Help needed please, stuttering gameplay on my NEW BUILD!!!!!

[ovlovbaby]

Hi all, long time reader here, first time poster.

Anyway, my new build is doing my head in. Gameplay is stuttering badly in GTA V and slightly annoyingly in Battlefield 1 and Sniper Elite 3. I haven't bothered downloading any of my other games just yet as I assume its not just down to those three games, but is a PC issue.

Most annoyingly, my old build worked fine on everything, just not with amazing graphics on newer titles. It was an off the shelf Asus M32 with Windows 10 that I upgraded with an X4 860k, extra ram (not sure how much, 16G I think), an Asus GTX 950 2G and a Corsair CS550M psu.

My new build is a Corsair 500R case, Windows 10 (not yet activated), Asus Z170 Pro ATX, i5 6600K with a Cooler Master 212, 16G of Vengeance 3000mhz ram, the old Asus GTX 950 2G and Corsair CS550M psu and my old Toshiba HDD which I completely cleaned prior to installing Windows. None of my recycled parts have had much use either.

I have everything set to default in the BIOS and use optimal game settings from GeForce Experience. No overclocking yet, tested the system with AIDA64 and everything seems up to speed and stable (from my untrained eye) with good temps YET STILL THE STUTTERING!!!!!!!

I know a CPU can bottleneck a better GPU but is my GPU holding back the CPU, is this possible???

Yours in frustration, ovlovbaby.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Of course your GPU is the weakest part of your system right now.
to understand what is causing the issue, check following values for CPU and GPU while gaming:
* Frequency
* Temperature
* Usage/Utilization

 

[ovlovbaby]

Ok so now my i5 6600K is making a liar out of me.

Can you recommend any specific program to monitor these n0ns3ns3?

Literally as I'm typing this, I heard an internal fan whirr up for a few seconds, so I checked my CPU temp on Speccy and CPUID and the temp jumped from 25 to 50 and back down. When i tried to select my email inbox nothing would happen for a few seconds, like the computer is slow or something. Literally only happened twice and now all is quiet again, for now.

Does this info help?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Well a software like MSI Afterburner can be set to display those and many other metrics as OSD (on screen display) over the game.
I guess you are not using SSD, that may cause your system to feel laggish. Also, in some games like GTA V, make sure your antivirus SW is not running while playing the game.

 

[ovlovbaby]

So I have MSI showing OSD metrics for what you said, I'm just not sure what I should be looking for within those metrics.
Everything looks to be operating comfortably below upper limits I think! GTA V on optimal settings plays fine for about ten minutes, then gets super laggy, that said its sometimes laggy from the start.

Annoying that it runs fine sometimes, then doesn't for no reason, which is why I'm here I suppose.

Also what is antivirus SW?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

You should look for the temperature, frequency and usage when you have the issues.
May be your CPU (or GPU) is overheating or over used. For example if at some point you see 100% CPU usage you are probably going to have freezes/stuttering.
Antivirus software is anything you installed like Avast/AVG/Norton/Kaspersky etc. If not, Windows Defender is running by default.
They can cause stuttering/FPS drops when running on HDD if they do some sort of scan while you are gaming

 

[ovlovbaby]

Apologies, I didn't realize SW stood for software, quite tired noob here!

I know its all relative to game settings but I'd hoped going from an X4 860K to an i5 6600K would not bring up issues like this, bit disappointing really. Even if I see issues I've no idea how to fix them so I reckon I'll pay someone to check it out.

Thanks so much for the info though, MSI afterburner is class!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

No worries.
Going from X4 860K to i5 should be same or better than before.
Same in case that games performance is limited by GPU. With 950 it is probable.

 

[ovlovbaby]

All things being as equal as possible, is the i5 6600k not a significantly better CPU than the X4 860k?

Building a PC is confusing.

It seems to be my hard drive slowing everything down, its running at 100% a hell of a lot. I cleaned it as per Pauls Hardwares instructions, its not that old, a Toshiba HDD 7200rpm thingy. I didn't realise that a maxed out hard drive could slow a game too!!!!

 

[n0ns3ns3]

i5 is significantly better.
the thing is that games relying mostly on CPU and GPU. And 950 is kinda "weak" GPU -> not much difference between old CPU and new i5. The i5 gives you more headroom to upgrade the GPU. If you were to upgrade the GPU with old CPU, you'd also feel very little improvement in FPS, only in graphics quality.
The HDD is not supposed to affect FPS (unless you have some antivirus doing full scan). It usually affects the game load times.

 

[ovlovbaby]

Does the HDD load up scenery etc during gameplay and if it was running at 100% could it cause the game to stutter? My 950 has 2G of vram, so does a larger vram take the strain off a hard drive in that respect?

All the other things I checked seem well within limits on MSI Afterburner, I think.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Yes - if you have a game that loads in scenery as you run around and your hdd is otherwise 100% in use it can get laggy.

Gta v is a likely suspect, bf1 is not.

Edit: did you let windows install all updates? After that is complete I'd install the latest mobo drivers from the manufacturers web site. Download DDU and run in safe mode then reinstall gpu driver.