Can a failing motherboard cause frame drops in games?

[Matt129]

Hello everyone, I’ve been getting random frame drops in games like Fortnite and occasionally Valorant, and I’ve replaced almost every part in the computer except for the motherboard. Granted, it is a MSI Z490a Pro that hasn’t been in use for even a year, but I’ve changed everything else. I have an MSI GAMING Z TRIO RTX 3080 12gb running at factory clock speeds, an i9 10900k running at factory clock speeds, and 32gb of DDR3 2666mhz memory overclocked to 2800mhz. It’s not a software issue that I can find, windows 10 and 11 have been clean installed multiple times without a difference. Nothing is overheating, and aside from the random blue screen here and there, there are no other symptoms. I mean, with my system I shouldn’t be getting frame drops from 200fps to 10fps in freaking Fortnite lol. Do you think it’s the motherboard at this point? It has had a lot of graphics cards in and out of it in the past year. Thank you for any help you can give me.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Lock allcore 5ghz at static 1.25v vcore just to eliminate cpu behaving oddly factor and see if that fixes your issue

[Majzok]

I would say yes - once (but a long time ago) I had issues with FPS in games cuz the 3V CMOS battery was dying.

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

Your RAM is AWEFULLY SLOW for that platform.

Might let you get away with typical usage but thats horrible for gaming when you have a Fast CPU/GPU but horrible unbalanced RAM.

 

3200+ would serve you well, 3600-4000+ will serve you better. 2400-2666 is pretty horrible for gaming  (esp paired with RTX3080) and 2800Mhz isn't much better.

 

Its also a reason you wouldn't see much gain switching GPUs and why you drop FPS pretty hard and fast...

[Dedayog]

21 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Your RAM is AWEFULLY SLOW for that platform.

Might let you get away with typical usage but thats horrible for gaming when you have a Fast CPU/GPU but horrible unbalanced RAM.

 

3200+ would serve you well, 3600-4000+ will serve you better. 2400-2666 is pretty horrible for gaming  (esp paired with RTX3080) and 2800Mhz isn't much better.

 

Its also a reason you wouldn't see much gain switching GPUs and why you drop FPS pretty hard and fast...

Uhm, it's 2800 MHz RAM, it's not all that much slower than 3200MHz..    It's definitely not horrible and unbalanced.  Going to scare the guy.

 

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

58 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Uhm, it's 2800 MHz RAM, it's not all that much slower than 3200MHz..    It's definitely not horrible and unbalanced.  Going to scare the guy.

 

 

Speed isn't everything, it's just one factor that goes into it,...  2666 with likely Auto Timings Manually set at 2800Mhz, even if its XMP 2400-2666 kits are not low latency either...

RAM is complicated, and varies in effectiveness game to game (Latency / Bandwidth Priorities in game)

Spoiler

You'd notice that slow 2800Mhz way WAY WAY less with a slow GPU like a GTX1650/RX570...than a RTX3080 based GPU.  It's likely still the reason his 3080 isn't performing great I'd put money on it.

 

Faster Ram with lower latencies (vs 2666 CL?) also allows CPU to do more work at any given time, and unbalanced Ram config can attribute to enhancing a CPU bottleneck...   Scaring the guy isn't my intent, but his pre-existing knowledge isn't my concern, his performance bottleneck is.  

 

The i9 10900K at stock with Balanced RAM of 3200-3600 with relatively good/tighter latencies will GPU bound a RTX3080 in 97% of titles, his platform is strong, his RAM is in the tier of garbage for THAT GPU TIER of Performance expected. HighHertz GPU with FPS/Data RAM Bottlenecked. 

Not a concern with lesser GPUs with lower frame targets required from the CPU/RAM but a RTX3080 ain't no slouch yet the RAM you have for HighFPS core scaling is horrible for that RYX3080,...not up to task to aid the system delivering its full potential from cpu/gpu throughput.

 

Thankfully the 10900K has a relatively decent IMC that can easily handle decent RAM 3600-3800 RAM and surpaas that.

 

Depending on your Higher FPS targets...  RAM configs matter when any thread in use gets decent usage (in GAMING)

[Matt129]

1 hour ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Speed isn't everything, it's just one factor that goes into it,...  2666 with likely Auto Timings Manually set at 2800Mhz, even if its XMP 2400-2666 kits are not low latency either...

RAM is complicated, and varies in effectiveness game to game (Latency / Bandwidth Priorities in game)

  Reveal hidden contents

You'd notice that slow 2800Mhz way WAY WAY less with a slow GPU like a GTX1650/RX570...than a RTX3080 based GPU.  It's likely still the reason his 3080 isn't performing great I'd put money on it.

 

Faster Ram with lower latencies (vs 2666 CL?) also allows CPU to do more work at any given time, and unbalanced Ram config can attribute to enhancing a CPU bottleneck...   Scaring the guy isn't my intent, but his pre-existing knowledge isn't my concern, his performance bottleneck is.  

 

The i9 10900K at stock with Balanced RAM of 3200-3600 with relatively good/tighter latencies will GPU bound a RTX3080 in 97% of titles, his platform is strong, his RAM is in the tier of garbage for THAT GPU TIER of Performance expected. HighHertz GPU with FPS/Data RAM Bottlenecked. 

Not a concern with lesser GPUs with lower frame targets required from the CPU/RAM but a RTX3080 ain't no slouch yet the RAM you have for HighFPS core scaling is horrible for that RYX3080,...not up to task to aid the system delivering its full potential from cpu/gpu throughput.

 

Thankfully the 10900K has a relatively decent IMC that can easily handle decent RAM 3600-3800 RAM and surpaas that.

 

Depending on your Higher FPS targets...  RAM configs matter when any thread in use gets decent usage (in GAMING)

I literally just bought a second kit of the 2666mhz a month ago . I don’t have it in the budget to upgrade right now. At least the kit was a PNY gaming kit. I don’t think that’s it’s the problem tho, I also had this problem when running 16gb 2666mhz, gtx 1060 3gb, and an i5 10400.

[SkilledRebuilds]

1 hour ago, Matt129 said:

I literally just bought a second kit of the 2666mhz a month ago . I don’t have it in the budget to upgrade right now. At least the kit was a PNY gaming kit. I don’t think that’s it’s the problem tho, I also had this problem when running 16gb 2666mhz, gtx 1060 3gb, and an i5 10400.

Well games and their metrics are most affected out of typical apps when using not just slow ram, but combining 'average' timings' with 'slower speed memory'.
Gaming loads have variance all the time, even with bursty workloads, the typical usage is still quite high per cpu thread in use by game engines vs typical idle apps with bursty loads.

[Matt129]

5 hours ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Well games and their metrics are most affected out of typical apps when using not just slow ram, but combining 'average' timings' with 'slower speed memory'.
Gaming loads have variance all the time, even with bursty workloads, the typical usage is still quite high per cpu thread in use by game engines vs typical idle apps with bursty loads.

My friend has ram running at 2133mhz and has a 3060, but he doesn’t have any problems that I know of running games? He certainly doesn’t have the same stutter I have. 

[SkilledRebuilds]

Your friends PC has nothing to do with yours...

Even with mirrored hardware at the same location in gane its never an exact match and then there are settings used (since installing Windows onwards) and all that too.

 

You realistically can only compare your machine against itself and its own configuration.