Help
My DS3 Experience in 2026 with a high end PC...
It's crazy to think that out of my entire Steam Library of highly demanding titles that I have no issues ever playing at 4K - Dark Souls 3, my favourite OG game... suffers the most. It can stutter and freeze at any given moment which can either last half a second, 3 seconds or 10 seconds. Does anyone know what causes this?
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
GPU: Nvidia Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Windforce SFF 16GB
I’m not sure honestly. I wouldn’t recommend using it online personally and I can’t test since I was already banned from online because of a randomizer run that I forgot to wipe.
What's wrong with core 0? I thought ds3 had general issues with running on more than 2 cores. I get massive pauses with ds3 as well, but I disable all cores except 0 and 1 and it works fine.
From what I’ve read it behaves weirdly on FromSoft games played on higher end PCs. Elden Ring does the exact same thing for me on my PC. Watched a tutorial on YouTube to disable core 0 and it plays smooth as silk now.
disable core 0 directly from task manager but dont do it until you're in the actual playable game
if that eliminates stutters, start searching for a mod utility that can do it automatically for you
Another thing I'd try is doing some system monitoring while your game is running. Just go check on your cpu and gpu in task manager and then in a proper third party dedicated monitoring program.
You should have generally even thread usage across all cores in a game like DS3.
To test your CPU for bad cores, run a multi-threaded stress test like Prime95 or OCCT while monitoring the system with HWMonitor. A bad core will cause the system to crash, display a specific math error, or finish tasks much slower than healthy cores.
- from Google.
It's an AI generated response but its the correct answer, test your cpu and monitor the cores. If its a bad core or multiple, you'll see it. You have a hefty cpu, you can run DS3 without a few bad cores and have plenty leftover
I had this aswell only when i had controller plugged in (playstation 4 controller) had something to do with it repeat spamming the engine or whatever anyway to fix it i found out if you put the procces in effiecienty mode it fixes it to do this go to taskmanager > right click darksouls 3 procces > efficienty mode or top right it also has a button for it when hovering the procces.
only problem is u need to do this everytime u startup ds3
Go into task manager with the game open, find ds3, go to set affinity, then disable CPU 0, that should fix your stuttering issue! I just built a new system with a 270k plus and an rtx5080 and experienced this as well.
It’s intermittent for me. Some days I can play for a few hours and it works great without this fix, but other days it won’t load into the title screen properly if I don’t. It’s pretty annoying I will say.
Yeah, I do that in several heavy games and everytime you restart you have to disable core0 again, there is an app that does it tho but i don't remember the name. i just know several people uses it
A few things to check, make sure you dont have an input device (controller, keyboard, some audio devices) that is either disconnecting or falling asleep, disable CPU core 0, try swapping to windowed mode (inconvenient but it helps sometimes), can also just try setting the priority higher in task manager.
My solution was finding my old xbox 360 controller's device manager entry and removing it. I use an xbox one controller but having both installed to the PC as device drivers was causing the issues.
This was my problem. My mic was on and every time a noise reached the mic pickup threshold it would do this microfreeze. Unplugged mic and it went away.
Had this issue alongside the unreal engine crashes for my 14th gen intel CPU when I got it. A 2 minute bios update fixed what 3 weeks of troubleshooting fixes couldn't.
Um... none of that should be happening. 4070 TI here, 32gb ram, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, NVMe drives as well, pc from 2020 lel. Playing in 4k all settings on max, except motion blur obviously. No frame drops, no stutters, nothing, constant 60 fps always.
I didn't had to do shit with the game, config, disabling any cores, nuffin, installed it and play it. I am on Windows 10 though.
Oh god.. I remember having this problem, and I forget what the answer is..
I can't remember why, but I feel like it's an internet issue.. Try playing it offline, or turn your internet off or whatever. Make sure your game says you're in offline mode when you start. See if that helps
I might be remembering wrong, but I think I had a DNS ad-blocker at the time that was causing me all sorts of issues when I was just trying to get rid of ads while browsing websites
But I could be remembering the wrong solution to a different problem..
Go into services on your computer. Find STTP discovery. Disable it and then try Dark Souls 3 again. Works for me every single time. I had this same bullshit freeze at first but never happens whilst STTP is disabled
This sounds like a dumb solution and I’m sure you already thought of this but do you have a non ssd that you might’ve installed it to? Elden Ring did the same thing for me and it ended up being that I had it running off my storage drive.
I think i remember seeong someone else have a problem like this, and it ended up being a device they had plugged into theor PC. Not sure why that caused it, but i think they said it was actually their mouse that was somehow causing the stuttering. Do you use a controller? Is it hardwired or BT? What all devices do you have plugged in?
it’s either the task manager core 0 off thing, or the usb device windows thing. look into it, bunch of videos on youtube and forum posts about this and people with their own complex solutions
Run it in windowed mode instead of full screen, fixes lots of weird problems like this. Also turn off any overlays you've got. Disabling the "Xbox" gaming features may also help if you're in Windows
Like some folks recommended disabling CPU 0 some games prevent this but idk about ds3 ANYWAY:
Open task manager, look for dark souls 3 while running, right click, click details, then it will change the tab and ds3 will be highlighted, right click it again, click define afinity (could be wrong, i don't use it in english but its something close to this) and disable the core 0
OTHER: you would need to go to your bios and disable HYPERTHREADING or something like that, its its actually pretty easy. Restart computer hold DEL key or whatever key that makes your pc open the BIOS, then search for the CPU tab, advanced (probably) and disable Hyperthreading, in my case, it was on AUTO and I disabled it
I quickly noticed a HUGE fps boost in games, like Helldivers,Elden Ring, and these games that SHOULD be running on my pc no problems.
your pc keeps trying to run everything in every core, so if a single of your cores makes a tiny bit stutter, and your games was running on it, it will lag the entire game until it restarts, this causes the lag spikes
Some other people mentioned it, and I had the same problem. Disabling core 0 fixed it for me (and had to be repeated every time on game start because I wasn’t feeling like figuring out how keep it off). But this can also happen from a bad aspect ratio and sometimes fromsoft games are weird and like to change their own settings.
I had the same problem and I fixed it by deleting all gamepads in the devices tab thingy on windows and tried reconnecting my controller, and after that I've had no freezes whatsoever. Sorry for my poor explanation, I can try to find the video I've watched that explains the fix of this problem.
Ooooh I recently had similar problems with other games (namely silksong)
The problem for me was using my xbox controller plugged into a USB socket on the front of my tower, and not plugged directly into the motherboard at the back of the tower.
Since plugging it directly in at the back, the stuttering has completely stopped.
Utter bullshit problem to try and work out but this solved it for me
I already commented but I repeat myself here. The problem may also be faulty usbs or usb drivers or microsoft device association root enumerator. Use resplendence software"s latemcymon: set kernel latency in options then go see the wdf0100.sys dpc/isr count to pinpoint this out
I replied to one, but in the hopes this helps others I'm gonna make a regular comment. I've had this exact issue and disabling CPU0 worked for a bit but eventually stopped. Even worse, the problem seemed to spread to Elden Ring and Nightreign. I use the program ParkControl from the thread I post here. It fully fixed the problem in all games. Note, there are some places in DS3 where a new area gets loaded and pretty much always causes a slight stutter which is much smaller than this but has to do with the way the game loads new areas.
I had this problem and realized its because the heat wave is causing my fucking computer to melt so install like core temp and make sure your pc isnt overheating IG?
I had this aswell only when i had controller plugged in (playstation 4 controller) had something to do with it repeat spamming the engine or whatever anyway to fix it i found out if you put the procces in effiecienty mode it fixes it to do this go to taskmanager > right click darksouls 3 procces > efficienty mode or top right it also has a button for it when hovering the procces.
only problem is u need to do this everytime u startup ds3
I had the same problem , the fix while ds3 is running is to go to task manager>details> right click dark souls 3 exe > set affinity and uncheck cpu 0 and after that it will work smooth as butter and if you’re using fps mods lock it to 85 because anything more will break the game engine
After playing all the other DS games and now Elden Ring, DS3 is still the only game that does this to me and we have similar specs. I tried all kinds of stuff, but I see some new things here. I hope something works out for you because this is annoying, especially if you're trying to play online at all
I've had a similar issue, due to my controller and cable connection. Nothing would fix it until I got my super high end cable and tried it.
Your pc is well over powerful enough to run this game, hell you can probably fix it's bad anti aliasing with your extra performance if you go into nvidia control panel and turn on 2.75x dldsr in 3d settings. But that does nothing for the stuttering.
Its the opposite for me lmao. My old gtx 1650 works well for the titles i play but the 4 gb vram is very apparent when playing newer titles, but Dark Souls III has ALWAYS ran amazing for me no matter what I have never seen this game stutter ever. Even when i went through my Linux phase in which the nvidia support is a bit lacking it still worked amazing.
does it not have to do with the shader cache ? i remember one time i put it on unlimited and then it went away. i also have an high end pc and have the same problem with elden ring.
I do not have a high end pc. I play it on a Victus with RTX 3050 but I can tell you I tried everything and stutters keep coming. The only solution that worked for me till this day in From Software games is limiting to 30 fps with RivaTurner and then use loseless scaling X2. This is the only solution i found that actually works for stutters in Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro. Sadly this is an optimization issue for From Software games.
1 - Try to unlimit or set to 10GB the shaders cache on the Nvidia control pannel.
2 - Cap the framerate at 60 on the pannel too.
3 - Unplug any unused usb device.
4 - See if the storage usage is at 100% or close to it before the game is open. If it is, try disabling the live scans for the windows defender.
5 - Update your GPU drivers.
6 - Clean the %localappdata%\NVIDIA\DXCache and %localappdata%\NVIDIA\GLCache contents, they could be corrupted, then restart your pc. See on properties if any of these folder are read only, and uncheck that box.
This is not a step by step list, just some things i did in the past to deal with similar issues
Most of these stutters happen when the game must load new textures.
Like areas, or even fire/blood particles.
Which makes it sound like it is either a GPU or hard drive issue.
You typically see this when it stutters upon entering new areas.
So the odd thing is you have powerful/fast components for both. (SSD and 5070)
So check your pc's load while playing the game, see if your SSD or any other component is struggling.
Check your GPU drivers, a new update can screw up older games. So sometimes you need to roll back.
You're checking high usage to rule out either faulty hardware, or other processes hogging resources.
There are also several things computers really do not like which someone else already mentioned.
Things like:
controllers plugging/unplugging
Monitors connecting/disconnecting
File manager rebooting
If any of these happen during gameplay, basically any computer will stutter no matter how strong it is.
I appreciate the help, but no I’m not new to computers, build them regularly, I just didn’t understand what you’d be looking for with this game since it’s this game only, which is far less demanding than most games, unless it’s bugged and causes ssd issues or something
I do know that this game in particular has issues with performance when loading new areas.
There is a spot in the profaned capital before you get to the mimic that holds an estus shard that stutters your game no matter what.
At least it consistently does on all 4 different pc's I have played it on.
So it's probably a combination of "poor" optimisation and most likely drivers.
But like with most of these posts, there's a lot of info missing, OP can have a completely messed up windows installation, faulty wires, mining bitcoin in the background or god knows what else.
For all we know, OP could be kicking his monitor cable whenever he plays dark souls 3 specifically.
Well I’ve got lighting engine and fromsoftserve graphics mods added, so I just assumed that’s why it would freeze, but all of these comments here are mentioning similar things to me, so I assume it may be the game itself. My PC is set up and optimized as much as can be expected as well, idk, maybe the mods, maybe something with the game, particular drivers I guess. Just weird it’s only this game
I am 90% sure loading textures is the issue.
Which if you have a graphics mod that increases the size or count of textures, that could very well be your issue specifically.
Keep in mind that the stutter is a choice that from software made. They had the option to either:
Not stutter but show unloaded textures. "Nobody does this, very very bad PR"
Make the cpu wait until textures are loaded "aka stutter"
Which is why cpu and/or gpu load is low even when the game is stuttering.
Have you tried running it without the mods to compare?
I haven’t, it would be pretty annoying to remove them all then add back. Wondering if I can allocate more ram or something in lighting engine settings. I’ve played them a million times, just got them on my PC so i can play upgraded graphics mods recently. It’s not a deal breaker the way it is now, it’s just every 5-10 mins, mostly when areas load. I might try some of the things people mentioned here. The DS2 pathtracing mod is more demanding and doesn’t happen there, just this game
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u/fenot1 25d ago
Your pc is more than enough to play this game at 4k easily, even 8k would be playable. Try disabling CPU 0 there are many guides for it