Frame Drops and Micro-Stuttering

[CMonPC]

Hi guys! Long time LMG fan but first time here on the forums, hopefully this is the appropriate place to post this. 

 

I've been dealing with frame drops and micro stuttering for quite awhile, and really don't know how to go about fixing it. I play on a laptop with an i7 and gtx860m and in games like Fallout New Vegas I have no problem achieving 60 frames but sometimes that will randomly drop down to 30-45 and quickly jump back up to 60. This is extremely annoying and seems to happen regardless of what settings I pick and also in other games (Witcher 2, Skyrim). Now that I have some time over the holiday break I would appreciate any help to fix this.

 

Thanks!

[Morgan MLGman]

Thermal throttling? what are your CPU + GPU temps?

[Humbug]

Micro-stutter is normally caused by momentary CPU bottlenecks rather than GPU bottlenecks.

Do you play with the power plugged in? This allows the CPU and GPU to operate in high performance mode.

[BrightCandle]

Vsync on or off?

[CMonPC]

I'm always plugged in, VSync is off in the in game settings. Here's a snip of HWMonitor.

[Humbug]

install this

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/96885/en-us

 

if you're using windows 10

[CMonPC]

Don't think it's a driver issue because they're old games and it has been happening for a few different series of drivers. Can anyone explain what the UC category under utilizations means and why it won't go above 50%? The individual cores do, but I don't know what that UC category is.