PC is Jittering/Stuttering Frametime spikes

General1337 · November 6, 2018

Hey guys,
I've been having this stuttering issue for more than a year now and can't figure it out. It's driving me insane. I have tried everything I can think of but could really use some advice/help.
PC Specs:
Motherboard: ASUS Z170-A
CPU: I7-7700K
GPU: ASUS ROG STRIX 1080 TI
SSD: Samsung 970 EVO Pro
RAM: DDR4 2400Mhz 32GB
Cooler: Corsair H110i
Monitor: ASUS ROG PG279Q

OS: Windows 10 1809
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The issue:
The main part of the issue presents itself in games or 3d applets, I will be running something in high framerate it will periodically drop several frames (up to 20 frames) and the entire game will either slow down, jitter, or stutter.

For example, I could be running a game running at 300 FPS(Overwatch), It will sometimes drop to 260 FPS. When this happens, the game will stutter, jitter, or have input lag.

This issue occurs in every game.

However the issue does occur DIFFERENTLY in most games. Sometimes the stutter can be worse, sometimes it can be less. For example if I play Rainbow Six, the stutter will occur about every 1-2 minutes. Whereas in Overwatch it will occur more frequently.

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What I've tried:

I have tried just about every single thing I can think of. Here's a list of my troubleshooting:

- Reinstall Windows 10 (Tried almost 10+ times or so, with different versions)
- Swapped with new RAM and new Graphics Card (Tested with higher speed RAM 3200 mhz and a friends 1080 TI). Issue still persists.
- Checked Latency and interrupts. (Everything is running fine, no latency issues exist)
- Ran countless XPerfs and analyzed to death. (There are no spikes during the framerate drops). Even when checking in the XPerfs where I log my stutter with a keypress. The XPerf does not show anything unusual. Except for maybe spiking of the nvidia driver, which I assume is normal.
- Reinstalling drivers, installing custom drivers, etc. (I have tried messing around with the drivers quite a bit, nothing changes.)
- Changing power cable. I've tried changing the power cord as I've had an issue with stuttering due to the cable itself before. Nothing changed.
- Swapped with different motherboard. (I tried swapping out the motherboard with a Z270, stuttering persisted).
- VSync, GSync, etc. I normally run with G-Sync on, but lately have tried with V-Sync. V-Sync works fine however again, sometimes the frames will drop by 1 FPS and a noticeable stutter or input lag will occur. Sometimes I think G-Sync isn't even running. Everything will be perfectly smooth for a while, then screen tearing and input lag will start to occur next.
- Thermal monitoring - There are no thermal issues present (that I can see), CPU, GPU, VRM, etc. All temps are fine.

- StandbyMemory bug - Tried it, no problems here.
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I have some images here showing frametime spikes. I managed to reduce the amount of inconsistency with the frametimes by capping my framerate in nvidia inspector to 142, but the spikes still occur.

IN-GAME FPS Cap

nVidia Inspector Cap

These spikes occur during gameplay. You can see the graph has similar micro spikes. Each one of those spikes causes a tiny stutter in-game.

I cannot think of anything else to try. I could use any advice.
Thanks

Misterios · November 7, 2018

Hi mate, I had a similar issue with frametimes but much worse(more spikes to 40-50ms and huge spikes of 100 and 200+ms which causes massive stutters) with a 2080, 8700K stock and 16gb ddr4 3600mhz. I sent the gpu back because I couldn't find a solution after trying many things like you do. Now I'm scared to buy another gpu and have the same issue.

I tested my cpu with 20 minutes of prime95 and 20 minutes of OCCT to test for stability issues and no errors, my ram with windows diagnostc tool for ram and with 1 pass of memtest86 and 0 errors. I can't test my motherboard or psu because I don't have others(well, I have a shitty psu but didn't want to use it with my current build) but I think maybe our PSUs are faulty...

If you find a solution to your problem let me know, thanks