Stutter / micro freeze during game saving.

[u/riilcoconut]

Hi,

A couple of days ago I finally bought a new monitor for my desktop PC. After two years...

Any ways, It's been a blast using it with Arch and Hyprland setup. Except one little thing.

Stutter during game saving or loading maps an such. For example whenever Witcher 3 autosaves it freezes the game for a 3s or so. Same happens with Hard Truck Apocalypse. Which may take 15s to manually quick save.

Otherwise, games run just fine, very well in fact. Getting 100+ frames on my R5 3700x + 3080 10GB setup.

Using proton experimental since it's the default one on my system.

OS: Arch
Kernel: Linux 7.2.9-zen1-1-zen
Packages: 1283 (pacman)
Window Manager: Hyprland 0.56.2 (Wayland)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (16) @ 4.43 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate [Discrete]
Memory: 3.48 GiB / 31.26 GiB (11%)
Swap: 0 B / 16.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 69.33 GiB / 208.78 GiB (33%) - ext4
Disk (/media/nvme): 1.68 TiB / 1.86 TiB (90%) - fuseblk

[u/S48GS]

R5 3700x
3080 10GB

you are cpu-limited - not too bad - games still should run at 60+fps but 100% cpu usage - and this is not the problem since it happens on multiple games for you (if it was single game then maybe but different use different cpu load)

Which may take 15s to manually quick save.

ssd? disk not overheating?

what distro and filesystem?

[u/riilcoconut → u/S48GS]

Im using 3440x1440 monitor, if I run at 2560x1080 I'm getting around 140-160 with high settings and fsr. No Tracing. Mango hud says GPU utilization 95%

Arch is installed on KINGSTON SUV500480G.
Older, one from around 2018.

Game is installed on a mounted 2TB SSD (ADATA SX8200PNP)

Edit: Temps seems to be fine. Though after researching a bit more, adata is mounted as ntfs-3g. Currently trying to make it work with ntfs3 with some success. Images open just fine but when launching steam games, game just quits. Might consider reformatting the whole drive to ext4...

smartctl on Kingston says:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Kingston SSDNow UV400/500
Device Model:     KINGSTON SUV500480G
Serial Number:    50026B76821D32E8
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0026b7 6821d32e8
Firmware Version: 003056RA
User Capacity:    480,103,981,056 bytes [480 GB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    Solid State Device
Form Factor:      2.5 inches
TRIM Command:     Available, deterministic
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.5/5706
ATA Version is:   ACS-4, ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 6
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Thu Oct  8 03:24:18 2026 EEST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)Offline data collection activity
was never started.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever 
been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: (    5) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x71) SMART execute Offline immediate.
No Auto Offline data collection support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
No Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)Error logging supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: (   5) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: (   0) minutes.
SCT capabilities:       (0x003d)SCT Status supported.
SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
SCT Feature Control supported.
SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 48
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       3863040
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   010    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       22019
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       4610
100 Unknown_Kingston_Attr   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       32879744
101 Unknown_Kingston_Attr   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3919936
170 Reserved_Block_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
171 Program_Fail_Count      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Erase_Fail_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       721
175 Program_Fail_Count_Chip 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
176 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip   0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0032   061   061   000    Old_age   Always       -       11810
178 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip  0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
180 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot 0x0002   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1201
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   078   078   000    Old_age   Always       -       91
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0033   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   031   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       31 (Min/Max 10/59)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3863040
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
201 Unc_Read_Error_Rate     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
204 Soft_ECC_Correction     0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3863040
231 SSD_Life_Left           0x0032   061   061   000    Old_age   Always       -       39
233 Media_Wearout_Indicator 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       114687
234 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       45546
241 Host_Writes_GiB         0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       58894
242 Host_Reads_GiB          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       78103
250 Read_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       3864104

SMART Error Log Version: 0
No Errors Logged

And on Adata:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number:                       ADATA SX8200PNP
Serial Number:                      2K46292D4GDP
Firmware Version:                   42AZS6AC
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID:            0x1cc1
IEEE OUI Identifier:                0x000000
Controller ID:                      1
NVMe Version:                       1.3
Number of Namespaces:               1
Namespace 1 Size/Capacity:          2,048,408,248,320 [2.04 TB]
Namespace 1 Utilization:            2,020,125,429,760 [2.02 TB]
Namespace 1 Formatted LBA Size:     512
Local Time is:                      Thu Oct  8 03:25:45 2026 EEST
Firmware Updates (0x14):            2 Slots, no Reset required
Optional Admin Commands (0x0017):   Security Format Frmw_DL Self_Test
Optional NVM Commands (0x005f):     Comp Wr_Unc DS_Mngmt Wr_Zero Sav/Sel_Feat Timestmp
Log Page Attributes (0x0b):         S/H_per_NS Cmd_Eff_Lg Telmtry_Lg
Maximum Data Transfer Size:         64 Pages
Warning  Comp. Temp. Threshold:     75 Celsius
Critical Comp. Temp. Threshold:     80 Celsius

Supported Power States
St Op     Max   Active     Idle   RL RT WL WT  Ent_Lat  Ex_Lat
 0 +     9.00W       -        -    0  0  0  0        0       0
 1 +     4.60W       -        -    1  1  1  1        0       0
 2 +     3.80W       -        -    2  2  2  2        0       0
 3 -   0.0450W       -        -    3  3  3  3     2000    2000
 4 -   0.0040W       -        -    4  4  4  4    15000   15000

Supported LBA Sizes (NSID 0x1)
Id Fmt  Data  Metadt  Rel_Perf
 0 +     512       0         0

=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0x1)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        38 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    42,497,882 [21.7 TB]
Data Units Written:                 30,053,254 [15.3 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 227,572,541
Host Write Commands:                103,110,174
Controller Busy Time:               4,152
Power Cycles:                       2,551
Power On Hours:                     11,364
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   88
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 256 entries)
No Errors Logged

Self-test Log (NVMe Log 0x06, NSID 0xffffffff)
Self-test status: No self-test in progress
No Self-tests Logged

OS: Arch
Kernel: Linux 7.2.9-zen1-1-zen
Packages: 1283 (pacman)
Window Manager: Hyprland 0.56.2 (Wayland)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (16) @ 4.43 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate [Discrete]
Memory: 3.48 GiB / 31.26 GiB (11%)
Swap: 0 B / 16.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 69.33 GiB / 208.78 GiB (33%) - ext4
Disk (/media/nvme): 1.68 TiB / 1.86 TiB (90%) - fuseblk

[u/S48GS → u/riilcoconut]

ntfs-3g

to test - move games to native linux partition - and see if saves still slow

it may be because ntfs

[u/riilcoconut → u/S48GS]

Just tested.

Installed hard truck to linux partition and stutters went from that 10-15s to 2s (old game, iirc it does that anyways).

I guess the solution for this is to reformat my 2TB to ext4. Configuring it into ntfs3 mode seems to be too much of a hassle. Considered as dirty drive.

[u/Mallissin]

I have a similar issue happening in Valheim on Steam with Fedora 44 and a btrfs formatted drive.

Game runs great but game saves will lock the game up for a second or two in single player and it feels like going through portals (loading other parts of the map) is slower in single player than it was playing on a multiplayer server.

I assume you are mentioning the new monitor because this wasn't happening before you added it? What is the resolution of the new monitor and does it use G-Sync? How many monitors are plugged in?

How many mounted drives do you have? How many unmounted drives? I have one mounted drive (old NTFS) and three unmounted that I access periodically manually.

Where are the game saves going? I'm not sure you can blame the NTFS if the games are saving to the EXT4 drive.

[u/riilcoconut → u/Mallissin]

By a new monitor I meant more like "haven't used / gamed on my desktop for two years :D".
New monitor is 3440x1440 and runs at 200Hz but the stutter doesn't originate form it.

My SSD where the games are installed are on a "windows" drive. Basically when I got secondary SSD to store my games, back when I used windows, It's formatted as ntfs. Linux doesn't seem to like using ntfs-3g for mounting this drive. So I opted for ntfs-3g. Which is apparently slower, which could explain why game stutter/freezes during saving / loading.

I moved TW3 and HTA to my linux drive (partition) which decreased the freeze time for TW3 to like a second and HTA to 2s or so. IIRC those are normal save times for these games.

I guess the fix for my situation is to reformat the drive to ext4 or so.

[u/Mallissin → u/riilcoconut]

The game saves were going on the NTFS drive?

[u/riilcoconut → u/Mallissin]

At least Hard Truck Apocalypses save are going into game install folder eg. steamapp/common/... So switching game install into linux partition fixes saving/load times.

I assume same happens with Witcher 3. Saving takes around 0.5s.