[SOLVED] PC stuttering every second

[ninjajon5]

I've been having an issue for a while where my PC stutters every second. On an FPS test like https://www.testufo.com/ it is obviously visible on the 60fps band. The little alien briefly freezes every second, the website records only 58-59fps, and interestingly is also unable to v-sync. If I play a constant tone at the same time, I can hear the audio pop randomly occasionally, but always at the same time as a visual stutter.

Here are some of my specs, sorry if I miss any that are important:
Intel i5-9600K CPU 3.70GHz
16GB RAM
Windows 10, 64 bit
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080

Another interesting thing to note is that usually the stuttering is barely noticable, but occasionally it will become particularly bad. If that happens, if I try to restart the PC, the monitors will turn off but the PC itself will not. I have to turn it off manually with button on the box.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Ralston18]

Make and model motherboard?

Audio hardware?

PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition?

Disk drives(s): make, model, capacity, how full

Observe system performance using Task Manager and Resource Monitor. Use both tools but only one at at time.

First watch without playing a constant tone.

Then watch again while you play the tone.

Any related or corresponding error codes, warnings, or even informational events being captured in Reliability History and/or Event Viewer?

 

[BFG-9000]

It's usually some misbehaving driver at fault (but can on occasion be something like a failing hard disk). The traditional way to find out which one quickly was to run a utility such as DPC Latency Checker and then start disabling them one at a time in Device Manager. Most frequently it turned out to be a network or sound driver.

Once you find the offending driver, then you can look for another one to replace it, including rolling back to an older one without the issue. Good luck!

 

[ninjajon5]

Hi both, thanks for the help. I've made some progress.

Looking with task manager, resource monitor, and reliability history didn't reveal much to my eye. All parts are well within their capacity, and there wasn't an obvious change when I turned on the constant tone.

I did have success with the DPC latency checker - specifically, disabling the driver 'Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (2) I1219-V' dropped the latency hugely and seemed to solve the problem. The latency checker was recording 40000us, but drops to 1000us when this driver is disabled. 1000us is still above what the latency checker seems to think is good, but it's far better than it was, and to my eyes and ears it solves the fps and audio popping problems.

I'm not sure where's best to go from here? Windows won't let me rollback this driver, and it thinks it's on the latest version. I did a manual install of the latest version through Intel, and I think I managed it (the website was a bit confusing), but it didn't solve the problem. Is it just a case of going through previous versions until I find one that works?

Thanks again for your time. I'll put the full PC specs below.

Standard Parts List:
Processor: Intel Core i5-9600K Coffee Lake CPU, 6 Cores / 6 Threads, 3.7 - 4.6GHz
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX Tempered Glass Case - Black
CPU Cooler: Chillblast Centurion Direct Contact CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste: Standard Thermal Paste
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z370N-WIFI Motherboard
Memory: 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory (2 x 8GB Sticks)
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB Graphics Card
OS Drive: WD Black SN750 250GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Solid State Drive
Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB 7200RPM Hard Disk
Power Supply: Corsair TX650M 80 PLUS Gold 650W Modular PSU
Sound Card: Onboard High Definition Audio
Networking: Onboard 802.11n 300Mbps WiFi
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
PC purchased 2019, C: drive is almost full (21.4GB free out of 250GB).

 

[BFG-9000]

If you don't need multi-gigabit ethernet right now, the Wifi on that board is actually Intel 2x2 Wave 1 AC for 867Mbps (at 256-QAM, 80MHz wide), which you could use until they fix their drivers. Or you could get a single-gigabit USB adapter if you don't mind the NIC running entirely in software. Unfortunately there are no free PCIe slots on that board.