[LINUX] Launch of new patch while in match causes game to stutter

[LuyeT]

Your system information

• System information from steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) in a [gist] https://gist.github.com/LuyeT/54176348e01b00cab639835477989772
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes]
• Are you using the latest stable video driver available for your system? [Yes]
• Have you verified the game files?: [Yes]

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen. Please link any large pastes as a Github Gist.

Occasionally the renderer will stutter, though the fps counter still shows above 90. I'm guessing its one mini-stutter for each frame. This only happens when a new patch is launched (of whatever significance) while I'm in a match. If its a 50 mb patch with some new hats, its not much of an issue because the updating will take like 10 seconds, but its a problem if its a major patch as most players dont have the patience to keep the game paused for 5-10 mins or so.

The issue has been around for as long (or longer) as I've been playing since my hiatus, around August or so.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Be in a match.
2. Patch launches while you are in a match.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @LuyeT, this is not a game-specific issue and Steam -> Settings -> Downloads -> Allow downloads during gameplay should control this behavior. It is not enabled by default.

[LuyeT]

Hi.

I should have specified that is not the case. It's not that the patch is downloading, because its only after I exit dota that the download starts. The downloading setting is already turned off.

It is that the availability of a patch, causes the renderer in the current match to stutter. It is not a networking issue.

[LuyeT]

"Occasionally the renderer will stutter, though the fps counter still shows above 90. I'm guessing its one mini-stutter for each frame. "

I'm sorry, this should read: "The issue happens occasionally, whenever any patch is released during an active game. The renderer will ministutter many times per second until dota is restarted. Though the fps counter still shows above 90. I'm guessing its one mini-stutter for each frame. "

[Turmfalke2]

Don't think this is linux specific, what you are probably seeing is server side io congestion.

[LuyeT]

Any update on this issue? This is still happening. Intermittenly since first report, twice now over the past 2 days. What happens is that each core of the CPU gets locked down with 100% load one by one. Both times in an active match when client update gets pushed (even though download doesn't start). First time I managed to catch it quickly enough for dota to gracefully terminate, 2nd time I could only get to htop fast enough to send SIGKILL signal, but not apparantly fast enough it seems that the dota process was able to receive it. Had to do an ungraceful reboot with REISUB to regain control of computer. Still using same hardware specs as original report.

Correlation does not equal causation of course, but i've seen there's a client update 100% of the time when this event happens. With my observations from yesterday however, it seems clear that the fault does not lie with the renderer, but rather that the renderer stutters as the CPU is getting gradually choked into full lockdown. I could only tell from the load distrubution of cores at the top part of htop. Did not have the time to check wether hundreds of threads were being spawned, though I suspect that to be the case.