How to fix memory bandwidth saturation in TLOU Part 1?
The game was hitching hard whenever I entered city ruins. My monitoring tools showed RAM usage hitting 92-96% with bandwidth completely saturated. I initially tried increasing the page file size, but that just hammered my disk I/O and actually increased the stuttering by 30%. It was a complete waste of time. I decided to go manual with the timings, locking them at 16-18-18-36 and bumping the RAM voltage from 1.2V to 1.35V. In the sensor panel, memory latency dropped from 88-102ns to a tight 76-82ns, and frame intervals stabilized from 18.5-26.1ms to 13.2-15.4ms. I'll admit, my first attempt at aggressive overclocking just gave me a loop of BSODs. It took three CMOS clears and some very careful voltage stepping to find this sweet spot. Even though the RAM temps sit around 52-58℃ under load, the fluidity is night and day. After comparing the latency distribution in a stress test, the memory scheduling is no longer blocking the CPU, with temps holding steady at 52-58℃.
