Do some MotherBoard and CPU combos slow each other down?

[Shadowdiamond201]

The first paragraph of this forum may not seem like it fits in this topic board but i wanted a bit of backstory to the reason i am asking this.

I was able to get my hands on GTA 5 while it was free and have been trying to play it. 
It seems to run fine for most areas on low-medium settings for a little bit but when my computer starts getting hot it has some serious stutter issues where driving a car will cause my game to freeze for a quarter of a second then resume and then freeze again for a quarter of a second.
Because of this i tend to avoid as much driving as possible after about half an hour of playing because then it starts the previously mentioned stutter.

 

I have searched around on the internet for a solution but the solution for this stutter issue bounces all over the place and it is impossible to pinpoint which one will help me.

For those wondering i have the following specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G w/ radeon vega graphics

GPU: Radeon RX500/500 series

RAM: 8GB with 6GB usable

I forgot the motherboard and other stuff i bought computer online almost a year ago

 

The reason i ask this question is because i found this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Fu7QutYwY

 

I am not sure if what they say is 100% true but i did try what they recommended but decreased CPU max power to 90% and it seemed to help delay the time it took for the stutters to start.

 

Sorry if i took too long to get to the point i just really felt it needed explaining.

 

[Jurrunio]

CPU or board thermal problem. You can check CPU thermals with softwsre like Hwinfo (sensor mode). Not mentioning the board is also a red flag that you just bought some crappy board that cant even run a wuad cire CPU full tilt.

[mariushm]

I doubt it's a thermal problem because the 2200g doesn't use a lot of power and you also seem to not use the integrated graphics which further reduces the cpu's power consumption.

The 2200g processor will consume up to around 50 watts or so of power, that's a small amount - even a lousy VRM with poor conversion efficiency would only dissipate around 5 watts as heat into the motherboard, and that can be easily dissipated into the motherboard pcb if there's no heatsinks.

 

But just to be sure, open the case and make sure the cooler on the cpu is working fine (spinning) and maybe use a toothbrush or something to clean the dust from the metal fins of the heatsink.

 

I suspect it's a memory issue (too little) , coupled with a mechanical drive that's too fragmented or a cheap slow SSD that may be nearly full , which makes the game take a lot of time to read data from the game files.

 

If you are indeed using a dedicated video card, first thing you should do is to go in bios and find the option that configures how much ram it's reserved for the integrated graphics - right now it may be set to 2 GB and it's pointless to reserve that much.  Lower it to 512 MB or lower values (if lower values are available)

This should eliberate some of those 2 GB reserved and you'll have more actual ram usable by the game, so the game will cache more stuff in ram and have readily available when you're moving in various areas of the game, so it won't stutter (which can happen when it takes too much time to read files from hard drive/ssd and prepare them to be sent into the video card)

 

Another important point ... do you have a single stick of memory or two sticks?  If you have a single stick of memory, upgrading to TWO sticks of memory is worth it, you'll get between 5 and 15% performance increase in applications and games just by having memory in dual channel mode, using two sticks.

In some cases it was noticed that using single channel actually causes those hiccups or random drops in framerate.

 

If you're using a mechanical drive, defragment it. If you have a SSD that's nearly full, free some space and then use TRIM on the SSD.

I recommend O&O Defrag, there's a 30 day trial version on their website. You can also use it to issue TRIM command to SSDs, has the option in the menu.

 

If none of the above help, you can try to see if it's indeed a VRM issue (overheating) which is unlikely. 

Easiest fix is to open the case of your computer and get a case fan (maybe unscrew it from the back of the case if you have one there and use some string or zip ties to position the fan between the cpu fan and the back connectors, that's where the VRM chips are.

Basically, fan blowing down in that area will cool the VRM so it shouldn't overheat now.  If you can, also leave the case open for the moment, the extra air flow will help.

The fan blowing down will also partially help the cpu cooler by bringing more air flow into the region of the board.

 

Now play and see if you still have the problems. IF they're less often or no longer occur, yeah that was the issue, overheating.

 

 

edit: to a lesser degree (barely worth mentioning) is that the 2200g being a cpu with integrated graphics only has 8 pci-e lanes going to pci-e slot for the dedicated graphics, which means a tiny bit slower transfer of data from cpu to video card.

If the game constantly has to "upload" data into the video card because the video card has little amount of dedicated memory (for example less than 4GB) that coupled with reduced amount of ram available to the game (6GB cause you reseved 2 for the integrated graphics) could result in such hiccups

[SpaceGhostC2C]

It sounds like you're using the integrated graphics instead of the dedicated GPU. 

[Shadowdiamond201]

On 5/27/2020 at 12:28 AM, mariushm said:

I suspect it's a memory issue (too little) , coupled with a mechanical drive that's too fragmented or a cheap slow SSD that may be nearly full , which makes the game take a lot of time to read data from the game files.

 

Another important point ... do you have a single stick of memory or two sticks?  If you have a single stick of memory, upgrading to TWO sticks of memory is worth it, you'll get between 5 and 15% performance increase in applications and games just by having memory in dual channel mode, using two sticks.

In some cases it was noticed that using single channel actually causes those hiccups or random drops in framerate.

After doing further testing my CPU and GPU handles GTA 5 without too much trouble. The hottest i saw them get during play was about 46C. 

I think my GPU does have a little too much ram assigned to it as it only ever uses about 1GB of the 2GB it has assigned. But i don't know how to change what it and haven't wanted to mess with it out of fear I might mess it up.

 

I messed around with steam games and other files. I removed over 250 GB from my 1TB 7200 RPM harddrive.

I think i might look into getting an SSD but i figured i would get another stick of RAM first.

I have 8GB on one stick of ram but i don't remember other details aside from it is an 8GB with 2GB of it being used for the GPU.
I don't know how to check it either.