Sapphire RX 480 Stutter?

[razak3l]

Hello, I have a Sapphire RX 480 which is not even 2 months old. Recently I have noticed some really noticeable stutter while gaming. My first experience was when I was playing Witcher 3 on ULTRA settings with Hair works off and it was happening really often. I thought it was normal even though when I first installed it and played it it didn't have any problems whatsoever. I decided to give it a try in GTA V which I never ever had any problems with, no lag no stutter no low fps nothing. It started stuttering very hard as well. Last night as I finished my Withcer 3 session I took off my headphones and there was a really loud noise coming from the PC tower, I'm not sure if it was the CPU which I doubt, I'm pretty sure it was the graphics card. I haven't overclocked it and the temperatures seem normal, what could be wrong?

My setup is as follows : i5 6660k, RX 480, 8GB RAM, ASUS z170-a, EVGA 550 G2, Samsung EVO 250 and 1TB HDD. Also, I'm not sure but throwing it this in just in case, I think this happened after I downloaded some new AMD update. Hope you can help!

[Zytoc]

Usually, stuttering comes from enabling V-Sync.  

1. Check if that setting was changed recently.  

2. CPU fans (stock) can be very loud but I would check temps on both GPU and CPU to see which fans are ramping up.  

3. Next steps would be a clean install of AMD drivers after a hard power cycle of the computer with the GPU out of the socket.  

4. If that doesn't help you may want to do a bios update/flash.  I would avoid that if possible but it may fix the issue.  

 

AMD is more prone to stuttering and bios corruption from my experience.  Please update after trying these steps.

[razak3l]

Just now, Jordan Scott said:

Usually, stuttering comes from enabling V-Sync.  

1. Check if that setting was changed recently.  

2. CPU fans (stock) can be very loud but I would check temps on both GPU and CPU to see which fans are ramping up.  

3. Next steps would be a clean install of AMD drivers after a hard power cycle of the computer with the GPU out of the socket.  

4. If that doesn't help you may want to do a bios update/flash.  I would avoid that if possible but it may fix the issue.  

 

AMD is more prone to stuttering and bios corruption from my experience.  Please update after trying these steps.

I checked V-sync in both Witcher and GTA and it's off. And I don't think V-sync would turn ON just like that in any of the games.

I don't have a stock CPU fan, It's a be quiet pure rock one.

Also, what do you mean hard power cycle of the computer with the GPU out of the socket?

[MattW]

If your running windows 10 that's probably the problem... I'm running a i5 6600 and a Sapphire RX 480 and I had the same thing happen twice to me when playing skyrim. The last time I had fraps running and there was no drop in fps. When I closed skyrim I found that windows 10 had downloaded new updates, and wanted to restart my computer. Did a quick reboot and everything is fine.

[razak3l]

Just now, MattW said:

If your running windows 10 that's probably the problem... I'm running a i5 6600 and a Sapphire RX 480 and I had the same thing happen twice to me when playing skyrim. The last time I had fraps running and there was no drop in fps. When I closed skyrim I found that windows 10 had downloaded new updates, and wanted to restart my computer. Did a quick reboot and everything is fine.

Hello, I'm running windows 7. It was once that I did a reboot and the stutter was gone, thought I opened it again after I closed it down for a bit and the stutter was still there..

[Zytoc]

Just now, razak3l said:

Also, what do you mean hard power cycle of the computer with the GPU out of the socket?

By this I mean:

 

1. Turn off the computer.

2. Unplug from the wall, try to turn on to pull remaining power from the motherboard.

3. Pull out the graphics card and unplug from the power supply.

4. Wait for a couple minutes

5. Reinstall Graphics card

6. Plug back into wall and start.

[razak3l]

1 minute ago, Jordan Scott said:

By this I mean:

 

1. Turn off the computer.

2. Unplug from the wall, try to turn on to pull remaining power from the motherboard.

3. Pull out the graphics card and unplug from the power supply.

4. Wait for a couple minutes

5. Reinstall Graphics card

6. Plug back into wall and start.

Sorry for the newb question, but don't I unistall drivers? I just do that without touching the software?

[Zytoc]

13 minutes ago, Jordan Scott said:

3. Next steps would be a clean install of AMD drivers after a hard power cycle of the computer with the GPU out of the socket.

 

1 minute ago, razak3l said:

Sorry for the newb question, but don't I unistall drivers? I just do that without touching the software?

Yes, step three states to do a clean install of AMD drivers.  By clean, we mean completely remove AMD drivers before installing again.

Don't worry about any questions, that are better than feeling stupid because it didn't work. 

[razak3l]

On 11/10/2016 at 1:04 PM, Jordan Scott said:

 

Yes, step three states to do a clean install of AMD drivers.  By clean, we mean completely remove AMD drivers before installing again.

Don't worry about any questions, that are better than feeling stupid because it didn't work. 

I am now installing the drivers again. Something I noticed is that when I downloaded the automatic configuration from the AMD website it said that it doesn't actually recognise what video card I have..which is weird. I'm manually downloading the drivers now.

 

Alright..I did the hard power cycle as well as reinstallation of the AMD drivers. I launched GTA V first and there was no stutter. Withcer 3 had a stutter at the start but it seemed to be just a bit of lag caused by the loading. I don't see any stuttering at the moment and I hope I won't in the future as well. I will go through a gaming session and update again. See if this lasts.

 

Nope, stutters again. Was playing Withcer and opened fraps. I saw a dip from 60 + fps to 20 and very fast up to 60 again. The fans are spinning real fast atm

[Zytoc]

At this point, you have a couple of options but first I would isolate the problem hardware.

 

Do you or a friend have another video card you could slot in to check if the stuttering continues?

You may want to eliminate any other non-essential hardware (ie. raid cards, USB PCI-e cards, external HDD connected via USB), especially any new additions to see if they change the behavior.

 

Also you may want to swap in another power supply.  Lack of power can cause this behavior.

 

If you identify it is not other hardware you could:

 

1. Flash the bios on your card with an update

2. Return the card and await a replacement via warranty.

[SirRoller]

On 10/11/2016 at 7:58 PM, razak3l said:

Nope, stutters again. Was playing Withcer and opened fraps. I saw a dip from 60 + fps to 20 and very fast up to 60 again. The fans are spinning real fast atm

Did you ever find a fix for this? Been having the same problem since October and tried just about everything. Thinking about just giving up and buying a 1070.

[razak3l]

22 hours ago, SirRoller said:

Did you ever find a fix for this? Been having the same problem since October and tried just about everything. Thinking about just giving up and buying a 1070.

Still having stutters on some games.. haven't played Withcer or GTA V though.. I have stutter on GTA IV but I think it's just a bad port..