F1 2016 Issue: Game freezing every now and then

SimRacer925 · Aug 19, 2016

Hi guys!

I have bad freezing for almost a full second every now and then with my GTX 1080. Cant see a FPS spike in the afterburner when this happens.. It is so annoying, the pciture and the sound are freezing and the game thinks it runs normally so you are almost every time when this happens crashing..

Anyone else having this?

JeDa · Aug 27, 2016

Hi, how can i enable the paging file? I want to check if this also works for me

Booth.the.doberman · Aug 27, 2016

Paging is on by default in Windows. You have to purposely turn it off. The only reason you would want to turn it off is if you had a honking boatload of memory, say 64 or 128G. I'd be interested in hearing from people who run on SSDs to see if they have the same issue.

JeDa · Aug 27, 2016

Hi, i have ssd in my system. The ssd is split in two partitions. On the first partition win is installed. This partition had by default paging on. The size was automatically determined by windows. The game is installed on the second partition of the ssd. This partition had no paging. So now i changed my settings to manually paging files for both partitions. I did a quick race on spa and had no freezes any more. Tomorrow I will test further.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. So far it seems to work

Anthony Rose · Aug 27, 2016

I have an SSD paging is automatically adjusted by windows. F1 is installed on the same drive. What settings are you suggesting fixes the issue?

JeDa · Aug 28, 2016

Hi, I have 16gb RAM. Usually you have to set swap file to min 1.5 times the RAM. I have set it to 30 for all drives.

hurricaneman · Aug 28, 2016

I got it fixed by going to steam and game properties and verifying the integrity of files in cache. After the analysis, it found three files were missing and installed them again. Maybe it is a coincidence.

Booth.the.doberman · Aug 28, 2016

The rule about setting swap based on ram applies only if you have a minimum amount of memory. These days, everyone has at least 16 so it's not really applicable. I manually set mine greater than the amount the system recommended as a test and it didn't stop the stutters. I run the steam checker frequently because it's a habit from running apps that have lots of third-party mods. My personal belief is that it happens when the game needs to write replay data to disk. But I would have thought SSD users would be fast enough that they wouldn't see the stuttering.

Giovaneveterano · Aug 28, 2016

My PC has 8GB of RAM but F1 2016 uses only 2, then Windows says "there is no more memory available"

Booth.the.doberman · Aug 28, 2016

Almost sounds like F1 2016 is running as a 32-bit application, doesn't it? When do you get this message? I get the stuttering (I have 24GB of ram and 8GB of video ram), but I never see this message.

JeDa · Aug 29, 2016

I also did the steam integrity check. It found three files which had to be fixed. Unfortunately it didn't solve my problem. I hope codies can fix this....

JimboJones · Aug 30, 2016

Same dip in gpu to 0% for about a second, multiple times per lap.

Tried to use benchmark mode in the video settings in the game with rain session to try all sorts of different options. stuttering still happens about 5-10 times per lap.

Still no fix with latest nvidia 372.70 drivers and v1.2.3 of game. Frustrated.

Booth.the.doberman · Aug 31, 2016

This may be just coincidence, but I tried increasing the swap file size in Windows 10, and I ran several quick races without seeing the stutter. I'd like someone else to test that to see if it has any palliative effect. I started out the evening with the swapfile at 4G and got stuttering on the second lap of a quick race at Bahrain. I then changed swap to a minimum of 6G (with a max of 9G), rebooted and ran several five lappers. On none of them did I see any stuttering. The swap (aka Pagefile) can be found at Control Panel | System | Advanced system settings | Advanced | Performance Settings | Advanced | Virtual Memory Change | Custom Size. Set some Initial and Maximum size and Ok out. I used Initial at 6G and Max at 9G. My totally unfounded theory has to do with F1 writing the replay file. I think it chunks everything into RAM/swap and then has to do a disk write and that's what's bogging it down. I know, writing to swap should be the same as writing to disk since they are the same operation. As I said, it's an unfounded theory. Just to be sure everyone understands, I made these changes AFTER today's (8/30/16) patch was applied. I saw the stutter after the patch.

UPDATE. Well, I didn't get any stutters in any of the quick races I ran. Then I went into practice from the quick race menu and got the stuttering back. But it only happened once a session instead of every few laps. So I don't know. But I guess that was obvious, wasn't it?