Question Is my HDD causing a lot stuttering in some recent games (Hogwarts Legacy and Sons of the Forest)?

[Ryuka]

I never had this kind of stuttering before and i played Red dead 2, Elden Ring, AC Valhalla and RE Village smoothly, but for some reason Hogwarts legacy and Sons of the Forest are unplayable for me cause of the stuttering. The moment i move or turn the camera its just freezes after freezes. God of war had a lot of stuttering (mostly in cutscenes) and the first minute entering a new area but it was playable.
I noticed my PC performance is much worse than it was 2 years ago but i dont think my HDD is failing cause hard disk sentinel is showing performance and health both at 100% for some reasons, but im not convinced.
My HDD spikes to 100% every single stutter and disk activity show high total (B/sec) pagefile.sys especially in Hogwarts legacy. (i guess i ran out of ram and its using the slow hdd virtual memory? but ram doesnt even get to +95% most the times)
I game at 1080p medium settings mostly, i tried lowering everything to low but not a single 1fps improvement and sometimes it gets worse?

My Specs:
Win 10 64bit
1060 6GB
Ryzen 5 1600 AF
8GB DDR4 2400MHZ (2x4GB) Dual-channel
HDD 1TB WD Blue (main OS) + HDD 2TB Seagate barracuda
I dont remember the Mobo and PSU, i dont think they're important here.

Im a poor student in a very poor country so i cant afford any big upgrade, maybe few extra ram or a cheap SSD for now. I never used an SSD before.
What do you think is the main cause of unplayable games recently ? Should i upgrade to 12 or 16 ram or get an SSD finally? can the pagefile of an SSD help?
I dont mind the minor stutters, its not like it never happened before, and they were rare.
My friends are running these games fine, some of them have 8gbs of ram but all of them have SSDs

 

[Frag Maniac]

Medium settings is too high I think for your spec. According to the requirements listed for the game, you're barely above minimum spec, so you should use Low settings. I would also advise using FSR 2, and you may need to set it to Performance, if not Ultra Performance mode.

That said, if your FPS are OKish, and it only stutters when you "move or turn the camera" as you say, it could be a case of the game not being coded as well for mouse as it could be, IF that's what you're using. In that case, sometimes lowering the polling rate of the mouse can help, but that is typically only possible to adjust with gaming mice.

IF you have a gaming mouse, try setting the polling rate to 500 if it's at 1000. If that doesn't work, try 250. It shouldn't matter gameplay wise lowering it anyway, because it's not a shooter.

On rare occasion, this kind of stutter could be caused by raw mouse input being enabled in the game, or too high sensitivity, but it's more often the polling rate. You could also try disabling in-game vsync and frame limiter, and not use any vsync if you don't get screen tear without it, or enable it and frame limiter via Nvidia Control Panel.

 

[Ryuka]

Medium settings is too high I think for your spec. According to the requirements listed for the game, you're barely above minimum spec, so you should use Low settings. I would also advise using FSR 2, and you may need to set it to Performance, if not Ultra Performance mode.

That said, if your FPS are OKish, and it only stutters when you "move or turn the camera" as you say, it could be a case of the game not being coded as well for mouse as it could be, IF that's what you're using. In that case, sometimes lowering the polling rate of the mouse can help, but that is typically only possible to adjust with gaming mice.

IF you have a gaming mouse, try setting the polling rate to 500 if it's at 1000. If that doesn't work, try 250. It shouldn't matter gameplay wise lowering it anyway, because it's not a shooter.

On rare occasion, this kind of stutter could be caused by raw mouse input being enabled in the game, or too high sensitivity, but it's more often the polling rate. You could also try disabling in-game vsync and frame limiter, and not use any vsync if you don't get screen tear without it, or enable it and frame limiter via Nvidia Control Panel.

Even with everything off and low i don't see any improvement in any game, and the stuttering happens even if i only hold W or use a controller, i dont think its a mouse issue.
i will try the FSR 2, I appreciate your help.

 

[Zerk2012]

I never had this kind of stuttering before and i played Red dead 2, Elden Ring, AC Valhalla and RE Village smoothly, but for some reason Hogwarts legacy and Sons of the Forest are unplayable for me cause of the stuttering. The moment i move or turn the camera its just freezes after freezes. God of war had a lot of stuttering (mostly in cutscenes) and the first minute entering a new area but it was playable.
I noticed my PC performance is much worse than it was 2 years ago but i dont think my HDD is failing cause hard disk sentinel is showing performance and health both at 100% for some reasons, but im not convinced.
My HDD spikes to 100% every single stutter and disk activity show high total (B/sec) pagefile.sys especially in Hogwarts legacy. (i guess i ran out of ram and its using the slow hdd virtual memory? but ram doesnt even get to +95% most the times)
I game at 1080p medium settings mostly, i tried lowering everything to low but not a single 1fps improvement and sometimes it gets worse?

My Specs:
Win 10 64bit
1060 6GB
Ryzen 5 1600 AF
8GB DDR4 2400MHZ (2x4GB) Dual-channel
HDD 1TB WD Blue (main OS) + HDD 2TB Seagate barracuda
I dont remember the Mobo and PSU, i dont think they're important here.

Im a poor student in a very poor country so i cant afford any big upgrade, maybe few extra ram or a cheap SSD for now. I never used an SSD before.
What do you think is the main cause of unplayable games recently ? Should i upgrade to 12 or 16 ram or get an SSD finally? can the pagefile of an SSD help?
I dont mind the minor stutters, its not like it never happened before, and they were rare.
My friends are running these games fine, some of them have 8gbs of ram but all of them have SSDs

PC SPECS

Experience Hogwarts in the 1800s. Your character is a student who holds the key to an ancient secret that threatens to tear the wizarding world apart. Make allies, battle Dark wizards and decide the fate of the wizarding world.

www.hogwartslegacy.com

 

[hotaru.hino]

Even with everything off and low i don't see any improvement in any game, and the stuttering happens even if i only hold W or use a controller, i dont think its a mouse issue.
i will try the FSR 2, I appreciate your help.

This to me indicates more of a CPU performance issue.

Though if the hard drive is churning away constantly while you're running the game, it could also be that too.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Out of curiosity, what is the amount of free space currently on your HDD, and do you keep it defragged? You need to keep at least 15% of the HDD space (actual space, not advertised) free for it to be able to defrag properly.

 

[geofelt]

Normally, the page file should get very little activity.
It the file is on a hdd, performance will be abysmal.
Look at task manager/resource monitor/memory tab/ hard fault page rate.
If you see anything much more than zero you have a problem that is fixable only by increasing ram.
I might think 8gb is too small.
When a page fault happens, windows must move 4k of code out of ram to the page file, and then read in the required page.
A typical seek/read/write operation for a 7200 rpm HDD might be 30ms.
More on a 5400 rpm HDD. More on a larger full HDD.

During that time, your app stops dead while you do two such actions to resolve a page fault.
If your page fault rate was 5 per second, it is like you were running your cpu at 70%.
A ssd will resolve page faults some 40x faster
See if you can't replace your ram with a 2 x 8gb kit.
And, all goes faster with a ssd as your C drive.

 

[Ryuka]

Normally, the page file should get very little activity.
It the file is on a hdd, performance will be abysmal.
Look at task manager/resource monitor/memory tab/ hard fault page rate.
If you see anything much more than zero you have a problem that is fixable only by increasing ram.
I might think 8gb is too small.
When a page fault happens, windows must move 4k of code out of ram to the page file, and then read in the required page.
A typical seek/read/write operation for a 7200 rpm HDD might be 30ms.
More on a 5400 rpm HDD. More on a larger full HDD.

During that time, your app stops dead while you do two such actions to resolve a page fault.
If your page fault rate was 5 per second, it is like you were running your cpu at 70%.
A ssd will resolve page faults some 40x faster
See if you can't replace your ram with a 2 x 8gb kit.
And, all goes faster with a ssd as your C drive.

Switching the pagefile from disk C (main OS with 5400 rpm) to disk D (storage with 7200 rpm) this morning have helped a lot, from completely unplayable to playable but with less frequent stutters. I just tested the games now and i did not expect this much improvement.
Here are the result from the tests

Sons of the Forest:

Hard faults from 8 to 40, stutters the moment i hit a tree with an axe and opening the inventory.

Hogwarts:

I dont know why the GPU usage is always 0% when playing Hogwarts and low CPU usage, it ran much better than before.
hard faults mostly at 10, Stutters when entering new rooms.
Do you thing an SSD would help even more to reduce stuttering? or is 16gbs Ram more recommended?

 

[Zerk2012]

Switching the pagefile from disk C (main OS with 5400 rpm) to disk D (storage with 7200 rpm) this morning have helped a lot, from completely unplayable to playable but with less frequent stutters. I just tested the games now and i did not expect this much improvement.
Here are the result from the tests

Sons of the Forest:

Hard faults from 8 to 40, stutters the moment i hit a tree with an axe and opening the inventory.

Hogwarts:

I dont know why the GPU usage is always 0% when playing Hogwarts and low CPU usage, it ran much better than before.
hard faults mostly at 10, Stutters when entering new rooms.
Do you thing an SSD would help even more to reduce stuttering? or is 16gbs Ram more recommended?

Both but you are still on the low end of the requirements.

Even people with higher end PC's are having problems with that game it's very poorly optimized.

 

[geofelt]

Switching the pagefile from disk C (main OS with 5400 rpm) to disk D (storage with 7200 rpm) this morning have helped a lot, from completely unplayable to playable but with less frequent stutters. I just tested the games now and i did not expect this much improvement.
Here are the result from the tests

Sons of the Forest:

Hard faults from 8 to 40, stutters the moment i hit a tree with an axe and opening the inventory.

Hogwarts:

I dont know why the GPU usage is always 0% when playing Hogwarts and low CPU usage, it ran much better than before.
hard faults mostly at 10, Stutters when entering new rooms.
Do you thing an SSD would help even more to reduce stuttering? or is 16gbs Ram more recommended?

No doubt in my mind, more ram is the best cure .

But, why not change the C drive to a ssd also?
Everything you do will feel quicker.
It is an easy thing to move your C drive to a ssd.
The ssd needs to only be large enough to hold the used portion of the C drive plus whatever expansion you want to plan for.