Help identify what's causing my in-game lag/stutter issue

[Hellrazah]

So I have been a lurker for about a week just trying to troubleshoot my own issue for around 3 months now, and recently came across this forum and website, I've been going through the various forum posts and felt this may be the best place to try getting some help.

I built a new PC three months ago coming from a 1080 ti, 2700x, 32GB of DD4 RAM (3200mhz), Win 10 with an LG 1080p 60hz monitor and a 600w PSU. Immediately after the new build I noticed something was off. My current rig: 3080 ti, 10700KF, Gigabyte Pro AX B560, 32GB DDR4 (same as last build), also same NVME (OS), SSD (games) and 2x HDDs for storage, also I upgraded my monitor to a freesync 27" (G27QC A) and of course got a new 850w (evga gold) PSU that came bundled in with my 3080 TI. At first I thought I was only suffering from micro-stuttering, where the screen would freeze or pause for a fraction of a second, then soon realized something more crazy was going on. I recorded a five and a half minute video showing off the craziness which starts around 3:18 of this video https://youtu.be/8N_DG0JN-lc?t=198 forgive the weird ghosting effect on the vehicles, it's just a graphic bug in-game when viewing from this perspective, but I thought it would show off the problem better from this angle. Prior to that the video looks fine, a few random micro-stuters, but it is mostly smooth.

So some things I have observed and noticed: this happens in every single game, some games it isn't as extreme like Cyberpunk but normally every 3-5 minutes it occurs and can last 5-10 seconds, other times it can last several minutes to varying degrees. I have observed my temperatures from the GPU to CPU and they are all at good levels, no crazy spikes, nor any overloading. My framerates never drop below what I have set, say if I am playing at 60hz or 120hz, my framerate will always display a solid 60fps or 120fps, even during the times where these stutterfests appear. Sometimes I do not see any lag in-game, but I will notice it in my recording afterwords even if I am just standing there. It does seem like sometimes activating shadowplay or OBS can trigger it... sometimes, but most of the time it will happen without any recording software running at all. Lastly about in-game stuttering... while moving I don't notice these prolonged stutterfests, it's less, more like seconds instead of minutes, but they happen more frequently while moving. I also tried out of game stuff, and recording say a 720p/60fps stream, and sure enough I see stuttering in them too, and also without recording, just odd random stutter spikes that last 3-4 seconds, so sort of the same as gaming: live not as prolonged, but more smaller, frequent stutters than what I capture in a recording.

Things I have tried to remedy the issue: I swapped out my freesync monitor for my old 1080p 60hz LG, removed the 3080 ti and threw my old 1080 ti back in and had the same issues. I've also tried a Ben Q 27" 60hz monitor and had the same issues. I have tried numerous combination settings with freesync on, off, freesync+vsync, various RTSS frametimer settings, I read a forum post in here talking about turning off various BIO's settings, I've updated my BIO's, I've reinstalled windows, DDU'd + tried older drivers going back to June of this year... nothing seems to help. I ran CapFrameX and it basically shows 99-100% smooth frametimes. I also thought it could be my SSD, so I installed games on other drives and that didn't help. I ran LatencyMon and didn't notice anything unusual, ran RAM tests, CPU tests and GPU tests.. nothing unusual. So software? A background program causing issues I'm unaware of? Perhaps another BIO's setting I missed? I don;t believe it's an EMI issue as my older rig is in the same room and ran fine for years. I originally thought it was a monitor issue, but apparently not, after trying several 60hz monitors.. perhaps it still is, and my system is just confused? Hell if I know lol.

So If there is anything out there I can test or look for that could lead to solving this issue I'd love to hear it and I appreciate any help given.

[Hellrazah]

An update. After reading jorimt's piece on "G-Sync 101" and the many comments and replies I believe I have solved most of my issues and realize now it was probably the monitor causing the issues... I am still a bit confused on how my other monitors produced the same issue. Either way things seem to have normalized again after three months.

[Hellrazah]

Well that was short lived. Guess I never tested enough and just got lucky... still having issues. Any help or direction on what to do would be appreciated.