from home that were different makes and sizes.

Only because I will have my AMD hardware back in the next few days I won't rebuild again until then but notes about my current build from when I did it are as follows:
1) Update latest Bios. - Done, I also tried earlier versions.
2) Load Optmized Defaults. - Done at install and also I redid it a few days ago, without a rebuild though
3) Unplug NIC (legit critical). It is integrated but I have tried disabling it through BIOS - second edit, I did this to stop Windows installing certain drivers during install, I misunderstood yoy initially.
4) Install Windows 10 64, 2004 from a USB you grabbed the latest version of from Microsofts website. - Done on most recent build and also have rolled back to 1903 and earlier drivers
5) Install ONLY the required necessary drivers and monitor CPU temps while doing this. Done, I reinstalled, loaded NVidia drivers, chipset drivers installed Steam and Destiny and had the same stuttering effect
6) Once rebooted, plug in NIC. - Done as part of first mention of this
7) Check Windows for updates. - Done
8) Personally I would enable Game Mode, make sure you are on the correct Power Plan and install Destiny. - I have this on and use either the bitsum power plan or the AMD one depending on driver versions as there is a recommendation of one or the other depending on versions.
9) Test that game. - Same issue unfortunately.
10) If this is good, I would plug in SSD, test again, good, plug in HDD test again.

Again, this is all written from my last rebuild a few weeks ago but also I have two machines doing this which leads me to:

My work colleague has a laptop with a GTX1660 Ti in it, I asked him to install Kombuster and run that up (he is probably not going to let me install a game to test things further there) and I asked him to move the mouse around in Kombuster at (roughly) 60fps with 16x tessellation on and also when 4x tessellation was on at over 144fps and he could see the mouse induced stutter on the 60fps settings quite clearly and barely noticeable at the 144+fps setting (although still a little present).

So on an entirely seperate system the exact same issues occur which just points harder at DPI vs polling vs refresh rate being the issue but I don't know how to find where the issues lays exactly.

I am going to have to cut this short as I have been called away, I will post a bit more later on tonight.

I was going to provide a video of destiny 2 or Tarkov still stuttering but couldn't record it in any meaningful way, do you guys have a better way for me to do that and capture the bung frames other than using a high fps camera, MSI Afterburners capture + uploading to YouTUbe seems to smooth the videos too much to show the issue.

Another question, when I use RTSS to lock frame rate\frame time I still get pretty noticeable frame time and CPU times when benchmarking with a game, is that normal and down to game engine optimisation or something else to look at? I ask because Kombuster or Furmark or whatever will basically lock my frame time and CPU to a flat line in the after burner display.

Cheers,

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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by xensid » 06 Oct 2020, 10:13

So an update, this definitely seems to be to do with the polling rate/DPI not making it to the program/game correctly or at least something is wrong there if that isn't the case.

If you told me that DWM/Windows wasn't polling the mouse correctly and sending input to the application/game correctly I would not be surprised.

I will go through all of the system timer type of troubleshooting again and see if I can find anything regarding Windows not handling polling rates correctly.

A side question that might lead me to where I need to be, how can I adjust my Windows sensitivity (I did this for testing not a normal practice) to say 1/11 and my mouse goes super slow in Windows but in a game the DPI settings from my mouse settings is used, is that just the game using RAW input behind the scenes or is there something else at play here?

I still don't know why this has all randomly started happening to me, I have multiple machines now and several different mouses on the go but varying speeds can make improvements to a games render, perhaps I need to couple a high DPI low in game sensitity with getting frame times as stable as possible.

Would a much higher polling rate on my mouse help here at all? Perhaps a PS/2 mouse? I will grab a PS/2 mouse tomorrow if we have one and give that a whirl.

Anyhow, let me know if any of the above helps or if I am way off topic.

Cheers again.

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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 07 Oct 2020, 21:52

Also,

Newer games behave better at high DPI than older games --

For example, Valorant will be more consistent with various DPI settings than CS:GO will be.

For example, going to 6400dpi (1/8sens) vs 800dpi may potentially have no side effects in Valorant, while it may have side effects in CS:GO

There is a wide variety of older games that seems to have issues with high DPI.
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Re: Mouse stutter/jitter causing rendering problem that looks like but isn't SLI frame pacing issue

Post by xensid » 08 Oct 2020, 01:31

Can you look at this and tell me what you think is going on? It is more noticeable in Tarkov so I have used that and the graphics quality settings are a bit higher than normal just to highlight this fact, it does the same jittery mouse movements even if I put everything on low. I still don't know why two machines will do this on me though.

Anyhow, here is the video and note the frame time graph as proof, my game doesn't stutter like that when strafing normally, that is because I started recording it all became a bit glitchy, the mouse movement is normal though: https://youtu.be/9bYvo-SrZf8.

Thanks

EDIT: I know Kombuster doesn't grab the mouse like a full screen application but this at 0:05 is a heighlight of the stutter I was talking about that, I think the Tarkov video smooths the issue out too much to see it easily, it just looks like I am whipping the mouse around instead of showing the stutter. https://youtu.be/w2F-okzHpIk

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