New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

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jorimt
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Re: New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

Post by jorimt » 16 Jul 2021, 07:56

stuttersolver wrote:
15 Jul 2021, 22:14
Please study the framegraph in the video, as it is a very specific type of frame skipping. Its like my computer freezes when trying to process loading new information or something like this. The frame rate and temperature DOES NOT MATTER.. Sometimes it even stutters to 65ms!!!!! IT EVEN HAPPENS If i lock to 30fps..... im stumped!!!! :cry:
They're called "frametime spikes," which occur whenever a frame takes longer than a single refresh cycle to render:
https://blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101- ... spikes-101
What are Frametime Spikes?

Frametime spikes are an abrupt interruption of frames output by the system, and on a capable setup running an efficient game engine, typically occur due to loading screens, background asset streaming, network activity, and/or the triggering of a script or physics system, but can also be exacerbated by an incapable setup, inefficient game engine, poor netcode, low RAM/VRAM and page file over usage, misconfigured (or limited game support for) SLI setups, faulty drivers, specific or excess background processes, in-game overlay or input device conflicts, or a combination of them all.

Not to be confused with other performance issues, like framerate slowdown or V-SYNC-induced stutter, frametime spikes manifest as the occasional hitch or pause, and usually last for mere micro to milliseconds at a time (seconds, in the worst of cases), plummeting the framerate to as low as the single digits, and concurrently raising the frametime to upwards of 1000ms before re-normalizing.

G-SYNC eliminates traditional V-SYNC stutter caused below the maximum refresh rate by repeated frames from delayed frame delivery, but frametime spikes still affect G-SYNC, since it can only mirror what the system is outputting. As such, when G-SYNC has nothing new to sync to for a frame or frames at a time, it must repeat the previous frame(s) until the system resumes new frame(s) output, which results in the visible interruption observed as stutter.

The more efficient the game engine, and the more capable the system running it, the less frametime spikes there are (and the shorter they last), but no setup can fully avoid their occurrence.
A 65ms spike honestly isn't that huge, and can be accounted for by asset loading in most cases, which can be down to the particular system and game combo, but is usually caused by the engine, often times regardless of the capability of the system running it.

Sometimes it can be reduced, sometimes it can't.
(jorimt: /jor-uhm-tee/)
Author: Blur Busters "G-SYNC 101" Series

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phaze
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Re: New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

Post by phaze » 21 Jul 2021, 05:36

Yes, Same I re-installed windows10 5 times on a brand new ssd... It happened on the 3rd time of clean install.. now when opening my PC the mouse freezes for a second, also in games, and also randomly on the desktop or when watching a video, the Graphics just freeze and the mouse but NOT the sound. I think its a Windows software issue, not your problem at all.

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Re: New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 23 Jul 2021, 00:30

RealNC wrote:
06 Jul 2021, 13:34
So I have pretty much the worse electricity quality imaginable basically, but zero problems in games.
Worse electricity? Hah!

Brownout-style electricity with brief dropouts (sub-second blackouts) isn't the worst! Switching power supplies can handle that just fine -- just make sure you have a great 80Plus Platinum ATX power supply, and you're probably fine shock-absorbing that kind of power. The power factor correctors in a good unit, are also good at powering through a distorted AC sinewave. Many of them will swallow random electricity in its voltage and frequency range, and even sometimes outside. And several have enough capacitors to run a computer for almost a second of blackout, especially at low computer loads. You've got a perfectly fine power supply.

A common misconception is that flickery electricity is the dirtiest electricity from a computer POV (if using a good power supply) -- but we engineer-mindsets know that there are much worse sources of interference, like 300-volt noise (inductance) into a 120-volt line, even if it's just a staticky amount of it...

A lot of 90V-260V universal power supplies will tolerate a bit of brief overvoltage, but at some point, noise of high-voltage, can start wreaking havoc with the voltages delivered to the internal computer components (like 6 volts instead of 5 volts), and start crashing or microfreezing the computer, if it's just only at the edge of failure thresholds.

Surprisingly, some of the issues come from electricity that isn't causing problems with light bulbs, but has a lot of injected radiofrequency interference that is filtering through to the computer system -- i.e. running a gaming computer underneath high voltage transmission lines.

Since the interference is in sync with the light bulbs, you don't see light bulb problems, but detectable (by a multimeter/oscilloscope) stray electricity injected into the wiring of all kinds (mouse cable, Ethernet cable, USB cables, power supply cables, or even the intense EMF injected through tempered glass sides and injecting stray voltages everywhere; etc. If you're unlucky to live in a country where houses are built underneath 500 kilovolt lines... Or in a room right above a condo mechanical floor (with a huge bigass multimegawatt transformer under your floor). I've seen computer crash in these rare EMP-league interference situations -- injected over the air like a massive inductor -- like a mini EMP bomb. Now that's BAD interference.

- Neighbour's malfunctioning fridge compressor or dryer motor (turned into a defacto RF jammer / sparkgap transmitter) strong enough to blackout nearby WiFi / cordless phones / inject stray signals into nearby wires / etc.
- Near-megavolt transmission lines that's less than ~20-50 meters away. The types that can make an unpowered fluorescent tube glow. That same stray voltage can get injected into mostly-unshielded mouse cables and Ethernet cables, or even into a computer innards and wreak havoc with stability.
- Power substation transformer in a mechanical floor/mechanical room adjacent to your room or floor.
- Large poorly-shielded power pole transformer inches away from a 2nd/3rd floor house wall
- Machines that emit EMP-leagues of EMI (nearby MRI machine, some science lab machines, etc)

Weird things like a single malfunctioning CRT TV actually blacked out an entire town's Internet, now try a million-times stronger interference signal than that by being in the next room instead of across town. Ouchie for your computer. The rules of squares in distance is your ally (move WiFi router further away from computer) and enemy (interference bad enough to kill internet signal 1 mile away, could conceivably destabilize a computer in an adjacent room).

These are rare problems, but with computers running at their limits, and some population unfortunate to be stuck near strong interference sources, some interference (strong EMI/EMF over the air) dominoes into a lot of freezes. This is one of those diffuse, super-hard-to-troubleshoot things, that feels very, very voodoo.

Oh, and don't keep RF-emitting devices adjacent to your computer. Keep a WiFi router at least 2 meters away from your computer & computer wiring. The cautionary tale of the LG 5K wifi issue is actually somewhat more widespread (on a much smaller, hard-to-debug scale like affecting only 100 users out of 1,000,000 users). Even test-disable onboard WiFi and Bluetooth, just in case, since 2.4 Ghz from that can actually interfere with 2.4 GHz processor/buses (somewhat) in creating lower margins of stability, etc. Mind you, these (while they exist) are pretty unlikely causes, so use common sense on skipping troubleshooting longshot causes.

Still, some common-sense RF hygeine doesn't hurt (power and data cables socially distanced a few centimeters away from each other, and major RF emitters (WiFi routers) away from the computer and computer wiring (except the criticals such as Ethernet cables, cordless keyboard/mice), but that only helps certain causes. And sometimes you have to go wireless (e.g. switching to wireless gaming keyboard/mice if you live only meters away from a >100 kilovolt power transmission line -- can actually, in some cases, reduce latency, since you've eliminated injected voltage noise into USB cables that is causing latency caused by USB error correction).

If you're living in a detached house way out in a suburb, far from major industrial transformers/machines, and your computer is not next to a major appliance / power panel -- then don't waste time on all of the above after getting a good recent 80Plus Gold or Platinum power supply (and possibly a high-rated UPS if you're getting lots of blackouts in your area), and making sure your WiFi router is somewhere else away from your computer area (even if it's just a couples meters). That's more than enough for the majority.
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Re: New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 23 Jul 2021, 00:47

phaze, Temporarily disable your antimalware scanner (e.g. MalwareBytes) during your game, and see what happens. Don't forget to re-enable when you exit your game and continue web browsing.

Try a slight underclock of your hottest components, e.g. underclock CPU, GPU and RAM by about 10% and see what happens.

Lag spikes caused "at-their-limits" components temporarily freezing/throttling -- are are big hidden problem with many modern systems (thermal throttling, error correction, automatic crash recovery, etc), especially with substandard cooling/thermals/airflow and/or substandard ATX power supply (or defective power supply) that isn't providing stable, clean voltage into the components.

- Hot room in summer (try increasing air conditioning)
- Next to heater in winter (move computer away from heater/vent)
- Blocked cooling fans (improve airflow)
- Dust in cooling fans (clean dust)
- ATX power supply issue (test another PS)

This may not fix your problem, but you should leave no easy stone unturned.
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

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liquidshadowfox
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Re: New pc stutters in every single game. Random frame time skips despite good fps

Post by liquidshadowfox » 28 Jul 2021, 16:42

Just my 2 cents, I've been victim to this type of torture from gaming laptops and even my desktop before :) I literally tested everything and found out each of these different components caused my random lag spikes
1. Unstable nvidia driver - So I updated several times and played a specific pool of video games, it wasn't until I played some of my older titles that I found out the driver was causing studdering and random frame lag spikes. Had to use DDU to completely uninstall, re-install an old driver, test and then repeat the cycle again until I found a stable nvidia driver
2. Window update - So I have also done several window updates over the years and again, another instance I started playing a game that I normally don't play to find that I get studdering. At this point I knew my nvidia driver was stable so I updated windows to the insider channel and BAM no more microstudder. I also had a windows 10 USB install from a couple of years back that also gave me no studder but it was missing features I need to play some modern games so it wasn't an option for me.
3. Background programs - Yes I had to use task manager, latency mon and a bunch of other tools in order to find what rogue process I had in the background was eating up CPU resources (I'm looking at you asus lighting service....) and I just ultimately uninstalled most of my applications, one by one until the studder was gone.
4. CPU voltages - I personally undervolt my machine, Despite my PBO settings and curve optimizer being "stable" where I can run a benchmark for hours, there was still issues with frame spikes because some cores couldn't handle the undervolt. Had to switch to per core undervolting, test, reboot, change, redo, etc,etc until I found the perfect numbers where my system didn't crash AND didn't introduce frame lag spikes
5. PSU - Surprisingly me swapping from my asus thor 1200w plat PSU to my corsair ax1600i actually made a small difference to my frame pacing. It didn't really fix the frame lag spikes but my frame times are now more consistent than before. Really odd that a PSU made a difference here.

As for code vein, I also experienced a lot of fame spikes. I used this mod to mitigate them: https://www.nexusmods.com/codevein/mods/32?tab=files

TLDR it pretty much makes your load times a little longer in exchange it loads ALL the textures into your GPUs VRAM so it doesn't have to dynamically do it on the fly while you play the game. Really helped with my frame times and it's a simple config file.

I know this might not be the BEST way to test BUT (everyone on this forum is more than welcome to attack me for suggesting this) I noticed that code vein has platinum certification on proton (steam's way of playing window games on linux)
https://www.protondb.com/app/678960

Reviews claim there's fps drops and stutter when entering an area but it's stable otherwise. My suggestion is install linux on a USB, boot from it, install steam and run code vein using proton. If you get the exact same frame lag spikes then it's a safer bet to say it's something wrong with your hardware and not windows. If the lag spikes aren't there, then it's DEF a problem with either windows, background processes or nvidia driver.

Those are my 2 cents. I've been battling frame lag spikes like these for YEARS and to this day I am still plagued by them every time I do an update for either my driver or windows. Words I live by "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

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