PC Stuttering (Lagging) while downloading

[Wavorly]

Hi, recently my PC started stuttering (lagging) while I download stuff (Steam, uTorrent, Chrome doesn't really matter with what). What I mean by this is that I can't control my mouse smoothly it jumps all over the place. Applications freeze up and while playing youtube videos it seems like the playback goes at 0.8 speed and it's also lagging even though it's buffered,

 

My Specs:

• Windows 10 Pro 64 bit Retail
• MAXIMUS VIII HERO (BIOS version 1102, latest)
• Intel i7 6700k (overclocked to 4.2GHz with AI Suite 3)
• 4x8GB DDR4 Kingston HyperX Savage (2133MHz)
• Gigabyte GTX 980Ti G1
• Samsung 256GB 850PRO (OS)
• Western Digital Black 4TB (storage drive -  yeah I know it's wasn't the best choice)
• Corsair RM850W

Sometimes the stuttering persists even after the download finishes. 

After I restart my PC it always goes away. I tried tracking what's happening in Resource Monitor, but I couldn't make anything useful out of it.

[StainlessSR]

Does this occur if you close Utorrent? If you are hosting a lot of files every time a file is accessed, Bitdefender scans it, so this may be the cause of your stuttering and why when you restart it goes away (all the connections from peers downloading from you goes away). As there is no real obvious culprit (ie: chrome using 75% cpu) this would be my best guess. If even with uTorrent closed it persists in happening then it may be a driver issue or irq conflict.

[Wavorly]

If I am downloading something with uTorrent and close it it still persists till the restart. What I noticed is if I limit my download speed to 1000 kB/s then it seems to go away.

I tried disabling BD and for now it seems to be ok, but I wan't to try it later when there will be more people online. The Disk usage seems though better. If it solves my problem I'll accept your answer.

[Wavorly]

I tested it with Bitdefender disabled. There was a some stuttering when PLEX kicked in and started working. But after I terminated it everything return to normal.

But when I almost thought I wen't away it started stuttering again. Not as badly as before but there's still something that I'm missing.

[StainlessSR]

Utorrent is more than likely the culprit. Your pc is getting pings and hit with searches and you are servicing downloads.

If you have this problem with Utorrent not running, then there may be something wrong. Utorrent is known to cause system stuttering.

[Wavorly]

Well for example I'm running uTorrent now for almost an hour without no problems, with Bitdefender and Plex running. But sometimes it start's stuttering at the exact moment I start it up. Or it even persists after I shut it down?

Are there some settings for uTorrent that I could try to see if it helps something? Or any other logs that I could provide to pinpoint the problem?

Edited May 24, 2016 by Wavorly

[StainlessSR]

Unfortunately, unless you are not sharing (I think you can still disable that option, it has been a long while since I last was doing torrents) your pc will still get pings for search's. It is the high search load along with all the other things your trying to make your pc do at the same time. The best solution would be to offload the Utorrent and Plex unto a dedicated (separate) system for that.

[Wavorly]

But what I don't understand is that my CPU and Memory doesn't seem to be overloaded. Only my Network and Disk reads seem to be all over the place.

I'm downloading to a HDD and my OS is on an SSD. My internet speed (100MB/sec) is much less then my HDD read/write speed (or at least that's what I think).

Or I can't reed the Resource Monitor correctly. Isn't the actual usage the one marked with green? I don't know what the blue line is about.

[StainlessSR]

It has more to do with the queue depth and latency on the hard disk.

 

I use gadgets (yeah so win 7 of me but they work on win 10) to monitor my disk usage, the gadget shows reads(Mb/s), writes (Mb/s) , queue depth(%) I have had low read/write but 100% queue depth while gaming and it causes a slow load and/or stuttering while it is waiting for the small bits of data that are stored all over the drive. Utorrent does not store the whole file in memory, so it has to go to the hard drive for each part that it then shoves down the internet (think random 4k reads) it is this type of use that hard disks fail at.

 

Here is a fairly detailed discussion on how high queue depth on a database increases latency. Now you are saying "But I am not running a database!", but you are running one in essence with both utorrent and plex.

 

Other than offloading that onto a different system the only other way to mitigate the load put on your disk is to

1.run multiple hhd in raid(0,5,10). (will help some but adding more disks will only speed it up to a point. (as long as the requested bit is on a different drive it will allow servicing more requests at a time) Also, unless you are using a separate raid controller, there is a slight load placed upon the system(cpu) for running "software" raid.)

2.put all files your servicing(downloading/sharing) on a ssd.

[Wavorly]

Well then it seems that I can't do much for now. It was weird that I never had problems like this on my old PC.

So if I wan't to get rid completely of the stuttering I should move all my torrent and plex stuff to a different PC or a NAS? I guess the other device would have the same problem but I wouldn't notice it on my end.

[StainlessSR]

1 minute ago, Wavorly said:

So if I wan't to get rid completely of the stuttering I should move all my torrent and plex stuff to a different PC or a NAS? I guess the other device would have the same problem but I wouldn't notice it on my end.

Yes.

2 minutes ago, Wavorly said:

It was weird that I never had problems like this on my old PC.

You were probably not getting hit as much or often on your old system as you are on your new one. (more popular files, more numerous files now)

[Wavorly]

OK. Thx for the info. I guess I just have to deal with it for now.