Inconsistent performance

[RPJX4]

So, I bought a PC for gaming 2 years ago and decided to get the xfx rx 480 with a refernce cooler, because I had no other choice. It was maintaining pretty good frames with the Battlefield 1 Beta on ultra graphics without droping under 100.

The next year I started work and I used my computed only for that, and I played a couple little indie games in my free time.

Then a couple months ago I decided to get back into PC gaming and I realized that the games don't feel smooth at all. The frames are constantly changing every second and the gap between them sometimes reaches 30-40 fps. It goes like 80, then 46, then 62, then 95, all in a couple of seconds and it feels like a stutter.

I tested The Evil Within 2, Shadow of War, Metro 2033, Fortnite and even Far cry 2. All of them have inconsistent fps and not only it's unenjoyable, sometimes it's unplayalbe. The GPU usage is staying at 100% in all games, and a lot of times drops to a random number and then goes to 100% again. I noticed also that the usage can also go to a high percent and then go to 0 when I'm watchin a video which make it stutter a bit from time to time, although it isn't very noticeable there . I have no idea what is causing this, but if it's a bottleneck or something like this, I can upgrade.

My parts: 
CPU: Intel Core i5 4460 3.2 GHz
Motherboard: ASUS H81M-K
GPU: XFX rx 480 black edition (with refernce cooler)
RAM: 8GB DDR3
PSU: Corsair VS Series VS650
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

[hammyboy31]

Have you checked to see if all drivers are updated? I updated mine and my frames fixed

[SageOfSpice]

If it's on the reference cooler, I'd check that it's not overheating. I've noticed on my reference 480 that it tends to throttle the card before it even begins to ramp up the fan speed. Radeon Settings seems pretty lazy like that.