PC stutters, how to find where it comes from?

[akmaggot666]

Hey, so.. my pc stutters randomly.

I get stutters while watching youtube, gaming, watching movies (at least there it's easy detectable)
The stutters occur randomly, while playing BF4 for example, it happens like every minute like a hard lagg but it's 100% the pc, same with watching youtube or movie, everything is smooth and then I get this sharp "cut" for a milisec just so I notice it's there

Anyway, I ran furmark, occt, memtest86, prime95, no errors, no "weird" stuff nor stuttering while running those, only Aida64 stress test on GPU gave me hard stutters but I guess that's how it was ment to be
aida64

Spoiler

also sometimes my brower starts to respond slower, when I am on youtube for example, hovering with cursor over links responds slower etc, pulling tabs sideways stutters (doesn't happen always)

this is a different problem that I have/had and might need to mention...
so.. I had this happening half week ago: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/my-monitor-started-to-play-weird-at-144hz.2503697/
my monitor randomly got some weird display of the pc, and what you saw on the pic in the link, first time it happened it was a bit different (more distorted)
1. tried to switch DP/DVI same thing happened, at 144Hz it displayed and shut down the monitor, at above 60 to 120 it displayed distorted and didn't shut down, at 60 it was normal
2. changed house and had oppertunity to plug my monitor when this happened again, to my brothers pc and it worked fine, while plugging back to my pc it showed the distorted image again
3. 4-5 days passed and not chaning a thing it never occured again
4. I printscr and the pic was normal, so it was the display only, maybe is the GPU failing? (only used the default OC from Asus and I have the GPU for 1,5y)

specs:
Win10 64bit pro
AMD FX8350
Asus Strix GTX 970 4GB
Asus Sabertooth 990fx 2.0
16 GB RAM G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz

so, what should I try next? :/
if any test results u wan't me to do so u can see it for yourself, sure I'll do it

Some will instantly say "heating", temps are low af

 

[pooptastic]

You've done a great job trying to isolate it with all of this data.

Do you have a spare HDD lying around? I'm sort of curious if you do a full new install of Windows on one, update drivers to latest on it, then run BF4 and see if you can reproduce the issue then.

Might be something corrupt within the OS itself causing it if so.

 

[akmaggot666]

You've done a great job trying to isolate it with all of this data.

Do you have a spare HDD lying around? I'm sort of curious if you do a full new install of Windows on one, update drivers to latest on it, then run BF4 and see if you can reproduce the issue then.

Might be something corrupt within the OS itself causing it if so.

that's what's actually weird, I think everything started from time when I updated the nvidia drivers months ago on windows 7, and it studdenly started the issues. There are theories that HD audio manager / GeForce Experience which are optional to install, cause the stutters. Anyway, I did the Win 10 install recently, and I have this for months both win7 and win10. I can tell that I thought I had this fixed once when I was reinstalling older drivers and only installing physix and display, but everything comes back to old, once it took a day and once just a hour, so idk what actually...
I plan to upgrade my pc almost completely and would give this to my brother so I am trying to fix this since it's broken

I plan to change the GPU with my brothers in a day and see how his works on my pc, if stutters happen etc. I think this is the best way to test it atm
I've some older RAM that I can plug and see also if it helps

 

[happy medium]

Have you tried cleaning your video drivers out completely with driver cleaner or some tool like that?
I would say its either your video drivers or your gpu going bad.
The only other possibility is your hard drive is screwing up and corrupting you OS.
Thats a long shot, but possible.

 

[akmaggot666]

Have you tried cleaning your video drivers out completely with driver cleaner or some tool like that?
I would say its either your video drivers or your gpu going bad.
The only other possibility is your hard drive is screwing up and corrupting you OS.
Thats a long shot, but possible.

I reinstalled win and no change, got 2 SSD
yes, I used DDU always

 

[happy medium]

I think your brothers card will solve your problem.
Is it an Nvidia card?

 

[akmaggot666]

I think your brothers card will solve your problem.
Is it an Nvidia card?

think 770
if it solves it, can I send it back as broken, idk how this works with warranty

 

[ConsoleLover]

You need to check one by one. First and easiest is software checks. Uninstall gpu drivers in safe mode, get two versions one the latest drivers and other much older, like 4-5 months old. First install the latest and see, if not uninstall again in safe mode and install the old drivers and see. Run windows error check on the drive.

Next is checking hardware. Remove one stick of ram and run with just one, then do it with the other ram stick, after that remove the GPU, uninstall drivers and run on IGP or another GPU.

Finally if nothing was determined so far, its most likely the CPU. If its overclocked, an easy thing to do is run it at default speed and see if there are still issues. You might also want to visually inspect to see if the fan is spinning properly and if the heatsink is glued to the CPU.

Sometimes the thermal paste just wears off and there is no direct contact with the heatsink and CPU, leading to high temperatures and the cpu throttling itself massively, leading to erratic performance.

 

[akmaggot666]

You need to check one by one. First and easiest is software checks. Uninstall gpu drivers in safe mode, get two versions one the latest drivers and other much older, like 4-5 months old. First install the latest and see, if not uninstall again in safe mode and install the old drivers and see. Run windows error check on the drive.

Next is checking hardware. Remove one stick of ram and run with just one, then do it with the other ram stick, after that remove the GPU, uninstall drivers and run on IGP or another GPU.

Finally if nothing was determined so far, its most likely the CPU. If its overclocked, an easy thing to do is run it at default speed and see if there are still issues. You might also want to visually inspect to see if the fan is spinning properly and if the heatsink is glued to the CPU.

Sometimes the thermal paste just wears off and there is no direct contact with the heatsink and CPU, leading to high temperatures and the cpu throttling itself massively, leading to erratic performance.

bear in mind, the weirdest thing is the stutters are random, if I'd unplug the GPU or reinstall drivers it prolly wont stutter for a while, once it was a day, once half hour, and when it starts to stutter it can be slight and rare and opposite
I did reinstall drivers like 10+ times, and currently use June 2k16 one
I'll try other GPU next day, same with RAM
I did not OC CPU, I changed thermal paste 1 month ago
aaaaaand someone mentioned temps already even I wrote it above -.-

 

[tamz_msc]

Test for DPC latency. Run LatencyMon, with a few Firefox/Chrome windows and drag them around, or in one window play two YouTube videos and do the same thing. Check what LatencyMon is reporting.

 

[akmaggot666]

Test for DPC latency. Run LatencyMon, with a few Firefox/Chrome windows and drag them around, or in one window play two YouTube videos and do the same thing. Check what LatencyMon is reporting.

so, I opened like 6 yt tabs and dragged them around..

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[tamz_msc]

so, I opened like 6 yt tabs and dragged them around..

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Hmm, can you induce it to stutter with any other sequence of tasks? What exactly happens during these stutters? Does the mouse cursor momentarily freeze when it happens?

 

[akmaggot666]

Hmm, can you induce it to stutter with any other sequence of tasks? What exactly happens during these stutters? Does the mouse cursor momentarily freeze when it happens?

they don't happen a lot currently since I am fiddling with gpu, was pulling it out etc, idk
thing is, nothing of this was happening 4months ago
now I go play BF4 and every 1 min I had a stutter that litteraly moved ur crosshair, like a super lagg, now the same but prolly wont be that hard one, and more rare (idk why now it's a bit different, as I said it's random or maybe something triggers it more)
as for youtube/movies, imagine u watch normaly and get a mini stutter just so u notice like it paused/played itself in milisecond, and this was more rare, like every 3-5min
as for chrome, I sometimes have 5+ tabs open, and it happens that they stuttered like hell while moving around (dragging them and they skip pixels by random amount) and then I'd leave them, do smthg, get back on chrome and they suddenly don't stutter anymore..

everything is so random, cuz if I'd go to bf4 now and play it, it wont stutter like it did 1 week ago, where I just lived with hard stutter, and I know this will come back soon as soon I stop touching anything

 

[tamz_msc]

they don't happen a lot currently since I am fiddling with gpu, was pulling it out etc, idk
thing is, nothing of this was happening 4months ago
now I go play BF4 and every 1 min I had a stutter that litteraly moved ur crosshair, like a super lagg, now the same but prolly wont be that hard one, and more rare (idk why now it's a bit different, as I said it's random or maybe something triggers it more)
as for youtube/movies, imagine u watch normaly and get a mini stutter just so u notice like it paused/played itself in milisecond, and this was more rare, like every 3-5min

Continue monitoring with LatencyMon running and report back when you have the stutters again.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

If I ran bf4 without fps limiter I sometimes had a big lagspike.

bf4 could max out my cpu, if I wouldn't cap frame rate I guess there wasn't enough cpu time left to stream in a next piece of the map while moving around.

If you cap make a user.cfg file with the gametime.maxvariablefps thing in it, better than external tools.

 

[akmaggot666]

If I ran bf4 without fps limiter I sometimes had a big lagspike.

bf4 could max out my cpu, if I wouldn't cap frame rate I guess there wasn't enough cpu time left to stream in a next piece of the map while moving around.

If you cap make a user.cfg file with the gametime.maxvariablefps thing in it, better than external tools.

I play BF4 for 2 years, and it started happening at one point and further, never before, chrome/yt/movies/bf4 everything at once
I didn't test a lot in League of Legends but I think it happened there too, played just 1 round and it stuttered a bit which never happened before

 

[ConsoleLover]

You haven't reported to my post above. Step by step write down which steps you took and if it had any effect. You will not get anything resolved if you do not update what exactly you did on my recommendations.

Like does it do it with either sticks of ram, does it do it with a different GPU, did you go through the safe mode uninstall and reinstall process as I asked you?

Is your PC maybe very low on drive space and you have virtual memory enabled? For anyone with 16GB of ram, I always suggest disabling virtual memory(or page file, its utterly slow, it takes HDD space and it degrades HDD/SDD lifespan)

 

[akmaggot666]

You haven't reported to my post above. Step by step write down which steps you took and if it had any effect. You will not get anything resolved if you do not update what exactly you did on my recommendations.

Like does it do it with either sticks of ram, does it do it with a different GPU, did you go through the safe mode uninstall and reinstall process as I asked you?

Is your PC maybe very low on drive space and you have virtual memory enabled? For anyone with 16GB of ram, I always suggest disabling virtual memory(or page file, its utterly slow, it takes HDD space and it degrades HDD/SDD lifespan)

I replied, u're asking questions that I literally answer.
"I did reinstall drivers like 10+ times, and currently use June 2k16 one"
"I'll try other GPU next day, same with RAM"
"I did not OC CPU, I changed thermal paste 1 month ago"

cuz I was playing with GPU yday, repluging it to diff slots and I saw resolution switching when I ran the pc, maybe it reenable drivers or idk, so I might need to wait a while when it starts happening, but I played bf4 for 20min and 0 stutters, still I switched my gpu with my brothers a while ago, this one didn't stutter also, played like 30min now, I'd keep this one for few days and get mine back and keep for few days and see.

I reinstall with DDU, but didn't use safe mode since I didn't find it necessary then

ye I thought about the pagefile yday why I didn't remove it, usually I always removed it, gona keep it now tho just to not change a lot
one thing about pagefile, I saw it being used slightly in a program recently, why? my ram were not even close to be full, maybe I should examine this more, maybe bf4 loaded on SSD cuz that by a mistake instead of ram occasionally?
I have enough space, 2 SSD's

 

[akmaggot666]

running now gtx 570 and not a single problem

 

[happy medium]

running now gtx 570 and not a single problem

So its your gpu. glad you solved the problem.

 

[akmaggot666]

So its your gpu. glad you solved the problem.

not so sure tho, I will be 100% sure if this one wont stutter for few days and if the 970 will stutter after at least 4 days of running it again, this will be my test

my bro gave me his 770 with f-ed up fan that goes full R mode, so I had to put my old 570 at the end cuz this was unbearable, gotta spend few bucks for fan replacement so we can sell it -.-

 

[imaheadcase]

Just a heads up, i had a 970 for a bit, not sure about asus, but mine did the same thing. It turned out the fan blades on GPU would randomly stop and go because power settings was messed up in its BIOS, i could not change from OS level. So PC was running fine, then i get weird slow downs, then it would work fine for a bit, then back to slow downs. I kept thinking i solved it everyu driver updated, reset. All it was doing was stopping card for a bit so it was "fake fixed". lol

Mine was not under warranty, but i chalked it up to bad BIOS on the card, or fan blades getting to hot during operations and warping and hitting sides.

 

[akmaggot666]

So its your gpu. glad you solved the problem.

ok plot twit, it's been now 2 days and it started stuttering again, now with GTX 570, so it's not the gpu afterall
now memory I guess

 

[tamz_msc]

What's the earliest version of the NVIDIA drivers you can roll back to? I'd try that and see if anything changes.

 

[akmaggot666]

What's the earliest version of the NVIDIA drivers you can roll back to? I'd try that and see if anything changes.

I bought a whole new pc (last component is arriving at may 4th) and these current components are going to my brother soon, but I'll do a safe mode DDU later and insert other ram and see, today is my last exam so I have time after today

I am rocking an old GTX 570 if u didn't read, so yea next test is nvidia driver + ram basically, and last I guess