What does it mean when a game's video freezes momentarily, but the audio keeps playing?

Triggeravus · April 27

It'll freeze or do a really long stutter for up to 5 seconds or so. It doesn't happen constantly but enough to be annoying.

I first noticed it with Ghost Wire Tokyo and thought it was just the game. Then I saw it with AC Valhalla and Horizon FW so it has to be the PC. All drivers, Windows, and BIOS have been updated, tried different HDMI cables. I don't know if the video card's going up or if there's something else I can try.

Asus Tuf 3080 OC 10 GB
i9-10850k
32 GB ram
Asus Strix Z490-E
Windows 11 latest build

YoungBlade · April 27

There can be a lot of potential causes, but this happens because the audio of the game is de-synced from the rendering of the game.

Basically, for a lot of games, stuff keeps happening even if your framerate dips. This is done so that the game is not framerate dependent - your FPS doesn't matter for the timing of things happening in the game, which is the case for the majority of games released these days.

It could be a CPU issue, GPU issue, RAM issue, etc. All it means is that something is wrong, but it's not an issue that's necessarily specific to any one component.

The first thing I would do is, if you have any overclocks running, I'd disable them - they might be unstable. Second, try disabling XMP on the RAM - this is technically an overclock. Third, try setting your CPU to use the Intel defaults in the BIOS (not "Optimized Defaults" that Asus gives it).

porina · April 27

This could be caused by the storage. What is the storage? Check its health, at the least look at SMART and do a full surface scan. If you have ever enabled HPET in Windows in the past that can also cause some weird symptoms like this.

Also try closing all other software before running the game in case one of those is stealing resources.