CPU drops while gaming, causes major FPS drops (goes down to <5 for 1-5 seconds).

[Brakkus]

A few months ago my hard drive died and I bought a new one, ever since then I've been getting these horrid FPS drops in games. I've been trying to figure out what's going on with my computer, I've run temp checks (everything is pretty normal for every part), I've tried swapping parts out with a friend (tried PSU and GPU), I've tried fresh installing things, just about everything besides buying new parts.

Was just wondering if I could get some help with this, if there is anything that I could possibly do. I still don't know if its the hard drive, CPU or motherboard causing the issues though. But when I replaced the GPU with my friends much more powerful GPU the stuttering was much less frequent and didn't last as long (only 1-2 seconds of low FPS instead of up to 5).

But yeah, I'm not sure what causes these FPS drops at all. But whenever they do happen, my CPU will go from 15-30% down to <5% and then it'll bump itself back up to whatever number and my FPS will go back to normal. This happens in every game, but it's even worse when it's not on my SSD.

If you guys need any more information I'm more than willing to update with it. Thanks for reading!

Edit: My CPU is an Intel® Core™ i5-3570K Processor (4x 3.40GHz/6MB L3 Cache), if that helps. The computer is almost 3 years old now, all the parts are that old besides the Hard drive which I bought in May (I think).

 

[Karadjgne]

What mobo? What ram?

 

[Brakkus]

What mobo? What ram?

Mobo: ASUS P8Z77-V LK -- 2x PCI-E 3.0 x16, 4x USB 3.0

RAM: 8 GB [4 GB X2] DDR3-1600 (it's Corsair I think? Not 100% sure)

 

[Karadjgne]

Do you have the EPU disabled or enabled. With Asus, (I have the LE, same board but only 2x pcie 16x) there is 2x ways the EPU can severely throttle a cpu. The EPU switch in the top right/middle should be off. Also, in bios (accessible either through bios or through Asus Suite) there is a software override on the EPU, which will choke the cpu to about 40% (I think it's been a while). Make sure this is disabled. You are gaming. 'Green' energy savers is your worst nightmare.

Also, make sure you go to Asus support and dl the last bios and mobo drivers. It's a hassle, but it made a difference on my rig with Internet speeds if nothing else. USB drivers will be important, they too use the BCLK, same as cpu and they can have funky results when not operating right.

 

[Brakkus]

Snip

I just installed new Audio and USB drivers, updated BIOS, couldn't find any mobo drivers though. Still getting drops like crazy. I checked to see if I had any power saving features on in BIOs, nothing was on (its on the medium setting).

http://i.imgur.com/TVlYiG2.jpg

Here's a picture of my CPU and RAM during a game of TF2. The drops happen kind of randomly, it might just be coincidence but it seems to drop whenever I interact with a player or when a sound happens (then it starts freezing and the audio repeats itself until the freezing is done).

http://i.imgur.com/7NlQGfo.jpg

Here is my CPU and RAM while I'm typing this up right now with Steam as the only other program running in the background (4 tabs for chrome).

Dunno if that info will help, but it might.

Edit: Just checked the EPU switch and I'm pretty sure its off (its closer to the back than the front of the case).

Edit 2: Here's a better picture of what my CPU/RAM is like idle actually:

http://i.imgur.com/FPwG8zP.jpg

 

[Ludacrust]

Just check whether your CPU is utilising all its cores . Open TaskManager click on performance and see the number cores your CPU utilises. For example if your CPU is quad core then the number of cores must be 4. If its not utilising all cores go to msconfig in your pc then go to boot tab and click on advanced option and uncheck the number of processors box. Then your CPU will utilise its cores and you should be able to play your games fine.
Hope this helps!
GoodLuck

 

[Brakkus]

Just check whether your CPU is utilising all its cores . Open TaskManager click on performance and see the number cores your CPU utilises. For example if your CPU is quad core then the number of cores must be 4. If its not utilising all cores go to msconfig in your pc then go to boot tab and click on advanced option and uncheck the number of processors box. Then your CPU will utilise its cores and you should be able to play your games fine.
Hope this helps!
GoodLuck

There has been no lock on my cores, but thank you for trying to help!

It might be a sound problem? Because it seems to freeze up whenever a newish sound pops up. I've been testing this in Team Fortress 2, because it seems to pop up the most in FPS games. But the FPS seems to freeze and the audio begins to skip/repeat itself for a second or so. Like if they announcer tells me that I took a control point, it'll freeze up and the audio will skip.

Does that help any bit?

 

[Karadjgne]

Hmm. In device manager, find your audio drivers and 'disable this device', then reboot and try playing a game. If that stops the freezes at least you'll know where to start, if it doesn't, then the freezes on sounds have another cause, which could be either the audio codecs may be corrupted or even something as funky as a problem with fonts.

 

[Brakkus]

Hmm. In device manager, find your audio drivers and 'disable this device', then reboot and try playing a game. If that stops the freezes at least you'll know where to start, if it doesn't, then the freezes on sounds have another cause, which could be either the audio codecs may be corrupted or even something as funky as a problem with fonts.

Well, while playing with the audio drivers off (I had two of them installed for some reason, realtek and AMD) the problem seems to happen a LOT less and for shorter amounts of time (only 1 second freezes, only happened twice during the 15 minutes of playing).

http://i.imgur.com/SBHstHn.jpg

Took this picture right after I finished playing of what my CPU and RAM looked like while playing. My CPU was oddly high though...

Edit: I'm going to try and find new realtek drivers, see if that fixes anything (I thought I had them up to date). If that doesnt fix it, how do I fix audio issues like this without just playing without sound?

Edit 2: Updating the drivers did not help. The problem still pops up.

Another interesting thing that happens, is that the freezing seems to occur when I interact with other players. I can run around the map for the most part and not get any freezing. Shooting the air, doing whatever. But if I get killed, shoot another player, another player near me gets killed the game has a chance of freezing up (it doesn't do this every single time).

http://i.imgur.com/2E5znFa.jpg

Here's my CPU with my Realtek audio driver updated and on. I'm going to try disabling realtek and use the AMD audio drivers now.

Edit 3: It was working alright, with little to no stuttering for about 5 minutes, then it started stuttering like crazy again. Which is confusing because that sounds like a heat problem? But I don't think my comps temps are having any issues. Should I just try to record what happens and show you guys that?

Here's another image of my CPU going crazy during gaming: http://i.imgur.com/VQZzzIG.jpg

Edit 4: I guess I should also say, while BOTH the drivers were off my CPU wouldn't drop below 20 (I think). The stuttering happens when my CPU drops below 20. Though it still stuttered a small amount with the drivers off, it wasn't insane and borderline unplayable.

Edit 5: I've been using a resource monitor program and I've noticed every time the CPU drops, the voltage for the CPU drops. But I've tried using a different PSU, which works just fine on my friends computer, what could that possibly mean? To be more specific, when the frame drop happens the CPU Voltage drops to idle numbers (from like 1.0 to 0.9 or something, and the cores all go from 4k+ to 1.5~k MHz).

Edit 6: I downloaded the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility program to check for things. I rand the CPU test and everything was fine, then I ran the memory test and got this:

http://i.imgur.com/PZIueRc.jpg

Does that mean anything?

Edit 7: Computer just blue screened, giving Error 0x00000124.

 

[Karadjgne]

That's a WHEA error. Check admin tools / event viewer for that critical error. itll be more specific, but usually that's a low voltage issue

 

[Brakkus]

That's a WHEA error. Check admin tools / event viewer for that critical error. itll be more specific, but usually that's a low voltage issue

Says it was a Kernal-power critical error event ID 41, task category (63). Temperatures, I'm pretty sure (unless some freak temp rise happened randomly) are not the problem here, if that helps. Not sure if I'm looking in the right section though, I'm looking at the system error codes.

 

[Karadjgne]

Yeah, that's about right. Basically what that's saying is the cpu isn't receiving enough power, and is throttling back under stress. Anything multi player is much more cpu aggressive than single player, which is more gpu. I'd make a very good inspection of both the motherboard power sockets, look for any burnt or melted areas. It's now entirely possible you have over heated/failing VRM's or caps or even a busted solder joint that just won't handle higher voltage/amperage draw.

DL prime95 v26.6 and real temp (designed to work together) and run a small fft test. That's a cpu punishment test, that will drive your temps up, but more importantly will push all 4 cores to 100% load. At stock speeds and stock voltages, your cpu should be fine, but if it crashes, freezes, bluescreens again it's a safe bet that it'll be a power issue as before. Check bios, and see what the setting for vcore is at, and the offset should be '+'. Also DL cpu-Z, and see what the vcore voltage is reading on that when running p95. If you are at stock voltages, it should be @ 1. 2v.

 

[Dragos Manea]

Since we suspect a power issue, what PSU you have, brand and power.

 

[Brakkus]

Yeah, that's about right. Basically what that's saying is the cpu isn't receiving enough power, and is throttling back under stress. Anything multi player is much more cpu aggressive than single player, which is more gpu. I'd make a very good inspection of both the motherboard power sockets, look for any burnt or melted areas. It's now entirely possible you have over heated/failing VRM's or caps or even a busted solder joint that just won't handle higher voltage/amperage draw.

DL prime95 v26.6 and real temp (designed to work together) and run a small fft test. That's a cpu punishment test, that will drive your temps up, but more importantly will push all 4 cores to 100% load. At stock speeds and stock voltages, your cpu should be fine, but if it crashes, freezes, bluescreens again it's a safe bet that it'll be a power issue as before. Check bios, and see what the setting for vcore is at, and the offset should be '+'. Also DL cpu-Z, and see what the vcore voltage is reading on that when running p95. If you are at stock voltages, it should be @ 1. 2v.

I already did a CPU test through the intel program. It said that everything was 100% fine.

During those tests the CPU VCORE (according to HWMonitor) voltage was around 1.080 the whole time. So I guess maybe I should check BIOS to see what the VCORE is at? Because when the freezes happen, my CPU VCORE voltage goes down to .9xxx

 

[Brakkus]

Since we suspect a power issue, what PSU you have, brand and power.

Solytech ATX 700W. Model: SL-8750EPS

Edit: But the thing is, is that I did try swapping out my PSU with my friends 750W (cant remember the brand) PSU and the same problems persisted. We tried his GPU too, which toned down the freezing but didn't stop it completely.

 

[Dragos Manea]

Well its a chinesse brand from what i see, did u got your hands a good quality psu to test it on your pc (seasonic, antec, super flower, resewill, evga)?

EDIT: as someone said that vcore dropped, yea vcore drops when the cpu is in lower usage state so it is normal to drop the vcore, also in gaming if the cpu is not stressed it is normal to be 1.08, when you run stress prime and load all your cores to 100% and vcore is not at 1.2 then it is not normal.

 

[Brakkus]

Well its a chinesse brand from what i see, did u got your hands a good quality psu to test it on your pc (seasonic, antec, super flower, resewill, evga)?

EDIT: as someone said that vcore dropped, yea vcore drops when the cpu is in lower usage state so it is normal to drop the vcore, also in gaming if the cpu is not stressed it is normal to be 1.08, when you run stress prime and load all your cores to 100% and vcore is not at 1.2 then it is not normal.

I think it was an EVGA but I'm not 100% sure, I'll have to ask my friend when they're available.

How do you check if your BIOS is limiting CPU voltage? I checked and I couldn't find 1.2v anywhere.

Edit: I just figured out that these issues seem to be only happening in online games, just played a singleplayer/offline game and have had no issues so far.