Why do Unity 2017.3 and 2018.1 have a stutter issue?

Questions & Answers
1

After downloading and installing the latest versions of Unity, I’ve been getting very constant stutters at a rate of about 1.5s. I’ve tried numerous amounts of fixes, including:

  • Updated all drivers.
  • Fresh install of Windows 10.
  • A blank unity project.
  • Switching the editor to lowest
    quality.
  • Used dependency walker to make sure
    all .dlls are correct.
  • Checked resource manager, only 5% cpu
    usage from the editor.
  • Checked to see there were no logs
    being output to the console.
  • Cleared temp and appdata.
  • Raised priority to above normal/high.
  • Reinstalled Unity.
  • Disabling vsync, using another
    graphics api.

The issue doesn’t just extend to when a project is open, even at the login screen there appears to be the very same stuttering. I have two captures of it happening. One in a completely blank project with just a cube, note how the cursor moves correctly but the screen updates very incrementally. This does not happen in my previous versions of Unity, from Unity 4 all the way to 2017.1, this only happens in 2017.3 and 2018.1.0b. Back tracking to 2017.1 was a temporary fix but my team work in 2017.3.

First Capture
Second Capture

My specifications are:

  • Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
  • AMD A10-7700k
  • ASUS GTX 770 DirectCU II
  • 2TB Seagate HDD
  • 320GB Seagate HDD
  • 12GB RAM

Even if this can’t be fixed, I’d at least like to know why it is happening. I’ve tried submitting bug reports and checked out a lot of other threads, which directed me to the fixes I have already tried. Any help or reasoning is appreciated greatly.

2

While I recognize the stuttering, and I can’t say specifically what is causing it, I can tell you that on much more modest hardware under Windows 8.1, I’ve not seen it in 2018.1.1f1. This isn’t necessarily Unity’s normal behavior.

It would be worth some large scale diagnosis. The simplest is to install Unity on a different machine to check of the behavior is there. Another approach is to install an OS on another drive (even if that’s a flash, or a small partition of your main drive) on the same computer, then install and test Unity on that machine. I suspect there is something about Windows that does this, maybe not the operating system itself but the particular installation and configuration of the OS, the graphics system, etc.

Under the hood, Windows must coordinate access to the graphics system among various applications. If two applications are competing, I’d expect the results you’re seeing. That doesn’t have to be a visible application, either, it could be something using GPU resources that doesn’t display anything, it you might not be able to tell what that is easily.