Question There is In-game stutter - - - I think it's whenever something needs to be accessed from disk ?

[silver085]

It's an old PC, but this isn't a resource problem, as it happens in old games too that aren't even close to maxing my CPU/GPU or RAM. It also happens literally in main menus.

MSI H97 PC MATE
Xeon E3-1240 V3 (i7 4770 equivalent)
16GB RAM 1600Mhz(4x4)
RTX 2060 SUPER
PSU XFX TS 550W (P1-550S-XXB9)
x2 MX500 1 TB SSD
x1 IRDM PRO gen2 512 SSD(system drive)
x1 Toshiba P300 1TB HDD(storage)
x1 Toshiba P300 2TB HDD(storage)
Windows 7


So basically this 2 fps sttuter occurs whenever something isn't already loaded in memory and it needs to be accessed from disk by the look of it.
I'm uploading 3 videos with examples(click direct link beneath). Sorry for phone quality, I recently uninstalled Shadowplay and am just lazy. You won't be really able to "feel" the stutter in this case, but you can clearly see the fps drop and frametime spike.

First video is showcasing pretty much the most ridiculous example. Basically after launching the game, I will get stutter when I open the overlay for the first time, because it needs to be drawn. After that I can open and close it as many times as I want without stutter.

Second video is me scrolling through the save files. Game needs to access each save file on the disk in order to get the thumbnail, and so it stutters each time I move onto new file. Scrolling back up through the same files produces no stutter, as those are already in memory.

Third video is actually in game. Keep looking at the trees in the middle of the screen. You will notice the stutter occurring the moment when new model was being rendered in.

Some things I think we can rule out:

Given that this is Windows 7, I think we can rule out some background processes interference. It's also trimmed down to the maximum perfromance where I have like 50 proccesses running and I know what each one of them does(compared to +100 mess in Win10/11). I just have ESET, Nvidia Panel, Realtek Audio Panel and RTSS with MSI Afterburner in my tray. So unless I actually disabled some important windows service, I think we can rule this out.

-Obviously it's not overheating problem as it happens in menu's too, but still both of my CPU and GPU are around 60C when gaming.

- It's not a dying disk, as it happens on all of my disk's and all of them are healthy too(I use HDTune, CrystalDisk and have HDSentinel running)

- I don't know if this is a hardware problem. The only thing I can rule out is GPU, cuz that was recently swaped from old 1060 3GB(yes I did clean DDU uninstall)

- I tried all Vsync's, framelimiters, max pre rendered frames, none has an effect on this

If I understand correctly how this works... it seems like there's some communication problem between my CPU and disk's?

If I could actually remember and notice when this started to happen at first, it would be easier to narrow down, but alas I have no idea. With this PC I just got used to stutters as you can imagine, but I do rememeber it wasn't that bad some time ago.

Going back to hardware, originally I had ASRock H97 Pro4 with i5 4590. I damaged my MOBO by accident at some point and had to buy new one. I didn't want to do a full switch to Win 10 with new PC yet, so I just bought a cheap replacement with MSI H97 PC MATE and that Xeon. I can't really tell if perhaps this is when it all started, but I think I would have noticed it right away.

 

[punkncat]

Any time you are pulling from HDD is going to have far more latency. If you move this game to an SSD do you experience the same stutter?

To be fair, this system is aged by any metric.

 

[silver085]

Any time you are pulling from HDD is going to have far more latency. If you move this game to an SSD do you experience the same stutter?

To be fair, this system is aged by any metric.

All my games are on SSD's. Those are classic 500/500 write and read SATA 3 SSD's, so it shouldn't be the cause. Especially since I'm not running new games.

 

[TerryLaze]

Especially since I'm not running new games.

Old games are coded for old systems...they are mostly single threaded and every time they have to load something in, everything else has to stop until that is done, and since they are coded for old systems they don't load in stuff whenever your current system is full but whenever the average system of ye olde times would have been full, it's called optimization.
Also depending on how old you are talking about they where never expecting these old games to run at hundreds of FPS which can also cause issues.

Also also your videos aren't working for me so I'm just guessing on general things without having seen the issue.

 

[Moonstick2]

I damaged my MOBO by accident at some point and had to buy new one. I didn't want to do a full switch to Win 10 with new PC yet, so I just bought a cheap replacement with MSI H97 PC MATE and that Xeon. I can't really tell if perhaps this is when it all started, but I think I would have noticed it right away.

Run some benchmark tests using CrystalDiskMark on all your drives to see if the results look normal. Post the results here for comment.

Make sure you've got the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed.

When you replaced your motherboard, did you do a full fresh reinstallation of Windows? If you didn't, you should do that now.

 

[silver085]

Old games are coded for old systems...they are mostly single threaded and every time they have to load something in, everything else has to stop until that is done, and since they are coded for old systems they don't load in stuff whenever your current system is full but whenever the average system of ye olde times would have been full, it's called optimization.
Also depending on how old you are talking about they where never expecting these old games to run at hundreds of FPS which can also cause issues.

Also also your videos aren't working for me so I'm just guessing on general things without having seen the issue.

Videos aren't showing because I used [media] tag, you have to click direct links beneath

Spoiler

It's important to read what I wrote about them and then watch them. This isn't a thousandth thread on the internet about random stutter occuring at random intervals while gaming. It's 100% reproducible and always happens when something new needs to be loaded into memory. On the third video I have a save where I'm standing at the start of it. After walking those few steps forward to trigger stutter, I can load that save, which will cause that model to be purged from memory and after moving forward again, I'll get this stutter again.

This isn't a matter of optimization, in happens in every game. It literally happens in main menu when I'm opening Afterburner overlay for the first time after launching games. Doesn't matter what needs to be loaded, doesn't matter what game it is, doesn't matter what cpu/gpu/ram usage is. Basically whenever something needs to happen for the first time, it will always sttuter.

 

[silver085]

Run some benchmark tests using CrystalDiskMark on all your drives to see if the results look normal. Post the results here for comment.

Make sure you've got the latest BIOS and chipset drivers installed.

When you replaced your motherboard, did you do a full fresh reinstallation of Windows? If you didn't, you should do that now.

Spoiler

OS DRIVE: IRDM PRO gen.2

1st Crucial MX 500 1TB

2nd Crucial MX 500 1TB

Toshiba P300 1TB

Toshiba P300 2 TB

So it seems my OS SSD got a little slower. It's supposed to have the same write and read speeds like MX500. It is though a bit old. I have it for several years now. Still it shouldn't cause this kind of stutter.

Both BIOS and chipset drivers are latest and yes I did a new windows installation when I did the switch.

 

[Misgar]

Xeon E3-1240 V3 (i7 4770 equivalent)

I have three i7-4770K systems and several old Xeons, plus a bunch of more recent stuff.

I'm guessing you can't overclock the E3-1240 (is it a V2 or V3) which is a shame. I'm running one 4770K at stock, another at 3.9GHz and the last at 4.2GHz all core with a manual lock at 1.250 Vcore. You can take them higher but I don't like running them at 1.4 Vcore.

You might consider swapping the Xeon for a second hand 4770K. They're relatively cheap these days, unlike the 4790K.

Even with a faster overclocked CPU, there's no guarantee it'll make any difference.

You might care to fiddle with Superfetch and switch it off (if it's enabled) or on (if it's disabled). Just a long shot, but who knows? Caching (or not caching) data in RAM might help.
https://techjourney.net/disable-or-enable-superfetch-in-windows-10-8-7-vista/

Those are classic 500/500 write and read SATA 3 SSD

I'm sure you know the 500MB/s figures are for Sequential Read/Write operations and Random 4K Q1 figures will be much lower.

 

[silver085]

I have three i7-4770K systems and several old Xeons, plus a bunch of more recent stuff.

I'm guessing you can't overclock the E3-1240 (is it a V2 or V3) which is a shame. I'm running one 4770K at stock, another at 3.9GHz and the last at 4.2GHz all core with a manual lock at 1.250 Vcore. You can take them higher but I don't like running them at 1.4 Vcore.

You might consider swapping the Xeon for a second hand 4770K. They're relatively cheap these days, unlike the 4790K.

Even with a faster overclocked CPU, there's no guarantee it'll make any difference.

You might care to fiddle with Superfetch and switch it off (if it's enabled) or on (if it's disabled). Just a long shot, but who knows? Caching (or not caching) data in RAM might help.
https://techjourney.net/disable-or-enable-superfetch-in-windows-10-8-7-vista/


I'm sure you know the 500MB/s figures are for Sequential Read/Write operations and Random 4K Q1 figures will be much lower.

It's V3. I appreciate the response where someone recommends a cheap upgrade instead of another "just upgrade to win 10 and buy a new pc". However still, this isn't a resource problem. I'll say this again :

This isn't a thousandth thread on the internet about random stutter occuring at random intervals while gaming. It's 100% reproducible and always happens when something new needs to be loaded into memory. Doesn't matter what needs to be loaded, doesn't matter what game it is, doesn't matter what cpu/gpu/ram usage is

Yet I see people coming to this thread and acting like it's just another stutter thread caused by too weak PC.

I play some MMO game which actually does push my CPU to 90% usage in some cities if there are also a lot of players there. If stutter occurs there, that's understable and completely normal.

It's not normal that I can't even open Afterburner overlay for the first time without stuttering as you can see on the first video.

Even in the 3rd video from Skyrim, what you're seeing is a LOD model switch. Where game switches LOD model to a full one as I get close enough. This is called "pop-in' in gaming. There are mods to fix or minimalize it for Skyrim, but still... the main issue is just that - Objects and textures in the distance 'pop-in' as I get closer to them. There should not be a stutter associated with it. It should just smoothly render in new model.

I'll try fiddling with SuperFetch. Caching data in RAM should help. As explained earlier, everything that's already loaded in memory doesn't cause stutter. Only when something new has to be loaded in. Still, that will be just a workaround. The real problem seems to be a slow disk access time, or I don't know how else to explain it.

 

[silver085]

I have edited my first post and uploaded videos on YT instead. That should make them more accessible.

 

[Moonstick2]

Nothing wrong with those MX500 benchmarks, and if you're absolutely certain you're running the games from the SSD that points to a software problem.

You're saying that this issue is consistent across all your games, not just Skyrim? Since stutter in Skyrim is a common complaint out there.

Are you using the latest graphics card driver? If you aren't, try updating it. If you are, try purging it from your system using DDU and using an older driver.

Otherwise in your shoes I'd probably try a total clean Windows reinstall in the hope that it helps.

Oh, and run some benchmarks on the CPU as well as CPU-Z, just to make sure your CPU and RAM speeds are all as they should be. I once had a Wolfdale processor in an ASRock motherboard where everything looked fine and 3.2 GHz was reported in BIOS, only to discover further down the line that this particular CPU was actually running at 1.7 GHz due to an issue with the motherboard BIOS that was only ever rectified by a 3rd party so, you know, odd stuff does happen.

 

[silver085]

Nothing wrong with those MX500 benchmarks, and if you're absolutely certain you're running the games from the SSD that points to a software problem.

You're saying that this issue is consistent across all your games, not just Skyrim? Since stutter in Skyrim is a common complaint out there.

Are you using the latest graphics card driver? If you aren't, try updating it. If you are, try purging it from your system using DDU and using an older driver.

Otherwise in your shoes I'd probably try a total clean Windows reinstall in the hope that it helps.

Oh, and run some benchmarks on the CPU as well as CPU-Z, just to make sure your CPU and RAM speeds are all as they should be. I once had a Wolfdale processor in an ASRock motherboard where everything looked fine and 3.2 GHz was reported in BIOS, only to discover further down the line that this particular CPU was actually running at 1.7 GHz due to an issue with the motherboard BIOS that was only ever rectified by a 3rd party so, you know, odd stuff does happen.

It's not latest graphic driver. I am on Win 7 so I don't have much choice. I can install some newer drivers with some workarounds but it's not going to change anything. I was experimenting with lots of drivers back on my 1060. I always do a clean reinstall with DDU in safe mode.

I'd like to avoid formatting since it's not guaranteed to fix it either.

CPU is running fine on 3,6 GHz just as my RAM is at it's max 1600 Mhz.

I know this PC well. I had it for years and I know what kind of performance I can except from it. It's the same games I'm playing for years and it's the same performance all this time. Obviously I gained some slight improvements when I switched from i5 4590 to this Xeon since I gained hyper-threading, 2mb more cache and 100MHz higher clock. Also I can push my graphic settings a lot higher now after switching from 1060 3gb to 2060 super.
My frames are stable once everything is loaded in game. This PC has no problems rendering what's already on the screen. It's only this damn 2 frames stutter when something new has to be accessed from disk and loaded into memory.

I recorded new example, again showcasing the most ridiculous example, that is stutter when opening MSI Afterburner overlay for the first time on each game.
There's just something fundamentally wrong if it happens on something as simple as this :

 

[Moonstick2]

I started to write a long reply, and then I realised that I don't know what ESET is, and found out that it's a security thing.

ESET Support: "By default, your ESET product scans a file whenever it is created or accessed. This is fine for typical computing conditions, but can cause significant performance issues for for games that constantly load sound files, textures and models. "

ESET thread from 2022: Complaints about ESET causing gaming lag and stutter during disk access despite setting "Gamer Mode" and other stuff.

I suggest you look into ESET as a likely source of your problem. Especially try disabling/stopping it while disconnected from the internet and see if you still have stutter then.

 

[williamjeremiah]

I see you're using the RTSS overlay.
If you have enabled the GPU power monitor in rivatuner, it causes stuttering in games.
And whether the overlay is enabled or not, the enabled monitors remain active.

View: https://youtu.be/bQH3DYNboM0

 

[silver085]

I started to write a long reply, and then I realised that I don't know what ESET is, and found out that it's a security thing.

ESET Support: "By default, your ESET product scans a file whenever it is created or accessed. This is fine for typical computing conditions, but can cause significant performance issues for for games that constantly load sound files, textures and models. "

ESET thread from 2022: Complaints about ESET causing gaming lag and stutter during disk access despite setting "Gamer Mode" and other stuff.

I suggest you look into ESET as a likely source of your problem. Especially try disabling/stopping it while disconnected from the internet and see if you still have stutter then.

Yes ESET is a company behind one of the popular antiviruses "NOD32", though nowadays they're promoting their newer "Internet Security"product more.

https://forum.eset.com/topic/27533-difference-between-internet-security-and-nod32-antivirus/

Program itself isn't being updated anymore on Win 7, but database is still being updated on daily, so I keep using this one.

Yes this antivirus works like that, hence it was one of my first suspects. I added a lot of exceptions like for my Steam folder, games outside of Steam, pagefile itself etc. Still, none of this matters because even if I disable real-time protection, stutter still happens. But doing so in conjunction with being disconnected from the internet is however something I never tried. So I did just that, launched a 30fps locked game and grabbed phone,

No difference sadly

It also doesn't matter what are the initial frames. I can lock it to 15 or 10 and this stutter will still appear.

 

[silver085]

I see you're using the RTSS overlay.
If you have enabled the GPU power monitor in rivatuner, it causes stuttering in games.
And whether the overlay is enabled or not, the enabled monitors remain active.

View: https://youtu.be/bQH3DYNboM0

I unticked "Power" in monitoring options, but it made no difference. I also verified some time ago that it's not caused by RTSS or Afterburner. Given this problem is consistent and easily reproducible as I don't even have to load to actual game, just RTSS overlay showing up for the first time is enough... but it's also easy to force it in games, just like in my third video. I just make a save in a open world games in a spot where I'm just a few steps away from LOD transition. So I just checked again. Closed both Afterburner and RTSS, loaded up that save from the third video in 1st post and run forward while also making some mouse movements and I can definitely feel stutter once that tree model loads in.

 

[williamjeremiah]

Could try picking up an NVMe drive and a PCIe adapter.
Intel 97 chipset was the first to be NVMe compatible.
I had two in my Sabertooth Z97 Mark S.

 

[silver085]

Could try picking up an NVMe drive and a PCIe adapter.
Intel 97 chipset was the first to be NVMe compatible.
I had two in my Sabertooth Z97 Mark S.

But it doesn't make sense why I would be forced to use NVMe now. It would make sense if I was trying to run newest Windows and newest games on this PC, but I'm not. This PC was bought I think in 2015 originally with GTX 770, i5 4590 and 8GB 1600Mhz RAM. I rememeber playing games like Crysis 2 without any stutter back then. I was doing some upgrades over the years, but obviously this PC fall off at some point, so I just got used to stutter in newer games, but that's the thing. Stutter in new games was caused by either my GPU or CPU not being able to keep up(90-100% usage). So I already got used to stutter and this is why this new problem with assets streaming/loading blended in so well to the point that I can't tell if it started 2 or 3 or 4 years ago. I only noticed something is not right when I was stuttering in older games with like 30% usage of both CPU and GPU. Then I narrowed it down to real-time assets loading.

I can now launch an oldest 3d application in the world and I can guarantee you if there's something that's not preloaded in memory and will need to be accessed from disk at some point to be loaded in - it will produce stutter.

RTSS overlay stutter in main menu is the best example of this. Even slowest HDD shouldn't have trouble opening it.

It makes me wonder if there's some way to test this outside of 3d applications? I can't tell because file explorer works just well. There's no stutter or lag when opening folders on my SSD's.

 

[Moonstick2]

Well then, if you're sure it's not ESET then it's back to my original draft.

You've got this issue with drive access. It's either the spec's just not up to it, there's a hardware problem, or there's a software problem.

They're old games on SSD so if the spec is fine it looks like a hardware or software problem.

The CrystalDiskMark scores look spot-on across the board, temps and health are fine, so it looks like it must be a software problem.

If it's across all games, it's something more fundamental than an issue with that one game.

If you're saying that the obvious ones like drivers and settings can be discounted, and it's not any of the other processes you've got running, then there's not a lot left to try. Reinstalling Windows is about all you've got left, but if you don't want to do it without a guarantee that it's going to fix your issue then you're stuck because I can't see how anybody can genuinely give you that.

I will say on this bit:

It's also trimmed down to the maximum perfromance where I have like 50 proccesses running and I know what each one of them does(compared to +100 mess in Win10/11). I just have ESET, Nvidia Panel, Realtek Audio Panel and RTSS with MSI Afterburner in my tray. So unless I actually disabled some important windows service, I think we can rule this out.

So maybe you have indeed disabled some important process or service and a fresh Windows install is necessary. To be honest, the days of keeping the system tray to a minimum for 'maximum performance' are long gone now that multicore processors and OSs that can use them are standard. I haven't bothered doing it since WinXP. You're running an 8-thread processor with 16 GB RAM. Unless you absolutely know that a background process is causing you problems you're better off just ignoring it, rather than deleting it because you're not sure you need it. Chesterton's Fence.

 

[williamjeremiah]

All right, since it isn't an issue of insufficient memory or drive space, and you're sticking with existing components, one thing which hasn't been mentioned yet is whether or not the current power plan is set on "High Performance".

 

[silver085]

All right, since it isn't an issue of insufficient memory or drive space, and you're sticking with existing components, one thing which hasn't been mentioned yet is whether or not the current power plan is set on "High Performance".

Yes I have basic stuff like Max Performance in Nvidia Panel and High Performance in Windows power plan set.

 

[williamjeremiah]

basic stuff

No one is too good to forget about the basic stuff.

View: https://youtu.be/5mWMP96UdGU

 

[silver085]

No one is too good to forget about the basic stuff.

View: https://youtu.be/5mWMP96UdGU

I don't have G-Sync monitor, but regardless like in my 1st post :

- I tried all Vsync's, framelimiters, max pre rendered frames, none has an effect on this

I tested every possible combination and none makes a difference.

As a side note, if I were to do a fresh install, do you guys think it's worth to install Win 10 on this PC? I'm just afraid of having lower performance in games. Having like hundred processes constantly running in background when I'm already CPU bound in pretty much every game(having slow RAM doesn't help either) sounds like a bad idea. On the bright side, I could use that Loseless Scaling app(doesn't work on Win 7) from Steam for some of my single player games where I don't care about input lag.

On the other side, playing some CPU intensive games like MMO's where I also run a couple of addons which all run on CPU and then adding a more demanding OS on top of that?