u/Inner-Jackfruit4002

It's getting worse by the year, I've played this game for 10k hours now and honestly its gotten unplayable. Yesterday I've started my monday wipe on a main server and already got 5 guys banned. The amount of people that use ESP just for diving / sub marine purposes is unreal at the moment because they dont get caught. There is no point in playing anymore because in a server with 600+ pop you're facing atleast 5% cheaters if you're lucky. Servers do not work togheter with Facepunch itself, when they're banned they just go a different server and start all over. This has to change somehow.

'm trying to diagnose severe microstuttering in Rust and I'm looking for people with similar hardware/behavior.

Specs:

• Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
• 32GB DDR5-6000
• Samsung 990 Pro NVMe
• MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi
• Windows 11
• 240Hz monitor

The weird part is that average FPS is not the problem. I can be around 180-220+ FPS while the game feels extremely choppy due to frametime spikes.

The issue scales heavily with server population / players:

• Low-pop vanilla servers are dramatically smoother.
• High-pop official servers (~500 players) can feel terrible.
• More players/active player workload seems to make it worse.
• GPU usage can have plenty of headroom when the stutters happen.

I've done CapFrameX captures and the large frametime spikes line up almost entirely with CPU Active, not GPU Active. During one large hitch, for example, frametime was ~23.6ms, CPU Active ~21.7ms, while GPU Active was only ~3ms.

I also captured the issue with Windows Performance Analyzer. Rust has a very heavily loaded Unity/Rust thread, while total CPU usage isn't particularly high. Because Unity/Rust symbols aren't available, I can't identify the exact function responsible.

The most interesting test so far: disabling SMT in BIOS made the game noticeably smoother on the same high-pop server.

It didn't completely eliminate the CPU-side frametime spikes, but the difference in actual gameplay was significant. This makes me wonder if Rust's player/entity workload is interacting badly with SMT/thread scheduling on my system.

I've already ruled out a lot of basic stuff:

• CPU temperatures/clocks are normal
• CPU/RAM stress testing is stable
• GPU isn't maxed during many of the stutters
• Changing graphics settings doesn't solve it
• GC collection didn't solve it
• Player culling settings can affect it but don't fix it
• G-SYNC/V-Sync isn't the root cause

Another important detail: after a completely clean Windows installation, Rust initially ran perfectly smoothly on this exact PC. After a later hard system freeze/reboot, the severe stuttering returned.

I'm not claiming this proves a Rust/Unity bug or an SMT bug. I'm trying to figure out why player-heavy Rust workloads produce such bad CPU-side frametime spikes on this system.

Anyone with a 7800X3D / 9800X3D / other X3D CPU seeing the same high-pop vs low-pop behavior?

I'd especially be interested if someone can compare Rust with SMT enabled vs disabled and capture frametimes with CapFrameX.

I’ve been troubleshooting a really strange Rust performance issue for a while now.

The problem:
Rust often reports around 150–200+ FPS, but the game does not look or feel remotely that smooth. It can feel closer to 50–60 FPS, with constant microstuttering / bad frame pacing. Sometimes there are small hitches or what almost looks like tiny visual pullbacks.

It gets noticeably worse when there are a lot of players nearby. A lot of static objects/buildings don't seem to have the same effect.

Specs:

• Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
• 32GB DDR5-6000 (EXPO)
• MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi
• Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe
• 240Hz AOC monitor
• Windows 11
• Ethernet via Realtek 2.5GbE

Things I have already tested / checked:

• Completely clean Windows 11 installation
• Fresh AMD chipset drivers
• Fresh NVIDIA drivers
• Fresh Realtek LAN driver
• Windows fully updated
• BIOS updated
• EXPO enabled, RAM running at 6000 MT/s
• Page file set to System Managed
• G-SYNC completely disabled
• VSync disabled
• Confirmed Windows/monitor is running at 240Hz
• Dynamic Refresh Rate disabled
• Tested fullscreen
• Tested much lower resolution
• Tested Rust on extremely low graphics settings
• Disabled/avoided overlays and unnecessary background software
• Tested without Armoury Crate/MSI Center/RGB software
• Checked temperatures with HWiNFO
• CPU does not thermal throttle
• GPU does not thermal throttle
• CPU clocks around 5.2GHz while playing
• GPU temperatures are very low (~50–60°C)
• CPU temperatures are normal for a 9800X3D
• Checked RAM/VRAM usage
• Rust can use ~14GB VRAM, but VRAM isn't actually exhausted
• Checked SSD activity
• Checked network activity
• Disabled Realtek Energy Efficient Ethernet / Advanced EEE
• Looked at Interrupt Moderation
• Tested mouse polling rate as a possible cause
• Rust gc.buffer is already around 4GB, so increasing it to 4096 doesn't make a meaningful difference
• Used CapFrameX to measure frametimes
• Used HWiNFO logging
• Used LatencyMon
• Recorded a Windows Performance Recorder trace and analyzed it in Windows Performance Analyzer
• Checked DPC/ISR activity for NVIDIA (nvlddmkm.sys), DirectX (dxgkrnl.sys), USB, NDIS/network, storage, etc.
• No obvious huge DPC/ISR latency culprit
• WPA shows some Rust/Unity threads are heavily loaded, but nothing that clearly explains the problem
• Checked individual logical CPU usage: no cores appear permanently parked or obviously stuck at 100%
• Lowering resolution/graphics reduces GPU usage, but doesn't seem to explain the bad frame pacing by itself

Monday servers should not exist.

What other options would there be to keep the pop?

I was playing Rustoria eu main this force, and after two days the server was below 400 pop. Thats just insane for a server like Rustoria and the size of the map.

How could they prevent servers from dying this quick?

Hi,

Are there any premium servers around that require more than lets say $50 worth of skins and a certain amount of hours? Cheating is getting out of control and I was just wondering whether this was a thing or not