Recently started getting stutters

[porina]

Recently I've been getting stutters and they're annoying. I know the standard response to a change is, what happened around then, and undo it? Problem is, I can't remember. I originally (incorrectly) thought it was Chrome running the background causing it, as closing it at the time seemed to resolve it. However, doing that now still doesn't fix it. Chrome makes it worse, but it wasn't the cause.

 

Game is FFXIV, system is main rig in sig (6700k, 1080Ti, plenty of ram, lots of SSDs, 1440p 144 Hz G-sync. Win10. Typical frame rates varies with content from 60 to the 144 limit of the monitor, but within that range it is normally smooth. Recently I've had glitches where there is an intermittant micro-stutter. The reported fps is 50-60-ish but it feels bad as it is a sudden drop from higher than that, as opposed to consistently in that area. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to when it happens, but it seems more likely to happen when moving around new areas.

 

Maybe it is the disk then? I fire up monitoring, and there is no appreciable disk activity when it happens on either the OS SSD or the SSD the game is installed on. Other drives are assumed idle.

 

What about the CPU? This is the only clue... while running the game, "System" normally uses around 3-4% CPU, but when the glitches happen, it goes up to around 6%. Nothing else changes.

 

Monitoring the GPU, I see the opposite, the GPU usage drops when the glitches happen. The GPU is not overheating or indicating any unexpected limiting.

 

I've kinda decided to work around this by moving the GPU to another system with more CPU and see how that goes, but I am curious what's happening here. 

[forceinline]

I've had a similar issue to this, you could try disabling ReLive/PlaysTV/ShadowPlay or any recording software you have. Since the Windows Creators Update in April they run very poorly eating up to 30% of CPU and making some games run worse.

[porina]

9 minutes ago, forceinline said:

I've had a similar issue to this, you could try disabling ReLive/PlaysTV/ShadowPlay or any recording software you have. Since the Windows Creators Update in April they run very poorly eating up to 30% of CPU and making some games run worse.

I know the nvidia one is disabled. I thought I had disabled the one in Windows but will re-check, since I can't be sure if I revisited it since April Update.

 

Thing is, there isn't any significant disk or CPU activity other than that logged by the game.

[NinJake]

Did FFIX have an update? Can you try playing other games and seeing if the stutters persist?

[porina]

2 minutes ago, NinJake said:

Did FFIX have an update? Can you try playing other games and seeing if the stutters persist?

FFXIV like many other online games gets ongoing updates. I don't have interest in any other PC game at the moment, but now you mention it, GTAV really doesn't like this PC either even before I had the problem on FFXIV. I was going to go the other way, and set up FFXIV on other systems to test with. If they're clean, I know it is limited to something in this system.

[NinJake]

Well by testing that, you can at least determine if it's the game itself, or anything but the game. That will save you a ton of headache if it does happen to be the game rather than your system.

[porina]

Ok, I'm going to have to hand in my PC troubleshooting credentials and take a break. While I don't know what the cause was, the fix was... rather basic. I hate to admit it... I just... turned it off and back on again! Reboooooot! Note I normally don't reboot my system except for the monthly Windows Updates on or around patch Tuesday. This has not been a problem before so I never suspected it. 

[porina]

I'm still not problem free on this system. Post reboot, I'm stutter free when not running Chrome, but it comes back if I do. Quite often I watch youtube on 2nd monitor while gaming so this isn't working great for me... I guess I still have to follow through on my original plan. Next job today: move 1080Ti into 8086k system...