Heavy FPS drops

[Ivanion]

Hi everybody.

I'm encountering a big problem when playing ETS2 on my laptop: I have massive FPS drops in Iberia DLC content and, in a lower amount, in Austria's new areas.
But let me take a step back: I started playing Iberia DLC as long as it came out and I immediately started having problems (FPS drops and lags, for which I mean that the game completely stops for half a second/a second), I also tried it on a completely new vanilla profile and it still caused low performance. Then I discovered that it was not well optimized and waited for a patch. After some time I retried it and things went better: I was doing 50 FPS (whereas in other map areas I was doing 60) but still had lags here and there. With Austria I have actually the same issue but with much lower lags (and only during daytime).

A week ago I started to play again after a while. I had a completely new save with a few mods; the 2 mods which might impact performance are Promods and Cipinho's Traffic density mod, but I'm thinking that it's not their fault in this case.
Firstly I went to Austria and as long as it was nighttime I had steady 60 FPS, then as the sun rose I started having FPS drops (about 40 FPS with minor lags in the game). The problem is that as I left Austria for Germany the FPS drops resisted (I don't have FPS drops in Germany if I start playing there).
Secondly I tried to go to Spain to see how it went: as soon as I passed through the last toolboth in southern France I started to witness FPS drops (to 25-30 FPS) and a lot of lag. The experience got worse when I reached Barcelona: I entered the tunnel section on the highway cutting through the city and FPS dropped to 1 only, the game started stopping and sometimes it got back to desktop and then restarted again.
Why am I saying that those 2 mods aren't the problem? Because the last trip I took was from Promods Munchen, where I had 60 FPS and the problems rose in Spain (which is a DLC) where it was also nighttime, so there wasn't much traffic (actually I remember encountering only a car when on the highway in Barcelona).
I would also say I don't have a problem with other new content: from Munchen to Spain I passed through new Stuttgart and new Lyon areas with no problem at all.

I closed the game and started a new job in Barcelona: It started with 1 FPS then went up to 20-25 and stood there. I checked the log but there's not anything which says me there's a problem.

Actually the problem that worries me more is the lag: I can live with 45-50 FPS instead of 60, but when in Austria and Spain the continuous lags are unbearable (sometimes the game stops even for 2/3 seconds).

My computer specs:
CPU: Intel core I7-7700HQ 2.8GHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce MX150 (2GB dedicated)
RAM: 8 GB
OS: Windows 10
I actually have an HDD and not an SSD (that might cause problems?)

I'm playing with medium to low graphics with some tweaks in Nvidia control panel trying to solve some of this problems

Hope that someone can help me

[jabo50]

There are a lot of opinions about this subject . SEarch and you will find! Let me kick off with this url

https://roextended.ro/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1865

[Ivanion]

Thank you jabo50 for your response. Actually I have already surfed through that forum's topic, but I have 2 questions about it.
1) Do I have this so called "rubber banding"? Because from what I understood it is a sudden stop + a consequent acceleration in the game. Instead what I see is a sudden stop (for 0.5 to at most 2/3 seconds) and then the game continues to perform as before, it doesn't accelerate. Maybe I'm wrong on this point...
2) If this is really rubber banding: as I understood there was a change after 1.40 update... I tried in the past to put uset t_averaging_window_length "60" in the config.cfg, then I put 150 as it was suggested in the forum, but it doesn't seem to make the trick (at least in the 2 map areas I talked about before). As long as I have 60 FPS in other areas should I try other multiples?

[MrAbner]

What fixed a similar issue with me was to bump up my RAM from 6 GB to 16 GB. I think it's a combination of ETS2/ATS trying to load more unique data into RAM, and when it gets full, Windows then starts swapping out older data to its swap file at the same time.

[Ivanion]

I monitored RAM during the Spain trip: as far as I know it reached a maximum of 75% usage. Do you think it's too much?

[blackpanther239]

I have 16GB RAM, but exactly the same problem as Ivanion describes.

[jabo50]

Here is another one: https://www.promods.net/viewtopic.php?t=20036

[Ivanion]

A little update: the last forum post was actually useful as my settings in Nvidia Profile Inspector were cancelled for some reason. I started the game and tried to do a job form Barcelona to Navia: at first all was smooth and I thought that NPI settings were the solution, but as time passed FPS were slowly but surely going down. At some point I also started to witness some screen freezes and FPS drops to 30. In the end the experience got even worse near Santander: firstly the FPS fell down to 1; then the screen freezes started to last more, to the extent that I had a massive freeze of about 2 minutes. When it got back the gameplay was very discontinuous (I had 20 FPS but continuous screen freezes). As long as the game was hardly playable I checked my RAM and saw that it was actually running at 95 % and, in fact, I had a very bad time in trying to close the game (it took me about 5 minutes). In conclusion is exactly what happened in the occasion I wrote about in the first post, only it was faster as I was already in Iberia.
Now this behaviour may seem related to my laptop, but what I don't understand is why this only happens in Iberia and not in other map parts (not even in modded one)...

[MrAbner]

The newer map parts tend to have higher resolution models, as well as higher resolution textures. Not to mention more unique types of models, so all of that adds up to more RAM usage for data.

You monitor RAM, but what is the Windows swap file doing at the same time? And is it on the same drive as the program? That becomes a serious bottleneck.

[Ivanion]

A further update: I found out that I had Windows Superfetch service turned off for some reason. I turned it on and it had a huge effect on performance: now my game has constant 60 FPS, with exception of big urban areas (I tried Porto and Lisbon, where I had roughly 50 FPS) and it doesn't freeze that often. From what I understood that service is necessary for RAM to work in the best way on hardware based on HDD.

Now what I'm trying to understand is another behaviour: for now I'm only doing quick jobs and I noticed that when I complete one and start another, after teleporting (even in the same city where I finished the previous one), the game starts to freeze (but when not freezing it is at 60 FPS). This also happens when taking a ferry or the Eurotunnel. It seems like my laptop "relaxes" because it has to load the new game part and when it has to work again it can't do it properly.
I have both the game and the OS on the same drive as I have only an HDD and it is not partitioned. MrAbner what do you mean by Windows swap file? And could it be related to my "newer" problem?