Why do I experience lag under 50 FPS.

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MadClover

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Jul 3, 2012
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Hello, I've had this computer for a while, and I'm really tired of always experiencing lag under 50fps, it pisses me off. Everything is smooth as butter but the second it takes more than 20ms for every frame (under 50fps) I experience lag, which feels like I'm playing at 20 fps or something. It only happens on this computer, I've tried running games on my older laptop and 30 fps looks amazing compared to 45 fps on this computer. Stuttering, mouse lag (sometimes), choppiness, it all happens the second I hit 49fps. I just can't explain it. I have switched screens, which didn't work, played with some settings in Nvidia control panel, etc... Before I used to have a HD 5970 which ran like crap already from terrible drivers, and this issue forced me to get a new card (now a GTX 580), it is much better than before, don't get me wrong, but I still have that unbearable lag. Any help appreciated.

Specs :
Core i7 860 @ 3.33GHZ
8GB of DDR3 ram
GTX 580 (Asus Matrix 1.5GB)
Gigabyte P55-UD6 Motherboard
Screen resolution : 1680 x 1050
 
Solution
casualcolors


Higher refresh rate monitor won't fix the issue of your fps being unregulated and shifting up and down. Like Hexit was telling you, if you wanted to sacrifice peak fps for steady fps, you could limit your max fps using a framerate limiter, and cap it somewhere below your lowest dip (30 fps for instance). You'd be gaming steadily at the same framerate and could get used to looking at it and playing with it, and you wouldn't feel the "jerkiness" in the game so to speak. It still won't look as nice as 60 fps though.

Also, using console as a comparison to your PC gaming...
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Okay, this is going to take awhile and I currently don't have the time to try all of that out. But yes, I knew something was wrong because in every game I have bellow average FPS for my computer's specs. My PSU is a Corsair AX850 (850w). I used to have a smaller one but since I switched to the GTX 580 I needed more power because it's really power hungry. Also my old card is a HD 5970 and not a 6970. My CPU was overclocked TO 3.33GHZ but it came in the box at 2.8GHZ, so it is already overclocked. About the screen, I don't know if it is under 8ms but it is an LG Flatron W2254TQ (doubt you can actually find that online) and it is 60hz refresh rate. I did try another monitor but it's the exact same results. If you could help me further with Bios etc I would appreciate it because I'm terrible in that field TBH. My motherboard only has one PCIE 8 slot and my Asus GTX 580 Matrix is much to big to move onto another slot because it already takes the place of two slots (it's a MASSIVE graphics card). Anyways I would just need help about settings for the PCI E slot in the bios, but I haven't touched anything in the bios thus far so I don't know why it would be set wrong.
 
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No it is not a problem. No card in the world will get bottlenecked much by PCIe 2.0 x8 slot.

perfrel.gif
 
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that actually depends. all then benches show a 15-5% bottleneck it may not be much but its enough. especially if your system has a weaker cpu than the system the benches were taken from... due to the 870 being about 20% weaker it may turn a 15% bottlneck into a 20-25% 1 and a 5% 1 into a 10%-15% bottleneck.
the saving grace is that the 580 is about 30% weaker then the 680 which should reduce the bottlenecks if there is 1.
what im getting at is if the pci-e is set wrong it may be set wrong in other ways like running at the wrong hz or it may be getting overclocked and becoming out of sync.
if you look back through the guys posts he had 2 cards on the system and both produced the same or similar results. that tells me it may not be the card but the system it plugs into the pci-e being the first point of contact which is why im asking these questions.
nothing he has tried so far has worked so now we go deeper eventually i hope to fix the problem but because i cant go visit him and get hands on, he is stuck having to go step by step...
 
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ah rite i had a look and i guess you meant the next available pci-e slot is x8 there are 3 x16 then x8 then x4
peg_1 =x16 slot
peg_2 =x8 slot
peg_3 =x4 slot.
so in bios make sure your set to peg_1 its likely set to pci or peg_1 anyway but peg_1 is the preferred.
also remove the pci-e clock rate off auto and set it at 100 this is the default but if its on auto it can cause the motherboard to increase or decrease it if it wants to depending on what the system is doing and what power savings are enabled.. setting it manually forces it to stay constant.
also make sure you have c1 halt and any of the other power profile perfomance switches disabled. things like c2,c3, and so on. doing so will make sure you overclock doesnt step down and reduce system performance when it should be going full tilt. as your overclocking make sure you have everything you need to set manually instead of auto... see pic (dont use my settings yours will be different)
i took a picture of my bios so you can see what i mean about switching from auto to manual settings. everything on the left is the default and you notice the bottom 2 are still on auto they were later changed over to what was on the left... they were the same values as they would have been in auto but they cant be (auto) changed by the system if the system decides to reduce the clock speed of other components.
 
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Okay, I've done the changes you've suggested in the Bios. I've changed every voltage setting to the same as the normal settings (they were all set to auto). I also made sure my PCI E slots were set to PEG but on my bios the list says : PCI, PEG, PEG 2 and PEG 3, so I assumed PEG was PEG 1 from your post and set it to that. I also set the PCI E clock rate to 100 but I couldn't find any options for c1 halt, c2 or c3. And I also do not have an option to disable load line calibration, but I can put it to standard mode which is Intel's default.
 
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I just finished playing some Metro 2033 and I can say the results are much better than before. Now, anything over 40 FPS looks much better ; no mouse lag, no stuttering. Before the bios changes, 50 fps was basically the lowest possible before starting to have those symptoms. I can also say the performance was much better in terms of FPS, and was pretty much always over 35 FPS with all settings maxed + 4xAA unless it was an extremely intense scene. Sadly under 40 FPS I still see some mouse lag and a bit of stutter. If there's any way to explain it, it feels like my mouse sensitivity was turned way down compared to higher framerates and there is still stuttering happening aswell.



EDIT : I also realized that after changing the bios settings my cpu usage seems to be higher but my RAM usage went down like 6-8%... Possible?
 
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its possible... maybe something failed to start or is on delayed start that takes up that extra ram...
c1 halt state should be in your cpu overlocking MIT section. same for c3.
c2 is normally in the pci-e section where you change peg mode. is its advanced powersaving for the pci slots.
as for the mouse lag. make sure you have advanced mouse smoothing off in windows mouse control and the speed slider set in the middle.
 
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Okay, the mouse slider was already in the middle and mouse smoothing was off (I'm guessing it's the enhanced precision setting?). About the ram I don't know why it is at a lower usage % than before but I have as much processes so maybe one of the settings were making it slower or less powerful. About C1 halt I'll contact you again after I find and change these options.
 
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Alright. So I went into the bios and disabled C.I.A.2 (CPU intelligent Accelerator 2) which I'm guessing is C2 because I couldn't find anything else, not sure if that's it though. Then I disabled C1 and C3/C6/C7. I couldn't disable C3 alone because all three were in the same option. Tell me what you think about that C.I.A.2 option because I doubt that's the right option as it really has nothing to do with PCI E slots.
 
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cia 2 is the correct 1... i recomend you turn it off because it ties in with all the other settings you want to turn off. it does have an effect on the pci-e in that when the system uses it the pci-e is also reduced in power and speed. it does have a small impact on the systems perfomance as well as the pci-e slots even if it is indirectly.
 
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Okay, so what would be the next step in increasing performance and reducing negative effects? Turning these settings off made me able to play at over 40FPS instead of 50FPS, I wonder how much better it could get... It's obvious that part of the problem lied in the bios setting, now where else should I check? thanks.
 
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i would suggest you try optimizing your system. first go into the gfx pannel and set it to default settings... if you have any active game profiles dissable them as they may be whats hampering the games perfomance.(you can enable them later if you wish)
then with apps like windows 7 manager. start optimizing properly.
http://www.yamicsoft.com/windows7manager/index.html i think this has a 30 day trial fully working. if not then there are other apps like it but free.

first off it has lots of options so dont go mad just stick to the basics of cleaning and optimizing... leave all the configuring windows with things like removing shortcut pointers and so on for another day...(also remember apps like these can be potentially dangerous as they can disable essential stuff so be careful)
use the optimization wizard (safest way)and just go through it 1 at a time answering the questions it gives. its pretty straight forward...

cleaning out your startup making sure you only have your antivirus, gfx panel, keyboard/mouse a typical optimized gaming system will have less than 5 startup entries.

if your not on a netwrork then you can disable all that stuff and things like printers and scanners can have there associated services disabled...
if you have a mobile suite or apple quicktime make sure you remove them from startup and set there services to manual so they wont start even on delayed until you click the application... you would be surprised at how many unneeded services start up just because you installed an associated program that you only ever use 1s in a while... like i say you can often set these services to manual and they wont take up precious system resources. 1s done you should have around 55-60 running services on a well optomized gaming system. less is better...

1s done and you have used something like ccleaner to clean the registry.
you can reboot and see if theres any difference in how your games respond.
if there still a bit sluggish then consider partitioning your hdd if you only have 1 partition on your boot drive...
if you have more than 1 drive and there identical consider setting up a raid 0 config... if you do this partition the raid into 2 primary and storage, the primary being 1/4 the whole disk.
if you dont but your drive is big then 2 partitions will be your best setup,. creating more will slow the drive down by 10% each time you make a new 1 so 2 is the optimum for speed and usability . first primary partition that you will install to should be between 1/4 and 1/3 the entire drive and the rest can be used as storage.
if you decide to do this you will get the best performance from the drive as you wont be fragmenting and moving files constantly.
btw you havent listed your drives. if its a 5400 rpm blue or green then it may the root of slow gaming, as they are really just storage drives and are generally to slow to run games off. a slow drive alone can cripple game performance by introducing texture pop when the drive cant load them fast enough. if you are using 1 then i suggest you replace it with 1 or 2 7200rpm drives... i can recommend the samsung spinpoint f3 for this as they are the fastest 7200rpm drives currently available at 1 tb. i use them myself and have 3 in my system...

as for the system iteself go to the gigabyte site and get all the latest drivers you can for the system. thingls like nfo installer, ethernet and so on...
if you dont have a raid and your not creating a raid then dont bother installing any of the drivers they can make a system unstable if they dont find the required hardware.
lastly update your gfx, direct x and run a windows update to make sure you have everything you need. things like .netfix and vcredist should all be checked and make sure there up to date with all versions installed. check the microsoft downloads site if you think your missing something.
1s done run ccleaner 1 more time reboot and hopefully your games will play silky smooth at max or very near max settings with 60fps...

anyways thems the basics... remember when your playing keep an eye on your temps with apps like gpu-z hwmonitor for a few days to make sure your system is stable and withing safe ranges. and hopefully thats enough.
 
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Okay, I cleaned everything up and saved almost 7GB in my SSD thanks to you. My processes are now down to about 50-55.

My hard drive is http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4138742&CatId=4357

This hard drive is where I put all my games and programs, but I also have an SSD for windows 7 and drivers.

Here is my SSD : http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/solid-state-drives-510-series.html

I'll test a few games and report to see if the problem is fixed. Tell me what you think about these for gaming purposes.
 
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to me 120 gig is a little small but its enough. if you have the larger 1 then its near perfect.(i would love 2x250gigs for a raid 0 setup) as for the hdd drive... its perfectly adequate for storage. segate are a decent enough brand. lots of elitists dont rate em but the reality is no company would survive in the hdd market if they didnt make reliable drives. it may not have the over blown rep of western digital (personally i dont rate them any more or less than samsung drives) but they do work and they do last... so other than it being a little noisy for my taste. its a good solid drive.
if your using it for both a storage and a program drive then that may be an issue as drives tend to get fragmented very quickly that way... best you make another partition on it and use 1 for programs the other part for storage...

if the ssd is 120 gigs then you will have about 90 gigs after windows is fully installed so theres plenty of space for a half dozzen games or so. i would put the bigger 1s on it. games that have lots of textures and are slow loading... games like bf3 like ssd's it wont completely eliminate the long load time of bf3 but it will reduce it to roughly half what it is on a hdd.
other games like crysis 2 will benefit a little less. some game that really will love it, are gta 4 and rage... they both have serious textures pop issues due to the way the textures are programmed ( rage uses a technique called mega textures, while gta 4 is badly written) on a slow drive it can drive you nuts watching the textures slowly appear. so yeah you may gett a little more perfoamnce if you move your best games on to the ssd... even if its just a trial run...

 
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Moving only SOME games to my SSD wouldn't work because I use Steam and Steam is located on my Seagate hard drive, except for minecraft lol. Yeah I know a partition would help so I could put games on one and programs on the other but then wouldn't I lose everything on my hard drive by partitioning?
 
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yep you would loose everything. but its worth considering when you get a new hdd.
as for having grief with the mouse lag. how big is your swap file? (virtual mem/page file) if its more or less than than 1.5x the actual physical ram it can cause all sorts of different issues...
but really you have done everything i asked and your still having issues so to be blunt im lost as to what could be causing it.. you have turned things like enhanced mouse precision, mouse smoothing and acceleration off. your usb's are not being overloaded as you dont have enough plugged in to cause a usb bandwidth issue.

is your mouse polling at the correct speed? have you checked the mouse manufacturers site to see if theres an issue with your mouses firmware...
http://www.ngohq.com/news/15043-how-to-increase-usb-sample-rate-in-windows-vista-7-a.html#post73228 try the apps here to see what your mouses poll rate is and if its working as it should.
also if everything is fine go into the nvidia panel and make sure the render ahead limit is no higher than 3 and preferably set to 2 (if its set to high it will cause mouse lag) the menu should be in the 3d gaming/render settings... other than that i dunno what else i can advise you to do.
 
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My mouse polling rate is set to 1000 I'll make sure I check my mouse settings etc. and Nvidia too, as I set Nvidia control panel settings to default yesterday for windows7 manager.
 
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