Repeated stuttering and freezes when gaming

[lbPC]

So I've asked this question a few times and never really gotten a definitive answer, and I'm about to potentially upgrade my RAM as its the cheapest option, in the hopes that it will help. However, I want to ask one last time in case it's a complete waste of money.

Basically in the past few months I've noticed some pretty intense stuttering and freezes when I'm gaming, most notably if I've been gaming for a while and especially in Gears of War 4 which I just bought. Aside from these freezes, the games I've been playing (BF1, Titanfall 2, GOW4) run on High at 50-60fps and some of the games even have High as the recommended setting based on my setup. This makes me think that my CPU+GPU aren't the problem*, and that maybe it's my ram?

My setup is:

CPU: i5 2500 3.3GHz
GPU: GTX 780
8gb RAM

*having said this I know they're both dated (especially the CPU) but I've been told the 780 still holds up quite well.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[BadBoyGreek]

Have you monitored your temps to see what they're like after one of those long gaming sessions? The biggest cause of stuttering / freezing during gaming, especially long sessions, is thermal throttling.

 

[PeppermintFangs]

Your ram is not likely the problem. There simply aren't any games that can take advantage of more than 6GB of ram running at less than 4k (or even at 4k in most cases), let alone 8GB. I highly, highly doubt this is the issue.

I'm sure you've already done this, but as a troubleshooter I'm obligated to ask - have you ensured your drivers are up to date? This includes graphics drivers, system drivers, etc. If not, this could be causing stutters.

Given that the games you're experiencing stutters in are all new games, I wouldn't be surprised if your dated hardware is to blame for stutters, but then again this is just an assumption. Let me know if your drivers are up to date, and if they are we'll move onto the next troubleshooting steps...

 

[lbPC]

Have you monitored your temps to see what they're like after one of those long gaming sessions? The biggest cause of stuttering / freezing during gaming, especially long sessions, is thermal throttling.

Temps were the first thing I tried to observe/fix, but they were fine. Installed a new CPU fan also.

 

[lbPC]

Your ram is not likely the problem. There simply aren't any games that can take advantage of more than 6GB of ram running at less than 4k (or even at 4k in most cases), let alone 8GB. I highly, highly doubt this is the issue.

I'm sure you've already done this, but as a troubleshooter I'm obligated to ask - have you ensured your drivers are up to date? This includes graphics drivers, system drivers, etc. If not, this could be causing stutters.

Given that the games you're experiencing stutters in are all new games, I wouldn't be surprised if your dated hardware is to blame for stutters, but then again this is just an assumption. Let me know if your drivers are up to date, and if they are we'll move onto the next troubleshooting steps...

Drivers are indeed up to date, I should've added in the post that it occurs regardless of graphical setting. Even on the lowest possible this happens.

 

[PeppermintFangs]

Your ram is not likely the problem. There simply aren't any games that can take advantage of more than 6GB of ram running at less than 4k (or even at 4k in most cases), let alone 8GB. I highly, highly doubt this is the issue.

I'm sure you've already done this, but as a troubleshooter I'm obligated to ask - have you ensured your drivers are up to date? This includes graphics drivers, system drivers, etc. If not, this could be causing stutters.

Given that the games you're experiencing stutters in are all new games, I wouldn't be surprised if your dated hardware is to blame for stutters, but then again this is just an assumption. Let me know if your drivers are up to date, and if they are we'll move onto the next troubleshooting steps...

Drivers are indeed up to date, I should've added in the post that it occurs regardless of graphical setting. Even on the lowest possible this happens.

I know you said you were monitoring your temps, but are you monitoring your clock speeds?

I'd play for about 5-10 minutes before taking a look at the results. What you're looking for is dramatic drops in the clock speed of your GPU, or drops in usage (in the best case scenario the GPU should stay at or around 100% usage).

You can also try some of the performance fixes from the article below for BF1, though the fact that it's occurring in all your games leads me to believe there's not one simple fix. Can't hurt to try!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlefield/comments/57nh6y/bf1_performance_tips_for_pc_potentially_huge_fps/