[SOLVED] Why are my games stuttering despite high FPS?

Mar 8, 2021
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Around 2 and a half months ago I started experiencing stutters even though I average above 100 FPS in most games. I decided that maybe it was time for a factory reset as I had used up a lot of my space in my SSD and HDD. After the reset the stutters stopped, however, they have recently came back around 1-2 weeks ago. I reset my PC again but the stutters still persisted. At this point I'm not sure what is causing these stutters, my two prevailing theories so far is that my monitor is somehow causing the stuttering or my SSD cannot load game assets fast enough. If someone could please give me some insight it would be much appreciated.

Specs:

GPU: GTX 1070 Ti

CPU: Intel i7-8700k

SSD: WD Blue 500GB

HDD: Seagate FireCuda 2.5" 1TB

RAM: Corsair Dominator DDR4 3200 C16 4x16GB

Main Monitor: EA234WMI NEC LED Monitor

Edit: I should add that the stutters started happening around the time I installed a new CPU cooler and case fans. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the stuttering I was experiencing, but I'm including it just in case.
 
Solution
Edit: I should add that the stutters started happening around the time I installed a new CPU cooler and case fans. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the stuttering I was experiencing, but I'm including it just in case.
Worth a try to take the GPU out of its slot and then re-inserting it. You may have bumped it out of position when changing the other hardware.
EVGA 500 W1 non-certified PSU... ahem. You are walking on a razor's edge, sir.

By the way are stutters happen when games are loaded from another SSD? You can omit monitor - if it does not glitch in games already after factory reset then monitor is not in vain.
 
Mar 8, 2021
21
1
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EVGA 500 W1 non-certified PSU... ahem. You are walking on a razor's edge, sir.

By the way are stutters happen when games become loaded from another SSD?

Yeah I probably should be looking to upgrade my PSU.

So yesterday I installed one of my steam games onto my HDD since I don't have two SSD's. Stutters still happened, so I thought that maybe both drives were damaged somehow. However, I'm starting to think that it maybe a problem with my PSU.
 
Reading does not damage SSDs. But they heat up during prolonged work and excess heat cause thermal throttling and slowing down. Check drive temperatures during gaming too. Probably they need radiators or your PC case must get cooled better somehow.

And yes - better change that PSU to something better and from Tier C if possible.
 
Games don't touch storage all that often. Even open world games aren't that taxing on storage drives.

If anything, the first thing I'd look for is to see if the CPU usage spikes up during these stutters. That would indicate there's enough background activity to cause hiccups.
 
There are some bad boys who stream textures from resource files into GPU very often - like GTA V. But yes, SSD throttling also may cause some background task to hiccup with game stuttering as collateral damage.
My observation of open world game design is since basically the early 2010s, games will load in the bare minimum and stream higher quality assets as needed. This is to prevent the need to have high quality assets up front and causing stalls in the game. The only time those games will stall is if another chunk of the game world needs to be loaded.
 
Mar 8, 2021
21
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Games don't touch storage all that often. Even open world games aren't that taxing on storage drives.

If anything, the first thing I'd look for is to see if the CPU usage spikes up during these stutters. That would indicate there's enough background activity to cause hiccups.

I'm not noticing any spikes in CPU usage during the stutters, I'm probably gonna rule out CPU.
 
Mar 8, 2021
21
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Reading does not damage SSDs. But they heat up during prolonged work and excess heat cause thermal throttling and slowing down. Check drive temperatures during gaming too. Probably they need radiators or your PC case must get cooled better somehow.

And yes - better change that PSU to something better and from Tier C if possible.

In game the SSD is staying at 29 C, for the PSU I was thinking this https://www.diypc.com/components/po...XDQuoZvHuV-bEVqC83ijcldEwOBLtYJYaAlHfEALw_wcB
 

logainofhades

Titan
Moderator
I like gigabyte motherboards, and some GPU's, but their PSU's, not so much. I would go with this Seasonic built Antec, at that wattage .

PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($115.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $115.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-08 17:40 EST-0500


 
Mar 8, 2021
21
1
15
I like gigabyte motherboards, and some GPU's, but their PSU's, not so much. I would go with this Seasonic built Antec, at that wattage .

PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($115.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $115.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-08 17:40 EST-0500



Thank you, I will probably buy this PSU.
 
Mar 8, 2021
21
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Could this potentially be a driver issue as well? Mostly with the CPU. I used Driver Easy a while back to update the drivers and I'm not sure if that could cause stuttering issues.
 

deesider

Honorable
Jun 15, 2017
298
135
10,890
Edit: I should add that the stutters started happening around the time I installed a new CPU cooler and case fans. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the stuttering I was experiencing, but I'm including it just in case.
Worth a try to take the GPU out of its slot and then re-inserting it. You may have bumped it out of position when changing the other hardware.
 
Solution