[SOLVED] Frame Stutters in Apex and RE2

[Blazingdgon]

For some reason I'm only getting frame stutters in Resident Evil 2 Remake and Apex. These are the only games that I know of where it occurs and other games I play like rocket league and even battlefront 2 on ultra run just fine. I've also already tried reverting the windows April update and that just lessened it but the stutters still render the game unplayable. I've tried a lot of the fixes origin support has recommended (4+ hours of support) and none of them have helped. Even when I run something like 3DMark it gives me a good rating and so I don't know what in these games could be causing the issue

Specs;
1080ti
Ryzen 1950x
32 Gb ram
Prime X399-A

 

[Frag Maniac]

What speed is your RAM? Ryzen, especially 1st gen, needs at least 3200 RAM to work well.

I've not played Apex, but I have played RE2 Remake on my 8700K, 1080 SC, 16 GB RAM spec no problem.

It is said that RE2 Remake has a graphics setting glitch that can be fixed by actually using max settings, and your spec should be able to handle it, provided RAM speed is not atrocious.

 

[Blazingdgon]

What speed is your RAM? Ryzen, especially 1st gen, needs at least 3200 RAM to work well.

I've not played Apex, but I have played RE2 Remake on my 8700K, 1080 SC, 16 GB RAM spec no problem.

It is said that RE2 Remake has a graphics setting glitch that can be fixed by actually using max settings, and your spec should be able to handle it, provided RAM speed is not atrocious.

I checked in my command prompt and it says that its speed is 2666 and configured at 1333 is that normal? Also in the past Apex ran fine and my ram has worked fine for the last 3 years with this CPU so im not sure why problems would only pop up in recent months with it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I checked in my command prompt and it says that its speed is 2666 and configured at 1333 is that normal? Also in the past Apex ran fine and my ram has worked fine for the last 3 years with this CPU so im not sure why problems would only pop up in recent months with it.

Yeah it's normal that it says 2666 RAM is configured at 1333, because it runs at an effective speed of twice that. Still though, 2666 RAM is pretty slow for Ryzen, especially first gen Ryzen.

If Apex ran fine before, do some malware checks, and check temps while playing with a tool like MSI Afterburner set to show GPU and CPU temps onscreen while playing. Other things that could be a factor are PSU, which you didn't list, what kind of drive the game is installed on, and if HDD whether it's defragged and has enough free space, possible startups that could be conflicting, etc.

Malwarebytes free is a great, fast and easy tool for scanning for malware. A weak or poor quality PSU can cause such problems, even if it ran fine before, it could be on it's last legs now if it isn't up to snuff.. HDDs need to have at least 15% of their actual (not advertised) space free, and they need to be defragged regularly to run well. For instance I store all my game captures on a pretty high quality WD Black 6TB HDD, but when I unknowingly had my on-the-fly defrag tool, PerfectDisk, not running for a few weeks, my video editing tool would take forever just to load the video clips. It was because the HDD had built up fragmentation, and even though it had tons of free space on it, that made it run much slower. An easy way to see if startups are conflicting is to just disable them one at a time, then test the game. The truth is, a ton of programs will automatically end up in your startup list if you don't uncheck that box when installing them, and most don't actually need to be run as startups.

If RE2 Remake never ran fine, even before, it could very well be due to that settings glitch I mentioned.

 

[Blazingdgon]

Yeah it's normal that it says 2666 RAM is configured at 1333, because it runs at an effective speed of twice that. Still though, 2666 RAM is pretty slow for Ryzen, especially first gen Ryzen.

If Apex ran fine before, do some malware checks, and check temps while playing with a tool like MSI Afterburner set to show GPU and CPU temps onscreen while playing. Other things that could be a factor are PSU, which you didn't list, what kind of drive the game is installed on, and if HDD whether it's defragged and has enough free space, possible startups that could be conflicting, etc.

If RE2 Remake never ran fine, even before, it could very well be due to that settings glitch I mentioned.

I have a 850 w PSU but since I have a have a prebuilt from 3 years ago there isnt much info on it other than that. My hard drive says 0 percent fragmented so do u have any recommendations for software to clean up a hard drive/open up space.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I have a 850 w PSU but since I have a have a prebuilt from 3 years ago there isnt much info on it other than that. My hard drive says 0 percent fragmented so do u have any recommendations for software to clean up a hard drive/open up space.

There are free tools that will detail the brand and model of each component in your PC. I use HWiNFO64, you can get it here. https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

Your PSU has enough wattage for your spec, but that alone means little, it needs to be a decent quality one.

Another cause of video problems is sometimes just a bad quality video cable that connects the graphics card to the display, and it's something that can be checked fairly inexpensively. Sometimes wiggling the ends of the cable will reveal if it's faulty by what you see on screen when you do.

Regarding the HDD the game is installed on, what size is it and how much free space does Windows say it has? Use the Windows calculator and multiply .15 times the drives actual space. That's how much free space it should have at all times.

On defrag tools, I've tried many, but my favorite is Raxco's PerfectDisk. It's Microsoft certified and has a stealth mode where it runs in the background, but only when no resource intense programs are running. With ANY defrag tool though, you want to set it to ignore solid state drives (SSD, NVMe), as these drives don't require defragging, and do their own version of it called TRIM. Defragging them will just make them wear faster.

Did you by chance check for software conflicts as I suggested, like background apps or startups running? Quite often these mysteries end up being solved by the user eventually reporting back that a certain program they were using was causing the problem.

 

[Blazingdgon]

There are free tools that will detail the brand and model of each component in your PC. I use HWiNFO64, you can get it here. https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

Your PSU has enough wattage for your spec, but that alone means little, it needs to be a decent quality one.

Another cause of video problems is sometimes just a bad quality video cable that connects the graphics card to the display, and it's something that can be checked fairly inexpensively. Sometimes wiggling the ends of the cable will reveal if it's faulty by what you see on screen when you do.

Regarding the HDD the game is installed on, what size is it and how much free space does Windows say it has? Use the Windows calculator and multiply .15 times the drives actual space. That's how much free space it should have at all times.

On defrag tools, I've tried many, but my favorite is Raxco's PerfectDisk. It's Microsoft certified and has a stealth mode where it runs in the background, but only when no resource intense programs are running. With ANY defrag tool though, you want to set it to ignore solid state drives (SSD, NVMe), as these drives don't require defragging, and do their own version of it called TRIM. Defragging them will just make them wear faster.

Did you by chance check for software conflicts as I suggested, like background apps or startups running? Quite often these mysteries end up being solved by the user eventually reporting back that a certain program they were using was causing the problem.

Do you have any recommendations for how to check through background apps b/c none of the startup apps in this list (the only ones I have enabled) causes any problems. Also I tried installing Titanfall 2 and it also has problems now with frame stutters (graph below). So do you know if any recent drivers could have caused it?

 

[Frag Maniac]

Do you have any recommendations for how to check through background apps b/c none of the startup apps in this list (the only ones I have enabled) causes any problems. Also I tried installing Titanfall 2 and it also has problems now with frame stutters (graph below). So do you know if any recent drivers could have caused it?

If you only had a few startups, and verified each one to not cause problems, chances are you don't have any programs running in the background causing problems, though I'm not psychic, I have no idea. Even Task Manager shows what programs are running though.

You posted no such graph.