[SOLVED] Games freeze every 30 seconds

[purple_banana]

Hey folks, long time listener first time caller. I have a really bizarre problem and haven't been able to find anyone else reporting the same thing...

Last year I played an off-road trucking game called SnowRunner, it performed absolutely fine. Yesterday, I revisited the game, but found it was freezing for a moment every 30 seconds exactly. As well as freezing, it also seemed to reset any inputs, for example if I was holding down W to accelerate, after the freeze it would be as if W was no longer pressed. Similarly, if I was using my wheel, I could feel the force-feedback trying to pull the wheel back to centre whilst frozen. This got me thinking about a regular stutter I experience on GTAV, so I did some testing and found this also followed the same 30-second interval, although the stutter is barely noticeable, relative to SnowRunner anyway! Interesting it is only the games which freeze. Background audio/videos/streams are all unaffected. I don't notice any issues when not gaming either.

CPU & GPU temps are all fine, and I should point out this freezing occurs as soon as the game launches, so I don't think it can be anything like a heat-soak issue. I have ruled out all HID devices, my AV, closed all unnecessary processes and programs, reinstalled the game on an SSD, but this 30 second freezing persists. I have even tried rolling back the recent notorious Win10 KB5001330 update. The only way I found to stop it was to disconnect the ethernet cable. Whilst offline there are no freezes, and even hotspotting to my iPhone (via USB), there were still no freezes. So I believe I have narrowed down the culprit to either:

• Home network (including powerline adapters)
• Ethernet port on motherboard.

I have ordered a wifi adapter for my PC which is due to be delivered tomorrow and will hopefully circumvent this problem, but has anyone ever heard of anything like this before? Or any more suggestions for things to try/check? I would much prefer to use a wired connection for performance and reliability reasons, but this 30-second freezing/stuttering is going to keep rearing it's ugly head

PC Specs if relevant:
Win 10 (installed on SSD, as is the problematic game)
i7-6700k
32gb ram (2x16)
RTX3080 (drivers and DirectX are all up to date)
750W PSU
Triple monitors (I read that this may be relevant to the Windows Update problem)

 

[teddiemar]

Hi! That's a really complicated issue and I haven't seen it anywhere tbh. I would suggest doing a Windows Repair Install. I am not quite sure if that is going to solve the problem, but it makes sense and it is a way better choice than doing nothing. Hope that helps!

 

[helper800]

Have you tried a different ethernet cable? I would also download and install LatencyMon and have it run in the background. It can point towards what is causing the stutter. This reminds me of a short a friend had on his motherboard with either a standoff screw or a loose screw, to which I cannot remember. Because disconnecting the ethernet cable completely removes this stutter I suspect it is a problem with the access point you have or the modem it is attached to. I am no expert on access points and modems related to repairing and diagnosing though. I would suggest that you get the access point and modem looked at by your ISP if they provided it, they may even send a new one.