Question Graphical and audio stuttering in more resource-intensive games

[Angius]

• Ryzen 5 1600
• GTX 1660 Ti
• 16 GB DDR4 3000 MHz RAM
• Win10 2004 on a SATA3 SSD
• sfc /scannow found nothing
• chckdsk found nothing
• Malwarebytes, ESET – neither found anything
• Crystal Disk Info reports every drive as either Ok or Ok (100%)
• Clean reinstall of Nvidia drivers didn't help
• De-dusting did not help
• Windows' built-in memory diagnostic found nothing

My PC was lagging, for seemingly no reason, about a month ago or so. Memory usage went up to 70% tops, CPU usage was around 5-20% depending on the task.

• Entering text sometimes caused the text to not appear as I typed and catch up later, making letters appear near-instantly
• Games were laggy as well, despite running at solid 30-60 FPS without any spikes or dips
• Moving windows around made the window with a copy of the cursor placed on it move slower than I actually moved my mouse. When I let go, I was free to move my cursor however I wanted, and the window with the copy of my cursor did its own thing
  • Trying to record it with ShareX produced perfectly normal footage, as if nothing was wrong

Then, the issue seemingly fixed itself. Up until now, when I booted up Witcher 3 to finally finish Blood and Wine, and was welcomed with the game stuttering, as if slowing down every couple of seconds for a second, together with the audio. Additionally, audio was tearing up, and sometimes crackling.

As trying to record it, again, ended up with perfect footage, I had to record it with my phone for the stutter to be visible.
I also recorded the output of OpenHardwareMonitor, which didn't seem anything out of the ordinary. The graph, however does look oddly choppy. Still, it never seems to have exceeded anything I'd consider normal.

I admit, I'm at a loss. I used to be able to play Witcher 3 on High/Uber without a hitch, now it's borderline unplayable. Other, less demanding games (Warframe, Paladins) don't seem to be affected.

Also, first time I tried to boot up W3, I was met with DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION bluescreen. A restart later, no such issue. A driver reinstall later, no issue either, except a video on YouTube I was watching froze and started emitting the last 0.1s or so of sound on a loop. That was followed by a freeze, and hard reset. After the hard reset, no video issues.

 

[rgd1101]

make and model of the psu?
check cpu/gpu temp?

 

[Angius]

make and model of the psu?
check cpu/gpu temp?

The PSU is EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G2 650W

GPU temperature stays under 70 degrees, CPU stays under 50.

 

[Angius]

A bit of an update. The game worked fine right after I launched it after the PC was turned off for the night, now it causes issues again. And ever since I ran it, window dragging behaves like this. YouTube videos also have that slowdown-speedup-normal-slowdown-speedup-normal quality to them, albeit to a lesser degree.