[SOLVED] i7-7700k Maxing Out, Potentially Causing Stuttering

[expl0rer]

I've had this 7700k for a little over two years now. Stock frequencies, no overclocks yet. So far, everything has been fine and I've enjoyed all of the performance I've gotten out of the processor. This thing has been through it all, especially these past couple months - long video calls, lots of multitasking with school assignments, gaming, and the occasional video editing. Unfortunately, it seems I've now hit a snag that I am unable to solve.

Now, any time I try to load up a game, my CPU maxes out at 100% and everything slows down. My voice on Discord cuts out, my mouse gets stuttery, and my performance is terrible. Games are basically unplayable. This happens to even the simplest of games, such as Minecraft (although, I am running shaders. But, my PC hasn't had a problem with that before). Restarting my PC and getting on with a fresh start helps, but it always eventually goes back to its previous state of making things unplayable. On the occasion that a game does run without any issues, it runs normally but begins to slow down along with the entirety of Windows after doing something like Alt-Tabbing.

So far, after doing some research I have done the following:

• reinstalled my NVIDIA drivers
• updated my BIOS
• disabled Xbox DVR and Game Bar
• installed the latest Intel chipset drivers
• uninstalled unnecessary programs that take up large amounts of my CPU

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Quick update, as I've been drafting this for the past few days and have had some small changes occur:

Nothing above has helped my situation, except for the last one (kind of). Uninstalling the extra unnecessary programs got rid of the maxing out at 100%, but when I play games and do things like Alt-Tab I still have the same stuttering issue both in-game and in Windows. Here is a clip of me walking around in GTA V, and you can see that everything is somewhat stuttery in-game. In real life I'm smoothly moving the mouse left to right with zero interruptions, but in-game my mouse seems to snag and jitter across the screen. Here's another clip where I Alt-Tab into Chrome from GTA, and you can see that moving the tab around is very stuttery as well.

It's weird though, because on paper nothing seems wrong at all. I've been watching my usage and my temps for quite a bit and everything seems relatively normal:

• ~9-15% usage with ~35°C when idling
• ~80-93% usage with ~55°C when under load

Based on these numbers, from what I can see I've fixed my maxing out issue; I haven't seen my PC hit 100% in anything so far. Yet, my issue with the stuttering still persists. It's leading me to think it could potentially be something other than the processor. But, I'm still going to put it under the CPU section anyway because of my initial maxing out issue.

It never used to be like this in the entire time I've had this PC. I still haven't been able to find a solution to this, and it seems that my specific problem isn't all that common, so I'm not sure where to go from here. That's why I've finally decided to turn to these forums, in hopes that I can potentially find a solution to my problem on here. Any extra tips and tricks will be greatly appreciated, and I'll try to keep this post updated with what works and what doesn't work.

Also, here are my specs:
ASUS Maximus VIII Hero
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Super Gaming X
Intel i7-7700k
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 3 / NZXT Kraken Z63*
G.SKILL Ripjaws V 32gb DDR4, 2133mhz
Corsair TXM 80+ Gold 850W Power Supply

*I've used the Dark Rock for the past two years, and I just switched to the Kraken yesterday. The issues have persisted on both CPU coolers, so from what I can tell it's not a cooling issue.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Sometimes removing offending programs, or patches, or Windows updates, or whatever, is not enough, because the OS retains it's registry settings pertaining to that software. Sometimes it only takes a single update or patch, or whatever, to piss Windows off and sometimes it will ONLY piss it off if you've upgraded Windows from an earlier version at some point to Windows 10 but have never done a full on clean install, and sometimes it will do it even if you have done a clean install but have been through many of the major spring and fall updates without having done a clean install.

And it could be entirely unrelated but I suspect this IS some kind of Windows issue.

My advice would be to try a clean install. Back up everything important, personal files, documents, music, movies, settings, etc. and then do a full clean install. Not a refresh or reset or in place upgrade. Clean install.

But, before you do that, it might be prudent to create a bootable Linux distro like Ubuntu, and run that to see if there are any similar issues while running a non-Windows environment because if there are still issues then it probably is not Windows related, but if there are not, then there is a real good chance it could be one of the types of problems I've mentioned, or maybe a driver that is no longer needed because the hardware isn't in use anymore but the driver is still loading in the background in case you reinstall the hardware again, which isn't unusual and can cause problems in some cases.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Assuming of course that you're running Windows 10, because if you're not, that might be the problem in any case. Windows 7 isn't updating anymore but from what I've seen on the last two systems I've serviced with it installed, it IS trying to connect and check for updates, the entire time Windows is running. I've had to wipe both those systems and upgrade them to Windows 10, one of which was a 2010 Athlon system so I was actually surprised it ran with no problems, and both are fine now.

Likely this isn't your issue, but I thought it might be worth mentioning just in case. I think this issue is fairly new because those systems were not having those issues three months ago when I installed some newer drives in them.

 

[mdd1963]

Are you playing games on a 144 Hz refresh monitor? (Many experience stutter when frame rates drop below a certain threshold on high refresh rate monitors, and, the 7700K, although still 'decent' is certainly no 10900K/5800X either....)

As stock operation is merely 4.2 GHz all core, you could possibly easily extract another 400-500 MHz across all cores with a few clicks within Intel's XTU, which overrides /manipulates BIOS settings but after bootup. (MY own 7700K hits 4.7 GHz all core at 68C gaming temps with it's Noctua NH-D15 cooler, but, 4.8 GHz was unstable without a small core voltage bump, which, when combined with higher clocks, spiked temps to 85C, so, that last 100 MHz seemed 'not worth it'...)

 

[Darkbreeze]

They don't mention making a monitor change, and they state that they didn't have this problem previously, so the refresh rate issue seems kind of unlikely. Valid, potentially an issue and worth checking into, but unlikely.

 

[expl0rer]

Sometimes removing offending programs, or patches, or Windows updates, or whatever, is not enough, because the OS retains it's registry settings pertaining to that software. Sometimes it only takes a single update or patch, or whatever, to piss Windows off and sometimes it will ONLY piss it off if you've upgraded Windows from an earlier version at some point to Windows 10 but have never done a full on clean install, and sometimes it will do it even if you have done a clean install but have been through many of the major spring and fall updates without having done a clean install.

And it could be entirely unrelated but I suspect this IS some kind of Windows issue.

My advice would be to try a clean install. Back up everything important, personal files, documents, music, movies, settings, etc. and then do a full clean install. Not a refresh or reset or in place upgrade. Clean install.

But, before you do that, it might be prudent to create a bootable Linux distro like Ubuntu, and run that to see if there are any similar issues while running a non-Windows environment because if there are still issues then it probably is not Windows related, but if there are not, then there is a real good chance it could be one of the types of problems I've mentioned, or maybe a driver that is no longer needed because the hardware isn't in use anymore but the driver is still loading in the background in case you reinstall the hardware again, which isn't unusual and can cause problems in some cases.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

Assuming of course that you're running Windows 10, because if you're not, that might be the problem in any case. Windows 7 isn't updating anymore but from what I've seen on the last two systems I've serviced with it installed, it IS trying to connect and check for updates, the entire time Windows is running. I've had to wipe both those systems and upgrade them to Windows 10, one of which was a 2010 Athlon system so I was actually surprised it ran with no problems, and both are fine now.

Likely this isn't your issue, but I thought it might be worth mentioning just in case. I think this issue is fairly new because those systems were not having those issues three months ago when I installed some newer drives in them.

Thanks for the help. Although, how might one go about creating a bootable Linux distro? If it isn't too much to do, I'd like to look into doing that before I do a clean install like you said. BTW, just want to clarify I am running Windows 10.

 

[expl0rer]

Are you playing games on a 144 Hz refresh monitor? (Many experience stutter when frame rates drop below a certain threshold on high refresh rate monitors, and, the 7700K, although still 'decent' is certainly no 10900K/5800X either....)

As stock operation is merely 4.2 GHz all core, you could possibly easily extract another 400-500 MHz across all cores with a few clicks within Intel's XTU, which overrides /manipulates BIOS settings but after bootup. (MY own 7700K hits 4.7 GHz all core at 68C gaming temps with it's Noctua NH-D15 cooler, but, 4.8 GHz was unstable without a small core voltage bump, which, when combined with higher clocks, spiked temps to 85C, so, that last 100 MHz seemed 'not worth it'...)

Not yet. Still running 1080p 60hz, but was looking into maybe upping to 144hz in the near future.

I actually upped to a liquid CPU cooler because I'm finally gonna take a crack at overclocking this thing. I was gonna start out slow, but I'll take up your recommendation and progressively ease into 4.6-4.7Ghz. While I'm here, any extra overclocking tips would be great. I've never touched any sort of overclocking before, so I'm still a huge newbie with it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview

 

[expl0rer]

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview

Okay, as of right now it seems that a clean install of Windows did the trick. I backed everything up and did a clean wipe a couple days ago, and since then I've been using it frequently to see if there are still any lingering issues. This new install feels much snappier, and so far I've been impressed with the speed and fluidity of everything. I did also go through with the Ubuntu bootable USB, and from what I could see there wasn't any stuttering or performance issues there (although, I wasn't able to do that much), which means it was a problem with Windows. I'm actually not surprised about this, as my previous install of Windows on this PC was installed back in 2016.

Thanks for the help with fixing my problem. If I encounter any more stuttering or other related problems in the next couple days I'll update this forum post.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Cool man. Sounds good, and glad it was an easy fix, at least so far. Lot's of people that have REALLY complex problems that are extremely difficult to sort out so it's nice when a clean install fixes the problem. One thing, I'd pay particular attention to WHAT you reinstall, and space it all out a bit, so that if something you are installing begins to cause the same problems again you will at least have some idea of what caused it rather than installing everything at the same time and then "well, I'm not sure WHICH thing is the problem now".

Hopefully though, it's just resolved, period, and no further worries.