Certain in-game sound effects trigger huge loss in FPS.

[Ellis_D]

I upgraded to an i7 4790k a few months back and ever since, under specific circumstances, certain in-game sound effects will trigger a massive drop in frames, almost as if the rendering briefly stopped when the sound effect was actuated. The the game will render normally throughout the duration of the sound effect and it's only the exact moment the sound effect starts that effects performance.

The two most repeatable instances I've found are when playing Mario Kart Wii with the Dolphin emulator and in Team Fortress 2. In Mario Kart Wii, the triggering sound effect is the tune that plays to signify when the third-lap has started. In Team Fortress 2, the chime that plays to once a reusable item (such as Jarate or Mad Milk) is refilled triggers the issue.

This problem occurs whether or not I'm overclocking or running on stock settings and I've updated all drivers and motherboard bios to see if this helps to no avail. I also uninstalled the Sound Blaster software that came with my motherboard thinking that possible the Scout Mode was causing the issue but that didn't work either.

I'm starting to think that this is a Hardware issue because I never once had this issue when I was using an AMD Phenom II x6 1100t. I'm still using the same GPU on my current z97 system as I was in my previous AMD system so the only two variables left are the motherboard and the CPU

So I'm not really sure where to go from here to troubleshoot it further. Anyone else have experiences with an issue like this?

 

[gamerk316]

This sounds a bit odd. Dolphin I could chalk up to an emulation bug, but not TF2. Can you post full system specs?

Also, for kicks, keep Task Manager open, and next time the problem occurs, check the CPU usage and see if it spikes.

 

[Ellis_D]

Intel 4790k
Gigabyte Z97x Gaming 7 Motherboard
Windows 7 64bit
AMD Radeon HD 6950
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD for system
bunch of other HDDs for storage

I tried monitoring my CPU usage and it doesn't seem like it spikes when it occurs. And to add to the description of what happens when, the first note of the audio that triggers the issue does stutter. I guess it's not just a drop in frame rate but rather everything freezes up for a second and then goes back to normal.

 

[Ellis_D]

Alright, problem solved. To cover my bases, I tried disabling hyperthreading (which didn't help) and toggled the multi-core rendering options for both Dolphin and TF2 and that seemed to fix everything. Also, apparently I'm not the only one because if you search "tf2 multicore rendering stutter" you'll get a boat load of people having the same issue, mostly Intel CPUs.

 

[gamerk316]

Huh, odd, as the 4790k should be more then powerful enough to not need to enable multicore rendering.