Huge Stutters

[qtanoc]

Hello, this is my first post on the forums, sorry if i made a post on the wrong part.

 

Basically the problem is, i'm having 0 fps drops (frametime spikes?) for 2-5 seconds on like most of the games i play. AC Origins, Metro Exodus, FF15 (some games stutter more frequent than the others, but the noticeable 2 seconds+ stutter is there). Even if i set the graphics to low it happens.

I can't explain the problem properly, so i provided a video :

https://youtu.be/DafkKsclELY

 

My specs are:

CPU Ryzen 5 3500X (1 month old)

GPU Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB (3 years old)

RAM Teamgroup 2x4GB 2400 (3 years old)

HDD WD Caviar Blue 1TB, no SDD

MBD MSI B450M Pro M2 (1 month old)

PSU Bitfenix Whisper 550W 80+ Gold (3 years old)

OS Win 10 1909 64bit

DIS LG HDTV 1366x768

 

When i first used the Ryzen, the temps (CPU and GPU) went all the way to 75-80ish and never had a stutter for a week (stock, no oc), but recently it stayed at 55-65ish and this stutter happens (stock, no oc). I presume it is because it's not working to the max?

Also, i do hear coil whine from my case (side panel opened) when playing games. The coil whine happens when the game runs smooth, but when the huge stutter happens, the coil whine stops. Then the coil whine returns when the FPS is back to normal. The stutters synchronizes with the coil whine sound.

I am also pretty sure VRM is not the problem, because even when all the settings are turned low to medium, the stutter happens.

 

What i am suspecting now is whether i need to upgrade my RAM, change my GPU or worst case scenario, replace the PSU because not enough power is being delivered.

 

things I have tried so far:

 

overclock the gpu core clock and memory clock

clean reinstall windows and followed instructions on this thread

disable and enable windows game mode

 

 

Help?

 

[Stahlmann]

I think 8 GB RAM is probably a problem for some of these open world games. I dont think the HDD is a problem, but maybe it is, because windows and your games are sharing the slow HDD speed.

 

Edit: If your RAM is full, the RAM data will be written to a "page-file". This will cause slowdowns even with SSDs, so a HDD could the issue here.

 

The Coil whine is from your GPU. When the whine goes away when stuttering i'd say the GPU is not the problem, because it was idle during the stutter.

[xAcid9]

Try check with LatencyMon if any of your drivers causing some spikes. Check while playing your games but make sure you're on windowed/borderless mode, not exclusive full screen. https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

 

[Parideboy]

AC Origins (and Odyssey) freeze like that when loading assets. I usually have one that lasts a couple of seconds, after that the games runs fine. Both games are are installed in a HDD. I do have both a dedicated SSD for the os and way more ram tho.

 

You probably run out of ram, so the system hits the paging file, slowing the HDD even further

[qtanoc]

22 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Try check with LatencyMon if any of your drivers causing some spikes. Check while playing your games but make sure you're on windowed/borderless mode, not exclusive full screen. https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

 

this was my result tested with AC origins, 1366x768 windowed

 

24 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

I think 8 GB RAM is probably a problem for some of these open world games. I dont think the HDD is a problem, but maybe it is, because windows and your games are sharing the slow HDD speed.

 

Edit: If your RAM is full, the RAM data will be written to a "page-file". This will cause slowdowns even with SSDs, so a HDD could the issue here.

 

The Coil whine is from your GPU. When the whine goes away when stuttering i'd say the GPU is not the problem, because it was idle during the stutter.

I played AC Odyssey, and my afterburner showed ram usage of 7000-7800ish when playing, while AC Origins only showed 6000-6800 RAM usage. AC Odyssey rarely stuttered (probs around every 30 mins or so, unnoticeable ones) compared to AC origins (every 1 or 2 minutes). I hope this information is of any help

 

17 minutes ago, Parideboy said:

AC Origins (and Odyssey) freeze like that when loading assets. I usually have one that lasts a couple of seconds, after that the games runs fine. Both games are are installed in a HDD. I do have both a dedicated SSD for the os and way more ram tho.

 

You probably run out of ram, so the system hits the paging file, slowing the HDD even further

this "paging" because of running out of RAM seems to be related to Mr. Stahlmann's reply. I suppose i should go get a RAM upgrade?

but in my afterburner monitoring i never see the RAM usage going above 7500 when the stuttering happens...

But, if i am to replace the RAM, will a 12GB (1x4 + 1x8) of 2400 suffice?

[Stahlmann]

2 minutes ago, qtanoc said:

this "paging" seems to be related to Mr. Stahlmann's reply. I suppose i should go get a RAM upgrade?

but in my afterburner monitoring i never see the RAM usage going above 7500 when stuttering...

If i am to replace the RAM, will a 12GB of 2400 suffice?

If possible, you should get at least a 128GB SSD to install windows and then your 12 GB upgrade should suffice. Altough i think you could almost get 16GB for the same price as 12.

 

Especially the upgrade to a SSD will improve your experience a lot, not only in games.

[qtanoc]

9 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

If possible, you should get at least a 128GB SSD to install windows and then your 12 GB upgrade should suffice. Altough i think you could almost get 16GB for the same price as 12.

 

Especially the upgrade to a SSD will improve your experience a lot, not only in games.

So, at least a 128GB SSD for windows, and a RAM upgrade, yes?

Do you think the stutters will go away completely? Just to make sure.

[Stahlmann]

1 minute ago, qtanoc said:

So, at least a 128GB SSD for windows, and a RAM upgrade, yes?

Do you think the stutters will go away completely? Just to make sure.

I think this will most likely solve your issues, yes. I can't guarantee it though. But the rest of your system seems fine.

[qtanoc]

Just now, Stahlmann98 said:

I think this will most likely solve your issues, yes. I can't guarantee it though. But the rest of your system seems fine.

Alright, tomorrow i will buy the RAM first. If the stutters still persists, i will get an SSD as well.

For now, I will continue to research more into this problem from other sources.

 

Thank you very much for the information, i will be in touch when i get the parts.

[Stahlmann]

Just now, qtanoc said:

Alright, tomorrow i will buy the RAM first. If the stutters still persists, i will get an SSD as well.

For now, I will continue to research more into this problem from other sources.

 

Thank you very much for the information, i will be in touch when i get the parts.

Happy to help! Hopefully you can solve your issue and enjoy your games again

[qtanoc]

7 minutes ago, Stahlmann98 said:

Happy to help! Hopefully you can solve your issue and enjoy your games again

oh another question sorry, do you think the GPU might be of the slightest factor in this stutter?

according to this latency monitor results, in case you haven't seen this in the reply above, nvidia has a high dpc latency, which made me think it is a little bit faulty.

[Parideboy]

50 minutes ago, qtanoc said:

this "paging" because of running out of RAM seems to be related to Mr. Stahlmann's reply. I suppose i should go get a RAM upgrade?

but in my afterburner monitoring i never see the RAM usage going above 7500 when the stuttering happens...

But, if i am to replace the RAM, will a 12GB (1x4 + 1x8) of 2400 suffice?

That's Windows trying to keep at least 500Mb "free" (most of it it's not probably free, but rather in 'stand-by')

Windows has to keep somewhat of an headroom, it can't wait for the ram to be full in order swap stuff to the pagefile.

32 minutes ago, qtanoc said:

oh another question sorry, do you think the GPU might be of the slightest factor in this stutter?

If you exeed the 3Gb of vram it can. The card will try to use ram as vram, but the fact that you're already on the edge doesn't help.

 

I think Origins has a meter that tells you approximatly how much vram will be used according to the settings.

On Odyssey I can barely reach 3.7Gb with everything on ultra. With some adjustments you can be in the 3Gb range.

 

From experience, the most taxing settings are shadows, volumetric clouds and ambient occlusion

[qtanoc]

3 minutes ago, Parideboy said:

That's Windows trying to keep at least 500Mb "free" (most of it it's not probably free, but rather in 'stand-by')

Windows has to keep somewhat of an headroom, it can't wait for the ram to be full in order swap stuff to the pagefile.

If you exeed the 3Gb of vram it can. The card will try to use ram as vram, but the fact that you're already on the edge doesn't help.

Ah, i understand now. So the 8GB is not all usable because windows has to keep some for "stand by", so that's why it didn't go all the way up to 8000.

Thank you so much for the information! I have learned a lot in just this single thread.

[Parideboy]

14 minutes ago, qtanoc said:

Ah, i understand now. So the 8GB is not all usable because windows has to keep some for "stand by", so that's why it didn't go all the way up to 8000.

Thank you so much for the information! I have learned a lot in just this single thread.

Windows will try to cache as much content as it can in ram, cause free ram is wasted ram. With 32Gb of total ram I have 9 used, 22 cached and only 1Gb free.

MSI probably reports only used ram, you can check how it is allocated in the task manager

[qtanoc]

Hello,

Sorry for the long wait.

I brought it to the shop, at first i was just explaining the problem, and showed him the video. He volunteered to use his monitor to let me test with my setup.

He changed the GPU to 1650 Super, stutter is still there

He changed the PSU, stutter is still there
 

after a diagnose, what he did was changed the thermal paste because it was dried out due to overheat (which is weird because my recent temps never showed it going above 70, probably because in the past it used to go over 80)

and also changed the HDD to a new one. It mostly fixed the problem.

 

So, yes, i think the problem is storage-related. It was my HDD. He told me to upgrade it to SSD but i will have to think about it some more due to my financial situations. At least the spikes are at minimum now, and i will know the culprit whenever i get problems like this again.

Thank you all for the answers, Mr. Stahlmann and Mr. Parideboy