Choppy Gameplay With Occassional Small Stutter (HDD Issue?)

[TMELT]

As of the last few months all of my video games have been running noticeably choppy and I can't seem to figure out why. The FPS in all of my games are always high 200+ in things like TF2 CS:GO even 100+ in things like Metro 2033.

The problem I have been having is that there is noticeably choppy gameplay at most all times where games appear to display at 45-55 FPS rather than the silky smooth 60 which I would expect out of my hardware. This is often followed by an occasional 1 - 1/2 second stutter once or twice a minute.

I've tried everything I can think of, turning off all power saving options in BIOS Windows and on my GPU. I bought a brand new Corsair PSU which solved a previous issue of bad throttling that I was experiencing but there is still the choppy performance issue. I also bought a brand new 770 which performs great but I still get a choppy display.

The only thing left that I can think of that would be causing this would be a faulty HDD perhaps? I don't know if a worn down HDD can cause a choppy looking framerate or not. My CPU has been running a little toasty as well and I play on applying new thermal paste soon but there's nothing super offensive about how hot it runs (75 celcius at the VERY most under 100% load)

I'm going to order a new HDD soon and see if that may solve the issue but it would be much appreciated if anyone could post anymore tips that they can think of to solve this choppy gameplay issue.

[rojimboo]

Questions

GPU: brand?model? 770 gtx
CPU: ? model? runs at 75C at load, tested how?
HDD: ? how long have you had it? brand model
Monitor resolution: ?

This maybe a stupid question but I have to ask since you mention dipping below 60fps and seeing 'stutter'. Is it a vsync issue, i.e. do you see a horizontal line flicker up and down? Have you tried forcing vsync in Nvidia control panel instead?

My first guess is an overheating graphics card as Kepler cards (yours) throttle down at certain intervals depending on heat load. But that's just a guess.

Have you checked GPU temperature at load? You can run Heaven 3.0 benchmark to stress gpu 100% for a few minutes and check temp.

[time goblin]

which cpu? amd calculate their degrees diffirently than intel, so 61 + on amd is too much where as intel is higher

[TMELT]

GPU: Factory Overclocked EVGA GTX 770
CPU: Intel i7 3820k tested through HW Monitor and CPUID
HDD: Seagate Barracuda it's about 1 1/2 years old and it's been through some wear and tear.
Display: I run dual monitors one at 1280x1024 one at 1920x1080 the issue persists with any combination of 1 of either monitor or both at a time.

The issue also persists whether or not Vsync is enabled through the game and or the Nvidia Panel. I also have an EVGA GTX 660ti that is a little old but changing back and forth between cards the exact same issues persist. Both GPUs never pass 75 celcius even in the most demanding games.

I don't believe it is a throttling issue as I had that issue before with voltage throttling on my old PSU and it looks nothing like throttling and it starts when i boot up a game when my GPUs are nice and cool and doesn't get worse as they approach higher temps, the issue also persists when I have very low settings in games and low temps on everything.

[TMELT]

Also I don't believe it is a Vsync issue, I've had this build for a year and I've ran games with Vsync on and off all the time and while it fixes screen tearing the choppy gameplay still persists and it never used to before this issue arose recently. I can deal with screen tearing at the cost of input speed so i always play with Vsync off, but it only causes screen tearing and doesn't affect the choppiness.

[Mag]

My first question would be are you using current drivers? The second would be what PSU do you have?

[rojimboo]

1. Do you only get the stuttering during games, or do you get it outside of games too, like a momentary stop/slowdown/unresponsiveness in 2D?

If both, might be a DPC latency issue.

http://www.sysnative.com/forums/windows-7-%7C-windows-vista-tutorials/5721-how-to-diagnose-and-fix-high-dpc-latency-issues-with-wpa-windows-windows-vista-7-8-a.html

See if you get an occassional red spike with DPC latency checker during the stuttering.

I had this once, and it was my wifi-card drivers, but it could be many things soundcard etc.

2. Else, still stress test your GPU, just to eliminate the issue xd. Get Heaven benchmark, let it run, check temps and voltages with MSI AFterburner or EVGA Precision X during it, and see if you notice throttling. The core clock goes down in 13mhz increments I believe. I forget the voltage decrease in steps.

[TMELT]

I'll give that a shot, although I don't believe that any drivers are the issue. No drivers changed in between this issue occurring and when everything was running smooth as butter. I've rolled back to every single Nvidia driver for the past few months and the issue still occurs with all of them. The PSU I'm running is a 650 watt Corsair Enthusiast model.

I've already run tons of benchmarks on both of my GPUs and they both perform excellently, and as I stated before I really don't believe it is throttling as I was dealing with throttling with my old PSU and once I changed PSUs that issue completely went away but the stuttering is still there (it is significantly less severe than what throttling looks like).

I really don't think it's GPU/Driver related as the same issues occur with my old GPU and my factory new 770. I'm assuming at this point it's either CPU related or perhaps my HDD.

I'm thinking of getting a top notch Western Digital HDD soon whether or not it is part of the issue. Is a faulty HDD even a feasible cause for choppy gameplay?

Anyway I'll give that test a shot in the meantime even though I doubt it's the issue. I really do appreciate the replies everyone, thanks for all the help!

I went ahead and ran the test and all the readings stayed nice and low.

[balln2k12]

Mr. Nuttutty, I feel your pain. I'm in the same boat as you. Have an AMD FX 8-Core CPU, 8 gig RAM, 750w PSU, and MSI GTX770. I thought it was my PSU, so I upgraded. Thought it was my GTX 660, so last week bought GTX 770. No help. Updated BIOS, no help. disabled all background programs. Thought my CPU was overheating, bought water cooling. I'm now think that AMD FX CPUs are bad or AsRock motherboards are junk. I have spent so much money dealing with the same drama.

The only games for me that play normal are first person shooters, or games like Dead Space 3, or Tomb Raider. sandbox games like Saints Row 4 or AC black flag are unplayable at any graphic settings (low-ultra).

[TMELT]

Yeah, it's gotten to the point where I can't play anything without ♥♥♥♥♥♥ looking performance. This weekend I'm gonna use a new HDD and reapply some thermal paste to my CPU to see if it was a heat issue. If neither of those work god save us both.

[Carlsberg]

Stuttering ingame is also caused by some HDD's not able to stream textures fast enough from disk. You could google some help on how to increase the size of your HDD cache if you have the ram to do so or consider an SSD.

If its any help in pointing you in the right direction my specs are;

Two nvidia gtx650Ti's in SLI with one dedicated to CUDA and Physx leaving one to gpu work.
16Gb Ram, 250Gb Samsung SSD running on a 144hz asus monitor.
My frame rate in ghosts is anywhere between 70 - 160fps, i get an average of around 120fps.

[TMELT]

Thanks for the reply again guys. I'll try turning up my fan a little bit Uberfiend but I don't think it's a huge issue as I'm running a liquid cooler at the moment, I am going to replace the thermal paste though as I suspect it may have dried out due to bad application when I first got my PC.

I've already tried all those settings you mentioned that would affect GPU performance and none changed anything at all, I'm 99.999% sure the issue has nothing to do with either of my graphics cards or any of their settings.

I'm able to get a really nice new HDD for pretty cheap factory new from my college hardware store so I'm gonna pick up one of those instead of headaching over my old one. (I've defragged and reformatted and cleaned up my HDD plenty previously and none of them fixed the issue)

Once I get the new thermal paste on I'll turn up my CPU fans more than normal and see if I get significantly lower temps.

[rojimboo]

Do you get the stutter only in games?

[TMELT]

Another side note, my MOBO makes occasional little beeps at me randomly, these happen anywhere from a minute to hours apart. I've heard this can be a sign of faulty power to the mobo or something? I have no idea as everyone seems to be completely oblivious to what mobo beep codes mean.

[TMELT]

It's hard to say, it's a very miniscule stutter so it's difficult to tell when doing anything that doesn't run at would should be a silky smooth 60 FPS as my games used to. It is definitely noticeable in any game I play as all of them I get 100+ FPS in but look like they're getting 50-55 as I said previously.

[rojimboo]

If you want you could check it's not the DPC latency issue, just to eliminate it? xd

1.Get DPC Latency checker
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
2. Run it whilst running a game
3. See when you get stutter, if you also get a red spike.

Edit:

Цитата допису Mr.Nuttutty (Loli Loving Autist):

Another side note, my MOBO makes occasional little beeps at me randomly, these happen anywhere from a minute to hours apart. I've heard this can be a sign of faulty power to the mobo or something? I have no idea as everyone seems to be completely oblivious to what mobo beep codes mean.

Check your motherboard manual under Troubleshooting likely.