I need help diagnosing my GPS stuttering in games.

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theotherguy1241

Commendable
Mar 3, 2016
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So mostly every game I play I can't have a smooth fps. It usually is a solid fps then will either drop 10 frames every 20 seconds or so, or just drop and stay at that fps for the rest of the game. With my pc specs I should definitely not be having problems like this when trying to run games.


CPU: i5 4690k
GPU: Msi r9 390
Mobo: Msi z-97 gaming 5
Ram: 8 gb (Had 16 but removed one
1tb hdd
250gb ssd
Cooler: Corsair h80 gt



First off I will start with what happened to my ram. The heatsink for some reason decided to slide off of the ram stick, ever since my pc has been very laggy. I decided to remove the broken ram stick and my pc lag has nearly vanished, but I still get fps drops in my games.

Secondly, while running games my cpu is almost always at 100 percent usage. Looking at a graph of cpu and gpu usage the cpu goes to 100 and the gpu goes down and back up as soon as the cpu goes down from 100 and it's a continous cycle. I'm wondering if I got a defective cpu chip because it idles at 40 degrees Celsius even with a water cooler and this is the second cooler I have used with this cpu. The weird thing is it has never gone above 58 degrees in graphically intensive games so I just don't understand. I doubt it is an overheating problem with the cpu.

Another thing is that my cpu will not overclock at all. I don't get the Bsod when I'm stress testing, but rather when I'm in a game like gta 5. I'm not sure if this could be related to possibly some bad ram. The other stick in my pc looks like it has been affected a little bit, but not as much as the other one.


As for the graphics card. I already installed clock blocker because I know r9 390s are notorious for down clocking. They do tend to run hot, but that is normal. All of my drivers are up to date at least that I know of. I have heard one rumor that could be true. It's that the Killer network driver could be causing all of this somehow, because I do have the z97 gaming 5 motherboard and that is the driver that is recommended for it.

I've run out of ideas... If you guys have any input what so ever I will be very thankful.
 
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If the fps suddenly drops then stays there, that's a tell-tale sign of thermal throttling. Please record your in-game temperatures and see if they match the drops in performance. What's the hottest your GPU gets?

Your RAM problems are concerning. Try booting to a usb stick running Memtest86+ to see if the RAM is giving you any errors. You often don't really need a heat spreader, so you can probably still use both sticks. Memtest86+ will tell you if your RAM is working fine.

You shouldn't be getting and BSOD's. If you are and you've overclocked your CPU, return it to stock. The CPU could be a dud or you might have a setting wrong. Revisit an overclocking guide or post a separate thread on that. But if you want us to diagnose your gaming performance, you've got to isolate the variables. Return the CPU to stock and stability test your system (at least use something like LinX to see if your CPU is throwing errors) so that we can focus on graphic issues. Also, 40C is far too hot for stock in normal temperatures and humidity (I was advising a guy in Australia yesterday who had special temperatures).
 
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I will try this tonight when I get home.
 
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Yes, I'm using task manager and it's the game using it.
 
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The CPU usage looks like it's mostly around 50%, but with spikes to 100%. This situation of yours is okay if you're gaming, but you're not: https://gyazo.com/43da2868ffb5042efe0161b931b0b110
What do you have running in the background? Any anti-virus?

I used to game with my Athon 64 x2 5600 (from 2007) and that would see a flat line at 100%. I switched CPUs and kept the same graphics card and my Dragon Age performance went from 20fps to 55fps.

Your Dying Light CPU usage looks about right. However, your GPU usage is jumping around a lot and that could be related to stuttering. It doesn't look like it's temperatures, so it could be:
1) A driver problem. Try reinstalling drivers with a "Clean Install" to reset all settings.
2) An MSI Afterburner setting mistake (that's what your GPU usage graph is from, right?) causing the GPU to clock at the wrong speed.
3) A bum card. GPU usage should change, but it shouldn't drop to zero like that all the time.

This looks odd: https://gyazo.com/381d545ab047f06e7149a63634fbdcfc
It indicates your GPU's fan is off.
 
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Yeah, I'm really unsure at this point. One thing I do know is that the R9 390 has a mode where the fans only run when they need to. At that point it seems like they should've been running though.
 
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Everything is stable except for GPU usage, which makes sense as some scenes in games are easier to render than others. Do you have Vsync turned on? I'd be curious to see how that impacts GPU usage.

Did the framerate every drop really low? What FPS do you have before it drops? What fps do you have after? That's one thing Afterburner doesn't include, but FRAPS can.
 
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So any idea on which parts I can replace to get the performance I should? Also how can I tell if it's something other than the CPU or gpu?
 
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No V-sync wasn't turned on in csgo, but is in other games. However the still drops from 60 fps when v-sync is on in most games. I'm still a little concerned about my cpu or motherboard as well because looking at cpu-z, the voltage and clock is always fluctuating. I have already turned on high performance mode and such. Other people in other forums have said something about VRM overheating, which i have no idea what VRM means. Take a look at this and tell me if it's normal.

1. https://gyazo.com/39017cc4a2e27c6ed25d08d246c10322
2. https://gyazo.com/6ade50e8761acdccd9b698d17bd2b549
3. https://gyazo.com/6c8d72f5ee946123c2f2315a16cd48a2
 
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They say VRM overheating because if your performance starts normal, then gets worse, that's an indicator of overheating. Nothing looks strange about those screenshots. Voltage and frequency typically fluctuate. Now, you can set the frequency and voltage to stay constant in your bios, but that just wastes a bunch of electricity. So long as your CPU passes stability tests, I doubt that's it.

I feel like we might be missing something. Can you describe the problem again? Here is my understanding of the situation.
1) Your computer plays games well, at about the framerate it should.
2) After a while...how many minutes?...the performance drops significantly and stays there.

That would generally indicate overheating. Earlier I was chasing the crashing you had mentioned, so I was concerned about stability. Have you had problems with crashing since?

Did you ever stability test the RAM with Memtest86+?

If it's not crashing and you've stability tested your RAM, we can rule out everything but the GPU pretty much?


 
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So my probably basically is that games do not run at the fps they should most of the time. Some do starting off and then I get worse stutters later on down the road. I did run a memtest and nothing was wrong..
 
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Do you have a game we can benchmark? Ideally, you can choose one of the games or synthetics already benchmarked in one of these reviews:
http://www.overclockers.com/msi-r9-390-gaming-8g-video-card-review/
https://lanoc.org/review/video-cards/7126-msi-r9-390-gaming-8g?showall=&start=4
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_390_Nitro/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8g-d5,4245.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/powercolor-radeon-r9-390-pcs-8gb-review,1.html

Use something like FRAPS to record a benchmark to a xls file similar to the benchmark run for these games, then upload it. I'm curious how far off of the expected performance you're getting. I also want to find out if your average performance is about right and maybe you've just got some sort of smoothness issue.

What speed is your RAM running at? That shouldn't be the problem, but maybe if it's set unusually slow?
 
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Yeah, I will certainly try this when I get the time. I've been quite busy with school this week and finals coming up.
 
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