Question Suddenly hiccups in every game I play

[Tricolores]

Hi all,

Since a few days, I experience hiccups in every game I play, for example Splitgate, CSGO, PUBG...
You could describe this best by saying that 95% of the time, the game is smooth as ever, but suddenly I get major frame drops - stutter for about half a second. After that, it goes back to being smooth.


I think it's needless to say this makes gaming difficult, certainly when you play FPS-games.

Computer setup:


Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64-bit (up to date)
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
RAM
16,0GB Dual-Channel @ 1571MHz (16-18-18-38)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. X570 AORUS ELITE (AM4)
Graphics
XG258 (1920x1080@240Hz)
2460G5 (1920x1080@75Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (Gigabyte)
Storage
223GB SanDisk SDSSDA240G (SATA (SSD))
931GB Seagate ST1000DM010-2EP102 (SATA )
465GB Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 500GB

What I have tried so far:



- Reinstall Windows

- Return to older Nvidia driver (currently running 511.79, most recent driver has the same issues) and even to Windows 10, with no results

- Remove dust from inside computer

- Set scaling to GPU instead of display

- Play around with multiple settings inside Nvidia Control Panel (problem also present at default settings)

- Check with LatencyMon if I could find any software causing it (besides lots of pagefaults from WebView2 Runtime, nothing out of the ordinary)

- Turn off power saving in BIOS

- Test hardware by running a UserBenchmark - result: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/53057863

- Turn of hardware acceleration where possible

- Check SSD health, stress test GPU

I'm in ICT support myself, but I'm flabbergasted by this. I might sound like an end user by saying this, but everything worked fine only a few days ago... And I can't put my finger on it why this is happening.

I really hope you guys can help me out, with every day passing I get more and more frustrated as gaming is one of my few hobby's.

Every kind of feedback is highly appreciated. I'll try to answer any questions for further feedback as soon as possible.

Thank you in advance and kind regards,
Tricolores

 

[Phaaze88]

Those frametime spikes in the screenshot in post #18 are nuts. 7000ms max?! O_O'
People see stutter with 50ms ones.

Do you play games with KB+M? Gamepad? Both?
Did you replace one of them recently?

Tried playing on just the 240hz monitor? Just the 75hz? [You should probably toggle between Vertical Sync: off and Vertical Sync: fast in Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings, depending on the game being tested.

I want to think this is hardware due to the symptoms, but 🤔




EDIT: Is Rivatuner installed with Afterburner? I remember a while back that this app actually caused performance issues on its default settings.

 

[Ralston18]

Try to discover what the system is doing, trying to do, or failing to do when hiccups occur.

There are three Microsoft tools that may prove helpful:

Task Manager
Resource Monitor
Process Explorer (Microsoft, free)

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Try using each tool but use only one tool at a time.

Boot up as normal but do not immediately launch any additional applications or games. Next, open one of the tools, reduce and locate the window where you can watch what happens.

Let the system stabilize - nothing changing or jumping about. Once stable open and play a game and observe. Objective being to discover some change, spike, etc. that corresponds with the hiccups.

It will take a bit of time and effort to get a sense of how to navigate any given tool and what the visual results are indicating. There is no rush to do so and it all will be somewhat confusing at first glance.

For example, you will see some small arrows in column headers. Clicking an arrow will sort the column so you may not need to scroll up and down to find some peak value.

= = = =

Also you can look in Reliability History and Event Viewer. Either one or both may be capturing some error code, warning, or even an informational event that is captured when a hiccup occurs. You do not need to run either Reliability History or Event Viewer while gaming. Just look in the logs.

Start with Reliability History. User friendly overall and the time line format can be very revealing. Event Viewer is much more cumbersome to navigate and understand. However, take your time to look around and you may discover lots of red and/or yellow icons somewhere at "hiccup" times. Some failure when a program attempted to launch as has been mentioned.

Key is to take your time, be methodical. Look at the details if something catches your attention. The details may or may not be helpful but always worth a look. An error code may lead to the culprit.