Cannot get a locked 60 fps on all games and stuttering happening all the time!

[Darren Decibel]

I was wondering if anyone could help me out with a problem I have never been able to fully fix for a number of years now. Basically in every game I play, I need to lock the game to 60 fps which is my refrsh rate.

I have checked my GPU and CPU usage in the River Tuner OSD when starting any game and I adjust graphics settings to try and get a consistent 60 fps exeperience. I use MSI Afterburner, River tuner to limit to 60 fps and sort out frame pacing and I set V-sych on either in the Nvidia control panel or in-game. Sometimes I will use the in-built frame limiter in-game.

What will happen is that it will be locked to 60 fps in the OSD and the frame -pacing will be a perfect 16.6 ms, but then it will dip below 60 fps to 59 fps quickly and then jump back to 60 fps in random areas. This either happens when there is a lot of things happening on the screen The moment it does that I check the OSD to see if the GPU or CPU are at 100 % usage so that I can see if there is a bottle-neck.

What I don't understand is that a lot of times the GPU usage and CPU usage is way under 100 % and the frames still dip causing stuttering. If I try to lower resolutions or in game settings, the same still happens. Why would the fps drop below to 59 if the GPU and CPU aren't maxed out?
I unfortunately don't have a g-sync monitor so I have to lock to 60, and stutters are very annoying.

I recently upgraded and my specs are:

i7-7700K
Msi b250m Bazooka MB
16GB of RAM
2 SSD's
3080 Ti

I have tried many NVCP settings to optimize performance, I don't run any background processes, I have updated GPU drivers and Windows is up to date, I have run many virus checks, diabled Game bar, thouroughly cleaned my PC and fans, added extra fans and changed my CPU cooler to get better temps etc. etc.

If I disable v-synch my fps can be in the 100's, so why cant I get a consistently locked 60 fps with correct frame pacing? I know my cpu is getting a bit old but I am trying to tun at higher resolutions to put more load on the GPU

Any suggestions would be appreciated
Many thanks...

[kitt]

is normal, nothing to "fix".


unless you see stuttering its normal. MSI or other tools round up or you would see 59,94FPS for example.

[nullable]

I've been using Gsync for a few years and I gotta say I think it's a better solution than trying to lock everything to 60FPS and massage everything to perfectly framesync.

Software isn't perfect, hardware isn't perfect, your setup isn't perfect. And you can't micromanage the hardware or configuration enough to get the results you seem to be angling for. So a better solution would be a configuration that's more permissive of performance variations. And again, GSync would help that along I think.

[MancSoulja]

Like kitt said, if you check the stats you’ll probably see that it’s not dropping to 59 but like 59.95, it’s normal and it’s fairly impossible to deliver a frame every 16.67MS and sometimes you might get one at 16.69 (61fps) or 16.65 59fps).

Best advice I can give you is to stop watching numbers when you’re playing games, if performance isn’t right you’ll be able to tell without a little clock in the corner of the screen.

[Iceira]

Can you have other issue that look like same issue then, most dont know lag and disk can give same issue even ram and virtual ram disk can cause this, so can to little free room on disk.

and as tech person here just like the other helper here, other things can make same look alike with stuttering even network can do this.

point is so many try spilt up the look alike with diffrent explannations, and in the end its same thing game dont run as it should.

and i think you have one of them things ( point is if single player game lag ( aka skyrim or SE ) then it cant be a network issue sense its a none online game.

other know issue learn from WoW make a 360 jump to see if this is pc can handle it, even skyrim can have issue with that, as i said you need to be a expert and have learn such.
most game engine is not build for such fast graphic change. ( its more a checking do it dump mem on disk and that why you lag ) so its not a valid test more a what if this is the bottleneck )

dont expert other tech person to agree with me, but whatever we say only your know then it stop doing it , and as you said even on lowest resolution it do it so Graphic cant be the only problem here.

do try older GPU driver just incase. ( that is more a test , then we try to tell you use old driver only see it what if GPU brand made a bug with newest driver. )
again we are over in a what if this and that case.


ps.
we are not support here, this is a user forum.

[crunchyfrog]

Yeah, the general rule is NOT to get hung up on the numbers. Many people do this, and in doing this they lose sight of what the purpose is (or don't understan dit in the first place).

60FPS is a guideline. You should aim towards it. NOT rigidly ensure it is EXACTLY on it at all times. That is impossible.

All you need to do is this - make sure you choose a framerate that is divisible cleanly by your monitor's refresh rate and forget about it unless you SERIOUSLY have horrible tearing issues or other problems.

If it works leave it be. You won't fix things how you think by faffing around with theoretical numbers.

Your mains voltage wanders at all times, as does the load on your PC. You'd have more success herding cats.

[Darren Decibel]

Thanks guys for all the advice and I’ve heard all the suggestions. I was hoping it was something that I had overlooked somewhere and it was something not relating to my GPU or CPU that I could have adjusted.

I am not so worried about the numbers in the OSD relating to the fps, but rather I am taken out of a game after having a perfect 60 FPS and then turning the camera with a controller and noticing the stutter when the frame pacing/fps changes. There are so many variables that affect this as you guys mention that it’s not something that can be fixed from my side. Some games are optimized more better than others so it’s something I just have to live with when it happens. Mouse and keyboard makes the stuttering less noticeable

As Snakub mentioned a G-sync monitor will solve this issue and I am in the process of getting one to ensure everything remains buttery smooth.

Thanks again

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Darren Decibel:

Thanks guys for all the advice and I’ve heard all the suggestions. I was hoping it was something that I had overlooked somewhere and it was something not relating to my GPU or CPU that I could have adjusted.

I am not so worried about the numbers in the OSD relating to the fps, but rather I am taken out of a game after having a perfect 60 FPS and then turning the camera with a controller and noticing the stutter when the frame pacing/fps changes. There are so many variables that affect this as you guys mention that it’s not something that can be fixed from my side. Some games are optimized more better than others so it’s something I just have to live with when it happens. Mouse and keyboard makes the stuttering less noticeable

As Snakub mentioned a G-sync monitor will solve this issue and I am in the process of getting one to ensure everything remains buttery smooth.

Thanks again

Not a problem. I was erring on the side of caution as I thought you might be getting hung up on the numbers (because I've seen that many times before).

So yeah glad you got the hang of what we're saying.

And Snakub's answer sounds the best result.

[Elucidator]

FPS and RefreshRate (of the monitor) are two different things.
There are many things that are considered frames in games.
Even the animation frames of each entity, though FPS usually is about world rendering (and the ability of the player to move through it)

Even a cloud has multiple frames, if it isn't in the skybox. Every layer on an image is basically a frame that can have different settings to it.

higher FPS (world rendering) means a smoother experience, but you will be able to notice even if this goes beyond your monitors refresh rate.

Refresh rate is how fast your monitor turns on and off to display stuff on your screen. FPS can be different per on game object, Refresh rate is about the entire monitor.
Refresh Rate is static and depends on the controller in the monitor and on the OS's internal settings.
FPS depends on the game.

Fixing FPS (world rendering) allows the GPU to process other things more quickly (should it get too busy basically) this is why consoles such as the PS4, often have their games fixed at a certain FPS rate.
(because they don't have a lot of power basically)

The point is, you'll likely notice a difference between 30 and 60, as well as 60 and 120 FPS despite your refreshrate.


Edit: just to name an odd example. In RPG Maker MV and MZ, FPS is also 'time'.
so if you throw more FPS into games made in this engine, then you'll notice the whole game running faster, and the internal clock going crazy fast.
It is recommended to keep it limited in this case. xd (usually its not needed though)
So here a frame yes, also means a frame of events.

What I mean here is that you don't really know what falls under the group of world rendering in the end; if it has frames, its probably handled along side other things handled in the group that decides fps.


Edit 2:I should mention what actually happens when you limit fps to a number. Then, the buffer simply gets used more often. Saved frames are repeated during processing basically, lowering FPS (because info is read from the buffer / memory), and skipping newer frames of information till a timed mark, where new information is read basically and send to the monitor for rendering on the display.

[ZiggyPanda]

Just to add incase people google and find this, a lot of games now use DX12 and it has a tendency unfortunately to cache shaders as you play, this creates unavoidable stutters even on the highest hardware unless a game specifically precompiles them either in the main menu discretely or on first boot with a ui element to show.

Also what’s unfortunate about shader cache stutter is that it’s tied to drivers so if you update, the cache is wiped and starts all over again. This often makes the first playthrough the worst as everytime a new shader appears there is usually stutter while it caches it. Not to mention benchmarks for new drivers can often be a pain as ya have to run through a good number of times to eliminate the shader stutter that can occur if the dev doesn’t precompile them.

[SSS]

Hey OP, did you end up buying a Gsync monitor? How did it go for you?
I've been having the same issue for years with fps dropping to 59 along with a beautiful stutter. I've tried gsync myself but for some reason or another I was not convinced that the issue was fixed. Ended up sending the monitor back. But maybe I missed something...

[Rosa]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.