Random Inexplicable Frame Drops in All Games

ehawkins2232 · January 17, 2021

I have been experiencing frame drops in all of the steam games I have been playing recently (Dishonored, Deep Rock Galactic, and Skyrim). These frame drops occur in game and as a far as I can tell, there is no pattern to the drops. I did some research into disabling in-game overlays but that did not solve the problem. I don't believe this is a weak hardware issue as games like DRG have low recommended specs.

I ran the Unigine Heaven Benchmark I happened to have installed to see if the same problem occur. During the benchmark, I did notice occasional frame dips. Looking at MSI afterburner, these dips correspond with a drop in the GPU utilization. GPU is running at around 65-70 Degrees Celcius during the benchmark.

Here is my current rig (I was able to snag a 5800x so hopefully I can get a 3070 soon):

i5 6500

Hyper 212 EVO

MSI GTX 970

Gigabyte Z170-XP SLI ATX

16GB DDR4 2133

EVGA 650W G1 Gold

Crucial 512GB SSD + Crucial 525 GB SSD

Enthoo Pro

Windows 10 64-Bit (latest update)

Latest Nvidia Drivers (Jan 7, 2021)

Unknown Bios Version (haven't updated since 2016)

I don't know if this could cause an issue, but both SSDs are almost full. However, they have been like this for a long time and it hasn't caused an issue in the past.

I'm also guessing frame drops can come from a multitude of sources, but any help would be appreciated. Thank you.