Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

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Stuttering fix (with RT enabled or maxed out)
By Adad
In the interactive art, video games, there's nothing like playing smoothly, without stuttering —the biggest or at least one of the biggest flaws that one can suffer—.
After trying numerous settings combinations I've been able to mostly eliminate the stuttering from this game turning it out into a beautiful experience.

First of all, I must say that this solution addresses a very particular use case and it's guided by three things: the hardware, what is sought from the game (graphics or performance) and its internal configuration.

I hope this guide can help someone with similar needs or at least serve as a help or guide with different ones.

*Based on further testing I have edited the guide.
   
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My particular case
The hardware:
First, my setup consists of: 16GB of RAM, a Ryzen 5 5600X, a RTX 3070 and a 1080p@144hz (G-Sync compatible) monitor.

What is sought from the game:
Since I have a Ray Tracing capable GPU and in Marvel's Spider-man Remastered the RT effects are especially justified because there are reflections everywhere —making the screen-space ones out of place and very ugly— there would be no reason to not activate them, right?

Unfortunately, as is known, the requirements for RT today are very heavy, not only for the GPU but also for the CPU. And Spider-man Remastered is no exception, particularly in the latter: the load on the CPU when RT is enabled is huge, with high probabilities of turning it into the system bottleneck.
Which, of course, happens in my case, leaving even the GPU with a moderate and sometimes low load.

So, for me there has been no way to not want to enable the RT and still want to enjoy a good experience.
The main issue: stuttering
However, another problem arises, one catastrophic for immersion and experience: stuttering.

In most situations one simply have to resort to RivaTuner, the GPU driver (Nvidia Control Panel in my case) or SpecialK to lock the frame-rate and thus the frame-time at a number that can be kept stable by the hardware to eliminate the stuttering (assuming that the game doesn't has internal frame-pacing issues).
But Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered is a very special case: it doesn't get along at all with the RTSS fps limiter, but the Nvidia Control Panel (I don't know in the case of AMD) and SpecialK doesn't work either.
The frame-rate variation can be so high that VRR can't eliminate the issue either. So it's necessary to resort to different options to solve it.
Settings
Following the above, these are the in-game and the Nvidia Control Panel settings:

  • In-game settings
    • Display

      Note the following:
      Window mode: Exclusive Fullscreen. It allows to lock the frame-rate —remember that neither RivaTuner, Nvidia CP nor SpecialK works correctly— to 50, 60, 85 or 100Hz, etc, avoiding the framerate and frametime spikes.
      Refresh rate: 60 Hz. Locked at 60 Hz since my CPU can't maintain 85 Hz —the next step— constantly.
      VSync: On. Normally and in theory it is not recommended to enable it in-game; however, in practice is the best option in this case (it seems to lock the frametime).
      • Nvidia Reflex low latency: Off. In theory its use is not necessary in this case (See the section "Reflex* Settings"[blurbusters.com], in practice it makes stuttering worse.
      • Upscale method: Off. Using it would make things worse since the game would be rendered at a lower resolution than 1080p (which is already low), further overloading the CPU usage —remember that it is already the bottleneck due to resolution and RT—); in addition, the use of the GPU is moderate so it isn't necessary.
      • Anti-aliasing: DLAA. It's the best anti-aliasing in the game (the inverse of DLSS, as the former scales upwards not downwards) and allows the best possible image in reflections; furthermore, it's not a problem for the GPU in these circumstances.

    • Graphics
      Note the preference for graphics, especially RT, since 60Hz allows it and the Low for Traffic and Crowd density since both don't negatively affect the appearance and to avoid more load on the CPU.

  • Nvidia Control Panel
    Note the following:
    • Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance. Prevents GPU and VRAM clocks dropping due to lower load.
    Vertical sync: Fast. Normally one would have to leave it On (see: Why G-SYNC + V-SYNC “On”?[blurbusters.com]) but Fast is the best performing option in this case.
Conclusion
With this combination of settings, different from the common tools or options (yes, once again, Spider-man Remastered is a particular case on PC), the feeling of smoothness and fluidity is abysmally better and together with the RT effects makes it a wonderful game.
1 Comments
picklealmighty 6 Jul @ 5:55am 
Smooth as butter now thank you, although I disabled Ray Tracing, as I don't care much for it.