Problem Details: Hello guys, first off I want to apologise if there is already an answer to a thread like this one. I have a problem with game performance. I am using a decent laptop, intel core i7-4702MQ; NVIDIA GeForce GT750; 8GB RAM and a 17.3 inch display. As you can see the characteristics of the laptop are more than enough to run the game at the highest possible performance (at least I think so, I might be wrong), but I still get serious FPS drops when multiple elements appear for example a group of 3-4 sliders or something like that. I tried using low resolution textures as adviced by the pined thread but this des not help me. I found that the only time I don't get those lag spikes is when I turn off all detail settings and even then when 6-7 sliders clump up I get a minor FPS drop. Can someone help me find a solution of this problem? I apologise for nott being able to provide a video or a picture of the problem. Thank you for your help!

Check if you're on openGL or DirectX. Switch to the other one and see if it still drops then.

Strange... I switched to OpenGL, now it seems to be handling the FPS pretty well ingame, the problem now is that it lags in the menu. For example when I switch between beatmaps and the flashy star animation plays, then the FPS drops from 60 to like 30-40 for a second or two. At what max FPS am I supposed to set it if it is related in any way to the performance?

What kind of FPS do you get when you're on the menu?
What does it drop to on song select?
What does it drop to when playing?
How much of a difference is it when you turn off the details compared to having them on?

I'm not really much of a tech wiz but you should be getting a lot higher FPS with those hardwares.

Just a tip for OpenGL, never switch to unlimited FPS. It'll crash the game.

That is what bothers me, with that hardware I shouldnt be getting any FPS problems. Anyways, to your questions. I have 60 FPS in the menu, my FPS limiter is 60(vsync). I press the play button and enter solo, then I select a song and I get a sort of a mini lag spike. The FPS drops from 60 to 30-40 for 1-2 seconds and then stabilizes. Gameplay wise, I havent gotten any bigger problems like the ones I had before I switched to OpenGL but I still get minor lag spikes like the ones in my song select menu when 8-9 sliders or basically many elements appear on screen (for example the map Another night on Hard). I still haven't tried turning off details in OpenGL but it is kind of fine when I turn them off in DirectX. Thank you for trying to help me.
P.S. I already crashed my game with the unlimited FPS and I had to use the shift + double click solution to fix my game. lol

Do you have any pending windows updates, this was the problem for me one time.

kiril199 wrote:

I have 60 FPS in the menu, my FPS limiter is 60(vsync)

Are you not able to use any higher resolution?

@DatPenguinTho Nope, my windows is up to date. I guess this is not the problem. :/
@drum drum What do you mean by not able to use any higher resolution? I use 1920x1080 (Borderless) and I left the FPS limiter at 60 (vsync) because this is the only FPS limiter that seems to work with OpenGL.

tbqh 1920x1080 is kinda large have you tried a smaller resolution?
And also my bad I mistook vsync for a resolution setting. (don't judge ok)

kiril199 wrote:

I left the FPS limiter at 60 (vsync) because this is the only FPS limiter that seems to work with OpenGL.

Have you tried every FPS limiters with DirectX too, and see if one works better than vsync on OpenGL?

Qfter a quick search it seems the GT750m isn't exactly the best laptop GPU, though it's still very good. I'm not sure about osu! since I'm new from a couple of months, but using vsync on some games that have lots of fast movements might not be the best idea, mostly because it forces the GPU to wait for the monitor to tell it's ready to receive a new whole completed frame, however the GPU only has a few ms before the screen will refresh whether it received it's new frame or not, so in case of a GPU that can't draw and send the frame quickly enough for the monitor refresh rate, that means your GPU will fail to send say half or a third of the frames, which naturally results in a low FPS. So, using vsync is probably not the best idea with a GPU that can't draw and send fast enough, you'd probably want to have a higher FPS limiter so that your GPU doesn't have to wait for the monitor before starting to draw the next frames, meaning while you might have some tearing, you won't get some too low FPS since your GPU will actually be working the whole time.

Depending on whether using DirectX with say 120 or 240 FPS limiters stop the low framerates or not, you might want to move to that or stay on OpenGL vsync but still keep the FPS drop on the menu.

drum drum wrote:

tbqh 1920x1080 is kinda large have you tried a smaller resolution?

Considering it's a gaming laptop, seeing from the specs, 1920x1080 is actually pretty normal, plus it's probably the native recommended resolution, I'd have that myself if my monitor supported higher than what I currently have. Changing the resolution won't exactly change anything, except the amount of pixels rendering different things at once. Say you use a resolution of 800x600 with a 1920x1080 native monitor, it means that about 4 pixels ((1920*1080)/(800*600)=4.32 pixels) in your monitor will work as if they were one, but they're still being used, and the GPU still has to calculate what the pixels will be showing, so that doesn't really change anything...

HbKusoneko wrote:

Considering it's a gaming laptop, seeing from the specs, 1920x1080 is actually pretty normal, plus it's probably the native recommended resolution, I'd have that myself if my monitor supported higher than what I currently have. Changing the resolution won't exactly change anything, except the amount of pixels rendering different things at once. Say you use a resolution of 800x600 with a 1920x1080 native monitor, it means that about 4 pixels ((1920*1080)/(800*600)=4.32 pixels) in your monitor will work as if they were one, but they're still being used, and the GPU still has to calculate what the pixels will be showing, so that doesn't really change anything...

I don't think laptop screens are usually 1920x1080. Only if you decide to hook the laptop up to a monitor will that resolution work correctly. Although, some laptop screen are 1920x1080 so I may be wrong.

Hmm, my laptop is considered a gaming laptop, yeah. The recommended resolution is 1920x1080, the screen is prety large so it makes sense I guess. (btw I forgot to mention that I am a complete noob at GPUs and overall the way graphics work with the comuter). So @HbKubeneko, before posting this thread I was runing with DirectX at 240 FPS limiter, I tried changing it to the other options, but the results were the same. The only settings I don't get such severe lag is when I am using OpenGL and 60 (vsync) FPS limiter. I also heard that vsync is bad for games like osu!/counter stike so I don't like that optios as well. This whole problem seems ridiculous to me because I am able to run games like Skyrim and Assasin's creed at ultra settings whithout getting even a sliver of game lag. It is still playable when I use the OpenGL settings with vsync (oh, I forgot to mention the game isn't able to run with any other FPS limiter exept 60 (vsync), if I use another FPS limiter the game freezes as soon as I click somewhere). I find it quite annoying.... Thank you for your help so far! I can try to record the issue, although I have never recorded anything on my computer. Can anyone tell me how to do it?
P.S. I will be away in the next 1-2 days so I won't be able to reply by then. Thank you all again for trying to help me solve this issue <3

kiril199 wrote:

I can try to record the issue, although I have never recorded anything on my computer. Can anyone tell me how to do it?

To make a video recording, you'll usually want to use something like Fraps or another screen recording software. You can also look in GeForce Experience if you're GPU supports ShadowPlay, in which case you'll be able to record without needing a software by looking at the options inside that and choosing between Shadow mode (Alt + F10 to save the last 20 mins to HDD) or manual mode(Alt + F9 to start recording and then Alt + F9 to stop and save).

Your model is slightly higher than mine, but it may be a laptop modified version so the performance output might not be the same. I will get 300-400 on unlimited. You should be getting around that many. I run my desktop computer on a 1440 x 900 screen that was built in the Vista era.

It does sound like you're just not able to process frames quickly enough. The more items on the screen the longer it takes to render a frame.

Ok guys, I am back. I installed fraps and one thing I would like to note is that when I start recording it just nails my fps to 30. I don't know if it can be changed in the settings or something like that but that is how it is. Also, in the video I recorded there is ablosutely no lag... I swear I had the same lag issues as I usually have but you just can't see them in the video. You can clearly notice the places I got lag spikes in which I miss a bunch of notes. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ts_yLJ ... e=youtu.be I hope it makes it a bit more clear to what is my problem although I doubt it...

kiril199 wrote:

Ok guys, I am back. I installed fraps and one thing I would like to note is that when I start recording it just nails my fps to 30.

Fraps locks the framerate at the framerate you set to record at. That's why. If you want to record and play at separate framerates use Dxtory.

Anyway...

From what I can tell from the video what you're experiencing aren't framerate drops
but rather huge frame timing jitter, combined with horrible cursor tracking.

Try this:
-Update your Nvidia drivers.
-Update your .NET framework. (4.5)
-Cap your fps at 120. (Using the game's frame limiter.)
-Run a 'basic' theme. (Non-aero theme in windows 7, or whatever those 'basic' themes are called in windows 8 if you use windows 8.)
-Run DirectX mode, windowed, at 1600x900 resolution.

Also, since you're on a laptop, turn the power saving settings to maximum performance. Also in your Nvidia control panel set everything to performance.

If what everything I mentioned above (the last 3 at the same time when playing) doesn't work
then run a benchmark with Fraps while having your framerate capped at 120.
(Benchmark all 3 of the options, which would be; "FPS", "Frametimes" & "MinMaxAvg".)
Then upload the results (files the Fraps benchmark created) to any file hosting site and share them here so we can have a look at them.

Ok you must be a god.... It actually worked! Indeed I had to update my Nvidia drivers, I was already runing with 4.5 .NET framework and I still had lag. But then I entered windowed mode and the lag disappeared. It runs smoothly now but I am really annoyed by the fact that it has to be windowed... Is there a way around it or I have no other choice but to get accustomed to it?

Marking this as resolved
hooray