Games are stuttering. Please help.

[shx0047]

Hi,
I'm not sure where to post this. I hope you guys would be able to help me.
My PC specs are:
CPU: Intel core i5 6500 3.2 Ghz
GPU: Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 3GB Mini
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: Toshiba 1TB
I can play games like AC Origins with 45 FPS avg on high settings with this config. But the problem is the game stutters heavily. And some times the fps drops to even below 10. I tried reinstalling the games, running a scan with malwarebytes, defragging hdd. The CPU temp is around 70C and GPU around 80C while gaming. I suppose that's normal for an air cooled mini GPU. I would have given up thinking its a bottleneck by my weak CPU. But the thing is, the game doesn't always stutter. During some lucky runs or after restarting the game for many times, there are some sessions where there are no stutter. The game runs butter smooth with a stable 40-45fps. If my system was the drawback, then this shouldn't happen, right? Please I'm in desperate need of a solution. My older GPU (gt 730) gave less fps but it didn't have stutter. Low fps is somewhat tolerable but constant stuttering is not.
Most of the games I play behaves like this (eg. PUBG, Watchdogs 2).
Thanks in advnace.

[MedievalMatt]

7 hours ago, shx0047 said:

Hi,
I'm not sure where to post this. I hope you guys would be able to help me.
My PC specs are:
CPU: Intel core i5 6500 3.2 Ghz
GPU: Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 3GB Mini
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: Toshiba 1TB
I can play games like AC Origins with 45 FPS avg on high settings with this config. But the problem is the game stutters heavily. And some times the fps drops to even below 10. I tried reinstalling the games, running a scan with malwarebytes, defragging hdd. The CPU temp is around 70C and GPU around 80C while gaming. I suppose that's normal for an air cooled mini GPU. I would have given up thinking its a bottleneck by my weak CPU. But the thing is, the game doesn't always stutter. During some lucky runs or after restarting the game for many times, there are some sessions where there are no stutter. The game runs butter smooth with a stable 40-45fps. If my system was the drawback, then this shouldn't happen, right? Please I'm in desperate need of a solution. My older GPU (gt 730) gave less fps but it didn't have stutter. Low fps is somewhat tolerable but constant stuttering is not.
Most of the games I play behaves like this (eg. PUBG, Watchdogs 2).
Thanks in advnace.

The HDD is going to affect performance in games with large environments considerably.

 

The "Stutter" is likely really only prevalent at the beginning of your session and tapers off after about 10-15 minutes.  thats your HDD loading all the crap it has to load... and in open world games it has to fetch files constantly which take literally forever with a spinning drive.

 

When you start a game multiple times in a windows session without a restart.  portions of the game will be cached in RAM and so it will appear "faster" when it really isnt.

[shx0047]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

The HDD is going to affect performance in games with large environments considerably.

The HDD is new. Its not even 3 months old

[MedievalMatt]

Im hoping this is a Typo... but DDR3 on Skylake is probably also not helping.  I didnt even know that was possible outside of some really cheap low power laptops.

[shx0047]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

Im hoping this is a Typo... but DDR3 on Skylake is probably also not helping.  I didnt even know that was possible outside of some really cheap low power laptops.

No. This motherboard supports it: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-B150M-D3H-DDR3-rev-10#sp

[MedievalMatt]

7 hours ago, shx0047 said:

The HDD is new. Its not even 3 months old

doesnt matter.... HDDs all, no matter how new, have massive latency.  I bet if you play a game that has closed in levels, where you arent free to explore, the system does much better.

IOPS is typically how you would see the performance difference in a drive for gaming.

your bog standard SATA - SSD is in the 1000-5000 IOPS

HDDs cap at 500.

 

7 hours ago, shx0047 said:

No. This motherboard supports it: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-B150M-D3H-DDR3-rev-10#sp

thats also a problem.  DDR3 has a MASSIVE speed disadvantage over DDR4.  which is also probably the cause of the stutter.

 

For reference, so you dont think im talking out my ass.

IOPS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

DDR3 Vs DDR4

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-differences-between-ddr3-and-ddr4-ram/

DDR4 operates at a lower voltage than DDR3. DDR4 runs at 1.2 volts, down from 1.5. 

DDR3 specifications started at 800 MT/s (or Millions of Transfers per second) and some went as high as 2133. DDR4, meanwhile, starts at 2133 MHz. The increased speed means an overall increase in bandwidth.

 

also - https://www.anandtech.com/show/8959/ddr4-haswell-e-scaling-review-2133-to-3200-with-gskill-corsair-adata-and-crucial

[KarathKasun]

4 minutes ago, MedievalMatt said:

For reference, so you dont think im talking out my ass.

 

IOPS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOPS

 

DDR3 Vs DDR4

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-differences-between-ddr3-and-ddr4-ram/

 

DDR4 operates at a lower voltage than DDR3. DDR4 runs at 1.2 volts, down from 1.5. 

 

DDR3 specifications started at 800 MT/s (or Millions of Transfers per second) and some went as high as 2133. DDR4, meanwhile, starts at 2133 MHz. The increased speed means an overall increase in bandwidth.

 

also - https://www.anandtech.com/show/8959/ddr4-haswell-e-scaling-review-2133-to-3200-with-gskill-corsair-adata-and-crucial

You are talking out of your arse.  Its the quantity causing stutter.  That system is likely using DDR3 1600 at a minimum as DDR3 1600 was mainstream with the Core 2000 series (Sandy Bridge).

 

The whole system is memory starved TBQH.  3GB GPU memory and 8gb system memory are on the low side of acceptable, and will cause stutter in many games.

[TechMasterMind]

15 minutes ago, shx0047 said:

Hi,
I'm not sure where to post this. I hope you guys would be able to help me.
My PC specs are:
CPU: Intel core i5 6500 3.2 Ghz
GPU: Zotac Geforce GTX 1060 3GB Mini
RAM: 8GB DDR3
HDD: Toshiba 1TB
I can play games like AC Origins with 45 FPS avg on high settings with this config. But the problem is the game stutters heavily. And some times the fps drops to even below 10. I tried reinstalling the games, running a scan with malwarebytes, defragging hdd. The CPU temp is around 70C and GPU around 80C while gaming. I suppose that's normal for an air cooled mini GPU. I would have given up thinking its a bottleneck by my weak CPU. But the thing is, the game doesn't always stutter. During some lucky runs or after restarting the game for many times, there are some sessions where there are no stutter. The game runs butter smooth with a stable 40-45fps. If my system was the drawback, then this shouldn't happen, right? Please I'm in desperate need of a solution. My older GPU (gt 730) gave less fps but it didn't have stutter. Low fps is somewhat tolerable but constant stuttering is not.
Most of the games I play behaves like this (eg. PUBG, Watchdogs 2).
Thanks in advnace.

OK so I notice like me you have a 1060 3GB and that 3GB with even games from a year or two ago dosn't stretch very far. If you have windows 10 go to task manager --> performance --> GPU 0 and it should say how much video memory and shared video memory (DDR3 in this case) you are using. If this is near 3GB (about 95%) and some RAM is being used then that is your issue if not check if your disk usage is nearing 100%

If not your 8 of RAM just like the video memory could be the issue so if about 85%+ of it is being used you're in trouble.

Otherwise I'm not sure I'd need more info.

[MedievalMatt]

5 minutes ago, KarathKasun said:

You are talking out of your arse.  Its the quantity causing stutter.  That system is likely using DDR3 1600 at a minimum as DDR3 1600 was mainstream with the Core 2000 series (Sandy Bridge).

 

The whole system is memory starved TBQH.  3GB GPU memory and 8gb system memory are on the low side of acceptable, and will cause stutter in many games.

he meets or exceed the minimums for all the games he mentioned.  8GB is not the limitation here.  That wouldnt explain why its smooth "sometimes" as OP describes.

 

EDIT - OP can confirm a system resources limitation by lowering the resoluiton.... this should cause lower memory usage overall.

[TechMasterMind]

Just now, MedievalMatt said:

he meets or exceed the minimums for all the games he mentioned.  8GB is not the limitation here.  That wouldnt explain why its smooth "sometimes" as OP describes.

Tbf minimum requirements are a meme they are so badly made sometimes so I wouldn't be so sure.

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

he meets or exceed the minimums for all the games he mentioned.  8GB is not the limitation here.  That wouldnt explain why its smooth "sometimes" as OP describes.

Yeah it does.  I have systems ranging from 2gb to 32gb of RAM, and his description fits pagefile thrashing (running out of memory) perfectly.  Especially in open world games where memory needs are very dynamic.

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

Yeah it does.  I have systems ranging from 2gb to 32gb of RAM, and his description fits pagefile thrashing (running out of memory) perfectly.

pagefile issues would also be helped by faster storage.  Just sayin.

 

Edit - My point is... he may not be able to get more RAM, but an SSD would help matters.

[KarathKasun]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

pagefile issues would also be helped by faster storage.  Just sayin.

Not really.  A SSD is orders of magnitude slower than the slowest RAM from 10 years ago.  We got 10gb/s out of RAM around 2005...

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

Not really.  A SSD is orders of magnitude slower than the slowest RAM from 10 years ago.

its also orders of magnitude faster than and HDD, even one made yesterday.

 

Faster as in Random IOPS.... which is what your storage would be doing using the paging file.  Not to mention seeking latency, among other things.

 

Edit - if he is using a page file.. and SSD would speed things along... even if  little bit.

[shx0047]

I dont think I will be able to get a new SSD anytime soon as they're expensive and I just recently have upgraded my pc. Is there any other solutions I could try? I have a friend who has the same specs but a 4th gen i3. He doesn't get stutters. Here take a look at this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DXokpSYjYJ-yphbHQW1VL7hddfMuB20A/view Isn't this horrible?
 

Edit: I dont see any game using more than 7gb of my ram. And I always make sure to adjust the graphics settings so that it never exceeds my VRAM. (You can see the monitoring in the above video)

 

 

[MedievalMatt]

4 minutes ago, shx0047 said:

I dont think I will be able to get a new SSD anytime soon as they're expensive and I just recently have upgraded my pc. Is there any other solutions I could try? I have a friend who has the same specs but a 4th gen i3. He doesn't get stutters. Here take a look at this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DXokpSYjYJ-yphbHQW1VL7hddfMuB20A/view Isn't this horrible?

 

can you post a list.  From the above.  I think the concern is ammount of RAM.

 

A 6500 is a very respectable CPU.

 

Another factor is the resolution at which you are playing vs. your friend.  1080P vs. 720P are very different in terms of system resources needed.

 

Have you tried lowering your resolution while gaming.  Does the situation improve?  Obviously your average FPS will go up, but stuttering wise.

[shx0047]

7 minutes ago, MedievalMatt said:

can you post a list.  From the above.  I think the concern is ammount of RAM.

 

A 6500 is a very respectable CPU.

 

Another factor is the resolution at which you are playing vs. your friend.  1080P vs. 720P are very different in terms of system resources needed.

 

Have you tried lowering your resolution while gaming.  Does the situation improve?  Obviously your average FPS will go up, but stuttering wise.

Here is a gameplay of my friend's: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zqfeVHCBU1JEBEbOVhL_xVRnASmtbxZL/view 
His specs are same as mine except the cpu. As you can see he got less average fps but the game is much smooth (You could compare the frametimes). He plays at 1600x900. 

I play at 1920x1080. If I turn down my res to 1600x900, fps increases but the stuttering remains (Though it seems less horrible, but it is still there to make it unplayable)