Micro stuttering

Micro stuttering is a quality defect that manifests as irregular delays between frames rendered by a graphics processing unit (GPU).

In lower frame rates,[note 1] when this effect may be apparent the moving video appears to stutter, resulting in a degraded gameplay experience in the case of a video game, even though the frame rate seems high enough[note 2] to provide a smooth experience.

Micro stuttering is inherent to multi-GPU configurations using alternate frame rendering (AFR), such as Nvidia SLi and AMD CrossFireX but can also exist in certain cases in single-GPU systems.

A configuration with two Radeon HD 7970 in CrossFireX-mode, on the other hand, showed an 85% variation in frame delays, compared to 7% for a single card, indicating large amounts of micro stuttering.

[6] The software program RadeonPro can be used to significantly reduce or eliminate the effects of micro-stuttering when using AMD graphics cards in CrossFire.

A depiction of 5 display refresh cycles with what may be shown during a micro stuttering case. Each colored section represents one of the GPU's frame buffer and each color change represents a frame buffer swap. Assuming a 60 Hz refresh rate, a benchmark tool may report this as 144 frames per second. However, the user will perceive less due to some frames existing for a tiny fraction of a display's refresh cycle.