What Could Be Causing my PC Stutter/Drop Frames?

[saltbox23k]

Hi guys,

 

So out of the blue over the past month I have been getting random frame drops in a lot of games, especially Rainbow 6 Siege. I believe it began happening after I had done a Windows update (maybe that was the issue?) and ever since then, about every 10-20 seconds while playing a game, I drop 10-30 frames for just about half a second. While this may not seem like a lot, it really is noticeable. I'm not sure what could be causing this either. I have an i7 7700K and a GTX 1080Ti (both OC'd) running on a 1440p 144Hz monitor. I ran some tests and My CPU and GPU temps are fine, GPU usage looks pretty normal (hovers in the high 80-90% most of the time), but I did notice that my CPU usage was a bit higher than I had remembered it being, staying in the high 60-80% range. Still, I don't think that could be the issue. I have noticed that my internet has been acting a bit funny however. While playing R6S, the icon displaying that Update Rate was slow would occasionally come on, for a fraction of a second, and then go away. The Ping and Host icons also sometimes come up, tho fairly rarely. Also, while playing on a multiplayer server on Battlefield 4, a little message in chat would occasionally tell me that my ping as above 200ms (it is usually no higher than 40ms). I tried recreating this possible ping spike in Command Prompt by pinging my IP address, however the response was always 1ms. What could be my issue? I'm not sure if its a internet problem or hardware problem or...I have never cleared my old GPU drivers, would doing that help? Or maybe a new router/ethernet cable? I also have never updated my Motherboard BIOS, should I try that?

 

Thank you.

[xaeleep]

I have a hard time seeing this being caused by your internet connection, assuming you're not only encountering it while playing online. I'm also assuming there are no other errors or symptoms showing, crashes, BSoDs and such

 

Clearing graphics drivers would definitely  be a first step, you can do this with DDU. Then you simply download and install your drivers again.

 

The issue is unfortunately rather diffuse so instead of starting to troubleshoot hardware I would reinstall Windows, if new drivers doesn't help. You'll find the options under  Settings > Update & security > Reset this PC > Get started.

[saltbox23k]

2 hours ago, xaeleep said:

I have a hard time seeing this being caused by your internet connection, assuming you're not only encountering it while playing online. I'm also assuming there are no other errors or symptoms showing, crashes, BSoDs and such

 

Clearing graphics drivers would definitely  be a first step, you can do this with DDU. Then you simply download and install your drivers again.

 

The issue is unfortunately rather diffuse so instead of starting to troubleshoot hardware I would reinstall Windows, if new drivers doesn't help. You'll find the options under  Settings > Update & security > Reset this PC > Get started.

This is a silly question, but is DDU safe? I’m just worried that something will mess up and I will lose my GPU forever or something...

[xaeleep]

DDU only uninstalls the driver, you simply download it from www.geforce.com/drivers afterwards.
Uninstalling the driver doesn't damage the graphics card, it does however help in figuring out if the driver/graphics card have anything to do with the issue.

[Ace McPlane]

20 hours ago, saltbox23k said:

This is a silly question, but is DDU safe? I’m just worried that something will mess up and I will lose my GPU forever or something...

It's fine as long as you follow the instructions and use it correctly:

https://windowsreport.com/display-driver-uninstaller-windows-10/

 

I'd like to add, it could be that the most recent GPU driver update is causing the problem so you may want to roll it back to 389.11 for example.

 

I had a ridiculous amount of stuttering in Oculus home after updating my GPU driver recently and rolling back to 389.11 fixed it.

[saltbox23k]

23 hours ago, stateofpsychosis said:

It's fine as long as you follow the instructions and use it correctly:

https://windowsreport.com/display-driver-uninstaller-windows-10/

 

I'd like to add, it could be that the most recent GPU driver update is causing the problem so you may want to roll it back to 389.11 for example.

 

I had a ridiculous amount of stuttering in Oculus home after updating my GPU driver recently and rolling back to 389.11 fixed it.

Thank you!

 

This is another really dumb question, but after I have wiped all the drivers off my GPU, will I be able to open Chrome and download the GPU Driver Installer off the NVIDIA website, or should I have the Installer downloaded before I clean out the drivers?

[Ace McPlane]

5 minutes ago, saltbox23k said:

Thank you!

 

This is another really dumb question, but after I have wiped all the drivers off my GPU, will I be able to open Chrome and download the GPU Driver Installer off the NVIDIA website, or should I have the Installer downloaded before I clean out the drivers?

It's fine either way.

DDU doesn't stop you from seeing windows after the reboot and even if it did, your CPU has on board graphics so if you couldn't see the screen, you could just plug the HDMI into your motherboard temporarily until you get the GPU driver installed again..

Even in a case where you didn't have that option and somehow your screen went black, removing the GPU, starting without it, rebooting, putting the GPU back in and booting again would make it automatically install a basic driver from windows too so pretty hard to screw this up

 

I still download it first though just so it's right there when I reboot to windows.

[saltbox23k]

On 7/10/2018 at 12:16 PM, stateofpsychosis said:

It's fine either way.

DDU doesn't stop you from seeing windows after the reboot and even if it did, your CPU has on board graphics so if you couldn't see the screen, you could just plug the HDMI into your motherboard temporarily until you get the GPU driver installed again..

Even in a case where you didn't have that option and somehow your screen went black, removing the GPU, starting without it, rebooting, putting the GPU back in and booting again would make it automatically install a basic driver from windows too so pretty hard to screw this up

 

I still download it first though just so it's right there when I reboot to windows.

Finally got around to doing a fresh install of drivers. I used DDU to clean them out then installed the 397.64 drivers (slightly old). However, I am still getting unstable frames in a lot of games. I have noticed that the frame drops are a bit more prevalent on games on my SSD rather than hard drive. Maybe an unstable overclock is causing my problems? I have my 1080Ti OC’d pretty high (2075MHz). I’m going to see if dropping it to 2025-2050MHz might solve my problem.

[Tosa]

In my experience, stuttering and random frame drops is typically caused by the CPU not managing to keep up. Though, given your specs, it shouldn't be an issue.

 

It could be Nvidia's Instant Replay. If you press Alt+Z and turn it off, maybe that'll help?

[saltbox23k]

47 minutes ago, Tosa said:

In my experience, stuttering and random frame drops is typically caused by the CPU not managing to keep up. Though, given your specs, it shouldn't be an issue.

 

It could be Nvidia's Instant Replay. If you press Alt+Z and turn it off, maybe that'll help?

Yeah, I don’t assume my CPU is the direct cause of my problems...

 

I’ve always had the Instant Replay feature off

[Tosa]

How often do you shut down/reboot your PC? And keep in mind, what the "shut down" option in the start menu does depends on the settings. Typically, it'll enter some kind of sleep mode instead so it'll "turn on faster". You should probably make sure this is off.

[saltbox23k]

1 hour ago, Tosa said:

How often do you shut down/reboot your PC? And keep in mind, what the "shut down" option in the start menu does depends on the settings. Typically, it'll enter some kind of sleep mode instead so it'll "turn on faster". You should probably make sure this is off.

I actually shut down/reboot very often. I typically don’t set my PC to sleep very often because when I wake it up the RGB profiles on my keyboard and CPU cooler don’t apply for some reason (yeah I know silly reason not to set my PC to sleep). I’ll definitely look into this.

[saltbox23k]

6 hours ago, Tosa said:

How often do you shut down/reboot your PC? And keep in mind, what the "shut down" option in the start menu does depends on the settings. Typically, it'll enter some kind of sleep mode instead so it'll "turn on faster". You should probably make sure this is off.

So I had fast startup enabled. which I went ahead a disabled. Didn't help with my frame drops. However I think I may have found a temporary fix. I lessened my OC on my GPU by 25MHz and I had found that, while I still get frame drops, they are usually not as extreme as before. I also set my frame cap to 155, so that if it dropped 10 frames I shouldn't notice it, since its still above 144 FPS. While testing everything out and trying to see if I would get a random frame drop, I did notice that my GPU usage was bouncing from about 97% usage to 91%. and occasionally dropping to the low 80s. I don't know if this is a direct correlation of my frame drops yet, but I'll try to figure it out.

 

Edit: I am going to post a screenshot of both my GPU and CPU usage after about 5 minutes of running around in a game of Rainbow Six Siege.

[saltbox23k]

So I ran a game of CSGO with Bots and an empty custom game of Rainbow Six Siege, each for about 5 minutes. Here are my CPU and GPU usages: (first is CSGO, second is R6S)

[ZacoAttaco]

1 hour ago, saltbox23k said:

I lessened my OC on my GPU by 25MHz and I had found that, while I still get frame drops, they are usually not as extreme as before.

In that case, I would try and run the GPU and maybe CPU at stock and see if you get frame drops again. If the performance is consistent and you're not having frame rate drops then I'd slowly begin overclocking again. If there still is issues with frame rates even at stock then the issue is not with the OC.

[Ace McPlane]

On 7/15/2018 at 11:43 PM, saltbox23k said:

So I ran a game of CSGO with Bots and an empty custom game of Rainbow Six Siege, each for about 5 minutes. Here are my CPU and GPU usages: (first is CSGO, second is R6S)

Try turning off GPU power usage monitoring in EVGA precision X there.

I had to disable that in MSI afterburner recently as it was causing massive frame drops in VR for me.

It's a long shot, but something worth trying.