Gaming Lag, CPU uses 90-100% then drops to 40% and repeats

[Jarrighty]

While playing games ive been getting some weird and super annoying lag. It all started a few days ago, when im in game my CPU usage is averaging about 90+% under load, and then 20 seconds later it drops to 40% for 10-15 seconds and then ramps straight up to 90+% again. When i drop to 40% my cpu suffers intense lag, my audio cuts out, game stutters, etc. Ive also noticed that my RAM usage is slowly ramping up over time, when i first check it was about 6.5/16gb then ten minutes later is slowly raised itself to 7.5gb, could this be an issue as well?

AMD Overdrive says thermal margin is 35C underload, so that shouldn't be an issue

Note:
I've cleaned my cpu of drivers and reinstalled, nothing
Completely wiped pc clean and reinstalled windows, nothing
Also cleaned out dust from everywhere even though the PC is 2 months old


My Pc

Asus A68HM-K Mobo
AMD Athlon x4 860k
EVGA Geforce GTX 950 FTW
2x8gb Gskillz Ripjaw Ram
Corsair H60 Liquid CPU Cooler
256gb Crucial SSD (Primary)
1tb Seagate HDD (Storage)
500w EVGA PSU

 

[Obakasama]

As you state, the thermal margin is fine (actually excellent). This rules out a temperature issue.

If it really only started a couple of days ago, then think back to what may have changed with your PC. I would go for full scans for viruses and malware first just to make sure nothing untoward has managed to infect the PC first.

Following that, I would have something like MSI Afterburner to record info concerning CPU, GPU and RAM usage (and the things associated with them). See what happens with the various components when the lag occurs. Additionally, you could also check Task Manager to see if any programmes are running which take up resources.

That's all I can think of...

 

[Neur0nauT]

This sounds like the Windows pagefile dumping cached data during the game. Whatever game you are playing might have a memory leak, which is filling up the RAM and/or pagefile. You could try manually setting the pagefile size (normally it is managed by Windows) However it could help in this case to set it manually. Read about that HERE

Yeah, as @Obakasama has said: Install MSI Afterburner, and set up the OSD to show your CPU & RAM usage in game to monitor what is going on.

 

[Jarrighty]

Thanks for the responses.

I ran Malwarebytes and we were clean.

Task manager is reporting no other processes using up such %, only the game played

Screenshots after updating MSI Afterburner and testing with the lag





Looks like gpu is acting like the CPU in task manager. But i noticed as my game lags my GPU usage drops right when my CPU Usage hits 100%, and when that happens my voltage limit drops to 0 for the duration of the lag.

This sounds like progress to me, just want to figure this all out.

 

[Obakasama]

This would be going beyond what I'm familiar with, but like you I find the voltage drop coinciding with the GPU drop as suspicious. 'Voltage limit' is that of the GPU's, and it's like it's hit the limit and had to 'throttle' back down or something. Also, it seems that's when the CPU is being stressed too (must be quite some game you're running with all cores topping out like that).

A part of me would want to know if the PSU is fine, but if a PSU cannot supply enough power I think it would just shut down (?). Short of getting proper testing equipment, a monitor like HWMonitor could give an indication of the voltages being run in your PC.

 

[Neur0nauT]

Are you OCing anything at the moment? Or is everything running at stock speeds?

 

[Jarrighty]

Are you OCing anything at the moment? Or is everything running at stock speeds?

Sorry had to sign in as a google user to reply for some reason, but no, nothing is OC'd. I'm too new to PCs to venture there yet.

 

[Jarrighty]

Any other options? all out of ideas

 

[Neur0nauT]

Any other options? all out of ideas

You could check for any Windows files that might be corrupted.

Click start and type "cmd", then right-click on the program and run as an administrator.

Type:
sfc /scannow (enter)

Let this run and see if there are any corrupt file/files found.

After it completes, type:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Then repeat:
sfc /scannow

Reboot your system and see if that helps.

 

[Jarrighty]

Any other options? all out of ideas

You could check for any Windows files that might be corrupted.

Click start and type "cmd", then right-click on the program and run as an administrator.

Type:
sfc /scannow (enter)

Let this run and see if there are any corrupt file/files found.

After it completes, type:
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Then repeat:
sfc /scannow

Reboot your system and see if that helps.

Alright so i ran the cmd scan but it said everything was a-okay. I still attempted the /online and other commands but it wouldnt accept anything. Oy vey

 

[Jarrighty]

Well i appreciate the help everyone. Maybe another site will be able to track down the issue !