Random lag spikes.

Here's my specs:

8GB 1600Mhz RAM
Gigabyte Radeon 7850 2GB
AMD FX-6350

Every once in a while when I'm playing I get these random bursts of lag at around 5-10FPS, that lasts about 10-15 seconds. It's really strange because when it lags, I have no control with the camera movement, although I can still control the car. I'll have 40-60FPS one second, then this happens. It can happen when I'm just driving, when I crash, or even after. It's completely random. It doesn't matter which car I use or what level I play on, but it manages to happen to me every couple minutes and it annoys the hell out of me. I even have my taskbar opened up, and there seems to be no chance in my RAM/CPU usage meters when this happens. I run the game at low settings so I can have a good FPS when crashing or when I'm playing on a level with more trees/grass.

Here's a video of it (Sorry about the poor quality, I wanted to upload this ASAP):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyVELdbBN0w (the lag starts at 0:10)

 

A similar issue happened to me, FPS would suddenly drop to around 30fps for me and the mouse would stop accepting input in the game until the FPS climbed.
I have a GTX680 and in the 3D settings in Nvidia's control panel I went from "Adaptive performance" to "Prefer Maximum performance" which solved my issue for the most part.

Disabling SSAO and HDR fixed the issue completely at the cost of prettiness, not sure if it's the implementation of the PostFX settings or the trees/grass because it seems to only happen when looking directly at heavy foilage.

 

It could be your AMD cpu the game isn't really optimised for AMD yet.

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It could be your AMD cpu the game isn't really optimised for AMD yet.

 

Same issue here.

 

Thanks, I'll see if this works.

 

I have this problem when Windows 8 changes the desktop background (which it does gradually every few minutes) in various other games so this could be the cause. It's not from having a low-end PC as mine is fairly high-end. I wouldn't be surprised if using Bandicam in conjunction with a changing background (or IM as Gabester said) causes problems like this.

 

I've never understood why something as simple as a background change is so intensive as to affect games etc. You'd think it'd just be some simple alpha blending.

 

This worked perfectly!

 

Yep, so far it worked for me. The Disabling of SSAO and HDR actually made my fps more stable, and the tinkering in the 3D Application Settings so far fixed the lag spikes. I'll get back in a day or so for an update. Also, for AMD users, to get to the application settings, right click on your desktop and go to the VISION CP (install it if you don't have it), go to the 'Gaming' tab and it'll be the only option. Click the "Add.." button on the left column to add a specific program to modify, select the game's exe and then hit all the options to override the settings to go 'optimized' and lowest settings if you'd like. It doesn't affect to much of what the game looks like, but play with it until you're satisfied.

 

I can tell you. Windows kernel generally runs on 1 thread. This only aplplies to windows operations, as programs can use multiple cores/threads. If the game is stressing one core more than the others (like core 3 for me), and windows uses the same core to change background, it will create lag. Actually try a moving wallpaper on windows. No matter how awesome you PC is, it will almost stop.

 

Only half solution because no editor in fullscreen mode, so less enjoyment.