Question 9070 XT 1%low stuttering

[jedi06]

Just brought a 9070 XT pre built system and was experiencing bad 1%lows off the bat, ranging from 50-100fps whilst getting a steady 120fps average. on some games/servers consistently dropping to as low as 30fps whilst having at least 80fps average, even on poor graphic settings the stutters still persist.

I have 2 PCs at the moment and there both plugged in to a 10a 250v 1-2 mitre extension lead to provide more sockets and that extension lead is plugged into the wall, I have another extension lead 13a 240V 1-2 mitre plugged into the first one to provide sockets for both my monitors.
Not sure if this is useless information but figured I'd put it here anyway. My other PSU is 1200w


UPDATE:
FSR4 at 1080p upscaled to 2k seems to help out a fair bit, appearing to provide better 1%lows, still far from perfect as there are still somewhat frequent 1%drops to 60-50ishFPS which hints me further to believing it could be an Internet issue and or a Driver issue. But I must say FSR4 is impressive, I couldn't even notice a difference visually between 1080p upscaled and native 2k besides the CPU having a little more headroom by the look of it and GPU power lower than before sitting at around 90w-220w roughly


Specs

Gigabyte 9070 XT OC
Ryzen 7 5700X3D
ASUS Prime B550M-A WIFI II
32g Corsair 3600 DDR4
850W Gold PSU
OS 1TB Kingston Fury Renegade 7000MTs/7700MTs
Main 180Hz 0.5ms 1440p AOC DP 2.1
Second 155Hz 1ms 1440p AOC DP 1.4
BOTH RUNNING AT 120Hz in settings
Fast Internet via Ethernet
Vader 4 Pro up to 1000Hz I only use 250Hz or 500Hz max (wired)



Things I've tried

Disabling MPO and Game DVR in reg edit
Disabling Microsoft Association Root Enumerator
Disabling High Precision Event Timer
Disabling RAM setting that keeps old data
Clean DDU reinstall of GPU drivers
Disabling SMT mode
Disabling Game Mode
Disabling Game Bar
Cleaned my steam cache
Verified the game files in steam
Optimized my SSD
Undervolted my GPU via AMD adrenaline
Increase power limit +10% via AMD
Disabling Re Bar
Disabling Security Device Support
Disabling any power saving settings
Disabling fast boot
Enabled ASUS Performance Enhancement
Enabled CBR15 Aggressive in Performance Bias
Disabling PSS support
Enabling Typical Current Idle power
Disabling NX mode
Tried capping frames to 135fps whilst playing at 120fps via MSI Afterburner
Tried capping frames in AMD adrenaline
Disabling vsync
Disabling variable refresh rate
Disabling GPU acceleration
Disabling all AMD adrenaline settings
Using Game Mode in Ryzen Master
Using Creator Mode in Ryzen Master

I'm not looking for the most fps possible, I'm more than happy with 100fps I just want it to feel smoother, playing on 120fps with 1%lows of 50-100 feels closer to 75fps and the stuttering is very noticable

GPU temps are around 65°c or under whilst gaming under full load and using anywhere from 100w-300w depending on graphics settings and I must say it has a crazy loud coil wine but that doesn't bother me. I haven't seen the GPU memory going anywhere near full load but the 3D seems to be consistently at 100% when gaming

CPU temps are around 60-70°c when gaming and overall utilization is around 35-50% with some cores hitting 80-95%

I haven't seen my RAM go anywhere above like 10g when gaming out of my 32g

And my SSD sits at around 30-40% whilst gaming I believe

The stuttering seems to be very inconsistent sometimes feeling somewhat okay and sometimes 1%lows consistently dropping to 50-60fps whilst still a pretty stable 120fps average

I ran several benchmarks on Steel Nomad and Speed Way and 1%lows seemed to be great

Steel Nomad (lowest fps I got)
1%L 63fps
AVG 66fps
Score: 7438
Board Power: 363W
Temp 63°c

Speed Way (lowest fps I got)
1%L 60fps
AVG 62fps
Score: 6558
Board Power:363W
Temp 63°c

And when I did some undervolting I was able to get even greater scores/FPS/1%L

I really don't know enough to properly diagnose any of these stuttering problems
so if anyone has any tips or advice it would be greatly appreciated!

Stay Blessed

 

[jedi06]

In your bios you have to have uefi and rezsizable bar activated and CSM deactivated

The logic is that whoever buys a new GPU is to use it with relatively new games from Steam/Epic Games/Wargaming.net, Ubisoft, etc., not ones from 10 years ago where you probably won't find optimized drivers. For example, a Nvidia 50 series can't run 32-bit PHYHS games.

Assassin's Creed came out 2 days ago and has an optimized AMD driver with 20% more performance.

Will give those bios settings a try on next boot, thanks for the help!

 

[Manumarblanc]

To avoid sudden drops in FPS in older games that don't have driver support, the best thing you can do is limit the FPS to 90 or 80. That way, if you experience a 1% drop to 40, you won't even notice it. You'll also further reduce latency and power consumption, making the game run more smoothly.

Remember that if you ever change the CPU for one that has an IGPU, you must disable the IGPU on the motherboard, because there are games that want to run with the IGPU instead of the GPU. Unless you were to remove the GPU and use an APU.

On Windows...system, display, graphics, specific graphics settings: hardware-specific scheduling + variable refresh rate + optimization for windowed gaming = ON

HDR only if your monitor supports it.

 

[Manumarblanc]

In AMD Adrenalin, you have a settings icon on the top right of the screen,push. Click on "Preferences," then "AMD Image Inspector = On."Image delivery method = Automatic.

 

[jedi06]

In AMD Adrenalin, you have a settings icon on the top right of the screen,push. Click on "Preferences," then "AMD Image Inspector = On."Image delivery method = Automatic.

Thanks for the help!

I have already been messing with variable refresh rate and hardware scheduling. I'll make sure all 3 are on and see if that's any different.

 

[Aeacus]

I did also install Ryzen Master are these things I should get rid of an do testing without them.

Well, you can keep them for testing purposes. But those programs can make things worse, or present another issue. Also, those are system resource hogs.

One another such utility program that i forgot to include in my previous list, is NZXT CAM (since there are NZXT MoBos as well).
NZXT CAM is also used to control NZXT ARGB hardware. E.g HUE+ and HUE2. I have HUE+ in my build with NZXT AER140 RGB fans and two ARGB LED strips.

For my build, NZXT CAM alone, uses 20% to 25% of total CPU compute power when it is running. And the CAM itself doesn't do much, only little bit of system telemetry and i can customize my ARGB profile with it.
Even the Corsair iCUE, that i have a lot of hardware connected to it (keyboard, mice, mouse pad, headset and headset stand) utilizes 3.9% of my CPU.

I did report the high CPU usage to NZXT but no dice thus far, even after 4 updates to the CAM. I'm thinking to make a new support ticket about it.
Since it isn't normal, that one software, that does very little, utilizes 20% to 25% of my CPU compute power. While ALL other background programs combined, that i have running in my PC + Firefox browser, in total, utilize 15% to 18% of my CPU. Leaving ~82% of CPU compute power free.
Currently, when i boot to OS and NZXT CAM launches, i keep it running as long as it takes it to load my custom LED profile. Once that happens, i exit the program. I don't need NZXT CAM running for my LED profile (like it is with Corsair iCUE).

So, there's that as well.

I've seen some people potentially fix there stuttering by using certain AMD adrenaline features and or changing settings in the specific steam game launcher not entirely sure how to do this or if it could help.

I, myself, doesn't have modern Ryzen CPU (not yet at least, but planning to buy it Q3 2025). So, i can't advise you on what settings you should configure in AMD Adrenaline.

But yes, it is possible to fix issues with it. But it can create more issues as well. So, be warned.

All-in-all, what i think your main issue is (and i've also said that already), is your brand new GPU that doesn't have well optimized drivers as of yet + you playing 12 year old game.
FPS cap (that i wrote about in my very 1st reply) would be the best mitigation to the current issue, while you wait for new GPU drivers to be released.

 

[jedi06]

Well, you can keep them for testing purposes. But those programs can make things worse, or present another issue. Also, those are system resource hogs.

One another such utility program that i forgot to include in my previous list, is NZXT CAM (since there are NZXT MoBos as well).
NZXT CAM is also used to control NZXT ARGB hardware. E.g HUE+ and HUE2. I have HUE+ in my build with NZXT AER140 RGB fans and two ARGB LED strips.

For my build, NZXT CAM alone, uses 20% to 25% of total CPU compute power when it is running. And the CAM itself doesn't do much, only little bit of system telemetry and i can customize my ARGB profile with it.
Even the Corsair iCUE, that i have a lot of hardware connected to it (keyboard, mice, mouse pad, headset and headset stand) utilizes 3.9% of my CPU.

I did report the high CPU usage to NZXT but no dice thus far, even after 4 updates to the CAM. I'm thinking to make a new support ticket about it.
Since it isn't normal, that one software, that does very little, utilizes 20% to 25% of my CPU compute power. While ALL other background programs combined, that i have running in my PC + Firefox browser, in total, utilize 15% to 18% of my CPU. Leaving ~82% of CPU compute power free.
Currently, when i boot to OS and NZXT CAM launches, i keep it running as long as it takes it to load my custom LED profile. Once that happens, i exit the program. I don't need NZXT CAM running for my LED profile (like it is with Corsair iCUE).

So, there's that as well.


I, myself, doesn't have modern Ryzen CPU (not yet at least, but planning to buy it Q3 2025). So, i can't advise you on what settings you should configure in AMD Adrenaline.

But yes, it is possible to fix issues with it. But it can create more issues as well. So, be warned.

All-in-all, what i think your main issue is (and i've also said that already), is your brand new GPU that doesn't have well optimized drivers as of yet + you playing 12 year old game.
FPS cap (that i wrote about in my very 1st reply) would be the best mitigation to the current issue, while you wait for new GPU drivers to be released.

Interesting, I've been playing with it capped at 120 since you first mentioned that. I only had frames at 135 because I heard capping frames slightly above can provide more consistent fps/1%lows is this false? And do you think buying a new Ethernet splitter and cables would be necessary to rule out any kind of cable Internet problem at least on my side of things? Obviously the server chains are a whole different story

 

[Aeacus]

Interesting, I've been playing with it capped at 120 since you first mentioned that. I only had frames at 135 because I heard capping frames slightly above can provide more consistent fps/1%lows is this false?

As i said before;

seeing FPS drops from 120 to 55, is far more noticeable, than FPS drop from 60 to 55.

And that's the main idea as well. The smaller the cap between average FPS and 1% low - the less noticeable the FPS drops (stutters) are.

Just try it out. Look if it does improve. Cap your FPS to 60.
If nothing changes, you can set the cap back to 120.

But FPS cap another idea is to keep your GPU not being fully utilized. This can improve overall performance when GPU doesn't have to work it's hardest. But sometimes, capping a bit isn't enough, so you may need to cap a lot more.

And do you think buying a new Ethernet splitter and cables would be necessary to rule out any kind of cable Internet problem at least on my side of things?

Hardware wise, the only way to rule out component issues, is to buy 2nd, known to work hardware and test with it.

Positive side of this, is that you can rule out that specific component issue (be it RAM, GPU, network cable, monitor, Ethernet splitter etc). If issue goes away, great, you know what the culprit was. If issue didn't go away, at least you know that this component wasn't an issue.

Negative side of this, is money wasted when the issue didn't go away. But with hardware, there is no other option to rule out individual components.

I still think your main issue is way too new GPU and old game.
You can go with new network cables and Ethernet splitter, to rule it out, if you like. But do buy the better version of what you currently have (e.g more ports on splitter, faster rated speed in cable). Since when issue remains, your money isn't completely wasted, because you got (small) upgrade out of it.