Frame time spikes beyond 50ms resulting in visual stutter

mashedmattato · January 5, 2019

UserBenchmarks: Game 130%, Desk 105%, Work 83%
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K - 101.1%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080-Ti - 166.1%
SSD: Sandisk X400 M.2 2280 128GB - 97.8%
SSD: SanDisk SSD Plus 240GB - 68.6%
HDD: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB (2013) - 85.5%
HDD: Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB (2016) - 101.3%
RAM: Corsair CMW16GX4M2C3600C18 2x8GB - 98.7%
MBD: MSI Z270 GAMING M5 (MS-7A78)

My user-benchmark scores came back great. I've been trying to solve my frame time issues for months.

-In games like Monster Hunter World where Riva Tuner caps my fps to 60fps in an effort to maintain a steady 16.6 ms frame time, I notice hitches that upon looking at my MSI afterburner graphs are correlated to frame times spiking up beyond 50ms. The hitches are annoying but don't ruin the game.

-The Witcher 3 has it really rough seeing frame time spikes almost any time I enter a village, ride around the country side, or sometimes even when I initiate combat. This makes me feel like something ins't getting loaded on time causing a frame to get stuck resulting in a high frame time spike. But I can't prove that as my MSI afterburner graphs don't correlate the high frame times to anything else.
However, my favorite PC game is CS:GO and the frame time spikes in that game happen much more frequently and directly affect my gameplay, and the frame time spikes are so frequent that they kind of ruin the game for me. These issues are worse in some games and non existent in others. For example it seems that my PC has no issues with Overwatch despite that also being a game that requires a constant 141 fps, the frametime never has such drastic spikes to the point that I would ever notice them.

-I have confirmed that the GPU, CPU, power supply, and RAM are all working as they should through both rigorous testing as well trying a spare replacement for each.

-I have tried installing Windows on both of my SSDs just in case one of them was problematic. I have also tried playing games off of all of my storage drives. No difference really other than loading times.

-I am aware of the Windows standby memory issue and have rolled Windows 10 back to the 1607 build as it seems to keep the standby memory stutters at bay.

-I have installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled all drivers for all components, tried different BIOS builds for my mobo and have tinkered with just about every Nvidia control panel setting in an effort to alleviate stutters that result from frame time spikes but nothing seems to get rid of them entirely. I have also tried testing with MSI afterburner and Riva Tuner both turned on and off, and I still feel hitching.

- I have under and overclocked my CPU and Ram with tons of different configs and it seems that clock speeds are irrelevant in my case.

-I suspect that the frame time spikes have something to do with texture or data streaming. It seems the stutters occur as a game world is loading in data especially textures but the issue is rather sporadic so I can't pinpoint exact reasons for why my system is unable to push out frames at a consistent pace.

-The only component not entirely replaced is my mobo, and I hope that perhaps there is an issue with it that is causing texture loading to cause the system to stall for 40ish extra ms resulting in these frame time spike stutters.

TLDR: Having established that my GPU, CPU, RAM, and Power supply are all working properly, what should I look towards to diagnose the cause of my games having large frame time spikes that can exceed 50ms despite having otherwise consistent frame rates. I'm considering replacing my motherboard as it's the only component that I haven't proven to be working properly. And if you have had these frame time spikes in your high end systems, what have you done to minimize them or make them less noticeable? At this point i'm so sensitive to frame time spikes and inconsistencies that I can rarely enjoy a game as I feel my PC isn't working properly and I can't seem to escape my desire to fix it!

narrdarr · January 5, 2019

what monitor do you have?

and have you tried not run chrome at all? it been a problem for a number of us.

Swes · January 5, 2019

Even with my SLI 1080 Ti setup everyone in a while I would get a stutter here and there. If you are GPU limited which usually is the case this can just be the way it is. Sometimes graphics OCs generate instability due to the way boost 3.0 works try and relaxing the core frequency a bit helps. I did this with my cards for a few games id tone down the OC and get better frame time consistency.

mashedmattato · January 5, 2019

31 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

what monitor do you have?

and have you tried not run chrome at all? it been a problem for a number of us.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-27-led-qhd-g-sync-monitor-black/5293502.p?skuId=5293502

G-Sync on and off in testing didn't seem to make a difference

And no I've not tried disabling Chrome I'll see if that makes any difference.

mashedmattato · January 5, 2019

31 minutes ago, Swes said:

Even with my SLI 1080 Ti setup everyone in a while I would get a stutter here and there. If you are GPU limited which usually is the case this can just be the way it is. Sometimes graphics OCs generate instability due to the way boost 3.0 works try and relaxing the core frequency a bit helps. I did this with my cards for a few games id tone down the OC and get better frame time consistency.

I'll try down clocking the GPU thanks for the suggestion