Frame times dont match with frame rate, causing stuttering

[Martinengo]

Im going insane, I bought a high end game pc, Ive tried a thousand things, but Im having frame time micro stuttering in all my games, but Fortnite is by far the worst to me. I have the game running at 160 fps and it goes down to 155 for instance, but the frame time goes from 6ms to 15-30ms, freezing my screen for half a second, sometimes a little bit more, and mid fight is so frustrating, I just want silky smooth experience and Im desperate, every day trying to find a solution with no good results. I want my games to have perfect frame times and be as smooth as possible.

My specs are

2080

i7 9700k

16gb 3200mhz ram

1tb ssd 860 evo

Aorus z390 ultra motherboard

My monitor is the pg279qz (165hz g sync)

If you can post some msi afterburner or simply frame times of Fortnite or The Witcher 3, especially if you play competitively or have a good pc. It doesnt happen in fortnite exclusively, but is the most noticeable and the one where it happens more often (every 45 seconds or so)

Games ive tried:

Doom: its relatively stable, but still microstutters.

The Witcher 3: can be decently stable, especially if I limit the fps, but still sometimes I have microstuttering. Same thing, fps drops 4-5 frames and the frametime spikes up to the double or triple.

Fortnite: the worst out of all the games (no streamer complains about this, every 30 seconds or so I suffer microstuttering.). Ive capped my fps to 160, 144, 120, 60, still, the fps might drop from 120 to 117, but the frametime spikes from 8ms to 25ms, and it pauses the game for a little bit.

Rocket League: same as fortnite but not as often

apex: same as fortnite but not as often.

Things Ive tried:

Used another gpu (gtx 970)

Tried max performance on windows and nvidia

Tried windowed, borderless, full screen

Downloaded intelligent standby list cleaner.

Reinstalled windows (even different versions)

Used DDU to clean nvidia drivers (in safe mode) and reinstalled them again

Used different nvdia drivers version

Updated BIOS

Updated all drivers

Run games in high priority

Close as many background processes as I can

Choose XMP profile for ram on BIOS, choose non XMP profile for ram on BIOS

Disable/enabled game mode, xbox services

Disabled Gamebar writer.exe

Disable hpet

Check temperatures, voltages, fps and frametimes. Everything seems fine except for frametimes (the frametimes dont match the frame rate). Ive noticed the gpu power going down sometimes, but not always.

Tried with g sync on, off. V sync on, off. Capped fps, uncapped fps. Different monitor.

Reset CMOS

Tried games installed on SSD and HDD.

Lowering graphics doesnt make a significant difference.

Most games are affected, despise of fps usually being higher than 165 (my refresh rate)

Tried multidisplay monitors.

Tried changing multiple settings in nvidia control panel.

Tried installing only nvidia graphics drivers (uncheck all the other nvdiia drivers after using ddu in safe mode to clean the drivers)

Tried lower resolutions, refresh rates

Tried different ISP, different houses (in case of being somehow related to electricity)

Tried lowering mouse polling rate, different mouse, keyboards.

Tried wi fi, ethernet.

Tried different display port cables.

I also notice some random screen flickering sometimes, and windows in general feels kinda choppy (like if its not working at 165hz, this is kinda random, not sure why it happens, and sometimes windows feels super smooth)

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If you want me to upload more examples, I will do it tonight, but this is the witcher 3 (which is actually not that bad compared to fortnite or rocket league):

[jorimt]

(I've removed your duplicate thread on the "G-SYNC" sub-forum: please refrain from posting the same thread in multiple sub-forums in the future)

They're called "frametime spikes":
https://www.blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync ... spikes-101

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 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.

They're normal, and there's nothing you can do to 100% get rid of them. Frametimes are never perfect (especially in more demanding modern games), even on powerful, properly configured systems.

That, and frametime spike occurrence/severity can vary depending on the game. For instance, many users have reported Fornite spiking roughly every minute; it's the game. Some games are worse in this respect, some are better, but all games have this issue to one degree or another.

[Martinengo]

But is it normal to have those frame time spikes while running around on the witcher or playing Rocket League where you dont load anything else? Seems really inconsistent.

I understand loading screen, or when the game is saving or picking up items, but out of nowhere just running around the map, and it doesnt always happens. Is there any website where I could see benchmarks including frame.time of games? I want to compare, it doesnt seem normal to be runninh around and having the screen pause for half a second every 45 seconds.

[RealNC]

Maybe some software you have installed causes this. Anti-virus software, gaming peripheral software, etc, can cause this. I don't use any of these things.

[jorimt]

But is it normal to have those frame time spikes while running around on the witcher or playing Rocket League where you dont load anything else? Seems really inconsistent.

I understand loading screen, or when the game is saving or picking up items, but out of nowhere just running around the map, and it doesnt always happens.

Yes, it's normal. It's called texture and/or asset streaming; anything that has to be accessed from the SSD or HDD makes the frame(s) take a longer time to render, meaning the "frametime" is higher for that frame/set of frames, which results in visible stutter.

In open-world games, this streaming process is usually continuous. Some open-world games do it better than others. And again, for online games, network activity or poor netcode can also cause frametime spikes.

In some cases, depending on the setup and/or game, you can reduce frametime spikes, but you can't fully eliminate them.

Is there any website where I could see benchmarks including frame.time of games?

Almost every benchmarking website now has frametime analysis in their CPU/GPU/game reviews.

[open]

dont have experience with fortnight but with overwatch I did have some little micro hitches like that at one point. if backing up your files isnt too much of a hassle then i would consider doing a fresh windows install with the version from microsoft not from a computer manufacturer. update drivers that you need for gaming, download fortnight and test. dont put anything else on and test before and after adding each new piece of software.

if it were me I would play with cpu settings power limits and clocks and such. but honestly i dont really have the time to explain all that unless you are REALLY WILLING to follow my instructions. the short version is that power limit throttling may cause small variations in performance which can add with other causes like in game asset loading or background processes. I prefer not to use short term high power allowances. having my cpu able to draw a consistent level of power for the whole time I game seems to be the smoothest.

[karavanasam]

Having stuttering with that great PC is not normal.I havent seen any stuttering for a long time after I bought my recent PC 3 years ago.And I play a lot of games.You should play all games super fluid without any problem.Either a hardware problem or a st.p.d GPU or Windows setting cause this problem.I wish I can help but dont give up until you solve this problem.

[open]

try setting your short term power limits to your processors tdp (95w) set all power limits to that (except for the ones that are in amps) you can also try raising them slightly above 95w or lowering them slightly. looks like your mode power draw is around 30w which is low compared to what the 9700k can do. but your peak is 98 and that is even with hw monitor which doesnt poll that often. pull up throttlestop or intel xtu and watch all throttle conditions.

[open]

get latency mon. it will show what drivers and interrupts are taking the most time to complete. if you see say a network driver taking a much higher ammount of time than everything else you can look at that part or driver. try using another network adapter for example.

[Martinengo]

I've done windows fresh install multiple times, including from pro to home.

I will be doing all of that tonight, could you explain me how to setting my short term power limits to my processors tdp?

At this point I'm not sure if its normal or not. I know that Rocket League has more stuttering while playing online, but even offline I have those stutterings, sometimes is more than others.

This is a screenshot of Rocket League (the polling rate of msi afterburner is about 100ms beacuse I wanted to check as fast as possible to see if I could pin point what is causing this)



Somethings it can be like this (online):


Fortnite is like every 45-60 seconds there's a frametime spike to 30 ms, and I dont see pros or other people complaining.

Not sure if my problem can be power related, but sounds plausible.

I tried the latency mon and I saw this (I played I little bit of Rocket League)



I know i've seen it higher before, but yeah, at this point I'm not sure what to do.

Is there any benchmark of the witcher 3 where I could see a long period of frametime to see if its the same as mine?

Thanks for your replies.