PC Gaming: Ultimate Anti-Stutter Guide (incl. Unreal Engine Universal Tweaks)

One of the most annoying but also most difficult things to eradicate from the PC Gaming Experience is Stuttering or more specifically when "Frametime" or "Framepacing" during gaming gets often interrupted by sudden "spikes" during the rendering flow which may automatically results in bad input response, sudden camera movements, VRR flicker and so a really bad experience overall if those "spikes" are frequent.

While more powerful hardware will for sure help in alleviating the issue by "brute forcing" it, often even the most extremely powerful hardware is not enough to fully get rid of it as many times it depends on how (badly) optimized the game itself is in actually leveraging the full capability of that hardware or by how many things are happening in the background in Windows more than with the game itself.

Here are my comprehensive suggestions to noticeably alleviate it and/or completely remove it from your games

1. Be sure to have a clean/debloated Windows 11 installation

For example you can read how much better is starting from scratch with a clean install using latest Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 ISO (which is the only official, already debloated version of latest Windows 11) instead of regular "Pro/Home" versions -> here
Or if you already are on a Win11 Pro/Home version and don't want to clean install, read how to debloat it (in a safe way) here and here

2. Update/Optimize Windows 11, NVIDIA/AMD drivers and Games' Settings

Following my always updated guide here

3. Give all games "High Priority" (via Registry Tweak)

You can download this .reg file example for the new Silent Hill 2 remake to just double click and add to registry when asked. This will allow Silent Hill 2 execution file to always run on "High Priority" over other background applications (both for CPU/Disk/Bandwidth and RAM) which will noticeably contribute to improve the Frametime and avoid stutters, all without the need to use other applications or services like Process Lasso or other mods.

For adding a registry entry for any other game it's sufficient to open this .reg file with Notepad and just change the name of the .exe file according to the game you want to add next:



Then save it as a new .reg file and launch it in the exact same way also for it

For Unreal Engine games only, the correct .exe to add is always the one ending with "-Win64-Shipping", like in the case above

4. Close all other applications before starting a game

This may sound trivial, but it really helps. Especially closing game recording/streaming apps like OBS

5. Disable all Overlays except for RTSS (if you need it)

So Xbox Game Bar Performance Widget, Steam/EA Play/Ubisoft Connect/NVIDIA GeForce Experience overlays etc.
If you want to see real time statistics, just stick to RTSS which is the lightest and also the most reliable/unobtrusive of all

6. Add the following launch arguments for Steam games' shortcuts

If you have 8GB+ VRAM add this at the end of your game's shortcut (which should point directly to its .exe file):

-force -dx12 -xgeshadercompile -nothreadtimeout -NoVerifyGC

so it should look like this after pasting them:

if you have less than 8GB VRAM, paste this instead:

-force -dx12 -xgeshadercompile -nothreadtimeout

7. Use my Universal Unreal Engine 4/5 Tweaks

Even in 2024, Unreal Engine still represents one of the main "offender" when it comes down to stuttering, even more now with Unreal Engine 5 when using all its new feature set (like Nanite + Lumen + Hardware Ray Tracing at the same time). This because the "base" engine Epic provides to devs is not automatically optimized for all hardwares or for the specific games that uses it, rightfully so I would say, but devs too often ignores to properly optimize it in this regard and just leave it as is, resulting in a stuttering experience for most, even on very high end PCs.

Luckily, UE is highly customizable even for end-users so I collected the most significant UE tweaks and optimizations we can do by ourselves without sacrificing visual quality or stability and which can work with any game by just copying all these lines to the bottom of each UE games' specific "Engine.ini" file. More specifically:

1 - Go to your File Explorer and paste the following: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local

2 - Now find the name of your game or the name of the developer/publisher of the game

3 - After that go into Saved > Config > WindowsClient or WindowsNoEditor or WinGDK (whichever one appears) then open up Engine.ini

4 - Copy the commands from the link above then paste them at the bottom of the Engine.ini file then exit and Save

Please pay attention to some comment lines after ";" which may be related to specific configurations (e.g. VRR usage, VRAM amount etc.), so change them accordingly to your hardware.

These tweaks will better utilize your CPU/GPU and HDD/SSD + RAM at the same time to keep the Frametime as low/flat as possible during gameplay.

As a bonus they will also improve the default Anisotropic Filtering & remove Film Grain & Chromatic Aberration, so games will not only run better but also look better :)

After you've saved and closed the file:

Right-Click on it -> Properties -> check "Read-Only" box -> Apply/OK

That said, there are still some caveats:

• While most stutters should vanish after this, some games suffering of "traversal stutters" (which for example happen in the exact same spots when entering a new area of the game, leaving the previous) will still keep having them as that's just the way they were designed (like Wukong) and only a full Unreal Engine versioning upgrade would fix those (e.g. from UE 5.0/5.1 to 5.3/5.5), but that is only possible to be done by the devs themselves...

• If you experience crashes/fatal errors on launch or during gameplay with specific games, try this older/lighter version of the tweaks with them instead

8. Add games to Windows 11 Graphics App List (and set them to Performance)

From Settings - System - Display - Graphics options, Manually add your games if those are not already in the list below and set their "GPU Preference" to "Best Performance".
Also ensure that Windowed optimizations are Enabled for them

9. After launching a game for the first time, open Xbox Game Bar settings and be sure to check "Remember this is a game"

This will add further optimizations to Windows 11 "Game Mode" with the launched game and should be automatically checked.

But double check just in case.

10. Add games' (and shaders) folders to Windows Defender Exclusions

1. Open Windows Defender

2. Go to Virus Protection -> Settings -> (scroll all down to) Exclusions -> click Add or Remove Exclusions

3. From here click on "Add an exclusion" and then "Folder" and pick all the folders related to games and shaders which are compiled/read for them, for example you can add the following folders:
   
   C:\XboxGames (where Microsoft Store / Xbox App usually store downloaded games by default)

   C:\nvidiaDlssGlom (if you use it)
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam (the entire Steam folder and all its downloaded games)
   C:\ProgramData\NVIDIA Corporation (where some of the shaders are stored)
   C:\ProgramData\NVIDIA\NGX (where DLSS .dlls Overrides and learning models are stored)
   %localappdata%\D3DSCache (where DirectX shaders are stored)
   %localappdata%\NVIDIA (where most NVIDIA shaders are stored)

   Along with your custom folders where you have your games stored.

   I found that doing so will noticeably improve/reduce traversal stutters in many games.
   

Enjoy :)

-P