Question 9700k stuttering in games: hardware issue?

[Carfax83]

Run msconfig. Go to the services tab, and exclude Microsoft services. Then Google each service that is left. Shouldn't be a lot of them. For your video drivers, use DDU to uninstall all scraps. Then let Windows find and install video drivers. If you've switched brands of video cards without a full uninstall/reinstall it will often times cause problems.

You should never let Windows install your GPU drivers. It will always install a much older version. I agree with using DDU to do a clean uninstall though.

 

[Carfax83]

To the OP, I don't think it's because your CPU lacks HT why you are getting stutters. The 9700K is a more than powerful enough CPU to be able to run that game without a hitch. So answer me a few questions:

1) What version of Windows 10 are you using? Some of the Creators versions had some issues with stuttering that were fixed later on. The current 1903 version is the smoothest version of Windows 10 I've ever used, so if you are using an older version, make sure you update to the latest one!

2) For a test, go into your UEFI and disable EIST, Turbo and the power states, then do a test and see if anything has improved. If it has, then you know you need to tweak those settings further.

3) Do what scannall suggests and use DDU to do a clean delete and install of the latest NVidia drivers; which is version 430.86 as of this post.

 

[gammaray]

What cable do you use to connect your screen to your video card? not vga or dvi hopefully? just making sure 🙂

 

[Minisi]

What cable do you use to connect your screen to your video card? not vga or dvi hopefully? just making sure 🙂

Displayport only.

 

[impact_aut]

A friend got the same problem. Problem was the RTX GPU. Not deefect, but he needs to lower (set) the refreshrate of the gpu/monitor.

 

[Minisi]

There's a higher binned version of 9900 coming that is guaranteed stock all core 5Ghz, given Ryzen2 I'd expect it to come in at no more expensive than current model, and possibly even less.

The situation is incredibly bizarre though, and may persist even with the new CPU. I tried restoring my 8086k to stock clocks, disabled HT, and disabled turbo (!), so running at 3.7Ghz 6C/6T, and I don't get stuttering in Odyssey or Origins. Framerates drop from 75-120 to 55-110ish, but otherwise feels great.

Try this : set resolution to native, set every other video settings to minimum. Make sure Gsync is enabled in the driver and at the display. Make sure the framerate lock thing is off. This should expose your actual CPU performance in this game, or close enough with only native resolution above minimum settings. Whether you still have hitching here or not would be helpful in determining what is causing it.

So I did what you told me and I still have hitching even on the lowest settings.

 

[MajinCry]

Does this happen in full screen? Does this happen in windowed mode? Does this happen in borderless full screen? What happens if you change the process' core affinity in task manager?

 

[Minisi]

Does this happen in full screen? Does this happen in windowed mode? Does this happen in borderless full screen? What happens if you change the process' core affinity in task manager?

It happens in fullscreen, and as far as I can tell changing affinity from normal to high does not solve the issue. I have confirmed this is happening in more than just AC: Origins. Odyssey, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Endless Space 2, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider all show the same issue, but in a different. It seems to happen when the game is loading assets, such as a big stutter when Rise of the Tomb Raider needed to load assets for a cutscene, or Endless Space 2 needing to load more ships, systems, etc. Also, the severity of the stutter depends on how intensive the game is. With Tomb Raider and ES2, it didn't last long, and only happened when needing to load assets. In AC: Odyssey, it seemed sporadic when or not it happened. I went to an area where the processor had 100% usage, and no stutters, perfectly smooth, but other areas where it would stutter every few seconds, with usage at around 50-70%.

 

[MajinCry]

It happens in fullscreen, and as far as I can tell changing affinity from normal to high does not solve the issue. I have confirmed this is happening in more than just AC: Origins. Odyssey, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Endless Space 2, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider all show the same issue, but in a different. It seems to happen when the game is loading assets, such as a big stutter when Rise of the Tomb Raider needed to load assets for a cutscene, or Endless Space 2 needing to load more ships, systems, etc. Also, the severity of the stutter depends on how intensive the game is. With Tomb Raider and ES2, it didn't last long, and only happened when needing to load assets. In AC: Odyssey, it seemed sporadic when or not it happened. I went to an area where the processor had 100% usage, and no stutters, perfectly smooth, but other areas where it would stutter every few seconds, with usage at around 50-70%.

Not the process priority, the core affinity. If you assign the process to use cores 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, does the issue still occur?

 

[Minisi]

Not the process priority, the core affinity. If you assign the process to use cores 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, does the issue still occur?

Yes, and is actually worse. Mind you this is still at the lowest settings possible. Also, I notice the GPU goes down to 0% usage when it does happen, so could it be a GPU issue?

 

[PorcusGrunzus]

Sorry for reviving the thread but did anyone ever fix this issue? I have exactly the same problem as Minisi and weirdly enough our hardware is very similar. I have a i7 9700k, Gigabyte Aorus Master, RTX 2070 Super, 16GB 3200mhz, M2 SSD and everything is connected to a 2560x1080 @ 144hz Monitor.

I was playing Assassins Creed Origins and in most bigger areas like cities its constantly hanging/stuttering for half a second, like its loading something. Beside of that, the game runs very fluid with 70-140FPS on maximum settings. Sure I already tried lowering the settings and also looked tons of fixes up online but absolutely none has fixed the issue yet.

And from what I am seeing here, this issue was also not resolved here in this thread. Is there any update or further help with this problem? Would be a shame if I have to keep playing it like that. Its fine mostly but in areas like Alexandria its a pain in the butt...

EDIT: I was actually able to fix it just now by coincidence. I had several games with this issue and weirdly enough all Ubisoft games. I do think I know what the actual problem is. Games like AC Origins push CPUs to their limit. Why? No idea, probably a Ubisoft Engine thing. Anyway, whenever the CPU is at its max with 100% on all cores, it stutters for me, like its loading, but its much more like it reached its limit and cant keep up with the game speed. Now, I am not sure if basically this happens to all CPUs or only to our i7 9700K because it got no hyperthreading and no threads to outsource this loading to, maybe also just a engine thing because I doubt this happens to all programs. Weirdly enough even other CPUs that have hyperthreading seem to suffer from this. I saw many people online with the same issues and they had CPUs like i7 8700K, which has 6C 12T, while ours has 8C.

Anyway, that was just barebone background. The only way to fix this, is to stay below 100% usage. To do this, the easiest way is to use a FPS limit, which the game actually offers in the settings. Guess the devs knew of this problem and therefore added this workaround. For me 60FPS was enough to usually cycle around 80% usage. But I also tried 90FPS, which sadly had 100% usage again. So I guess I am stuck with 60FPS which is ok but not optimal for my 144hz anyway. Good enough, not the first game that is locked to 60FPS for me anyway. Just annoying if you got the horse power but cant use it, grrr.

I guess Ubisoft needs to fix their games tanking the CPU for no valid reason or someone needs to write a third party tool that fixes this. I also saw that some guy once wrote a program, which was supposed to optimize the whole game engine and optimize its CPU and GPU usage such as allocating VRAM more efficiently. If that has to do with our issue, I dont know but if that tool fixed the CPU tanking, than it probably also fixed our problem. Problem is, the tool seems to not work anymore with the latest game/uplay version. Was some tool named SK something... It did wonders to the game via a dxgi.dll wrapper. But this is only what I read. The thing doesnt work anymore, as I said already.