Insane stuttering everywhere

[Axymeus]

Hello everyone. I'm in dire need of your help. I was delighted to build a new PC for myself and I'm now agonizing over an issue I cannot isolate. I'm plagued by constant and terrible stuttering, in games, and on videos (played locally or over the internet) in spite of all metrics saying that there are no drops at all. I've captured this quick footage to highlight the issue in Yakuza Kiwami 2 https://vimeo.com/441290154 hopefully you should be able to see the fps counter top left indicating that the game is running a smooth 59-60 fps, although it's visually closer to a 30.

 

As it is, my PC is able to run the game with much more fps than 60, in the video vsync is enabled. Without, I can easily reach 70-80 at this quality, or far more at lower settings, but stuttering is still visible (less visible mind you, but the tearing is massive). It seems to me to be a vsync issue. You might think the game is porrly optimized (to be fair, it kinda is) but I'm experiencing stuttering on youtube videos, twitch streams, or locally played videos (through MPC-HC and VLC both). Anything that runs at 60 fps stutters as a matter of fact.

 

A few added precisions: on Youtube, enabling advanced stats reveal 0 frames being dropped. With MPC-HC, once again the stats reveal a smooth 60 fps being decoded. Enabling vsync in MPC-HC does fix the stuttering, but nothing on Chrome does (hardware acceleration, I'm looking at you). Furthermore, the stuttering, at least on videos, seems very cyclic. I've measured about 2 seconds worth of 30-fps-looking stutter every 17 seconds, and it's driving me nuts. I have not noticed any particular load on the CPU, GPU, or anything else. Here's my build by the way.

 

Gigabyte Z370P D3 (latest bios, F15a)

Intel Core i7-8700

nVidia RTX 2070 Super (Gigabyte Windforce 3)

Corsair Dominator DD4 2666 (2x8 GB)

Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe M.2

Corsair HX 750 W

No overclocks.

 

A test on userbenchmark doesn't reveal any issues https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/30822065

 

I have two LG 27UD58-B and a Samsung SA 350 for monitors. The first two are 4K DisplayPort monitors, and the last a 1080p HDMI monitor. I've tried running a single-monitor setup, switch the LG's on HDMI, lowering the resolution to 1080p... but the stuttering is still present. Admittedly, it is a little better over HDMI for games, but exactly the same for videos, there is no difference when switching monitors or resolution. I've performed a clean install of Windows 10 just to be sure, but the issue remains and now I'm lost.

 

I doubt the problem comes from any of my monitors, after all the stuttering is visible on video. Although I've had on two ocassions extreme monitor desync that was this time invisible to the video I haven't been able to reproduce the issue. So what could be left? Some bottleneck in the motherboard?

[mahyar]

i suggest you install passmark performance test and run all test post results here

[Ulz]

Your frame time is probably quite high, meaning it's probably a CPU bottleneck, although I can't see how it could be because it's still a really competent CPU for gaming. Check your bios settings, maybe you have XMP turned off for ram, as it is only 2666mhz. Ram overclocking isn't that hard and yeilded very good results for me, as I was having stuttering issues too. I was at 2400mhz, now I'm at 3200 stable all the time, which feels great on my mid-range hardware, however I'd say you're at a pretty high end, with the bottleneck being your ram. That's being nitpicky though, just try the ram, otherwise I don't know what to do.

[Axymeus]

Here are the PassMark results

 

PassMark 6733 (86th percentile)

CPU Mark 13169 (69th percentile)

   Integer Math 45413

   Prime Numbers 32

   Compression 198192

   Physics 667

   CPU Single Threaded 2629

   Floating Point Math 28423

   Extended Instructions (SSE) 13298

   Encryptions 4769

   Sorting 24952

   Cross-platform Mark 26126

2D Graphics Mark 1097 (96th percentile)

   Simple Vectors 21

   Windows Interface 74

   Image Rendering 321

   PDF Rendering 52

   Fonts and Text 276

   Image Filters 2383

   Direct 2D 69

   Direct 2D - SVG 79

3D Mark 6988 (51th percentile)

   DirectX 9 236

   DirectX 10 19

   DirectX 11 374

   DirectX 12 66

   GPU Computer 8437

Memory Mark 3057 (78th percentile)

   Database Operations 4756

   Memory Read Cached 30161

   Memory Read Uncached 15463

   Memory Write 11508

   Available RAM 13249

   Memory Threaded 28129

   Memory Latency 31

Disk Mark 27843 (97th percentile)

   Disk Sequential Read 2923

   Disk Sequential Write 2911

   IOPS 32KQD20 1910

   IOPS 4KQD1 89

 

Those GPU scores look a bit low for a 2070 super wouldn't you say? The DirectX 10 looks like a massive failure (I was getting about 18 fps in the demo).

22 minutes ago, Ulz said:

Your frame time is probably quite high, meaning it's probably a CPU bottleneck, although I can't see how it could be because it's still a really competent CPU for gaming. Check your bios settings, maybe you have XMP turned off for ram, as it is only 2666mhz.

XMP is enabled for the RAM.

[Axymeus]

There appears to be something definitively wrong with my RTX. I had a GTX 1060 lying around, and sure enough while the 2070 outclasses it on every tests, the 1060 scored 10 times better on DirectX 10 (110 vs 19!).

 

However, it does not completely removes my issues. In game, it is noticeably better but a few hiccups happen here and there. Video decoding seems fixed except that MPC-HC still exhibits the same odd behavior if vsync is turned off, but it could be a software bug for all I know.

 

GPU issue aside, how can it be that I can experience hiccups and lag spikes with a frame counter being steady? Is the CPU to blame for those remaining lags as Ulz was saying? I had half a mind to upgrade to a 9700K anyways, but I'd like to know if the motherboard could be the source of the bottleneck first.

Thank you for your help so far.

[mahyar]

its a gpu problem as far a i can tell the 2070 super should score around 18000 try reinstalling drivers and resetting cmos

[Axymeus]

I will actually swap the Gigabyte for a different brand. But this faulty GPU is not the only thing to blame here. Even with the 1060 I have drops when playing 60 fps video content, locally or online. Where do you think this could be coming from? No frames are actually dropped, they just appear to lag when displayed.

[mahyar]

mobo

[mahyar]

1 minute ago, mahyar said:

mobo

maybe psu

[Axymeus]

PSU would be a surprise. 750W seems far enough for even the 2070. Considering the 1060 draws less and still exhibits the issue I doubt this would be the culprit. Especially since the PassMark scores are so fine. On the other hand, changing the mobo is going to be a PITA... No test I could run to find that out?

[mahyar]

4 minutes ago, Axymeus said:

PSU would be a surprise. 750W seems far enough for even the 2070. Considering the 1060 draws less and still exhibits the issue I doubt this would be the culprit. Especially since the PassMark scores are so fine. On the other hand, changing the mobo is going to be a PITA... No test I could run to find that out?

wattage is not quality 

[Axymeus]

Fair enough. But I hope the Corsair HX750 is quality enough. Of course, it could be faulty but... Well I just want to know before attempting to swap either the mobo or the PSU.

[mahyar]

im out of ideas bro sorry 

[mahyar]

your psu is good i think is mobo