Any video playing on second monitor causes microstuttering in games

[Omie]

Can anyone help me with this super weird issue? Basically whenever a video plays on my second monitor, such as Twitch/YouTube, games on my primary monitor get these random microstutters every few seconds and the overall game just feels stuttery. As soon as there's no video playing on my second monitor, the microstutters disappear.

 

I've tried everything I can think of, also reinstalled GPU drivers with DDU but it didn't help. I'm also playing all my games in full screen. The only thing I can think of right now is doing a full wipe and reinstall of Windows 10. I don't recall experiencing this issue in the past.

 

Additional info:

• i7 7700k, RTX 3070, and 16GB RAM
• Monitor 1: Dell S2716DG G-sync capable (G-sync on), 144Hz
• Monitor 2: Acer XFA240 G-sync compatible (G-sync on), 144Hz
• Issue occurs on any browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.)

[Tech87]

32 minutes ago, Omie said:

Can anyone help me with this super weird issue? Basically whenever a video plays on my second monitor, such as Twitch/YouTube, games on my primary monitor get these random microstutters every few seconds and the overall game just feels stuttery. As soon as there's no video playing on my second monitor, the microstutters disappear.

 

I've tried everything I can think of, also reinstalled GPU drivers with DDU but it didn't help. I'm also playing all my games in full screen. The only thing I can think of right now is doing a full wipe and reinstall of Windows 10. I don't recall experiencing this issue in the past.

 

Additional info:

• i7 7700k, RTX 3070, and 16GB RAM
• Monitor 1: Dell S2716DG G-sync capable (G-sync on), 144Hz
• Monitor 2: Acer XFA240 G-sync compatible (G-sync on), 144Hz
• Issue occurs on any browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.)

Perhaps your cpu is getting maxed out.

 

Check your task manager when you have both screens open, and see what percentage the cpu shows.

[GuiltySpark_]

Try changing G-Sync between Full Screen only and Full Screen + Windowed mode in NVCP. 

 

This is a problem with a long history, it used to be more common when you'd have mismatching refresh rate displays but you don't. 

 

I solved this years ago on my old i7 system by just running my secondary display on the iGPU. 

[Omie]

7 minutes ago, Tech87 said:

Perhaps your cpu is getting maxed out.

 

Check your task manager when you have both screens open, and see what percentage the cpu shows.

Nope, looks like it's sitting around 40-50% in one game I play (League). Definitely don't think it's getting maxed out.

[Omie]

6 minutes ago, rickeo said:

Try changing G-Sync between Full Screen only and Full Screen + Windowed mode in NVCP. 

 

This is a problem with a long history, it used to be more common when you'd have mismatching refresh rate displays but you don't. 

 

I solved this years ago on my old i7 system by just running my secondary display on the iGPU. 

Yeah I've tried that as well as even disabling G-sync on my secondary monitor but it didn't help.

 

Do you think this is an issue with my CPU since it's fairly old? I built my PC around 5 years ago. Haven't tried running the second monitor off my iGPU though. If I do that, can I still adjust color settings with nvidia control panel?

[GuiltySpark_]

4 minutes ago, Omie said:

Yeah I've tried that as well as even disabling G-sync on my secondary monitor but it didn't help.

 

Do you think this is an issue with my CPU since it's fairly old? I built my PC around 5 years ago. Haven't tried running the second monitor off my iGPU though. If I do that, can I still adjust color settings with nvidia control panel?

Not for the second display, no. The Intel utility may be able to do what you want, however. 

[Omie]

3 minutes ago, rickeo said:

Not for the second display, no. The Intel utility may be able to do what you want, however. 

I see. I'd just hate doing that. Do you think this issue is happening due to my CPU? About a month ago I swear I never experienced this issue.

[Kilrah]

If it's new it could just be either a driver update, Windows update, game update or newly installed program that caused it.

[GuiltySpark_]

If it worked fine before, likely not an issue with your hardware. Some new software conflict. 

[Omie]

16 hours ago, Kilrah said:

If it's new it could just be either a driver update, Windows update, game update or newly installed program that caused it.

 

16 hours ago, rickeo said:

If it worked fine before, likely not an issue with your hardware. Some new software conflict. 

Would it be worth it to do a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows in that case? I built my PC 5 years ago and have never fully wiped it before.

[GuiltySpark_]

2 minutes ago, Omie said:

 

Would it be worth it to do a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows in that case? I built my PC 5 years ago and have never fully wiped it before.

I do that sometimes twice a year because its a painless process. It's always worth it for issues you can't solve otherwise.

[Omie]

3 hours ago, rickeo said:

I do that sometimes twice a year because its a painless process. It's always worth it for issues you can't solve otherwise.

How do you go about doing it? Is it really painless though? Because won’t I need to install everything all over again, including drivers, apps, etc.

 

The way I was thinking of doing it is by wiping the entire drive by deleting every partition.

[GuiltySpark_]

29 minutes ago, Omie said:

How do you go about doing it? Is it really painless though? Because won’t I need to install everything all over again, including drivers, apps, etc.

 

The way I was thinking of doing it is by wiping the entire drive by deleting every partition.

That's generally how you do it. Ideally nothing important is kept on your system drive so backups to a thumbdrive/cloud are pretty quick. Make a Win 10 or 11 install USB using the official tool from MS, boot from it, wipe the drive using the installer and just let Windows install. 

 

Drivers aren't nearly as big a deal as people seem to make them. Grab the latest GPU and chipset driver from the respective manufacture and let Windows Update run a few times. Anything it doesn't pick up just grab from your motherboards support page. Easy. Then its just install apps. 

 

Honestly, I make a USB stick with the drivers and app installers beforehand so I can just plug it in after booting up to the fresh install and just go down the list installing things. From an old build to sitting at the new desktop with drivers fully up to date and Windows Update saying there are no more updates.. 25/30min? 

[Kilrah]

If you have a bunch of huge games and a slow connection or data cap it can mean more preparation/hassle though. 

 

In this case it might be worth resetting Windows keeping files first.

 

Obviously you always want backups of anything important regardless.

[Omie]

32 minutes ago, rickeo said:

That's generally how you do it. Ideally nothing important is kept on your system drive so backups to a thumbdrive/cloud are pretty quick. Make a Win 10 or 11 install USB using the official tool from MS, boot from it, wipe the drive using the installer and just let Windows install. 

 

Drivers aren't nearly as big a deal as people seem to make them. Grab the latest GPU and chipset driver from the respective manufacture and let Windows Update run a few times. Anything it doesn't pick up just grab from your motherboards support page. Easy. Then its just install apps. 

 

Honestly, I make a USB stick with the drivers and app installers beforehand so I can just plug it in after booting up to the fresh install and just go down the list installing things. From an old build to sitting at the new desktop with drivers fully up to date and Windows Update saying there are no more updates.. 25/30min? 

 

15 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

If you have a bunch of huge games and a slow connection or data cap it can mean more preparation/hassle though. 

 

In this case it might be worth resetting Windows keeping files first.

 

Obviously you always want backups of anything important regardless.

 

Ah gotcha. I mean the process is fairly straightforward. However for me, I have a bunch of games installed on the same drive as my OS. So I have to do some clean-up and management first before reinstalling. Also have some personal files on my computer and OneDrive syncing some of my stuff, so it's a little messy. I do have an extra 500GB SSD though, so I might install that and keep that solely for games, while my other SSD is kept solely for Windows. On top of that, I have a 2TB HDD that I've also been using for games.

[Omie]

On 1/15/2022 at 9:37 AM, rickeo said:

That's generally how you do it. Ideally nothing important is kept on your system drive so backups to a thumbdrive/cloud are pretty quick. Make a Win 10 or 11 install USB using the official tool from MS, boot from it, wipe the drive using the installer and just let Windows install. 

 

Drivers aren't nearly as big a deal as people seem to make them. Grab the latest GPU and chipset driver from the respective manufacture and let Windows Update run a few times. Anything it doesn't pick up just grab from your motherboards support page. Easy. Then its just install apps. 

 

Honestly, I make a USB stick with the drivers and app installers beforehand so I can just plug it in after booting up to the fresh install and just go down the list installing things. From an old build to sitting at the new desktop with drivers fully up to date and Windows Update saying there are no more updates.. 25/30min? 

Well I just did a complete wipe and reinstall of Windows and still get the stutters when I'm watching a video on my second monitor. I guess I'm going to have to chalk this up to a CPU issue as my i7 7700k is fairly outdated.

[Omie]

Wanted to bump this just on the off-chance anyone else was experiencing the same issue as me.

 

I updated to W11 (despite having an unsupported CPU) and my stuttering issues were resolved. It looks like something with the way Windows 10 has been handling multi-monitor setups was causing the issue. As soon as I updated to W11 everything became much smoother.