Question PC suddenly started to have lags, low framerate and stutters in some games

Nov 1, 2024
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Hi Tom´s Hardware community!
I hope you all are doing fine and could help me with a "little" problem or problems:
My girlfriends gaming rig just started behaving "weird" from one day to the other and i dont really know how to diagnose the problem.

System:

Motherboard: MSI MAG Mortar B550m Wifi Bios: 1.90
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900x
GPU: AsRock AMD Radeon 6800xt Taichi x 16GB VRAM
RAM: 32 GB 2x G.Skill F4 3600C18-16GVK
Drives: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1Tb (C: )
Crucial MX500 500Gb (D: )
Screen: Samsung F27G35TFWU
OS: Windows 10


1. So shes playing Hogwarts Legacy for the 4th time and halfway trough the game it started stuttering, most noticable in the transfiguration courtyard, but also in fights and different areas of the castle, sometimes even in very low populated caves and such. Most of the time it looks like microstudders, sometimes like low framerate and a few times a complete freeze for 0.5 to 1 second. Also in the trials wich are a seperate instance, she had troubles with like 5 FPS. (Also it seems like the screen is flickering slightly, like it seems like the brightnes is going up and down 2%. But this is an unrelated issue, as it happens in other games and started after a crash in Rdr Online earlier that year) I wouldnt be suprised if it wouldve been always like it, but for the last playthroughs she never had a problem and also it just started in this playthrough like 3 days ago.

I monitored the lags ins the ressourcemonitor, amd driver and Task manager. When the lags/stutters/etc. happen, GPU usage drops to 0, Disk usage seems normal but sometimes slightly high (but not from hogwarts task, its the system task that gets high but not in every lag scenario) and the usage of the 4 Cores the Game uses seem to go near 100%. So naturally i would assume its just a cpu bottleneck, but it just started 3 Days ago so idk.

This Game is Installed on C: (970 Evo)

Steps we tried where:
Validating the game files
Reinstalling display and monitor drivers
Tried changes to the config files
tried v-sync off and on different framerate limits etc
Also different graphics settings seem to have no effect at all, also using fsr doesnt change a thing (but i figured it shouldnt be a settings issue, cause it worked before flawlessly)


Will try later:
Reinstalling the game


2. After the Problem started I installed Ghost Recon Wildlands on her PC, as i sometimes game on it iff she goes to bed early or wants to read etc.. When i started the game it also had really bad lag, then i tried some things and setting the game to windowed borderless seemed to fix it. But then every now and then the game will freeze for 1-2 seconds. Sometimes it happens once a minute and then it stops for almost an hour or 2. Investigating this issue further im not sure if setting the game to windowed borderless has anything to do with it, cause i changed it back and it did not behave differently. As the problem started to get less frequent after playing for an hour i thought it could be a shader issue, as i read amd Gpus sometimes have a problem with that and it stops after playing for a while.

Also for that game i looked at different stats. What i noticed was: GPU usage drops to 0% when the lag occurs. CPU usage seems low across all threads. Drive usage seems in a bit more use, but not too much. Weirdest thing here is the network usage spikes every and i mean EVERY time there is that 1-2 second stutter. Which i think is pretty weird and should not affect my game, as i play in single player, with coop turned off. Never saw that before. I notice at first that there were two task from MSI center that always used the network when the lag occured. After deinstalling those the lags where gone but sometimes still persist. now its svchost.exe (which i understand is just a windows process) using the network in that moment. I put the network in metered connection to stop windows from loding updates and such, but it didnt change anything. (Im not even sure if the network is really the problem, but it is odd to say the least)

This Game is on D: (MX500)

In general her PC could run every game we own without a problem and that on highest settings without RT. Now it struggles with a game from 2017? I also tried to start some other games Portal: Revolution seemed to play fine without any lag, but that should run on a potato, also cyberpunk was playable on ultra without any lag, maybe an occasional micro stutter, but nothing that would be abnormal for cyberpunk. Raft seemed also to be fine, but i didnt play any of that game longer than half an hour. I also used 3DMark Benchmak to see if stutter occured there but it was perfectly smooth.

After all the 2 Problems dont have to be connected, but it seemed strange, that 2 games had similar issues, especially after the first lags seemed to be exactly like the ones in Hogwarts. Im now thinking about reinstalling windows and everything to but maybe someone here could find out whats the issue with the pc in general, before doing that.

Sorry for this long question, and maybe the 2 unrelated issues, but i dont really know where to start right now tbh.
 
Sep 30, 2024
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try limiting the frame rate to just under your display's refresh rate. Attempt a higher frame rate. Second, try pushing the game to a much higher frame rate—double the monitor's refresh rate or more.
 
Nov 1, 2024
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Nothing is overclocked. Temps seem fine in Ghost Recon, have to ait for Hogwarts to finish downloading to test.
I set the frame rate to uncapped which didnt change a thing, will try to set them to half the refreshrate,

I startet Ghost recon (still connected) and had only one lag in half an hour then disconnected, played for 1 hour and had no lag now im back to connected and didnt notice any lag either, so maybe that fixed itself and the hogwarts issue is a different one
 
Nov 1, 2024
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So the stutters in Hogwarts Legacy still persist, i tried setting the framerates differently changed freesync on and off, sadly didnt change a thing.
Also CPU and GPU Temps are not above 78 C*
 
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Nov 1, 2024
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So i did some additional tests:
Reset the system to an earlier recovery point (changed nothing)
Checked the drive integrity and read/write speeds: everything completley normal
installed newest drivers for the mainboard, chipset, etc. (nothing changed)
Over all it seems like the hardware is not getting used much, all cores are on medium usage, GPU is at 70%max still only getting low framerates and stutters.
Did Memtest64 also showed no issues

Ah and Ghost recon started to stutter again so thats that, im getting really frustrated over here and cant understand, cause everything worked as it should and stoped from one day to another. Any advice what else i could try

PS: checked XMP settings allready, cpu also boosts and stuff just not getting used as much as it should, same like the graphics card
 
Hey there,

What windows power profile are you running. Does switching to high performance help things?

What setting are you using in NVCP for GPU in the power management mode? Try 'prefer maximum performance'. Does that help?

78c is on the higher side for GPU temp. What is the GPU hotspot temp? You can check this with GPU-z. If the hotspot is more than 30-40c higher than the GPU temp, then that could be the issue.
 
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