Help with FPS drops

[gamedev12]

I'm getting big fps drops in all games. Just Cause 3, Watch Dogs, PUBG, CS:GO, even minecraft. The games will run smooth for a few minutes, then the fps will drop from 60-144 to around 10-20 for a few seconds, then recover back to high fps. I have only had this issue after resetting my pc and reinstalling windows.
So far I have tried changing the graphical settings, updating my nvidia drivers (they WERE out of date), and installing chipset drivers for my motherboard that I forgot to do when I reinstalled windows. EDIT: Just updated my BIOS to no effect
I have: AMD 8320, NVIDIA Geforce 1060 6 GB, ASRock 970m motherboard, and 24 GB DDR3 1600 mhz RAM.

 

[alceryes]

Are you doing any kind of overclocking?
Is sounds like your CPU or GPU could be throttling. Download and run open hardware monitor - http://openhardwaremonitor.org/downloads/
Let it run in the background while you play and it will log system info every few seconds. A few seconds after you experience one of those slowdowns exit the game and check the logs.

 

[gamedev12]

I'm not doing any sort of overclocking, and I'm not sure what I'm looking for in the logs. My CPU, GPU, and motherboard temperatures are all good, and neither my cpu or gpu went to max load at any point. They went to about 95% max while playing a game. Since I posted that I also disabled AMD Cool n Quiet which it said was a big problem for a lot of people, but disabling it did nothing for me.

 

[alceryes]

So, in the excel spreadsheet, do you see your CPU frequency (Mhz speed) fluctuate at all?

 

[gamedev12]

Nope, at all times its locked at 3692 mhz, no fluctuation at all.

 

[alceryes]

Something is still overclocking your frequencies. That CPU, without any overclocking, should sit at 3500Mhz and not move.

 

[gamedev12]

I have no idea what is causing it, I cant even check it in AMD catalyst control center.

 

[7664stefan]

Let's come back to the good throttling thought. I also assume your GPU is facing a temp issues cause that perfectly fits you the behavior you described above. What the temps recorded with HW monitor in idle and up to the point where you notice the frame drops?

 

[gamedev12]

In idle i'm getting 58c, in game it goes to 60-62c and max is 65c. That looks like it's all in normal temp ranges, is it not?

 

[GhislainG]

Use AMD Overdrive to monitor the CPU. Run Prime95 Small FFTs and check the thermal margins; do they drop close to or below 0°C?

 

[alceryes]

If your bus is overclocked (which appears to be the case) you may as well run 30 mins of the blended test in addition to burning the CPU with the small FFT test.

 

[7664stefan]

In idle i'm getting 58c, in game it goes to 60-62c and max is 65c. That looks like it's all in normal temp ranges, is it not?

Would expect the card to run cooler in idle and to warm up more when gaming. My question was more in regards to the temps you encounter when you notice the FPS drops? This is valid for GPU as well as for the CPU temps please.

 

[GhislainG]

In idle i'm getting 58c, in game it goes to 60-62c and max is 65c. That looks like it's all in normal temp ranges, is it not?

Would expect the card to run cooler in idle and to warm up more when gaming. My question was more in regards to the temps you encounter when you notice the FPS drops? This is valid for GPU as well as for the CPU temps please.

FX CPU temperatures can't be accurately measured; thermal margins are much more accurate (one of the reasons why AMD released AOD). A cooler than expected GPU may be the result of a throttling CPU; we won't know until the OP runs P95 and provides the AOD results. It would also be nice to know what CPU cooler is installed.

 

[gamedev12]

https://imgur.com/a/qBi3UyR

Here's the thermal margins over a 60 seconds period of running the prime95 fft test.
I have a Corsair H55 cooler, which has worked just fine since I got it. It has two fans in a push-pull setup.
EDIT: I was just looking around in AMD overdrive and noticed that in the System Info -> Diagram setting, it shows nothing in the PCIE connected to the chipset, and in the GPU status of Overdrive it is entirely offline. Is this because I have an NVIDIA GPU or does the cpu perhaps have some problems recognizing it?
EDIT #2: Figured out how to set my cpu clock back to normal, apparently something called Turbo Core Control had it pumped up to 3700 mhz. It's back down to its normal 3500 mhz now

 

[GhislainG]

Are there FPS issues at 3500 MHz? How are you cooling the VRM? The stock cooler did, but a water cooler doesn't.

 

[gamedev12]

There is a slight reduction in fps at 3500 mhz, and the drops are still there.
I didn't know anything about cooling the VRM, I've never even heard about that being a thing. If you say that the water cooler doesnt, then I guess it doesn't, no idea how I would get any cooler in there to reduce the temps of the VRM. In my pc I have 3 intake fans on the front, 2 exhaust (on the radiator), 1 intake on the power supply, and the 2 fans on my graphics card.

 

[GhislainG]

You may not have a VRM cooling issue, but it's difficult to be 100% sure when stress testing for only 5 minutes. Any reason why you didn't provide the graphical view of the thermal margins while P95 is running (let it run for at least 5-10 minutes before capturing the screen)? It provides more info than the screen that you posted.

 

[gamedev12]

I'm running the stress test for longer right now, but I'm unsure how the graphical screen shows more info? It just shows info for that specific second, instead of logging it over time like the other one.
EDIT: Here's the results, I took screenshots of both the graphical and the logging. This was over a 10 minutes period
https://imgur.com/a/a0TJRNU

 

[GhislainG]

It shows that you have no issues while stress testing the CPU with P95 which is good. I suggest you use AOD to monitor the CPU while playing; switch to it as soon as you detect a FPS drop and check if the thermal margins or the CPU frequency dropped.

 

[gamedev12]

In-game the cpu usage is fine and the thermal margin sits at 20-22 consistently. When the fps drops happen, the thermal margins drop to 18-19 and one or two of my cores usage spikes massively. The rest of the cores stay the same.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Backing way up, did you also install the other mobo drivers besides chipset (audio, usb, storage, etc)?

Do you have other things running at the same time? Go to msconfig and systray and stop any unnecessary services/programs.

Not saying to mess with it for sure, but read up on disabling HPET. Doesn’t help some, helps others.

 

[gamedev12]

On asrock's website there is a chipset driver, a lan driver, and an audio driver. The lan driver just installs the audio driver which is weird but I would assume is fine. I have installed all of those. I looked into any sort of other drivers that I'm missing and found nothing.
Disabling HPET massively improved my overall framerate by about 20 fps, but the frame drops are still there. Oddly though, they arent *as* bad as before, now dropping to about 30 fps for 2-3 seconds, instead of 10 fps and freezing the game at points.
EDIT: Out of curiosity, I looked in task manager while playing to see if anything else was spiking and causing the game to lag. For some reason when the game's fps dropped, the cpu usage dropped as well, from about 70% to 40% until the lag was over, at which point it went right back up to 70%. Does this have to do with anything?

 

[gamedev12]

Fixed it by first uninstalling Nvidia's HDMI Audio drivers, which reduced the rate that the fps dropped by about 75%, then I clowned around in nvidia control panel settings and switched global settings for both "power management mode" and "texture filtering quality" to max performance and suddenly my issue appears fixed. the in game quality is no different but I guess it worked. Thanks for all the help with the different stuff and trying to determine it.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Good news!