Question Mystery Stuttering On High End PC. No resolution after 1 year of troubleshooting.

[Dillonr93]

Hello all, I am returning again after prematurely marking my last post as solved. I thought my issue was resolved, but it had only improved slightly but never went away. A little over a year ago I build a high end gaming and workstation pc. Ever since it was built, it has been stuttering both in games and on the desktop. Sometimes even in the bios. The stuttering goes as follows: When in the desktop, while moving windows around, they will sometimes stop in place for a split second before continuing about. In productivity apps its like it freeze frames for a second when I'm trying to use them. When browsing the web the stutter tends to happen while scrolling, briefly stopping the scroll. Every single game I play is affected by the stuttering in some way, even games that are very easy to run. For example, in Cities Skylines, the game will hang for a split second while moving the camera about. The audio cuts out as well when this happens. Same thing in Civilization 6, it just hangs for a second periodically when moving the camera around. Games like overwatch 2 run pretty well but instead of having the typical stuttering, it will completely freeze frame for a few seconds and the screen will cut to black before things return to normal. The stuttering happens consistently every few minutes no matter what I'm doing. I have tried every solution that I could possibly think of and then some. Nothing and I mean absolutely nothing that I have tried has solved this problem, and I have been troubleshooting as often as I can over the course of a year now.

Here are my specs:
OS: Windows 11
Mobo: Asus prime Z690 A
CPU: Intel i9 12900kf
RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000mhz
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3090Ti
PSU: EVGA Supernova 1000W
Storage: 3 Samsung EVO 980 pros. Two 1TB drives and one 2TB drive.
Asus Thunderbolt 3 Card
Cooling: Noctua air cooler
Monitors: 2 Sceptre 1440P 165hz Freesync
Mouse: Razer Naga
Keyboard: Logitech G910
Headset: Also Logitech but unsure of model.

Here is everything I have tried, in order, as far as I can remember. Get ready, this is a lot.

First attempt of fixing this, I upgraded my PSU from an 850W to my current 1000W. My thought was that I was pushing that PSU to its limit. No change in stuttering.

Next I tried messing with XMP settings, but they just wouldn't work. In my previous post, many people stated this could be a RAM issue or possibly a CPU issue and I was told to update my BIOS.

I updated BIOS and this helped the issue only a little bit. I was now able to properly use XMP profiles. I spent a long time here messing with various XMP profiles and settings and nothing helped at all.

Next I tried messing with various power settings in the BIOS. I tried everything from turning off C states to disabling SpeedStep and SpeedShift. I turned off turbo mode, I even tried underclocking my CPU. Nothing helped.

Disabled E cores. Made issue much worse.

I have messed with every windows setting imaginable to try to fix this. Tried different power plans. disabled all unnecessary startup tasks. Deleted all unnecessary apps. I turned off literally every setting that could be needlessly taking up resources. I even started to mess with REGEDIT to disable all kinds of features that could possibly be deemed problematic, such as MPO.

Messed with all sorts of settings in Nvidia Control Panel. Nothing helped.

Ran all kinds of diagnostic and benchmark tools for every piece of hardware. No problems detected on any of them.

Tried uninstalling/ reinstalling pretty much every driver I could and tested various configurations like this. No fix

I even uninstalled graphics drivers with DDU and that didn't help

At this point I have exhausted most of the software troubleshooting options and I began troubleshooting the hardware side.

I tried all the different possible ram configurations. No fixes there.

I bought a new RAM kit and installed it. Stuttering Persisted. Returned RAM

I bought an ASUS Z790 A to test. Problem persisted. Returned new MOBO

I swapped my GPU with my old 1080ti and still same issue.

Borrowed my brothers i912900k and put it into my PC. unbelievably, stuttering was still there!

Next I started testing my m.2 SSDs. I tried every configuration possible with these, from just 1 drive to all 3, with a fresh install of windows for each configuration. Still the problem persists. It did not matter which SSD was the boot drive.

I removed the thunderbolt card and tested pc without that part. Still stuttering.

I booted the PC without any nonessential peripherals. no fix.

I booted PC with all nonessential internal components such as fans and USB ports disconnected. Problem persisted.

I tried different monitors, different mouse and keyboard and different audio devices. No fix

Turning Freesync off or on did not change anything

Removed ethernet cable/ disabled lan. No fix.

Checked PC case for grounding issues. Did Not see any. Also important to note is that I had 2 different PC cases throughout this ordeal.

PC temperatures stay within acceptable ranges so I know that's not an issue. EG CPU rarely goes over 70C while gaming.

At this point I was really running out of options. Here is where my troubleshooting has led me in the past few days. I decided to revert My OS back to windows 10 and this is where things get interesting. I have discovered that early builds of windows 10 have no stuttering. Once I update to The 22h2 version of windows 10, the stuttering returns. Any version prior to Windows 10 22h2 = no stutter. 22H2 and any version of windows 11 = stutter. I do not mind using an older version of windows 10 but the problem is, this cannot be a permanent solution. Windows will eventually force everyone into 22h2. Then I'll be stuck dealing with the stuttering again. As of tonight, I have installed Ubuntu to test if stuttering occurs there. Sure enough, I am getting the same stuttering issue in Ubuntu.

I really need some help figuring this out. At this point, I feel like I have tried every possible solution, short of just building an entirely new PC. I'm at my wits end, truly. I'm losing sleep and rapidly aging over this issue.

Could it simply just be that my specific combination of parts just don't play well together for some reason? Could it be some sort of conflicting drivers that I have failed to identify?

A PC that I put this much money into just shouldn't be performing poorly like this. I am desperate for any fix that doesn't involve buying a new PC. Any advice and contributions are greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to help.

 

[Dillonr93]

What speed is your ram running at? As your cpu only supports ram speed upto 4800mt/s.
Have you tried disabling/enabling intel features in bios like

• Neural Accelerator
• Intel® Thread Director
• Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost)
• Intel® Optane™ Memory Supported
• Intel® Speed Shift Technology
• Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0
• Intel® Turbo Boost Technology

Etc.

6000MHZ. However, changing the RAM speed or any XMP settings had no effect on the stuttering, asides from making my games crash if the XMP overclock wasn't stable. Even underclocking the RAM didn't help, nor did a RAM kit with a lower speed. I did have a temporary Issue where event viewer was showing that my CPU was getting throttled for some reason, and disabling speed step and speed shift solved that problem, but didn't fix the stuttering. After a BIOS update, I was able to keep those two settings on and not get throttled anymore. The turbo settings had no effect either, other than making my system perform worse. I don't think I've seen those other settings before so I'll have to look and try disabling those.

 

[Dillonr93]

Update: It appears that stuttering on the OS level is gone. Not exactly sure what cleared it up as I have been doing so much tweaking and optimization. No more stutter on desktop or apps, chrome stuttering is fixed after messing with some settings there. Most of my games are running smoothly asides from a few that have barely noticeable micro stuttering. I'll have to iron out the remaining issues by taking a game by game troubleshooting approach. I know not all games are optimized well. I'm feeling much better about how my PC is performing now and I would like to sincerely thank all of you for your efforts in helping me.

 

[helper800]

Update: It appears that stuttering on the OS level is gone. Not exactly sure what cleared it up as I have been doing so much tweaking and optimization. No more stutter on desktop or apps, chrome stuttering is fixed after messing with some settings there. Most of my games are running smoothly asides from a few that have barely noticeable micro stuttering. I'll have to iron out the remaining issues by taking a game by game troubleshooting approach. I know not all games are optimized well. I'm feeling much better about how my PC is performing now and I would like to sincerely thank all of you for your efforts in helping me.

Please post back as to the exact solution to the issue if you figure it our for future and current readers with potentially the same issue!

 

[Dillonr93]

Please post back as to the exact solution to the issue if you figure it our for future and current readers with potentially the same issue!

Im fairly certain this was fixed with Bojus's suggestion of Fresh installing windows and Making sure that windows doesnt auto install drivers for you. Basically After my last fresh install, I had the internet disconnected and also turned off the windows setting that auto installs drivers. I had downloaded the most recent Nvidia drivers and Intel chipset drivers and all that, to an external hard drive and then manually installed all them. It was from then that my OS was running better than it ever had before and I realized that any other stuttering I was having was either an issue with the game or app itself. Chrome stuttering was fixed by disabling then re enabling hardware acceleration for example. I suspect that the way windows was auto installing the Nvidia drivers was to blame. Specifically installing the latest Nvidia driver myself, rather than letting windows do it I think was the true fix.