unconsistent FPS charts on an old system

[NotBoraAtAll]

hey guys, so ive been on this 2nd hand system for almost 4 years now, and its 6-7 years old at this point. and i need some help with micro-stuttering that's happening in every game that im playing.

the basic specs of the pc are:

-i5 6500 (stock cooler, running at %100 fan speed)

-gtx 970 zotac amp edition (running at the highest overclock settings possible) (driver 466.11)

-msi b150 gaming m3 (latest bios)

- 16gb 2400 mhz ram (running at 2133 cuz motherboard cant handle it)

- 512gb nvme ssd on a pcie 3.0 x16 adapter, and two 256gb sata ssds

and its all powered by an overkill cooler master 750W 80+ bronze PSU

and i also added a couple of fps counter graphs for you to take a look. if you need any other info/graphs feel free to ask!

 

the micro-stuttering has been happening for around 2 years now and last summer i decided to try overclocking. for the first week it was sorta effective but afterwards it basically did nothing to improve performance.

and in the last few months i started experiencing graphical glitches even in the most popular titles like LoL, Valorant, Apex Legends, CS:GO which are pretty well optimized at this point. valorants new update that came out today actually helped a lot with micro-stuttering but its still there :').

 

since we got that all out of the way, time for the question. what can i do? i have done (im basically gonna put EVERYthing ive done on this list, so you dont waste your time explaining to me something ive already tried)

- factory resetting (3 times)

- overclocking the gpu

- updating motherboard bios

- turning fan speeds up to their highest speeds

- shutting down ALL background applications including norton 360

- reseating and reconnecting every component

- cleaning every component possible (a few times, excluding CPU itself.) (but one thing i havent done is re-apply thermal paste, let me know if i actually should)

- using razer cortex which actually made the gaming experience worse :I

- clearing cache

- setting the game to high priority in task manager

- deleting every bit of unnecessary file excluding system files

- trying to find the best settings possible for each game by trying and with suggestions of geforce experience (which are misleading :/)

 

i might have forgotten some basic stuff but if you have anything to say, please do; if you read this far, i need your help. i am sick of playing at 30 fps even though the counter shows 144  thank you!

[LogicalDrm]

Can you provide graphs for CPU and GPU usage too? And possible for GPU shader/core clocks. Also temps? Off the top I would say that you are seeing something related to (ugh, hate this) bottleneck of one component.

[NotBoraAtAll]

1 hour ago, LogicalDrm said:

Can you provide graphs for CPU and GPU usage too? And possible for GPU shader/core clocks. Also temps? Off the top I would say that you are seeing something related to (ugh, hate this) bottleneck of one component.

Hey, thank you for your reply! I've been wondering if it's a CPU bottleneck too but just couldnt be sure by looking at these charts. take a look for yourself, this is after a 20~ minute gaming session of Apex Legends. the timings on cpu and gpu charts dont match well since i had to scroll down lol, but basically both drops down when i shut down the game. and also the cpu was running at 3292 Mhz while in-game. I hope I could add everything you wanted in the files, thanks again  

[LogicalDrm]

6 minutes ago, NotBoraAtAll said:

Hey, thank you for your reply! I've been wondering if it's a CPU bottleneck too but just couldnt be sure by looking at these charts. take a look for yourself, this is after a 20~ minute gaming session of Apex Legends. the timings on cpu and gpu charts dont match well since i had to scroll down lol, but basically both drops down when i shut down the game. and also the cpu was running at 3292 Mhz while in-game. I hope I could add everything you wanted in the files, thanks again

GPU is over 90C, that could indicate thermal throttling there. CPU is pinned to 100% which is quite good indicator that it can't keep up.

[NotBoraAtAll]

4 minutes ago, LogicalDrm said:

GPU is over 90C, that could indicate thermal throttling there. CPU is pinned to 100% which is quite good indicator that it can't keep up.

I see, so what do you think I should do then? Do I have to change the CPU out for a new one like the 5600x maybe? If I do that, I would also change the GPU too. Or is there anything I can do like changing some settings?

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, NotBoraAtAll said:

I see, so what do you think I should do then? Do I have to change the CPU out for a new one like the 5600x maybe? If I do that, I would also change the GPU too. Or is there anything I can do like changing some settings?

You could try and see if you can get cheap used CPU. The mobo is compatible with 6th and 7th gen CPUs from Intel. So up to 7700K (which would require aftermarket cooler too). Overclocking is not possible, but I think just having i7 would help here.

 

For GPU, as you might already know, upgrade is not feasible really. Anything with capable power is hard to get. I don't think going for GTX1660 is worth it here. So changing thermal paste on it might be just best for now. Get those temps down, under 85C, to prevent throttling.

[Mark Kaine]

your gpu is probably still ok, but you should replace that cpu as has been suggested.