Question Frametime spikes - normal or am I just paranoid ?

amarynth

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Oct 8, 2012
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Hi guys,

I'm pretty broken, I've been going through a real ordeal for several weeks now and I don't know what to do next. But I'd better start from the beginning:

It all started with Egosoft's X4, which I noticed was stuttering every now and then. At first I thought to myself: “Well, occasionally, it happens, never mind”. Then it bothered me and I worked my way through the settings: No difference. I gave up, I kept seeing the stuttering.

I decided to play “Suicide Squad - Kill the Justice League”: I quickly regretted the decision, it was a stutterfest - but not all the time, just: occasionally in the cutscenes - until I reached the city and then: boom. And here too: Raytracing on, raytracing off, DLSS, resolution down, up, it didn't matter: the frametime spikes came. I could play around and by combining some settings I could manage to get the spikes almost vanishing, but they were there still, even if rarely. That frustrated me, so I switched to Guardians of the Galaxy and... well, I saw it there too, although not so often, rather rarely.

Then I played Doom Eternal - all on Ultra, again: occasional spikes. It could be normal, who knows, but I sometimes had it in the fights. The now trained eye saw that. It also saw it in “Pacific Drive”, “Elite Dangerous”, “Warframe” and, albeit very rarely, in Furmark and in the 3D Mark stress test (the last test version, I think it's called “Nomad”).

I have the following specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor at 4.20 GHz
MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi, AMD B650
RAM G.Skill Flare X5, DDR5-6000, CL32, AMD EXPO - 32 GB dual kit
Gfx ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 TUF O24G, 24576 MB GDDR6X
NVME Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD, PCIe 4.0 M.2 type 2280 - 4 TB
Power supply be quiet! Straight Power 12 Power supply 80 PLUS Platinum, ATX 3.0, PCIe 5.0 - 1000 Watt
OS Win 11
Monitor 1 Aorus FV43U (Main, 144 Hz, DisplayPort, HDR Off, Freesync off)
Monitor 2 LG IPS FullHD (HDMI, 60 Hz)
All custom water cooled, temperatures are stable at max 75°C GPU temp max

I did the following:
  • Deactivated unnecessary programs (esp. MSI Center)
  • Disabled unnecessary devices
  • Disabled internal GPU and sound
  • Installation on C or D (in both over 1 TB free memory)
  • Activation of compatibility mode
  • Only with one monitor (second monitor unplugged)
  • Temperature check: All nominal at 60 degrees Max GPU
  • Mouse polling rate set to 500
  • In Game: DLSS deactivated, ray tracing deactivated, VSynch deactivated, frame rate limited to 60, 100, 143
  • NVidi settings: GSync deactivated
  • Energy saving plan High performance
  • Graphics card update
  • Chipset driver update
  • BIOS update (settings previously screenshotted accordingly) - not reset after the update
  • BIOS Expo activated, Rebar activated, Rebar deactivated
  • BIOS deactivation fTPM, RGB Control
  • Energy saving plan -> Processor energy management: Min from 0 to 100, all on "Ultimate" power plan
  • Disable Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows


Maybe one of you has an idea, maybe everything is very normal and I'm just paying special attention, being paranoid. But I wonder if something is dying on the computer. I'm running out of energy myself. I've been an enthusiastic computer gamer since I was 12 (and yes, the C64 and the Amiga were computers! :) ). But slowly I can't do it anymore...

Sorry for all the text, I am really frustrated by now, this is going on for several weeks and I am simply at the end of everything 🙁

Thank you, whoever has an idea 🙁

Ama
 
Hi! I have been experiencing your same issue since July, with two very similar builds, I am pretty sure you are experiencing EXACTLY my same issue: very occasional (sometimes hours, sometimes minutes) frametimes spikes completely random, nothing to do with loading shaders/assets/poor optimization or whatever. I presume you could stand still in almost static menu and still experience these. (I have tested several BIOS, GPU drivers and chipset drivers).

PC Specs 1:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600X
GPU: RTX 4070 Super EVO DUAL Asus
RAM: 2x16 GB Corsair Vengeance 6000 MHz
Motherboard: MSI X670E Gaming Plus Wifi
SSD: NVMe 1 TB WD_Black SN770
PSU: NZXT C750 Gold

PC Specs 2:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600
GPU: RTX 4060 MSI 2X VENTUS
RAM: 2x16 GB Corsair Vengeance 6000 MHz
Motherboard: MSI B650M Gaming Plus Wifi
SSD: NVMe 1 TB Crucial P3 Plus
PSU: XTR 550W Gold

I have almost nothing install aside from Steam, Discord and Chrome. I have tried almost everything you have tried. I'm almost sure It has something to do with AM5 or MSI, very much sure is nothing hardware related. Are you still trying to figure this out or were you able to solve it? First time I noticed It was around early July, something around the 11th. I have absolutely no idea of what could be causing it. Having in the background monitors such as PresentMon or RivaTuner seems to increase frequency of these microstutters, it's the only thing I'm sure of. As a reference without these tools these microstutters cause the Steam FPS built in counter to drop 2-3 digits (depends on framerate, the higher the framerate, the higher the drop). And, hear me out on this one, if a game is causing coil whine, it will stop for fraction of a second (I had and absolute stroke of luck with this one) exactly the instant the microstutters happens.
 
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