2-3 Seconds of FPS and Audio lag, sometimes DC with Error 2001 when first looking at Poxbursters

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Bugs
1

Issue Type (Required):

Other

Issue Description (Required):

Whenever I first lay eyes on any individual Poxburster, I experience a freeze that last for around 3 seconds. The screen freezes at around the time the Poxburster starts emitting the “lit fuse” effects and would normally play the associated sound. Audio is also skipped or heavily distorted for the duration. My inputs are still being read throughout, for example the Veteran Ability Voice of Command will still work (which is how I cope with this at the moment) and I will find myself in a different position, usually roughly aligned with where I feel I should be according to my movement. Very occasionally ( Say, 1 in 20 Poxbursters) I will disconnect with Error 2001. Not terrible, since I load in very quickly, but… you know.
PC Specs:
CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU: Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Motherboard: MSI B650 DDR5
RAM: G.Skill Flare EXPO X5 DDR.5-6000 DIMM @ 4800 (No AMD EXPO for the time being)
Storage: 2TB Lexar NM620 M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 3D-NAND TLC. (One holding windows, and a second, identical NVME holding Steam Library.)
1440p Native Resolution, Settings on High or Maximum, RayTracing OFF. for a solid 90+ FPS outside of the issue. No OC, Undervolting or anything. Hardware as stock.
I have recently swapped GPU from a 4060Ti. Drivers have been cleanly done using DDU. BIOS was also updated.

A log from my most recent match is attached.

Some anecdotal suspicions I have: Whenever the sound cues of a Trapper or Poxburster get boosted by the game to be “above” whatever noise is going on at the time, the audio starts to be jumbled, impacting performance overall, and peaking in the experience described above. I will keep an eye out for solitary Poxbursters spawning outside of combat to see if maybe there is a difference when they are an isolated source of VFX.

Lastly, if I have picked the wrong part of the forum for this post, I apologise. I am unsure what to label this.

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

  1. Play Darktide, any mission.
  2. Wait for a Poxburster to spawn (or a Trapper, for a much less impactful frame drop)
  3. Look at the creature
  4. Realign yourself with the cosmos after the jarring loss of sight.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

Yes, and I’ve tried disabling them

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

Player ID (Optional):

ScaryName

[PC] Upload Console Log & darktide_launcher.log (Optional):

console-2024-08-23-08.07.22-87a3021c-ac10-435e-ba57-dae8ed370fec.log (256 KB)

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2

So, after an additional couple of matches I believe I can say:
-It is much worse during the current Rolling Blackout condition. If there were lightsources on the map (like the floodlights on the bridge fight, or the giant blue hologram) it is less bad. The same goes for maps that are simply brighter by default.
-Singular Poxbursters that spawn during low enemy presence don’t always trigger lag spikes. I have not understood why.
-Groups of Poxbursters as you see them in Maelstroms are not worse. The spike behaves about the same. If there is however an amount of time between my seeing them, it will happen again.
-Opting into the Beta Branch and editing the config file does not impact it in a noticeable way.

My next step will be to reinstall the game once I have an opportunity to leave the computer running. When I came back to the game after a 6 month hiatus, this was the only thing that made similar FPS/Audio stutter disappear (at the time GPU was 4060Ti, same system).

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3

Reinstalled. Deleted the game and deleted my user_settings from appdata before redownloading.
Swapped to experimental build, but Somehow I can not get the user_settings edits to stick, they always disappear from the file. So unsure if the following is influenced by them or not.
Put my graphics settings back to what they were, still experienced the lag and even one CTD driver crash that prompted AMD Adrenaline to let me send a crash report.
Some more desperate testing and experimenting resulted in 2 very interesting pieces of information:
FSR2 doesn’t give me that many FPS.
I don’t lag at all when it is OFF.
I drop to 40-50 FPS which is a lot less than I would want, and I will need to lower some settings… But I do not have the stutters.

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4

Now running XeSS to great effect. Any FPS related issues have disappeared entirely, I only suffer from rare and minor audio stutters. Disclaimer: I have since updated XeSS to Version 1.3.1 manually to get access to Ultra Quality, which gives me a little more in the looks department for the same performance benefits.

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