Very strange stuttering issues with R9 380

[jamesp81]

I recently built a new rig with a Gigabyte R9 380 4gb. I'm getting some serious weirdness with it.

At first I was having serious stuttering issues in Killing Floor 2. I initially cleared these up by rolling back from Crimson to older Catalyst drivers. Later I used a driver removal tool to pull all drivers and reinstall the most recent version of Crimson. When I did that, there was a patch released for KF2 and I didn't experience any further issues. I don't know if it was my driver judo or the patch to KF2, I suspect the patch.

Now, I'm having issues with Skyrim where my card stutters and appears to drop framerate. This is especially common in interior spaces or when I'm up very close to a wall.

As if this wasn't weird enough, I ran into a real doozy. I thought I'd use Fraps to record the reduced framerates, because this sort of thing is easier to show than to talk about. When I told Fraps to start recording...stuttering went away. I won't say it went away absolutely 100% but I would call it a 90% improvement. Enough improvement to suit me anyway. Turning off video capture in Fraps and the stutter / low framerates come right back.

Clearly that indicates something, I just don't know what. I've tried frame rate control in the Crimson drivers but that seems to have zero effect on anything. I wanted to ask the forum if anyone had encountered such a thing before?

Ordinarily I wouldn't spend this kind of effort on a GPU, but I'm seriously short on disposable income right now, so I'm stuck with this thing for the time being. In retrospect I really wished I'd ponied up another $100 for a GTX 970. I won't make the mistake of buying an AMD GPU again.

 

[cleanshot911]

Have you used any cpu monitoring and gpu monitoring software to see what your cpu and gpu usages are? Because it could just be that your computer isn't utilizing the full processing power of either one for some unknown reason until you started running FRAPS as well. Not sure why FRAPS would set that off, but stuff can just happen like that sometimes.

 

[jamesp81]

Have you used any cpu monitoring and gpu monitoring software to see what your cpu and gpu usages are? Because it could just be that your computer isn't utilizing the full processing power of either one for some unknown reason until you started running FRAPS as well. Not sure why FRAPS would set that off, but stuff can just happen like that sometimes.

Well, this is interesting.

I ran Skyrim in windowed mode at a relatively low resolution, so I could watch HWMonitor while playing. CPU usage ran in the 70ish percent range (cpu is an i5-4590)

GPU memory clock was maxed out at 1425 MHZ. GPU itself was clocking at about 610 MHZ, it's maximum is 990 MHZ.

However, running windowed at 1024x640 everything was smooth. No stuttering.

I am beginning to wonder if my screen resolution is a problem. I have a fairly old monitor, it's native resolution is 1680x1050, which is kind of an oddball resolution these days. Maybe that has something to do with it.

In any case, I don't think the GPU is underclocking too aggressively. I already used a program called ClockBlock that forced the GPU to run at full clock at all times and that made no difference at all.

 

[jamesp81]

Additional info

Full screen at 1280x800 is marginally better, but not much.

Full screen at 1680x1050 and limiting frames to 60 FPS with RTSS gives improvement right as the game starts, but quickly deteriorates within seconds.

Full screen at 1280x800 and limiting frames to 60 FPS with RTSS is a major improvement

I should add that in none of these cases, things aren't quite 'right'. There is still some hesitation, for example if I'm standing outdoors and simply turning in a circle. It's far less at 1280x800 with the 60 fps limit but it's still there.

It's a sad day when a five and a half year old computer with a GTX 460 outperforms a one month old machine with an R9 380. I should've stuck with the green team.

 

[jamesp81]

I think I have created some success. I use RTSS to cap my framerate at 59 FPS. Not 60. 59. It made a huge improvement. Now why this is necessary...no idea. But since the thing is working I'm willing to leave it be for now.

 

[cleanshot911]

Sounds good, I'm glad to here that things are at least working for now