What decreases/causes stuttering in games?

[Dekuuz]

I'm currently playing RE3:Remake and when I just launch the game and start playing usually the first Zombie I shoot my game drops by 5-15 frames or when I get grabbed by a zombie the same thing happens. My graphic settings are 3.8/5.9 GB VRAM. Most of my games run at stable 60 I'm just suffering from frame drops/stutters. Monitoring my PC while I'm gaming I don't think I see any thermal throttling because both my CPU and GPU stay below 70. Is it RAM or HDD?

 

My specs are:

MOBO: MSI Z390-A Pro

GPU: 1660 Super 6GB
HDD: 2TB BarraCuda

RAM: 16GB 2133 HyperX

PSU: 650w Corsair

CPU: i5 9600k

[7heo]

6 minutes ago, Dekuuz said:

My specs are:

MOBO: MSI Z390-A Pro

GPU: 1660 Super 6GB
HDD: 2TB BarraCuda

RAM: 16GB 2133 HyperX

PSU: 650w Corsair

oh wow, you have a computer running without a CPU? How did you do that?!

 

6 minutes ago, Dekuuz said:

My graphic settings are 3.8/5.9 GB VRAM.

Also that's not how it works. Graphics settings determine more than the VRAM usage. Any processing matters.

[RejZoR]

The "first event" thing is a rather common problem, I have much more powerful system and Killing Floor 2 does the same. Whenever I shoot the first enemy in the head game pauses for 1/4th of a second. And never again after that within same play session. So, that can be a game specific issue and the way how it loads and caches assets.

 

In your particular case, I'd say HDD is the main reason. Get an SSD or if you're not in a mood to pay 300€ for a 2TB SSD, get a 256GB SSD and PrimoCache and accelerate your HDD with it. You'll get near SSD performance for like 70€ (some 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD with DRAM for 40€ and 30€ for PrimoCache).

[7heo]

Go optane

 

(just to clarify: this is a joke. You can get better perf than what you have already by using a cheaper SSD than an optane drive, and putting your OS and game there. And THEN if you need more perf, using a better SSD or optane would help.)

[emosun]

20 minutes ago, 7heo said:

Also that's not how it works. Graphics settings determine more than the VRAM usage. Any processing matters.

If they have the machine running without a cpu maybe they found a way to only load the vram and not the gpu as well

[7heo]

So absolutely no computation. Not sure how that can be called a computer anymore...

[Dekuuz]

44 minutes ago, 7heo said:

oh wow, you have a computer running without a CPU? How did you do that?!

 

Also that's not how it works. Graphics settings determine more than the VRAM usage. Any processing matters.

My bad, I forgot. I have a i5 9600k

[7heo]

24 minutes ago, Dekuuz said:

My bad, I forgot. I have a i5 9600k

Ok, that should be plenty. So yeah as @RejZoR said, try to add an SSD cache, or try reinstalling your OS to an SSD as I suggested. That should help.

[jaslion]

Usually what causes stuttering in games is if you run out of a certain resource.

 

What I mean with that is for example:

 

Ram at near 100%

Disk at 100%

Cpu at 100%

 

At this point in time the 9600k is NOT a goo gaming cpu because most games use past 6 threads now and without those extra threads games stutter. I'm not sure RE3 remake falls under this but it could very well be the case.

[7heo]

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Usually what causes stuttering in games is if you run out of a certain resource.

Could you be less specific?

 

11 minutes ago, jaslion said:

At this point in time the 9600k is NOT a goo gaming cpu because most games use past 6 threads now and without those extra threads games stutter

That is just wrong. First, "most" games don't use "past 6 threads", no. Second, the i5-9600k has six cores (and six threads, since no MT), which is more cores/threads than the CPU most gaming rigs have.

 

As I previously said, this CPU should be plenty for gaming. There are very few games that are CPU bound, and a CPU bottleneck would not be felt only when a specific asset is loading.

 

As @RejZoR said, it is very likely a caching problem; with the game loading assets in a "lazy" fashion, and so, the speed (or lack thereof) of the HDD can be plainly felt when that happens. OP didn't give enough information in their post to determine if that happens continuously, but even if it happens often, I would bet my lunch that they just run out of memory eventually and get the assets overwritten by one another all the time; so they experience this delay regularly.

[jaslion]

Just now, 7heo said:

Could you be less specific?

 

That is just wrong. First, "most" games don't use 6 threads, no. Second, the i5-9600k has six cores (and six threads, since no MT).

Why would I be less specific? This is the number one reason for stuttering?

 

Yes most games use past 6 threads nowadays that is normal now. Also where am I incorrect about the 6 threads of the 9600k? You literally said it yourself. It's a 6 core cpu where 1 core = 1 thread so it by that logic has 6 threads. So it is also a 6 thread cpu.

[7heo]

8 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Yes most games use past 6 threads nowadays that is normal now.

No.

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, 7heo said:

No.

Numbers don't lie.

 

This is a pretty cruddy video with only 5 of this and last years most popular games but even then numbers don't lie. Also like number 2 result on google.

 

The moment you hit 8 threads and up fps stays the same this is not accounting stuttering, drops,... this is a very simple example.

 

 

[rockyroller]

26 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Why would I be less specific? This is the number one reason for stuttering?

 

Yes most games use past 6 threads nowadays that is normal now. Also where am I incorrect about the 6 threads of the 9600k? You literally said it yourself. It's a 6 core cpu where 1 core = 1 thread so it by that logic has 6 threads. So it is also a 6 thread cpu.

from what I gather you are correct for most games as Intel set the bar with 4 core budget CPU, but the extra cores deal with other programs and remove them from potential stutters and this was AMDs way to gain more power in a CPU. Instead of dropping all the stored information for the game to get started on a 2nd program even for a quick task, the system just allocates a new core for the job.

 

As for the OP, A SSD or M.2 drive would be an upgrade that will show a real visible difference in so many areas of WoT. A HDD is just too slow these days in data transfers for demanding games.

You should reduce by experiment some of the GFx effects, as firing a shot has a lot of changes made to the monitor each shot. Bit of movement, bit of flash and bloom etc all adds up to slow the fps for a brief instance

[7heo]

2 minutes ago, rockyroller said:

you are correct for most games as Intel set the bar with 4 core budget CPU

That is not what they said. They said games will always stutter unless the CPU has more than six (6) threads. Last time I checked, 4 > 6 was false.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, rockyroller said:

from what I gather you are correct for most games as Intel set the bar with 4 core budget CPU, but the extra cores deal with other programs and remove them from potential stutters and this was AMDs way to gain more power in a CPU.

 

As for the OP, A SSD or M.2 drive would be an upgrade that will show a real visible difference in so many areas of WoT. A HDD is just too slow these days in data transfers for demanding games

This was true in 2017. Then ryzen came and now 8 thread is the new norm so many games already stutter and perform worse on pure 6 core cpu's. It's been proven over and over.

 

I mean the current absolute minimum cpu is the i7 2600k and whilst it will obviously have overall lower average fps it will be a far more stable experience in a whole bunch of games compared to a 9600k simply because it has those 2 extra threads.

[jaslion]

9 minutes ago, 7heo said:

That is not what they said. They said games will always stutter unless the CPU has more than six (6) threads. Last time I checked, 4 > 6 was false.

I never said always. I said games now use past 6 threads (which is true for almost all games excluding the obvious lighter titles like stardew valley and such :p) and that the 9600k because of that isn't a good gaming cpu because it has already been thrown in the same situation the i5 7600k was in in 2017-2018.

[7heo]

@jaslion can you stop moving the goalposts and can we get back to helping OP? Their problem is about a sudden stutter in a specific game, and it has probably been solved in the third post. If you want to make it known to the world that games suddenly require more than 6 threads, please start a new thread.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, 7heo said:

@jaslion can you stop moving the goalposts and can we get back to helping OP? Their problem is about a sudden stutter in a specific game, and it has probably been solved in the third post. If you want to make it known to the world that games suddenly require more than 6 threads, please start a new thread.

No.

 

I gave a reason where things can go wrong in general and I fully agree with @RejZoR said. But then you came in stating wrong information and thus I showed you factual evidence that what you were saying was incorrect and spreading misinformation which is something I try my best to not do and avoid happen.

[rockyroller]

7 minutes ago, 7heo said:

That is not what they said. They said games will always stutter unless the CPU has more than six (6) threads. Last time I checked, 4 > 6 was false.

 

Who was they?

The truth falls somewhere in the details and the current minimum bar set by Intel and programmers adopting it. (Intel having the largest market share can set a bar to aim for.

10 minutes ago, jaslion said:

This was true in 2017. Then ryzen came and now 8 thread is the new norm so many games already stutter and perform worse on pure 6 core cpu's. It's been proven over and over.

 

I mean the current absolute minimum cpu is the i7 2600k and whilst it will obviously have overall lower average fps it will be a far more stable experience in a whole bunch of games compared to a 9600k simply because it has those 2 extra threads.

 

AMD still sells the 6 core 5600x, and reviews went all out to promote it on release you'll remember. But AMD doesn't have the market share yet to force programmers to adopt its roadmap. Intel does and when it dropped from 10 core flagships to an 8 core, that should tell you something about what they see as a maximum core need . Next year this may change again as the situation changes nearly every year in the drive to sell you the next best thing.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, rockyroller said:

 

Who was they?

The truth falls somewhere in the details and the current minimum bar set by Intel and programmers adopting it. (Intel having the largest market share can set a bar to aim for.

 

AMD still sells the 6 core 5600x, and reviews went all out to promote it on release you'll remember. But AMD doesn't have the market share yet to force programmers to adopt its roadmap. Intel does and when it dropped from 10 core flagships to an 8 core, that should tell you something about what they see as a maximum core need . Next year this may change again as the situation changes nearly every year in the drive to sell you the next best thing.

The 5600x is a 6 core 12 thread entirely different from the 9600k that is a 6 core 6 thread cpu. Amd has been gaining marketshare non stop basically ever since ryzen came out.

 

Why do you think we suddenly got a 6 core intel cpu in consumer sockets the moment ryzen was announced?

 

The drop for cores from intel was because they backported 10nm to 14nm and the 10900k was a very hard to make part with low yields as an answer to the 3900x.

 

So the drop in cores wasn't a because you don't need more thing it was a because we cannot make it work thing.

[mariushm]

The first thing I'd try is to lower the graphical settings so that the VRAM usage will stay at around 3.5-3.6 GB.

You want to reduce swapping and transfers from/to video card to ram as much as possible, so leave a few hundred MB of room on the video card for situations where some textures or some data has to be quickly pushed into the video card.

 

edit:  just saw it's a 6GB VRAM video card... I assumed it's a 4 GB VRAM card. In this case, the advice above won't make any difference, since there's still 2 GB of empty vram.

 

You have 16 GB of ram, you say it's not fully used, but other programs run in background.

Optimize your page file (swap) .. I'd suggest setting up a fixed page file of at least 8 GB (8192 MB) - by fixed I mean manually set the minimum and maximum page file size to the same value. 

After a reboot, Windows will recreate the page file and on mechanical hard drives, it will create it somewhere around the center of the drive, where it's the most free disk space - it tries to do that to reduce fragmentation of the page file. 

But, you can go a step further and use a smart defragmenting tool like for example (shareware, trial version available) O&O Defrag to force the page file to be moved at the beginning of the mechanical drive so that you get the lowest access times, fastest transfers speeds from page file to ram and back and so on. 

If the page file is fixed, it can be moved... if it's left on auto, it can't be moved. 

 

If your page file is small and your game loads and sees for example that there's only 16 GB + 2 GB swap = 20 GB total and there's only 4 GB free, then it may not keep in RAM as much stuff as possible so you may get the game pausing to read game data from the game files (seek in files, unpack files, convert files to specific format your video card needs, upload into card's VRAM etc)... this can be further aggravated if the game is physically fragmented on the mechanical drive. 

If you set up a bigger page file, the game may see much higher total memory available and use more RAM - when needed, the operating system will push the data used by other programs (ex your chrome , firefox whatever) into the page file and free more ram for the actual game.

 

Defragmenting the drive to move the page file at the start will also defragment the game files so they'll be read faster.

 

[Dekuuz]

8 hours ago, mariushm said:

The first thing I'd try is to lower the graphical settings so that the VRAM usage will stay at around 3.5-3.6 GB.

You want to reduce swapping and transfers from/to video card to ram as much as possible, so leave a few hundred MB of room on the video card for situations where some textures or some data has to be quickly pushed into the video card.

 

edit:  just saw it's a 6GB VRAM video card... I assumed it's a 4 GB VRAM card. In this case, the advice above won't make any difference, since there's still 2 GB of empty vram.

 

You have 16 GB of ram, you say it's not fully used, but other programs run in background.

Optimize your page file (swap) .. I'd suggest setting up a fixed page file of at least 8 GB (8192 MB) - by fixed I mean manually set the minimum and maximum page file size to the same value. 

After a reboot, Windows will recreate the page file and on mechanical hard drives, it will create it somewhere around the center of the drive, where it's the most free disk space - it tries to do that to reduce fragmentation of the page file. 

But, you can go a step further and use a smart defragmenting tool like for example (shareware, trial version available) O&O Defrag to force the page file to be moved at the beginning of the mechanical drive so that you get the lowest access times, fastest transfers speeds from page file to ram and back and so on. 

If the page file is fixed, it can be moved... if it's left on auto, it can't be moved. 

 

If your page file is small and your game loads and sees for example that there's only 16 GB + 2 GB swap = 20 GB total and there's only 4 GB free, then it may not keep in RAM as much stuff as possible so you may get the game pausing to read game data from the game files (seek in files, unpack files, convert files to specific format your video card needs, upload into card's VRAM etc)... this can be further aggravated if the game is physically fragmented on the mechanical drive. 

If you set up a bigger page file, the game may see much higher total memory available and use more RAM - when needed, the operating system will push the data used by other programs (ex your chrome , firefox whatever) into the page file and free more ram for the actual game.

 

Defragmenting the drive to move the page file at the start will also defragment the game files so they'll be read faster.

 

Would it be safe to put the paging file on my main HDD? (With Windows and all my games) or my secondary HDD? (With some backup photos, recordings and game mods)

[mariushm]

You can actually create a page file on BOTH drives.

The operating system will pick whatever drive is faster or whatever page file is more empty.

 

Here's how it looks on my system :

 

I have a small 4 GB fixed page file on my boot SSD - it's so low because it's a 128 GB SSD and if the 4 GB is filled, it can spill onto the mechanical drive (D) 

 

You can see that at the moment I took this picture Windows enlarged the D page file up to 19994 - 4096 - ~ 14 GB - that's because I tend to open a lot of tabs with Youtube videos and watch them on my second monitor as I play games on my first monitor, so windows tends to dump the browser tabs that aren't active to the page file.