Anyone getting a slight stutter/freeze/lag?

[wowmangwt]

Hey I've been playing a bit now, something I've noticed is that I get these .5-1.5 second freeze every maybe... 10-15minutes? I don't really know how long in between.

ut basically, I'm driving around, walking around, etc then the screen just freezes for like half a second or maybe a second and half then it's back to normal. It's not too bad, but when it happens during fights or crucial car driving moments, that slight second allows the car to skid into the wall or for my aim to fall off the person and die.

I built my computer a few months back with some good parts, so I'm pretty sure it's not my comp. 64bit, i2500k ocd 4.5ghz, gtx 570 - newest drivers.

Does anyone else seem to have a similar issue? Tips, ideas, suggestions?

[jelman98]

I do. I dont know how it happens.

[Daehawktitan]

I only logged in long enough to check my old characters out. While standing still in the login area my sound would go completely quiet every 12 sec or so for .5 sec at a time. I dont know if it was just the sound or if the game was freezing because I was looking at menus.

[asura]

Same here, and I thought I was the only one cuz my friend told me he could play fine. A brief freeze lasting about 0.5 sec happens every min or so and it's really annoying.

[GodSlayer69]

Hey I've been playing a bit now, something I've noticed is that I get these .5-1.5 second freeze every maybe... 10-15minutes? I don't really know how long in between.
[...]
Does anyone else seem to have a similar issue? Tips, ideas, suggestions?
I have the same issue while playing. It went worse this weekend for me (I installed the game a week ago, no lag/stutter/freeze noticed prior to Saturday). This problem is completely ruining the game now, my computer freezes sometimes for 10+ seconds and it can happen so repeatedly I can't even rotate the camera correctly!

I often get killed when it happens, either because I was in a mission or because my vehicle just crashed into a wall while I couldn't do a thing... I noticed it happens a lot when you respawn or start a mission (or reach the next step of a mission, but I'm not sure), these lags never happened to me while I was just wandering in a district without purpose. I thought it was because servers were too crowded at first, but I also played at 2:00 AM (UTC+1) and beyond, the lag was still there.

I searched on the web and this issue seems very VERY common, the game is known to lag a lot. Unfortunately the solutions I found were all involving to remove programs that are usually installed with the game, when you download it from the GamersFirst website. Pando Media Booster and GamersFirst LIVE! seem to be a possible cause, but they're not installed with the Steam version as far as I know (I searched everywhere on my comp, couldn't find anything)... So I have no clue how to fix the Steam version. I have tried all solutions I could find (even updated the game from the game launcher menu, just in case) but to no avail, I still have to try this method though:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-LeatrixLatencyFix.html

To those wondering, my computer is not the issue. Any other game I have runs just fine, both online and offline games. My computer meets the recommended requirements for APB, and my internet tests are good.

[Freyar]

Happens to me too, but it's been so infrequent that I forget about it.

[Infogirl]

It used to be rare for me, but lately it's been pretty common. Rubberbanding just as you're getting into a firefight is um... I'll say "annoying" to be polite. Also noticed a slight but distinct delay between when I press buttons and the action happening.

[GodSlayer69]

OK, I just run some FPS test in the game in case it shows anything, and here's what happened:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/341/screenshot00003b.png/
This screenshot shows my FPS when I'm standing still, no mission started or anything. As you can see, my stats are good (graphics quality is all maxed out). The game is working fine even though there are a few short freezes when a new part of the map is loading. So far, no big deal.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/screenshot00007bw.png/
This was during a mission, when getting closer to a Bloodrose gang member. The client FPS drops drastically, the game is totally unplayable for a few seconds and it freezes every time. It could be due to the high number of human players (~50 criminals and the same for cops, at the time), especially since these regions are where players spawn and respawn. But still, it looks ugly...

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/189/screenshot00008bj.png/
This one is the worst. I was in a gun fight during a mission, it was so unplayable I couldn't even know who shot at me. Client FPS is extremely low, latency is huge, basically whenever I play a mission my screen freezes when a car explodes, someone shoots, or if I even dare moving the camera.

I tried playing in the Fight Club districts, the game works fine. No FPS drop except when a new round is starting, but it's kind of normal considering there are at least 50 players to include to the game at the same time (and they need to be synchronized). So basically, these freezes/stutters/lags only happens in the largest districts.

I still can't see what's wrong with the game, but I just wanted to let people know in case a member comes by and can tell us more about it...

[Rave2n]

What and how much ram?

Hard drive speed as well.

[RpTheHotrod]

I get it as well. It's not rubberbanding but an "everything" freeze (sound and all) for half a second every 3-5 minutes. It's on a consistent basis so I have a feeling it might be an anti-cheat system in place. That's completely an assumption on my part, though.

[Rave2n]

I do not have this issue, and my PC is quite slower then his.

[GodSlayer69]

What and how much ram?

Hard drive speed as well.
I don't think my config can be relevant (too many people with the same issue), but here it is anyway:
I have 4GB of RAM (Kingston), my OS (Win7 64bit) is on a SSD drive, and I have 1TB of data (SATA2).

No latency issue in any other Steam game so far, and I play UT3 which uses the same engine as APB Reloaded. I have read the official forums and maybe, just maybe, it's an issue related to the Steam version itself. They're working on it, so I'll wait and see. They released a patch yesterday already, I patched my game but it's barely better. RpTheHotrod is right, it's more of a "everything freezes including sound" than just a lag. The music is affected too. I'll probably try to run the game with PunkBuster off if I can, just to be sure.

[Meitzi]

4GB of RAM is not enought for this game. I have 4GB and Win64 and so on. (any other games runs smoothly)

Its almost unplayable in my machine. games FPS meters does not show how much Windows does have free memory. (that would be vital information)

It's memory issue definetly. APB uses 2GB from start and sometimes its go over 2.5GB. Also I noticed games VOIP uses another EXE which takes around 350MB ram. DISABLING VOIP DOES NOT SHUTDOWN VivoxVoiceService.exe. (BAD again) (however you can manualle kill that task.. frees memory)

Also, game uses memory very unpleasant way. Its takes and frees it in very small amounts VERY rapedly. Swapping that to disk causes very serious lag.

Of course developers have like 32GB super machines for free so.. dont hold your breath.

[Rave2n]

I don't think my config can be relevant (too many people with the same issue), but here it is anyway:
I have 4GB of RAM (Kingston), my OS (Win7 64bit) is on a SSD drive, and I have 1TB of data (SATA2).

No latency issue in any other Steam game so far, and I play UT3 which uses the same engine as APB Reloaded. I have read the official forums and maybe, just maybe, it's an issue related to the Steam version itself. They're working on it, so I'll wait and see. They released a patch yesterday already, I patched my game but it's barely better. RpTheHotrod is right, it's more of a "everything freezes including sound" than just a lag. The music is affected too. I'll probably try to run the game with PunkBuster off if I can, just to be sure.

Your hardware is extremely important in your issue. Just because a large number of people are seen with a similar issue does not mean ignore the obvious.

The SSD is perfect. Your ram is insufficient. When I had issues when I first started the game, I thought it was a ram issue. So I dropped 8, to 4. To see if I possibly had a bad stick. The drop in performance was extreme and very close to your issue. This is DDR2, not 3 I'm speaking of.

Just saying look at all options because I wouldn't depend on a patch, or my version variance to another as a reason to exclude. The file structure and locations are the same within the root folder of the game instead via steam or G1. The only difference is it should be found within steam, via steamapps folder I assume. Everything else is patched the same, as my install via the G1 installer. Unless you have some funky folder permission issues with your user profile then I suggest looking down another avenue.

Corrections?

[GodSlayer69]

Yeah... 4GB of RAM is probably not enough these days, but I don't intend to buy 4GB more just for this game. I forgot to mention I have DDR3, by the way.

Anyway, it seems Meitzi and I think alike, because I played yesterday after killing the VoIP process (Vivox-whatever.exe). The game worked like a charm, really... A few lags here and there during the first minutes (loadings I guess), but nothing else for more than 3 hours... So definitely, I think my issue was more about the VoIP than my RAM. I don't use VoIP anyway, so I had no use for this.

[DukeR3]

Hey I've been playing a bit now, something I've noticed is that I get these .5-1.5 second freeze every maybe... 10-15minutes? I don't really know how long in between.

You have to reboot the system, then try the game.

I know, is an issues.

¿Have you try it?, im not a bad person im telling you what i do because the game has some issues whit memory, i have 8GB ram, i great computer, but the game has problems.

Please, just, reboot the machine, try play again.

If you feeling the lag, you can do this:

Uninstall Nvidia Physix
-Launch the game
-It will install Nvidia Phsyix automatically

Now try playing.

[xtraL]

I do but it's not that frequent so it doesn't really bother me unless it costs me a death.

[Whist]

Since it's been on steam I get audio stuttering after around 3 hours of play.

Around 4-5 It'll start freezing up until it finally completely locks up.

[iDre]

Whoa, killing the VivoxVoiceService.exe process totally seems to help me out! I was having hardware lockups (with looping sound, required hard reset) but I haven't had one in the couple of hours since. Fingers crossed this is the real deal... thanks GodSlayer69!

[GodSlayer69]

Fingers crossed this is the real deal... thanks GodSlayer69!

You're welcome. It should work fine, I've used this trick for 3 days now and the game works like a charm ever since. I have no idea why the VoIP application has so many leaks causing these huge freezes, maybe it's because I don't have any microphone (or headset with a microphone either) so it generates errors somehow. I don't know really, it's odd.

[Gridlost]

I'm noticing this at peak hours. I am guessing due to the shear number of players interested have over loaded the poor servers. Solution, IMHO is that perhaps we need more paying players to convince G1 to invest some more money into more servers.

[Millor]

I get this too, and my computer is powerful enough to run every game out at the moment like Battlefield 3 at the highest settings, with 8 gigs of ram I think I should have enough... I've gotten this in games before, but it always seems to be an MMO of some sort and I've never figured out the issue.

Sucks when entire missions come down to if some one freezes mid fire fight, which it has on several occasions.

I honestly wish It would happen to the whole server at the same time, just so it'd at least be fair, and everyone could collectively get mad at the same time lol, then maybe G1 might look into it.

[DemonsRage]

I have had this very same problem for quite some time and have spoken with friends(4) about it, and we've found that the ONE program we ALL have in common... is Avast! Anti-virus. I believe that all of this started during an Avast! program update.

This problem isn't just with APB, it has been with several games; APB, Mount & Blade, Monday Night Combat, and more.

I've also found that in some games, Digsby tends to cause stutter in 1 second intervals for a fraction of a second. Once Digsby is closed, it all goes away.

So... if we're all running Avast!, then I think we may have found our culprit.

[GodSlayer69]

So... if we're all running Avast!, then I think we may have found our culprit.
We all have a Windows operating sytem, I think we may have found our culprit.

... I'm kidding you, but it's to prove it's not that relevant. It's not totally wrong of course, but have you ever tested shutting down Avast while playing to see how well it works? I have Avast myself (like 60-70% of computer users?), but I don't use auto updates, so I'm pretty sure it can't be it. It could be NVidia as well, if you think that way...

However it seems Steam downloaded 5 updates to my games last night, so I guess it's why my network was so laggy yesterday... Shutting down the Vivox process didn't work and I had no clue why, I'll try shutting down Avast and will report here later. But honestly, I don't see how Avast itself could freeze my computer for 10+ seconds when it's on, especially since I had some excellent results lately by just shutting down the VoIP service when running the game.

[PwettyPony]

Okay now, the 0.5 second stutter has nothing to do with any 3rd party programs, it also has nothing to do with the vivox file.
Closing the vivox file does increase the FPS, but doesnt remove the 0.5sec stuttering.

That stuttering was "introduced" in a previous patch.
We actually had that problem already months ago. We'll just have to wait for a patch that fixes it.


Also, 4 gigs of ram are enough for APB:R.

[Meitzi]

renaming VivoxVoiceService.exe to _VivoxVoiceService.exe will stop it from start.

[GodSlayer69]

To be more accurate, killing the Vivox process DOES help against the freezing, but does nothing about the stuttering. I think these issues are not related, even though people here are complaining about both.

I just tried stopping Avast and the various protections (P2P shield, etc), it did absolutely nothing. Killing the VoIP process doesn't help anymore (too many people during weekends, maybe?), so whenever I do something my screen freezes 10+ seconds again, as it used to. It makes the game unplayable, in comparison stutters are just a joke...

Back to square one. They really need to patch their game indeed, I've never seen an online game with that much memory leaks and latency/FPS issues...

[iDre]

Yeah, sorry if I have added to any confusion, there are multiple issues with the game, and mine was about locking up (which is related to the VivoxVoiceService).

My machine has no performance problems, and it is "only" a
Core2Duo (OC'd to 3.6 GHZ)
4GB RAM @ 1333
GeForce GTX 460 (factory OC'd)
Only on rare occaision when I first start up do I get some stutters, clears immediately.

On the other hand, my GF's machine has constant stutterring in the framerate, and from time to time stutters the sound. It is unplayable. She has a lower spec machine:

Core i3 @ 2.9 GHz
2GB of RAM
GeForce GTX 250

Something that I haven't needed to worry about in years, but with APB... make sure to close other programs before playing. Eg. FireFox can be a huge beast on memory. Someone suggested the software "Game Booster 3", I installed it and it's kind of neat, it can automatically kill/resume all sorts of running processes and windows services for when you want to play games.

Although this doesn't affect my machine since it already runs fine, this seems like the right direction for performance issues (short of upgrading), maybe give it a try.

[Kurushi]

Not sure it's a RAM thing. I'm on 2GB and the game runs perfect on max (32bit mind) but my friend on at least 8GB ram get the same thing, like me. Game runs fine apart from the odd freeze every 10-15 mins.