Experiencing microstutter/frame drops in games that cause input lag and choppy fps. Usage during superposition benchmark is much more stable with a couple dips during opening or changing scenes/ I mainly play fortnite at the moment but first noticed it in warface months back (when I was running previous driver and old install of windows 7). FPS stays in the 180-200 range and will plummet at the same time my GPU usage drops. The drops cause it to drop to a single digit percentage, sometimes to 0%. The drop only lasts a fraction of a second and it returns to it’s previous load, but very shortly after that it drops again. Recording the graph of a game results in very little stable load percentages with drops happening constantly. My gameplay suffers often but not always that noticeably with the drops. In the graphs the only other element that follows the same pattern are FB Usage and power %. Voltage, gpu and cpu temps, cpu core load, everything else looks normal to me
My rig
Gigabyte p55m-UD4 mobo
- Latest intel series 5 chipset driver from here
- Lan, Audio, Intel rapid storage technology, and BIOS update from here
Western Digital WD10001-FALS
- Passed seagate tests
Intel i7 860 4 core @ 2.8 ghz
- Overclocked to 4.09 ghz (195x21)
- vcore @ 1.35
- vtt @ 1.37
- pll @ 1.88
- Have tried CPU in both stock and overclocked settings
- Doesn't seem to be evidence of throttling
8g 1600 mhz DDR3 ram in dual channel mode
- running at 1560 mhz
- timings set to manufactures specs 11-11-11
PNY NVIDIA GTX 970
- Stock clock and voltages
- Drivers from 05/24/2018
- Have tried older driver from 05/08 and problem persists
- stock clock and voltages
Corsair TX650W PSU
- I’ve had the computer 2011 ish and this is the original PSU that I purchased when I built it. I’ve read some issues where the PSU wouldn’t supply stable power and cause similar issues but I’ve also read things that debunk that. Currently wondering if this is the issue. Power usage in graph spikes make me wonder if the low power usage is causing gpu drops or if the power is dropping because the gpu is dropping.
Monitor is older Acer H23HD5
- 60 hz refresh
- HDMI connection
Idle Temps
- CPU Cores at mid 30's
- GPU at 40
Common Settings
NVIDIA panel
- Power management set to highest performance
- physx set to operate on gpu
- vsync is off
- Texture quality set to performance
Geforce Experience
- Overlay is turned off
Windows Settings
- Power management is custom, set to performance, and turned off all individual power saving options in the advanced tab
Other Settings
- Have tried capping framerates to 60
- Have tried with VSYNC on and off
- Have adjusted max pre rendered frames in nvidia from application controlled, to 1, to 4. 4 was the worst
- DPCLantecy was stable at around 100
Hardware Monitor Logs
- HWInfo Log as a Google Sheet. Lines highlighted with red feature large discrepencies in GPU usage.
- Imgur gallery of MSI Afterburner Hardware Monitor
- Both of these from the same time frame containing two games of fortnite
Other Things:
- No background apps running. On a fresh install of windows with just drivers, hardware monitoring software, and the game
- Stutters do not happen using superposition to stress my gpu. There are a couple dips during the blackouts in between scenes and maybe one stutter but overall the stress usage is stable.
- I have freshly installed windows 10 and this problem persists
- I have tried most solutions I've found from googling and would appreciate some other ideas or solutions.
- I don't have any other monitors, PSU's, or motherboards to test
- The closest solution I found with similar symptoms was regarding a program they had installed called advanced system care that had a "clean ram" setting enabled and would throttle the ram at 50-60% which would slow down the card. I do not have this program installed.
My rig
Gigabyte p55m-UD4 mobo
- Latest intel series 5 chipset driver from here
- Lan, Audio, Intel rapid storage technology, and BIOS update from here
Western Digital WD10001-FALS
- Passed seagate tests
Intel i7 860 4 core @ 2.8 ghz
- Overclocked to 4.09 ghz (195x21)
- vcore @ 1.35
- vtt @ 1.37
- pll @ 1.88
- Have tried CPU in both stock and overclocked settings
- Doesn't seem to be evidence of throttling
8g 1600 mhz DDR3 ram in dual channel mode
- running at 1560 mhz
- timings set to manufactures specs 11-11-11
PNY NVIDIA GTX 970
- Stock clock and voltages
- Drivers from 05/24/2018
- Have tried older driver from 05/08 and problem persists
- stock clock and voltages
Corsair TX650W PSU
- I’ve had the computer 2011 ish and this is the original PSU that I purchased when I built it. I’ve read some issues where the PSU wouldn’t supply stable power and cause similar issues but I’ve also read things that debunk that. Currently wondering if this is the issue. Power usage in graph spikes make me wonder if the low power usage is causing gpu drops or if the power is dropping because the gpu is dropping.
Monitor is older Acer H23HD5
- 60 hz refresh
- HDMI connection
Idle Temps
- CPU Cores at mid 30's
- GPU at 40
Common Settings
NVIDIA panel
- Power management set to highest performance
- physx set to operate on gpu
- vsync is off
- Texture quality set to performance
Geforce Experience
- Overlay is turned off
Windows Settings
- Power management is custom, set to performance, and turned off all individual power saving options in the advanced tab
Other Settings
- Have tried capping framerates to 60
- Have tried with VSYNC on and off
- Have adjusted max pre rendered frames in nvidia from application controlled, to 1, to 4. 4 was the worst
- DPCLantecy was stable at around 100
Hardware Monitor Logs
- HWInfo Log as a Google Sheet. Lines highlighted with red feature large discrepencies in GPU usage.
- Imgur gallery of MSI Afterburner Hardware Monitor
- Both of these from the same time frame containing two games of fortnite
Other Things:
- No background apps running. On a fresh install of windows with just drivers, hardware monitoring software, and the game
- Stutters do not happen using superposition to stress my gpu. There are a couple dips during the blackouts in between scenes and maybe one stutter but overall the stress usage is stable.
- I have freshly installed windows 10 and this problem persists
- I have tried most solutions I've found from googling and would appreciate some other ideas or solutions.
- I don't have any other monitors, PSU's, or motherboards to test
- The closest solution I found with similar symptoms was regarding a program they had installed called advanced system care that had a "clean ram" setting enabled and would throttle the ram at 50-60% which would slow down the card. I do not have this program installed.