Hardware or Software Causing Stutter Every 10 Seconds?

[StillNvidia680]

I've been working on this for months and haven't had any luck, so hoping for some advice on what to try next here.

 

Long story short, I have stuttering issues that seem to occur every 10 seconds in games.  It gets worse the longer the system is on, only happens in fullscreen exclusive games (not windowed or borderless), and is solved temporarily by a restart of the PC.

 

Regarding main fixes / culprits, I've attempted everything from DDUing the drivers, clean install for new chipset drivers, updating BIOS, I have XMP enabled on my RAM and it passed Memtest86, I didn't daisy chain the GPU power, no thermal issues, and re-installed the GPU in socket.

 

I have also tried disconnecting the 2nd monitor, every combination of G-sync and Freesync settings in Control Panel/Game UI/Monitor OSD, trying wired peripherals vs wireless, using performance mode vs balanced mode, disabling scheduled hardware acceleration, disabling hybrid sleep mode, disabling fast startup, using RAMmap to look for memory leaks & clearing standby list, disabling Xbox GameBar & PVR function.. and I'm sure there's a few other things I'm missing. 

 

The only things I have left on my list that I haven't attempted from reading 100s of other forum posts on similar issues is trying to uninstall Armoury Crate, a clean install of Windows 10, or swapping hardware to see if it might be the issue.  I don't have any access to components and this seems likely unrelated to hardware faults, but I've had the PC nearly a year now and am worried I'll soon lose warranty and support.  Any advice on what else to try or if I should just backup my files and do a clean install of Windows at this point would be appreciated!

[Allan B]

When it is doing it, I would put task manager up on your 2nd monitor and look for other processes consuming CPU\GPU resources when the system is stuttering.   In Task manager under processes tab sort by CPU, if you don't see anything during the stutter, try sorting by GPU and again look for something else consuming resources.

 

 

[doubleflower]

28 minutes ago, StillNvidia680 said:

I've been working on this for months and haven't had any luck, so hoping for some advice on what to try next here.

 

Long story short, I have stuttering issues that seem to occur every 10 seconds in games.  It gets worse the longer the system is on, only happens in fullscreen exclusive games (not windowed or borderless), and is solved temporarily by a restart of the PC.

 

Regarding main fixes / culprits, I've attempted everything from DDUing the drivers, clean install for new chipset drivers, updating BIOS, I have XMP enabled on my RAM and it passed Memtest86, I didn't daisy chain the GPU power, no thermal issues, and re-installed the GPU in socket.

 

I have also tried disconnecting the 2nd monitor, every combination of G-sync and Freesync settings in Control Panel/Game UI/Monitor OSD, trying wired peripherals vs wireless, using performance mode vs balanced mode, disabling scheduled hardware acceleration, disabling hybrid sleep mode, disabling fast startup, using RAMmap to look for memory leaks & clearing standby list, disabling Xbox GameBar & PVR function.. and I'm sure there's a few other things I'm missing. 

 

The only things I have left on my list that I haven't attempted from reading 100s of other forum posts on similar issues is trying to uninstall Armoury Crate, a clean install of Windows 10, or swapping hardware to see if it might be the issue.  I don't have any access to components and this seems likely unrelated to hardware faults, but I've had the PC nearly a year now and am worried I'll soon lose warranty and support.  Any advice on what else to try or if I should just backup my files and do a clean install of Windows at this point would be appreciated!

Might be useful to post your PC specs here, and try monitoring DPC latency and see whether there are any misbehaving drivers causing stuttering.  You might want to try uninstalling any third party antivirus software and motherboard utilities and see whether you can alleviate the problem or not. 

[StillNvidia680]

26 minutes ago, Allan B said:

When it is doing it, I would put task manager up on your 2nd monitor and look for other processes consuming CPU\GPU resources when the system is stuttering.   In Task manager under processes tab sort by CPU, if you don't see anything during the stutter, try sorting by GPU and again look for something else consuming resources.

 

 

Just did that quickly to see if I noticed anything off & don't see anything abnormal, Rocket League takes 11% CPU and below that just chrome and other things at below 1%, GPU 60% of it going to Rocket League and 8% to the DVR service.  I also tried to use task manager to look for CPU frequency drops in the past, but it changes core/thread and doesn't refresh fast enough to really see if it downclocks at the same time as the hitch.

18 minutes ago, doubleflower said:

Might be useful to post your PC specs here, and try monitoring DPC latency and see whether there are any misbehaving drivers causing stuttering.  You might want to try uninstalling any third party antivirus software and motherboard utilities and see whether you can alleviate the problem or not. 

My apologies forgot to put specs in - putting them below.  From a quick search is LatencyMon a common tool for looking at DPC latency or is there a way baked into Windows?  No 3rd party antivirus on here, but I'm guessing Armoury Crate (ASUS tool) is a motherboard utility and likely the cause of my issues if it isn't faulty hardware.

 

I've been hesitant about uninstalling Armoury Crate as I'd seen many people mention not being able to re-install it after uninstalling, having it hang/freeze at the same spot, but there's a good amount of people reporting issues with it so I might just have to take that risk.. Apparently I'll have to disable it in BIOS as well and that is where some people mentioned it is so deeply integrated with Windows you'd be better off just doing a clean Windows install to remove it, but I guess I might as well try the uninstaller utility.  Worst case I lose RGB control lol  

 

Hardware - 5900x, ASUS X570 TUF WiFi Pro, Noctua NH-D15 Chromax, Corsair LPX 3600 CL18 2x 16gb, ASUS 3070 Strix OC, Corsair RM850x, Meshify 2.

 

Cheers and thanks yall!  Hope to get to the bottom of this and hope it can help others too if I can

[StillNvidia680]

On 10/1/2021 at 3:09 PM, doubleflower said:

Might be useful to post your PC specs here, and try monitoring DPC latency and see whether there are any misbehaving drivers causing stuttering.  You might want to try uninstalling any third party antivirus software and motherboard utilities and see whether you can alleviate the problem or not. 

Just wanted to say right on the money with the motherboard utility, looks like that was the cause!

 

ASUS Armoury Crate was uninstalled via the uninstaller on their site, and since then no more stutters for over a week!  

 

Sooo relieved, hope that anyone else with similar issues and finds this post can figure out what's up too!  Down the road I might try the separate Aura app for RGB, but the poor experience I've had with Armoury Crate makes me think I'd be better off trying OpenRGB or anything other than ASUS utilities, RGB is truly the least of my worries though haha. 

 

Thanks so much, glad to be gaming without rebooting my PC before I play games!  Also reassuring that it wasn't a hardware issue

[Victor85]

I had that problem. Noticed it first in videos. I measured the time between the stutter, and found it to be 10 seconds between. When I paused the film for say 4 seconds the stutter came 6 seconds later when playing the video again. So I though it was something global and had nothing to do with the video. I moved windows around the screen for 10 seconds and found the stutter to accur even then.

 

I solved the problem by changing the energy setting for the PCI Express.