[SOLVED] 60-80 fps on 144hz monitor feels laggy

[Vedixsz]

The game is The Hunter Call of the Wild. Basically as soon as my framerate dips into the 70s the game doesnt feel smooth, 60s feel really akward takes me out of it completely and i cant help but notice it. The 80s are fairly smooth but i wouldnt mind some more smothness there. 90+ is very smooth and the times i hit 100+ is like cloud nine.

Rtx 2080 Super
R9 3900x
32GB RAM 3600mhz
Monitor: 27GL850

G-sync is on, nvidia settings are on default, powerplan is "amd ryzen high performance". Im playing all games at 1440p maxed out graphics.
I should probably mention that some games seem to be smoother at the same framerates, for example Kingdom Come Deliverance feels perfectly smooth at 70-90fps.

I have googled around and the opinions and answers are all over the place, some think there is something wrong others say its perfectly normal to experience 60ish fps as laggy when one gets used to 100+fps 144Hz.
I would play Call of the Wild on 1080p and have 120+ fps but the thing is it looks so incredibly washed out and lacking sharpness on 1080p. This might be the thing where im so used to the crispness of 1440p that 1080p feels blurry and bad but im not sure about the fps, i remember 60-70fps feeling waaay smoother on my old laptop.

Perhaps someone can explain some of this to me or maybe there is even someone who plays Call of the Wild and has similar hardware playing at 144Hz.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You should be able to play just about ANY game at 1440p Ultra settings with that configuration. Probably ANY game, at 1440p. I'd think there's something going on for sure.

How many DIMMs are installed? Can you verify that the memory is ACTUALLY running at 3600mhz in Windows, by downloading and installing HWinfo and looking at the memory section, or CPU-Z and looking at the memory and SPD tabs?

Let's stay away from HWmonitor and some other utilities for this.

Also, all of these.

If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.

First,​

Make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.

Second,​

Go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates. When it comes to the chipset drivers, if your motherboard manufacturer lists a chipset driver that is newer than what the chipset developer (Intel or AMD, for our purposes) lists, then use that one. If Intel (Or AMD) shows a chipset driver version that is newer than what is available from the motherboard product page, then use that one. Always use the newest chipset driver that you can get and always use ONLY the chipset drivers available from either the motherboard manufacturer, AMD or Intel.


IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.

Third,​

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.

Fourth (And often tied for most important along with an up-to-date motherboard BIOS),​

A clean install of the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Graphics card driver CLEAN install guide using the Wagnard tools DDU
​

And last, but not least, if you have never done a CLEAN install of Windows, or have upgraded from an older version to Windows 10, or have been through several spring or fall major Windows updates, it might be a very good idea to consider doing a clean install of Windows if none of these other solutions has helped. IF you are using a Windows installation from a previous system and you didn't do a clean install of Windows after building the new system, then it's 99.99% likely that you NEED to do a CLEAN install before trying any other solutions.


How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10, the RIGHT way​

 

[Vedixsz]

Thank you for the extensive answer!
I will take a day to go over eveything you have listed and update anything that may need updating. Its late here and i dont fancy troubleshooting in the middle of the night. I will for sure try DDU graphics drivers because i did actually have a AMD card on this system just two months ago. The store people did my GPU swap so i honestly just assumed they knew what they were doing but perhaps there is still some AMD nonsense in there messing with the Nvidia card.

Also, im extremely sensitive to lag and stutters. I can not for the life of me figure out how some people play below 60fps. Would rather not play a game at all than play with even the occasional dip below 60fps. I tried God of War on PS4 at a friends house and the 30 fps lock hurt my eyes so bad, my friend was like "its perfectly smooth" ^.-

Anyway. i'll get back to you when i have tried all of your suggestions.

 

[Darkbreeze]

👍

 

[Vedixsz]

👍

Alrighty so i went over a few things. Firstly i checked the RAM and it is installed correctly, i got the two sticks in the correct slots and i checked HWinfo for speeds and at first i was a bit confused about the readings (because i have never used HWinfo before) but 1800mhz x 2 makes 3600 and i also checked in the bios to make sure and it says its at 3600 frequency and i got XMP enabled.

Then i went over to https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X570-AORUS-MASTER-rev-10/support#support-dl-driver.
I checked the BIOS updates for the motherboard i have (gigabyte aorus master x570) and it turns out they had 5 BIOS updates since the version i was on. I updated to the newest one (went from version F11 to F31d).
The other drivers i updated were chipset under "CHIPSET", WIFI driver under "WLAN + BT" and audio under "AUDIO".
The chipset update said it was successful but i cant find anything called "chipset" in the device manager, im just going to trust that its updated i guess.
Similarly with the audio update it just kind of went by and when i check the "Realtek Audio" driver version in device manager the date isnt 2‎020/05/08. Im just going to trust it was successful as well because it asked me to restart the pc to finish the update which i did.

And then as the last thing i used DDU twice, first time for AMD and then for Nvidia before reinstalling the latest nvidia driver.
As for rhe clean windows installation i actually did that 3 days ago, i figure i may have done some change at some point that i cant remember doing and it messed something up. Turned out that wasnt the case.

I dont ahve time right now but i will do some game testing in a couple of hours to see if its still the same and if it is then im just going to accept that some games just perform badly in parts due to bad optimization and having a fast refreshing 1440p 144hz monitor only makes it all super obvious because i will say playing on 100+ fps on my current setup is waaay smmother than playing on 100+ fps on my laptop.
Also i decided to boot up my old laptop to see if its as i remember and holy moly is that thing laggy. Even on the desktop moving the mouse around felt horrible. I dont know if something has happend to it or if the difference just hits so hard. I cant even imagine playing games on that thing anymore.

One thing i have noticed already is that my pc has stopped reving up the fan speeds when ever its shutting down and booting up. It used to kick them into max i think. Now its smooth the fans start spinning the same speed they always do right away.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Cool man. One further thing to always check for too and that is whether there are any updates or patches for the specific game you are having problems with. Sometimes they aren't always automatically updated and you have to actually go LOOK for them. Especially if it's a patch and not a full on update.

Anyhow, just a thought.

Also, I don't see your power supply model listed and this OFTEN is a HUGE factor in some hardware, especially graphics cards, but potentially anything, not performing at the expected performance level. What is your EXACT power supply model and how long has that unit been in service?