Question Asset loading lag across every game

[Doogledank]

Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X570-P
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
SSD: WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB
PSU: Corsair CX650W
RAM: 16 GB DDR4 (2X8) 3200MHz

I've been having this issue for a while where all my games will stutter while loading game assets and saving data. These stutters are really noticeable and in certain games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, are extremely distracting because they occur everytime I enter a new room. All my games are running off of my SSD. Additionally I noticed that I have a nearly identical issue on my laptop so I'm suspecting I have the same issue on two devices.

I've been looking for a solution for a while and I'm pretty desperate, any help is appreciated.

I tried:
Lowering in-game settings (enabled/disabled v-sync, changed framerate caps, texture quality, etc)
Updating motherboard BIOS
Updating chipset drivers
Updating GPU drivers
Did a clean graphics driver install with DDU
Disabled NVIDIA in-game overlays
Setting RAM speed to full speed in BIOS (it wasn't running at full speed before apparently)
Checking SSD health, and read and write speeds (everything seems to be fine)
Checked PC temps and everything seems to be fine

 

[rgd1101]

how full is the ssd?

 

[punkncat]

How full is the disk?

This was also my first thought, but not sure how it would also be doing so on the other PC...

 

[kerberos_20]

maybe antivirus is kicking in backround, win defender doesnt like some games

 

[Doogledank]

how full is the ssd?

How full is the disk?

This was also my first thought, but not sure how it would also be doing so on the other PC...

Right now there's 259GB free out of 930GB, but tbh it was nearly full for a good while so that might be an issue. I did verify my ssd health with software like aja system test and crystal disk but i'll try and get a new ssd just to test.

 

[Doogledank]

maybe antivirus is kicking in backround, win defender doesnt like some games

Just tested it out and turned off windows defender and it didn't work unfortunately, and I don't have any other anti-virus that could be causing the issue.

 

[Doogledank]

Just tried troubleshooting again with msi afterburner for deus ex human revolution. While going in an elevator the game loads assets so that's where I see the biggest lag spikes.

Just noticed that my gpu usage drops to 0% while the stutter occurs (the average is usually 20-40%). GPU and CPU temps seem to be fine (max GPU temp was 50°C and CPU max was 59°C).

Cpu usage and cpu core usage seems to be fine as well.

 

[rgd1101]

did you check the ssd usage when the gpu usage drop?

 

[boju]

Have you tried checking for ssd firmware updates?

https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detailweb/p/276

If you're going to get another ssd look at Samsung m2 970 evo plus.

 

[Doogledank]

did you check the ssd usage when the gpu usage drop?

Yeah I checked my disk usage and it's usually at 0-5% even while the gpu usage drops. Quick correction tho, gpu usage won't drop to zero all the time but there will usually be a decent decrease in gpu usage while the stutter occurs.

 

[Doogledank]

Have you tried checking for ssd firmware updates?

https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detailweb/p/276

If you're going to get another ssd look at Samsung m2 970 evo plus.

Yeah I checked on dashboard earlier today to see if I was missing a firmware update and it said my ssd was up to date. Thanks for the ssd suggestion, i'll keep that one in mind.