[SOLVED] PC underperforming, weird lag during gaming

[ItsMugen]

I have been having frame drops as of recently and sometimes big lag spikes. First thing i did was look at task manager for any irregularities. I noticed that while gaming my usage for Valorant was Very High. I don't know if this is bad or not, but i have also been noticing when i watch Twitch streams and i tab out the stream quality goes down to 480p. I have tried lowering my setting to low in game, but this doesn't really help much. I locked my frames to 144, but during big team fights my frames would go to as low as 70 and sometimes a get 2-3 second game freezes. This is just so strange to me cause this game isn't that new and when it first came out last year i would get 200+ frames at high settings. This PC isn't even that old, i just built it 3 years ago. I did overclock my CPU so maybe its becoming a problem now?
This has never happened to me before its only as of recent. It is only getting worse. Another thing i can think of that might be causing these issues is i only have 8GB of ram and my memory usage hits 70%-80% usage during gaming. However, i don't know why all of a sudden this could be an issue. I don't want to buy a new PSU or even RAM and have it not even be the problem. I have tried to get help from people at r/buildapc, but still cant figure it out. This is my first post in this website so sorry if I'm doing something wrong.

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1050 TI 4 GB

CPU: Ryzen 3 1200 3.1 GHz (Overclocked 3.8)

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8 GB (2x4) DDR4-2400 CL 15 Memory

Motherboard: MSI B350M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4

PSU: Corsair VS 500 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply

 

[AdamG]

If your usage is very high for valorant, it indicates a cpu bottleneck, but only having 8gb ram and a 1050 doesn't help much either. How high is very high? 99%? That would be probably the first factor limiting your fps. The good news is the am4 socket on that board can handle ryzen 1st and 2nd gen cpus, so you could get like a 150$ upgrade to a ryzen 5 1600, or a 200ish upgrade to ryzen 5 2600; which are 6 cores, 12 threads & SMT/hyperthreading instead of the 4 core cpu you have now which has no hyperthreading. You would see probably the most performance boost that way in my opinion, but the 1050 ti also could be upgraded aside from the ram....1050 ti has same amount of cuda cores as a 650 ti from 2013, the only reason i decided to go with a 1060 instead of a 1050 ti when looking at the specs years back. I had a 650 ti at the time so it didn't make sense paying the 150$ for a slight frequency increase in clock speed and no additional cores.

 

[ItsMugen]

Yea, my power usage goes to “very high” for Valorant and “high” for other apps like discord or Spotify. My CPU does reach 98% to 99%, however when I alt tab to task manager it does back down to around 60%. Do you think that just upgrading my CPU is worth it? Will it fix these problems? Or do you think it’s best building a new PC? I wa thinking of building one with a $1200 budget but, these GPU prices aren’t helping much. Also one thing i don’t understand is why is this happening now? All of a sudden everything is running bad. My PC used to run really well, I used to get 200+ frames on Valorant.

 

[AdamG]

Yea, my power usage goes to “very high” for Valorant and “high” for other apps like discord or Spotify. My CPU does reach 98% to 99%, however when I alt tab to task manager it does back down to around 60%. Do you think that just upgrading my CPU is worth it? Will it fix these problems? Or do you think it’s best building a new PC? I wa thinking of building one with a $1200 budget but, these GPU prices aren’t helping much. Also one thing i don’t understand is why is this happening now? All of a sudden everything is running bad. My PC used to run really well, I used to get 200+ frames on Valorant.

Alt tabbing often reduces utilization as the application moves to a background app, not really relevant to the bottleneck. I don't think building a entirely new PC is something you need to do to play valorant, but if you want to its your money. I would personally upgrade the cpu to a 2nd gen ryzen that fits the am4 socket, your utilization will reduce substantially with a hyperthreading/smt cpu with more cores/threads. You could get a better video card then the 1050 ti aswell, and additional 8gb of ram. I can't answer why it would "suddenly" run bad, but valorant routinely updates as with any game it can introduce new features & bugs, but additional memory usage is not super uncommon for games that add additional content or introduce potential memory leaks over time.

You can view spec differences of your current cpu vs ryzen 7 2700x for example:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-3-1200-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-2700X/3931vs3958

The motherboard you have supports 1st and 2nd gen ryzen, so while you could get a better ryzen cpu for only additional 50$ or so, it would require a motherboard that supports the 3rd gen ryzen cpus, like a b450 or higher (b550) instead of the b350 you have.

So realistically speaking building a new pc would just require a new motherboard if you decided to go with the 3700x using am4 socket with b450 or b550 chipset, but those newer cpus (even the 2700x which runs on your current board) would most certainly pass the bottleneck to your gpu as the 1050 ti is a lower range card. Both of the cpus 2700x and 3700x are 8 cores and 16 threads, one running on your chipset (2700x) and the other requiring new motherboard.

comparing the 1050 ti to a 3060 ti:
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti-vs-Nvidia-RTX-3060-Ti/3649vs4090

Should be noted that the 3060 ti are all sold out on newegg for example, but are around on other sites around 500$ ,and ofcourse on 3rd party sites or scalped prices of 700, lol. I seen a few websites I didn't really think are trustworthy looking around aswell. I'd personally set notification on newegg and whatever sites you typically use for when they are in stock if you decided you wanted a substantial gpu upgrade. 1050 ti has 768 cuda cores (same as older 650 ti released almost a decade ago), the 3060 ti has 4864 cuda cores among other spec upgrades like higher frequency/clocks and overall bandwidth.

If you go with a newer gpu you might need a psu upgrade aswell, just upgrading the cpu on the same board to the 2700x you'd be fine with the 500w, but upgrading the gpu to a 3060 ti ontop of the 2700x or 3700x with new motherboard, you'd likely want a higher wattage psu. Nvidia specs page has 600w listed but that spec for the 3060ti is footnoted as tested with a 10900k intel cpu, which has a higher wattage under load, meaning lower wattage cpus could potentially run fine on a lower wattage psu then 600w.

Really its mostly preference, money wise anyway. Even though the cpu you have is lower tier, only 4 cores, and no hyperthreading/smt, upgrading to a hyperthreaded/smt cpu with more cores/threads would put that 1050 ti into the next bottleneck for your games.

On a personal note I feel the "just built this 3 years ago", typically I'm building new pc every 3, to 3 and a half years at this point, but I'm using it 24/7 and like to have relatively decent fps, even if I have to sacrifice settings for higher fps on a lower-mid range rig. 1500 is a decent budget for a higher mid range build.

 

[ItsMugen]

Well if just buying a better CPU will just move the bottleneck to my GPU i would much rather just wait a year or so to build a new PC. All i would do is maybe take my SSD (if that's possible?) and give this old one to my little brother and see if my parents want to help him upgrade it with a 2700x and 3060TI. Maybe if upgrading my CPU to a 2700X got me threw another 1-2 year's of gaming i would upgrade, but i don't want to spend the money and then have another bottleneck right away.

 

[Karadjgne]

I have tried lowering my setting to low in game, but this doesn't really help much

Classic symptom of cpu capping fps, there's only a few cpu settings in those presets, everything else is graphic, gpu.

Check to see if you have the latest motherboard chipset drivers, specifically audio and Lan.

My daughter plays Valorant on her laptop and has reported the same drops and lagging, so there's always the chance that it was the last update, you know the one that fixes 3 bugs by introducing 5 more, all in an attempt to shut down exploits.