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I've completely stopped playing Minecraft for this reason, only this: 1.8 is the laggiest and worst update Mojang has ever released. I used to get 120+ FPS in 1.7x, no stuttering, no chunk loading problems, this was also on medium to max settings. Today in 1.8 I get around 40-70 FPS, and it stays in that range; there are an unbearable amount of chunk loading issues and frequent stutters.

Tell me, is this just on my side? Or everyone having problems with this? I know most people were complaining about the lag in the full 1.8 release, but I'm talking about that and the newer releases, like 1.8.7. I have everything lowered to lowest of the lowest, and get many stutters and FPS issues. I even get better FPS on max settings rather than the lowest settings.

For me at least, this was possibly the most disappointing update for me. I can't even play Minecraft itself anymore due to these problems. These "optimizations" Mojang did, did nothing at all.

I'd really appreciate it if someone can explain this odd phenomenon to me, thanks.

Quote from Crafterguy3x3»

I don't get any problems with my FPS, but I have noticed (when flying in creative, and when creating a new world) that there are problems loading chunks. And the delay when exiting a world/server.

I am using OptiFine though, but I'm pretty sure these still happen when I'm using the plain versions.

All of those things you listed also happen to me; I'm also using Optifine. It's not any better in vanilla so I prefer Optifine for the customization.

It seems that a detailed explanation of the lag issues and how Mojang "remedied" some of them I posted was deleted, apparently because somebody was offended by my mentioning of my personal solution to the lag, instead of simply not playing the game anymore (i.e. use mods, backport newer features, or play older versions, assuming you play singleplayer).

I'll repost it with a few changes and additions, minus the "offensive" part:

In my case multiplayer might run well enough since server lag is the biggest factor limiting my render distance to a level that causes other issues (e.g. in 1.7.4 they made it so that chunk loading is affected by render distance to compensate for a big performance drop, without fixing an issue with mob spawning first).

Performance issues have even forced Mojang to remove or nerf some features to compensate; for example, big oaks were removed from forests because they caused a big performance hit even on their computers, which are likely much better than the majority of Minecraft players's computers. True, the issue is partly due to the trees themselves (leaves decaying, which could have been fixed by simply adding an extra log or two at the ends of branches) but also because chunk updates became much more resource intensive.

Similarly, jungles may have been made rarer and caves smaller/less concentrated; the last is likely related to changes in the occlusion culling used to the method that is used on the Pocket Edition (caves caused too much lag to be added to the PE until they implemented this; on the PC they previously used Advanced OpenGL, which may not benefit all computers but had a major impact on my performance, it was also optional, unlike the new OC) - note that PE runs on very different hardware; PE also appears to be the source of the infamous BlockPos and other bad programming habits which explain why memory usage rises so fast, before dropping with a garbage collection.

From looking at the code myself I can also see that functions related to manipulating blocks were significantly complicated, which in particular causes very slow world generation, which is a common issue (chunk loading is so slow because the game can't render chunks that don't exist; one way to see this is to look at the MultiplayerChunkCache in the debug screen; it should be close to the square of (render distance x 2 + 1).

See this post by sp614x which explains the issues with allocating so many short-lived objects: Minecraft 1.8 has so many performance problems that I just don't know where to start with

Also, despite claims of optimizations and performance boosts the system requirements were significantly increased, such that my computer went from meeting most of the recommended requirements (aside from RAM, but that never game me any issues) to failing to meet most of the minimum requirements, particularly the GPU, which advanced by three full generations - when comparing the previous recommended to the current minimum.

Quote from undefined »

-snip-

smh. I'm learning to develop games and will never be like this, or at least try.

You'd think that as the game progresses the system requirements would lower, or at least stay the same through the entire process, because of optimizing, right? My computer doesn't even fit into the minimum requirements...what is Mojang thinking? If they don't start acting now the pressure will build and eventually explode into millions of angry people(as myself) addressing the low FPS and the optimizations that could be done but haven't/won't.

Thanks for explaining, it's really interesting to read long posts such as these, I especially enjoyed reading sp614x's post about this.

To be fair, you can expect the system requirements to increase over time due to additional features; however, the difference between 1.8 and older versions is far beyond what the new features that were added can explain, and some of the features that do demand more performance, such as a higher maximum render distance, or the Super Secret settings (some of which do have a significant effect on performance) are entirely optional. I've also seen people say that they can run a significant number of mods, adding far more items, blocks, mobs, and all, than in 1.8, and mods often aren't well optimized.

Also, while they are rewriting the game to take advantage of newer features in hardware and software the game warns you if you have an outdated graphics card and tell you that you won't be able to play "future versions", suggesting that you should be fine if you don't get the warning. "Future versions" may refer to 1.8 (the warning appears in at least 1.6.4 and 1.7) since the system requirements call for at least OpenGL 2.1, which is the same version the warning tells you that you need.

It'd be interesting if somebody compiled a list of various hardware setups and performance improvement/degradation in 1.8 so a common factor could be singled out but I haven't seen any lists, and some people with weak (strong) computers report improved (worse) performance, or a weaker computer, even below the current minimum requirements, runs the game better overall than a much stronger computer (sometimes this is due to the game running on integrated graphics instead of the dedicated card; the debug screen will tell you what GPU is being used; but this has been ruled out in some cases).