Apologies in advance if this isn’t the right spot for a question like this: this is my first time posting here and I’m kind of at my wit’s end.
I’m having this really weird issue with Unreal Engine 4.27.2 on Windows (specifically the version as downloaded from the Epic Games Launcher) where when I do things like hover the mouse over more or less anything (though it tends to be most noticeable with dropdown menus when items in the content browser) where - for a second or two - the framerate will tank to sub-60 before eventually coming back up to 120.
If I hold the mouse over basically anything in the content browser, it’ll do these little lag spikes in semi-regular intervals.
Current hardware:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700x
AMD Radeon RX 6700XT (Driver version 23.Q4)
and I’m running the engine off of an SSD (granted, one that I got for free with another purchase so I can’t say I’m expecting miracles out of it - but even then that wouldn’t really make sense) so there’s no good hardware related reason why this is happening. I admit that this is my first AMD system so maybe I’m missing something basic but I’ve tried disabling and enabling Freesync in the AMD software thing but that doesn’t seem to make a difference one way or another.
I’ve also tried running chkdsk and that windows install diagnostic thing but again - no difference. This particular project was originally started on Windows - then worked on on Linux, and now kinda back to Windows for gaming compatibility reasons. Interestingly, when I went back to Linux to open the project (or at least a copy of it) it didn’t seem to have this issue.
I know it’s a relatively small issue in the grand scheme of things - but having to deal with jittery node movement and little lag spikes whenever I have to do basic things like mouse over a folder or move a blueprint node around it’s gonna send me up the wall.
Hey there @KaiserKlay1! Welcome to the community! Do you happen to use a high DPI monitor? This can cause all sorts of issues in older engine versions, though there is a setting to enable support for them in your project settings that should mitigate the issue if this is the case:
However, if High DPI isn’t the case, it’s likely you were already on the right path trying to adjust something inside of Adrenalin, as if this was an Nvidia card that’d be my first move. Then I would look to disable anything that touches GPU memory in operation like Afterburner or similar programs.
I do not use a high DPI monitor (in fact I’ve been using the same 1920x1080 display for like a decade and a half now). For the sake of science though I did try your suggestion with disabling the high DPI support but it didn’t seem to change anything.
I don’t have MSI Afterburner (or anything like it to my knowledge) installed on my computer so the only other place I could think of that would be touching the GPU and its settings would be maybe the UEFI but that’s doubtful. It wasn’t doing this on the Linux version of UE4 so I’m more than a little bit convinced it’s a Windows issue or a driver issue of some kind - but I can’t really be sure.
EDIT: New Discovery - I enabled fullscreen mode within the editor - which seemed okay at first - but as soon as I opened the ‘file’ dropdown menu it started lagging to the point of being genuinely unusable (I thought it was frozen at first). I’m guessing these are connected somehow.
Hmm, thanks for the info. There were previously an issue with a windows update doing something similar, however the previous issue led to a crash and was a bit easier to diagnose due to that. Does this still occur if dropping from DX12 to DX11?
The closest I could get to doing that (with my knowledge) is un-checking the “DirectX 11 & 12” box under ‘targeted RHIs’ in the project settings.
All that seemed to do was cap my framerate at 60. Interestingly, if I manually set the max framerate to something sub-40 or so (I did 20 just at random) then the issue is “fixed” but naturally I wouldn’t call using UE4 at 20fps a victory.
Also - I should like to point out that when I had the engine in fullscreen and it was freezing - it seemed to freeze ‘the whole system’ meaning that even the YouTube video I had playing in the background was frozen by it.
I’ve had a user who had a similar issue in which Windows was using an integrated GPU instead of their actual GPU. It’s rare, but possible. Ignore the portion about the display adapter here, and check your settings in the same location to verify your primary GPU for Unreal is set to your true GPU. Also, what are the GPU’s statistics while the engine is running slowly?
Unfortunately, I had already seen that thread - and I can confirm that the RX 6700XT is the GPU being used. In fact, it’s the only one it even lets me select.
GPU utilization did definitely appear to spike when the frame-drops were happening. That higher middle spike is when I tested the fullscreen freezing thing. It seems like rendering anything overtop the editor window causes it - like it’s forcing the v-sync to 30fps or something. Or - more wildly - it’s triggering the ‘use less resources when not in focus’ thing when it shouldn’t be. Though that wouldn’t explain why it’s pseudo-freezing the whole system when its’ done in fullscreen mode.
The game itself runs fine - which is part of what’s so weird about it. When I play in-editor - when I play in a New Editor Window (PIE) and when I run the game in standalone configuration it runs perfectly.
None of the builds I’ve made seem to have the issue either.
EDIT: It appears that if I sort of ‘massage’ any given item in the content browser - that is, do little circles with the mouse cursor - it’ll stay at an even 30fps.
