What causes framerate stutter?

[fastcar123]

I'm curious to this. I always thought it was signs of a bottleneck in the cpu, but on older version of directX (9,10, sometimes 11) I get some pretty major stutter on my ryzen system.The older the API the worse the stutter.

When I say major stutter I'm talkie 115 fps then 0 for like a half second then back to 115 over and over again. 

 

I have a ryzen 1700 and a RX 480 8GB

 

So now I'm just wondering. What causes stutter all together?

[ARikozuM]

Anything can cause it. To narrow it down is difficult and usually only applies to that one point. 

 

Bottlenecks aren't just hardware, but software as well. For example, (I'm taking an old game, by the way) Magic Carpet relies on the CPU's speed (frequency) for it's own play speed. Trying the game on a Pentium back in the day would have been a good choice since the CPU was capable of everything for it and the game could run efficiently. Unfortunately, the game didn't too well two years ago when I tried it on my 4690K since the frequency is much higher than the Pentium (we're talking higher IPC and GHz) meaning that it ran at 999Hz and up (my capture software can only display 999 as max). 

Needless to say that the game, while it played well, ran like crap since you'd go around the map with a single press of WASD. 

 

Then you have CPU bottlenecks where the CPU can't keep up with the software. It could either A) be the engine of the game or B) something in the background taking resources or C) both. 

 

GPU bottlenecks are usually easy to diagnose because your frame-rate may drop when you go over a hill and look upon a valley or you're walking up a hill and see nothing but blue (or 50 Shades of Whatever). 

 

Storage bottlenecks are usually the hardest to diagnose since they generally are only noticed with texture pop-in or cell loading (think of most open-world RPG's like the Witcher 3 or World of Warcraft). The disks never send data to the GPU, so that moment that you drop could be the fetching of data to the GPU's VRAM. Cards with low VRAM can sometimes gain a bit of performance when paired with a gaming SSD (SSD storing games) since the latency and IOPS can fill the buffer much faster than an HDD. 

 

My least favorite bottleneck is the OS kind. For some reason, you always get that hankering for Ultima or Icewind Dale, but your OS doesn't f#cking support the damn program anymore (looking at you Win7 and Icewind Dale). 

 

@fastcar123

[fastcar123]

Interesting. I was sure it was a CPU thing. i'm guessing its hard to pinpoint exactly where the issue is?

[RadiatingLight]

it could just be the game, loading in new stuff inneficiently

[fastcar123]

all my games and programs run from a 1TB SSHD. could that be the issue?

[fastcar123]

it happens in burn in test like no tomorrow. I cant remember exactly what games. 

I think the original skyrim did it. I don't remember all the games that it did it with

 

[fastcar123]

ok sorry for the late response to all this. I wanted to do extensive tests.

I have concluded that every game in my steam library and battle net library stutter to some degree. Some more than others.

I have tried different things with ram cup and graphics overclocking. None of these things made an improvement that was very noticeable. 

I also tried running everything at stock speeds with pretty much the same result.

The one thing I have not yet tried due to lack of space is install a game directly to the m.2 ssd. 

 

I am stumped at this point. I thought this computer's specs would be really good. 

something else that i feel like i should try is try the same psu, hdd, graphics card and peripherals on my old fx6300. I think doing this would at least narrow it down. What do you think?

[Vacras]

Did you try reinstalling the gpu drivers? 

Also have you upgraded/modified your OS in any way recently? I've had stuttering issues after upgrading to windows 10 and only a clean install resolved the issue.

[Moress]

How much Ram do you have? Because those hard drops in fps could be a ram issue. Perhaps ypu have something eating up a lot of ram in the background?

[fastcar123]

3 hours ago, Vacras said:

Did you try reinstalling the gpu drivers? 

Also have you upgraded/modified your OS in any way recently? I've had stuttering issues after upgrading to windows 10 and only a clean install resolved the issue.

not that I'm aware of. The is has been windows 10 since I built the computer. It had the issue before the creators update as well. I am also currently running the latest Radeon drivers. I think it's 17.6. Not 100% since I'm not at my desk currently. But I know I update everytime there's one available. Radeon updates seem to have no effect though.

 

3 hours ago, Moress said:

How much Ram do you have? Because those hard drops in fps could be a ram issue. Perhaps ypu have something eating up a lot of ram in the background?

i have 16 GB installed. Nzxt cam reports a max use of 13 in intense work loads.

[Vacras]

Hm I would still suggest a clean install of everything before you hassle around with all the hardware testing one by one.

[thedons1983]

On 6/10/2017 at 2:58 AM, fastcar123 said:

Interesting. I was sure it was a CPU thing. i'm guessing its hard to pinpoint exactly where the issue is?

I doubt it, the CPU will have an effect of course, but you would notice other inconsistencies in general use of the system in my opinion, if the CPU was truly to blame.

 

On 6/10/2017 at 3:00 AM, fastcar123 said:

all my games and programs run from a 1TB SSHD. could that be the issue?

No. I had a GTX 670 back in the day with major micro-stuttering in every game that I played, and this was consistent whether a game was installed on an SSD or an HDD. What solved it for me in the end, was replacing the system with one than contained a GTX 760.

 

I sold that system (the 670), and the buyer seemed very happy, but... I think that card was bust, looking back, as it performed according to spec but still produced awful stuttering in every single game that I played.

 

12 hours ago, fastcar123 said:

ok sorry for the late response to all this. I wanted to do extensive tests.

I have concluded that every game in my steam library and battle net library stutter to some degree. Some more than others.

I have tried different things with ram cup and graphics overclocking. None of these things made an improvement that was very noticeable. 

I also tried running everything at stock speeds with pretty much the same result.

The one thing I have not yet tried due to lack of space is install a game directly to the m.2 ssd. 

 

I am stumped at this point. I thought this computer's specs would be really good. 

something else that i feel like i should try is try the same psu, hdd, graphics card and peripherals on my old fx6300. I think doing this would at least narrow it down. What do you think?

Try a clean OS. Seriously, it might fix everything, so try it!

 

If that doesn't work, then take the card back, as it is not right in my book. Some games stutter all by themselves, but if all games stutter all the time, then the system is to blame, and the GPU is the most likely culprit.

[fastcar123]

16 minutes ago, thedons1983 said:

I doubt it, the CPU will have an effect of course, but you would notice other inconsistencies in general use of the system in my opinion, if the CPU was truly to blame.

 

No. I had a GTX 670 back in the day with major micro-stuttering in every game that I played, and this was consistent whether a game was installed on an SSD or an HDD. What solved it for me in the end, was replacing the system with one than contained a GTX 760.

 

I sold that system (the 670), and the buyer seemed very happy, but... I think that card was bust, looking back, as it performed according to spec but still produced awful stuttering in every single game that I played.

 

Try a clean OS. Seriously, it might fix everything, so try it!

 

If that doesn't work, then take the card back, as it is not right in my book. Some games stutter all by themselves, but if all games stutter all the time, then the system is to blame, and the GPU is the most likely culprit.

I almost wonder if my 480 is a bust. I guess I could try one of the R7 360s that I have lying around. Think, that would prove to be a useful test?

 

I can try a freash install of windows, as I do have an SSD that is barely being used at the moment. I could just move that stuff of the drive and then load windows. I would need to remove my m.2 drive though. If It helps at all the install of windows was fresh back when I built the system. The problem is though once I had installed games, I had already cluttered the drive with all kinds of other stuff. I might do that tomorrow. But reactivating windows will be a huge pain in the ass. Could I try a fresh install of windows with nothing else loaded and try to run games from the HDD?

 

I could also try safe mode to see if things straighten out there.

[thedons1983]

On 6/24/2017 at 5:25 AM, fastcar123 said:

I almost wonder if my 480 is a bust. I guess I could try one of the R7 360s that I have lying around. Think, that would prove to be a useful test?

 

I can try a freash install of windows, as I do have an SSD that is barely being used at the moment. I could just move that stuff of the drive and then load windows. I would need to remove my m.2 drive though. If It helps at all the install of windows was fresh back when I built the system. The problem is though once I had installed games, I had already cluttered the drive with all kinds of other stuff. I might do that tomorrow. But reactivating windows will be a huge pain in the ass. Could I try a fresh install of windows with nothing else loaded and try to run games from the HDD?

 

I could also try safe mode to see if things straighten out there.

Sorry for the late reply mate... but, yes I think trying another GPU would be great idea! If they stutter too, then something else is up, but if not then the 480 does sound dodgy unfortunately. Although, it could just be some stupid driver problem, that a clean install might fix!

 

Are you on Windows 10? If so reactivation "should" be easy... Skip all "enter activation code" type pop-ups, and just click "next" during the install and once you've entered your Microsoft account details, the OS will auto-activate itself once you are at the desktop and have an internet connection (in my experience). Yes, I see no problem with doing a clean install and running the games on the HDD, but you could always try an SSD install of one or two games, just to see if the problem persists when the games run on the faster storage.

 

Also, once you are running games, make sure that your GPU clock speeds are where they should be... IE, check them in Precision-X or MSI Afterburner or whatever, and make sure they are not jumping up and down too much. If they are lower then you would expect (I'm on Nvidia, so I don't have current experience of AMD GPU's, so this might be irrelevant), then you might try to force the card into high performance mode or something like that. For example, if I play GTAIV on my rig, the GPU will not boost properly (clock speeds jump up and down all over the place due to low GPU usage), unless I manually select "Prefer Maximum Performance" in the driver settings. After doing so, clocks are stable at their maximum level, and FPS is much more consistent.

[chrisz5z]

On 6/9/2017 at 8:54 PM, fastcar123 said:

I'm curious to this. I always thought it was signs of a bottleneck in the cpu, but on older version of directX (9,10, sometimes 11) I get some pretty major stutter on my ryzen system.The older the API the worse the stutter.

When I say major stutter I'm talkie 115 fps then 0 for like a half second then back to 115 over and over again. 

 

I have a ryzen 1700 and a RX 480 8GB

 

So now I'm just wondering. What causes stutter all together?

With your Ryzen 1700, have you tried turning off SMT? (simultaneous multithreading)

 

Over at GamersNexus, they showed huge gains in the 1% & 0.1% framerates when disabling SMT. Low framerates in those will cause serious stuttering due to the framerate dropping/raising so often.

 

You can read up on it here: http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2835-amd-ryzen-r7-1700-smt-off-overclock-benchmarks