Occasional Potent Lag Spikes

ShadowNya

Terrarian
Hello. Recently I have been having issues with Terraria (the majority of my issues can be seen here: "Will Terraria damage this computer i use?") but occasionally I experience very potent lag spikes, which dramatically slow down gameplay for a few seconds, with the duration ranging from about 1 second more or less, to 2.5 seconds or more. While the lag spike happens, sometimes the lighting in-game ends up bugging, where it fluctuates for a moment in a unstable manner.

Computer Specifications:
Computer system type: Windows 10 Pro
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080 60Hz
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor 4.01 GHz
Installed RAM: 32.0 GB (31.9 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Graphical Card: GeForce GTX 1070 [version 390.77]
Motherboard: ASUSTeK SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 [version REV 1.xx]
PSU: Corsair 750W

Terraria type: PC, Steam-downloaded

Nvidia GeForce Terraria Settings: Current Terraria settings.png

My computer is also slightly unstable, and it freezes occasionally (I do not know why). However, when I was first testing Terraria, there was major issues with it in a windowed format, where the resolution was customised by resizing the window a bit. Changing it back to full-screen mode and 1920x1080 resolution had seemingly fixed that problem, but the lag spikes are still happening, although not as bad as when Terraria was in the custom resolution and windowed mode.
These lag spikes put me on edge, as I think that Terraria's stability is just temporary, and that these lag spikes are some sort of bad omen. I also think that fixing the problem might possibly cause some other issues, but I do not know for sure until fixes are tried.

I do not know what specifically is causing the problem, but does anyone here know a possible solution?
 
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I have similar stuttering issues, and I have the exact same CPU. I have done tests using MSI afterburner, and it may be due to a CPU bottleneck. Perhaps a CPU upgrade is the only solution to this. I've posted about this many times and not gotten any helpful answers, I'm lucky if I get any answers! I wish I could help you, as I have a similar problem, but I don't know the solution.
 
Thanks for the information anyways, I do appreciate it. I guess for now i'll have to put up with the occasional lag spikes.
If it's just occasional, then you have it much better than me. I have that, and lag in other situations, such as when switching between normal and Underground mushroom biomes, the game effectively 'freezes' for a few seconds. I hope the devs can do something to improve overall performance. Your computer shouldn't lag at all, neither should mine. (I have an R9 380 and the same CPU as you.)
 
Now that I think about it, the lag spikes may or may not happen around when the computer demands spike, such as spiking CPU usage. It could very well be something else though, and I reckon for you that it's probably severe enough that it triggers when Terraria simply needs to slowly change some game elements (background, theme, etc) where it would end up playing both of those parts while they fade in/out.
If you haven't tried, I suggest to keep Task Manager open while playing Terraria, and then to monitor the lag spikes in comparison with the Task Manager's stats. If there is some occurrences that repeatedly happen whenever Terraria lags, then that may be linked to the cause of the lag.
Unfortunately I can't do this well, as if I am correct, keeping Terraria in a Windowed Mode may be a issue for my computer, as there's a problem I experienced where having a altered Terraria resolution and/ or windowed mode had caused intense and possibly volatile lag spikes on the whole computer.

I hope you manage to find a good solution to the intense lag spikes you have with Terraria.
 
Now that I think about it, the lag spikes may or may not happen around when the computer demands spike, such as spiking CPU usage. It could very well be something else though, and I reckon for you that it's probably severe enough that it triggers when Terraria simply needs to slowly change some game elements (background, theme, etc) where it would end up playing both of those parts while they fade in/out.
If you haven't tried, I suggest to keep Task Manager open while playing Terraria, and then to monitor the lag spikes in comparison with the Task Manager's stats. If there is some occurrences that repeatedly happen whenever Terraria lags, then that may be linked to the cause of the lag.
Unfortunately I can't do this well, as if I am correct, keeping Terraria in a Windowed Mode may be a issue for my computer, as there's a problem I experienced where having a altered Terraria resolution and/ or windowed mode had caused intense and possibly volatile lag spikes on the whole computer.

I hope you manage to find a good solution to the intense lag spikes you have with Terraria.
Well, funny that you mentioned that windowed mode causes performance issues for you because that's the same case for me :( I think we'll just have to wait for the developers to address these issues. If they don't fix any issues, then I can't play. Such a shame that a game as great as this is plagued by performance issues. I usually don't have any programs open when I play Terraria, but I'll see if there's anything messing with my performance. The drops aren't huge, it's usually down to 58FPS, but I've seen worse. Either way, frame drops in any matter make the game unplayable for me. And when I switch between underground biomes, the game almost freezes for a few seconds.
 
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Is there anyone (game devs, game quality moderators, etc) which we can talk with? It's very possible that this issue has been unnoticed by Terraria devs as from what I know, there is very few cases of this happening with Terraria, including that Windowed Mode problem.
This thread and my other thread I mentioned in my first post here, could both be useful to them when addressing this problem, as I have put quite some detail on that other thread about my computer specs, and also about the volatile lag spikes that happened with custom Terraria resolution and/or windowed mode.
[I tried asking Leinfors once to look at the other thread of mine, but it seems they haven't replied on the topic. idk why, but I understand if they are busy.]
 
They apparently look at these threads, and then try to fix the issues in these threads. At least that is what I heard from one of the moderators. They say that they do the ones that they think need fixing, and in my opinion, performance issues should be fixed before any new content or anything else should be done. I don't know if I trust this though, that sounds kind of like PR speed to me, but I hope the developers actually do something about the performance of this game, because this game doesn't run well on so many machines, even powerful ones. That is much more important to address than to add a new furniture set. They may just be busy, and may have already read these threads. But there isn't any indication of whether or not any of the devs read this thread. It would be nice to know that. I actually got a warning point because I was asking for help, and none of the posts that I created were getting any attention. And since I was 'reposting', they decided to give me a warning point, and just give me a vague assurance that they are working on it. I hope that is true. If you can't tell, I'm not a big fan of the way that these forums are handled, it seems the mods care more about rules than listening to community feedback and forwarding it to the devs. I just really don't like moderators in general.

Anyways, I hope these issues will be fixed in the next patch, but I can't say whether or not the devs look at these posts, I have no idea.
 
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