Huge stutter on lowest settings

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Mar 15, 2014
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I have constant lag spikes in pretty much every new game ( Game like: Splinter cell: Blacklist, Thief, Titanfall, Assassins creed 4 ).

- FPS is very steady, but almost every time I get this lag spike my fps drops in an instant and then goes back to normal just as fast as it dropped.

- There's very little difference with lowest or highest graphic settings.

- I usually play with 1920x1080 resolution. Lowering it to about 1280x720 makes only very small difference, just like lowering the graphic settings.

- Vsync on or off also makes little to no difference.

- I think smoke effect in games makes the game lag even more.

- Depending on the game and settings, cpu temps are pretty healthy 50-60.

- Game cpu usage is around 50-70% when playing.

Computer specs:

- Windows 7 64bit Ultimate
- Geforce gtx 770 sli x2 ( Latest nvidia drivers. )
- CPU Intel i5-4670k ( I haven't gotten to overclock it yet, due to all the lag issues. )
- RAM 16GB
- PSU Corsair AX 860
- Motherboard: MAXIMUS VI HERO Intel Z87 LGA 1150 ( bios updated )

I have noticed that disabling sli makes it so much worse in every way. Temps get to about 70 degrees or even higher, cpu usage is 10-20% higher and game lags just as it does with sli. Splinter cell: blacklist cpu usage jumped to about 95% without sli.

What could be wrong with my computer?
 

clutchc

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Try a few things.

1) Uninstall the gfx driver and all Nvidia's extra apps, and run Driver Sweeper from safe mode. This version: http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4266-driver-sweeper.html
Have it remove any remnants of ATI, AMD, and Nvidia drivers it can find. Re-boot and install the latest driver for your card(s) and OS from the Nvidia website.

2) Then run CCleaner and do the Clean and Registry portions both to get rid of Registry errors, junk files, and resource wasting crap that could be stealing resources. If your system is badly corrupted, you may have to run it more than once.

3) Disable as much stuff running in the background when Win7 starts as you can. Look in your tray and see how many you can do without. If your tray has a whole string of crap in there, it's not helping things run smooth. Also check System Configuration/Start Up and see how many boxes are checked. Uncheck as many as you are familiar with and can do without. For comparison, I usually have about 6-8 I keep. Everything running in the background when you game is stealing resources and clock cycles.
 

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Ok, So I did all of that.
This stutter is still happening.
 

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Single player games.

So, I tried both cards in a single card configuration and compared those to the sli.

That weird stutter does go away with a single card or just disabling sli. I guess I just have to admit defeat and assume that these games that I've tried, have really poor sli performance.

Maybe not the best game to test with, but assassins creed 4 results with single card were really bad, if you ask me.

I had to go with mid to high settings. All "extra stuff" disabled, like physx and stuff. Resolution was 1600x900. I was able to get 45 - 50 fps with no stuttering.

- - - - - - -

With a lot of nvidia control panel / game graphic settings tinkering, I was able to get a pretty solid results with sli. Although I still feel like I my setup should be able to rock "very high" settings with 1920x1080 even with a single card, but no.

It could be that my expectations are distorted by not playing super new games that much, until very recently.
 

clutchc

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Strange. I just sold my 2 x GTX 660 OC cards from another system because I went with the small PC in my sig, and they worked beautifully in SLI with every game I tried. You are using the 2 red PCIe X16 slots I presume? Have you another SLI bridge to try? If it's bad, all the data between cards has to go thru the PCIe buss. That would hinder performance.

I wasn't talking about disabling PhysX. That has a very little performance impact. I meant stuff running in the background when Win7 starts... stuff in your tray, syscgf/startup.
 

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Yes, both cards are in those pcie slots.
I don't have another bridge to try. Might look into getting one.

Weell, when I was talking about physx and such settings, I basically meant that I disabled any setting that wasn't: texture quality, environment quality or shadow quality.

I don't have anything extra running in the background.

But on another note, a lot of games / nvidia experience seems to think that my physx setting needs to be on the low setting ( Although nvidia experience tries to give me 1440p res and highest settings, but they never work that well. My old computer with single gpu used to work really well with the settings suggested by nvidia experience ), which I find strange. I'm not too sure about other games, but in assassins creed 4 I had huge difference when I disabled it. With or without sli.

 

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Yes.

I've had this problem for a while and for maybe 4-6 different bios versions. So far updating bios hasn't helped.