# PC stuttering while playing games - RAM? HDD?



## KKSlider1337 (Nov 10, 2019)

Hi folks,

I've got an annoying issue with my PC, in which it runs games at a generally smooth framerate but will have periodic stutters. It doesn't happen on every game - Forza Horizon 4 and The Outer Worlds are two examples it affects. The stutters may only be a second or less but enough to screw me over while racing/in combat etc.

When alt-tabbing out of the game, I've noticed that my disk drive usage has spiked to 100%, particularly when the stutters occurred. My RAM is also close to maxed-out. 

Any help with what could be causing this would be much appreciated. So far, I've checked the defragmentation of my HDD, run a health check and chkdsk which all seem to indicate it's fine. I also just tried switching my paging file to my system SSD in case it's using that which is causing the stutter.

System specs:
i7-4770k 3.5ghz
GeForce GTX 970
8GB RAM
240GB SSD, 1TB HDD

Thank you!


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## rtwjunkie (Nov 10, 2019)

I cannot speak to Forza, but The Outer Worlds will load more into VRAM than the GTX 970 has.  What resolution are you at?  That could account for the disk drive usage, having to get more textures.

What are your CPU and GPU usage readings when this occurs?

Also, any chance you can overclock that 4770k?  I might be wrong, but I feel 4Ghz would make a difference.

Additionally, 8GB is a bare minimum I would advise.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 10, 2019)

Any programs running in the background like the AV?


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 10, 2019)

Is your ram 2x4GB or 1x8GB??

What resolution do you game at and whats your power supply?



KKSlider1337 said:


> RAM is also close to maxed-out.



Time to pick up some black friday deals - 16GB is the standard


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## KKSlider1337 (Nov 10, 2019)

rtwjunkie said:


> I cannot speak to Forza, but The Outer Worlds will load more into VRAM than the GTX 970 has.  What resolution are you at?  That could account for the disk drive usage, having to get more textures.
> 
> What are your CPU and GPU usage readings when this occurs?
> 
> ...



Thanks for this. I restarted my PC after changing the pagefile to SSD, as I realised it hadn't taken effect. This has definitely improved things, which makes me think the use of a pagefile is linked to the issue (and now it's on my SSD, the pagefile is a lot faster and causes less stutter).

Forza is now much smoother. I monitored it and it doesn't go above using about 3GB of my 970's 4GB VRAM. CPU is okay too. It would appear that it's the standard RAM it's maxing out, at a guess.

The Outer Worlds, however, is a different story. You're right, it's using a lot of VRAM - the monitor was showing it going upto about 3.8GB, and GPU usage at 99%. Still stuttering a bit less than before, I think - is the pagefile used for VRAM overflow too? Sorry for the noob question. So I guess I just need to turn down the settings on this that affect VRAM usage. Only playing at 1080p.

Disk drive usage is still spiking to 100% too, on the drive the the game is installed (but the pagefile no longer resides). Is this an issue?


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 10, 2019)

KKSlider1337 said:


> The Outer Worlds, however, is a different story. You're right, it's using a lot of VRAM - the monitor was showing it going upto about 3.8GB, and GPU usage at 99%. Still stuttering a bit less than before, I think - is the pagefile used for VRAM overflow too? Sorry for the noob question. So I guess I just need to turn down the settings on this that affect VRAM usage. Only playing at 1080p.



Theres part of your problem. Going above 3 or 3.5GB Vram usage on a 970 kills your performance. Thank Nvidia for lying about the 4GB the card comes with.


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## KKSlider1337 (Nov 10, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Is your ram 2x4GB or 1x8GB??
> 
> What resolution do you game at and whats your power supply?
> 
> ...



Thanks for the reply. I only game at 1080p usually. PSU is a CX600. RAM is 2x4GB. I think you're right, may be time for an upgrade!



FreedomEclipse said:


> Theres part of your problem. Going above 3 or 3.5GB Vram usage on a 970 kills your performance. Thank Nvidia for lying about the 4GB the card comes with.



Interesting, this is news to me. I'd not heard the 970 had this problem. Obviously it's not the newest or most powerful machine by today's standards and an upgrade was on the cards at some point in the future, though with buying a house soon it may have to wait a little...


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## potato580+ (Nov 10, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Is your ram 2x4GB or 1x8GB??
> 
> What resolution do you game at and whats your power supply?
> 
> ...


dont you say this, it is rather an opinion, is not a standard in general, im fine with 8gb 
anyway using vsync can minimalize those sutter problem, or probably using frame cap


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 10, 2019)

KKSlider1337 said:


> Interesting, this is news to me. I'd not heard the 970 had this problem. Obviously it's not the newest or most powerful machine by today's standards and an upgrade was on the cards at some point in the future, though with buying a house soon it may have to wait a little...



Its been well documented all over the internet. It was quite a big fiasco back in the day.









						Nvidia slammed with class-action lawsuit over GeForce GTX 970 specifications - KitGuru
					

While only a small fraction of GeForce GTX 970 owners plan to return their graphics cards to stores




					www.kitguru.net
				









						It’s a feature, not a flaw: Nvidia CEO addresses GeForce GTX 970’s memory spec fiasco
					

The GTX 970's bizarre memory setup was designed to be a benefit, not a flaw, says Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.




					www.pcworld.com
				









						Gigabyte GTX970 4gb of ram or 3.5
					

Hi All  recently bought a GTX 970 gigabyte and got told that i had been ripped off with the ram like the strix gtx 970 where advertisement said 4gb but really its 3.5 plus another 512mb of not really usable memory, is this true or is the gigabyte gpu true to its advertisement




					forums.tomshardware.com
				












						Nvidia facing legal action over GTX 970 specs
					

UPDATE 25/02/2015: Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huang has issued a statement on the controversy surrounding the company's GTX 9…




					www.eurogamer.net
				




I could go on forever.....

there was a lawsuit but only for people who bought the card in the U.S I think some people got $30 back but of course the real winners were the lawyers as they take the lions share of the money before its all distributed among their clients who bought a 970


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## rtwjunkie (Nov 10, 2019)

KKSlider1337 said:


> is the pagefile used for VRAM overflow too


Well, it can affect it, because textures nearly always load into RAM before being sent to VRAM.  This could affect other files that are being shifted to the paging file.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 10, 2019)

rtwjunkie said:


> Well, it can affect it, because textures nearly always load into RAM before being sent to VRAM.  This could affect other files that are being shifted to the paging file.


Didn't Obsidian have a similar issue with New Vegas?  I remember textures in the distance would "pop" in like a fireworks show when the game first launched.


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## rtwjunkie (Nov 10, 2019)

dirtyferret said:


> Didn't Obsidian have a similar issue with New Vegas?  I remember textures in the distance would "pop" in like a fireworks show when the game first launched.


It’s certainly possible. I don’t remember, though.


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## KKSlider1337 (Nov 10, 2019)

Appreciate all the helpful responses here. I was just looking at getting new RAM, and then I realised that my mobo only supports DDR3. Sure, I _could_ pick up 16GB of DDR3, but I guess it makes sense that I just wait and upgrade pretty much everything in one fell swoop!


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 10, 2019)

Depends if your current setup is still doing it for you or not. There are games that like more cores and run like ass on systems that dont have more than 4 cores. BF:V is a good example of this. Many people report FPS drops and stuttering with quad core CPUs. Im not 100% up to date with the info but i know there are a handful of games that definitely need more cores to run smoothly (i think one of them is a driving game... maybe FORZA or something similar)

If it still plays the games you want to play. the cost of DDR3 can be used to offset the need for a complete overhaul till it starts to struggle playing more modern titles.


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## Mac2580 (Nov 10, 2019)

Forza is the game i play the most currently and ive tested the game with a few different PCs. On both my i7 and Ryzen the game runs flawlessly. I have an FX 8300 with 8GB ram and a R7 260x(1gb) which did stutter horribly. I fixed the stutter by doing the following:

1. Turning Game Bar off
2. Turning Background Apps off in Windows privacy settings
3. Launch the game and first go to benchmark mode, on that pc i use medium with dynamic optimization On vsync Off
4. It will then stutter throughout the benchmark and get noticeably smoother towards the end.
5. When it restarts the game I press alt enter for windowed mode and only once the game has fully loaded into the menu i alt enter again for fullscreen.

The game does complain about low video memory but runs smoothly. Although, everytime the game updates and the load screen says "Optimizing for your PC" it stutters and the benchmark must be done again.

Disclaimer: I enjoy messing with PC's in general. I have no rational explanation for the above steps just trial and error. I dont expect it to fix your stutter your hardware honestly seems pretty decent. I would at least just run the benchmark and let the game restart.


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 10, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Forza is the game i play the most currently and ive tested the game with a few different PCs. On both my i7 and Ryzen the game runs flawlessly. I have an FX 8300 with 8GB ram and a R7 260x(1gb) which did stutter horribly. I fixed the stutter by doing the following:
> 
> 1. Turning Game Bar off
> 2. Turning Background Apps off in Windows privacy settings
> ...



This is not what this thread is about btw.


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## Mac2580 (Nov 11, 2019)

FreedomEclipse said:


> This is not what this thread is about btw.


I apologize if thats the case but I read OP's post it seems like a similar issue. Im not referring to FPS dips.


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## johnspack (Nov 11, 2019)

Could very well be a vram issue.  It's why I upgraded to a used 980ti from my 970.  I think you can get 980tis now on ebay for 200us.  A used 1070 is the same thing,  but with 8gbs instead of 6.  The ti is still
a bit faster though.  Sorry...  have a thing for my old card...  find a used 1070ti and call it a day.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 11, 2019)

I highly doubt this is a VRAM issue.  I say that based on two things.  First is this chart showing that even at max detail @1080p The Outer Worlds doesn't take more than 3.5GB of VRAM.  The second is that I spent a good portion of this afternoon playing The Outer Worlds on a GTX1050 2GB @1080p and it ran just fine.

IMO, it is more likely the hard drive not being able to stream world data fast enough.

I'd suggest lowing the Texture setting a notch in the graphics settings.  It will, ironically, lower the VRAM usage quite a bit as well as lower the load on the hard drive because it will be loading smaller textures from the HDD into VRAM.

Also, it might be worth looking into adding at least another 4GB of VRAM.  2x2GB pairs of DDR3-1600 are selling for dirt cheap on the used market, like under $10 dirt cheap.  And even just bumping up to 12GB can make a difference if you're hitting your RAM limit with 8GB.


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## Mussels (Nov 11, 2019)

the always forgotten option, make sure your power settings in the windows control panel are cranked up for hard drive idle time - the entire PC can stutter as a mechanical drive wakes up from sleep


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## ShrimpBrime (Nov 11, 2019)

> I've noticed that my disk drive usage has spiked to 100%, particularly when the stutters occurred. My RAM is also close to maxed-out.



Close to maxed out and then memory is dumped to virtual memory (page file) on the disk. The game engine is getting slow read times and high latency. 
I'm guessing the page file is being dumped onto the 2TB HDD if OP specs are accurate.

Would invest in larger sticks of Ram for sure. 
Would set page file to the SSD only, disable it for the HDD.


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## KKSlider1337 (Nov 11, 2019)

Mac2580 said:


> Forza is the game i play the most currently and ive tested the game with a few different PCs. On both my i7 and Ryzen the game runs flawlessly. I have an FX 8300 with 8GB ram and a R7 260x(1gb) which did stutter horribly. I fixed the stutter by doing the following:
> 
> 1. Turning Game Bar off
> 2. Turning Background Apps off in Windows privacy settings
> ...



Thanks, some good tips there worth me trying for general performance.



newtekie1 said:


> I highly doubt this is a VRAM issue.  I say that based on two things.  First is this chart showing that even at max detail @1080p The Outer Worlds doesn't take more than 3.5GB of VRAM.  The second is that I spent a good portion of this afternoon playing The Outer Worlds on a GTX1050 2GB @1080p and it ran just fine.
> 
> IMO, it is more likely the hard drive not being able to stream world data fast enough.
> 
> ...



Yeah, I agree it'd probably be worth me expanding RAM. What you say about the hard drive not being able to stream world data fast enough, though - what's the solution for that? I think it's a 6GB/s 7200RPM HDD, have games really reached a point now where you need an SSD to load their data smoothly at high settings?


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## FreedomEclipse (Nov 11, 2019)

KKSlider1337 said:


> have games really reached a point now where you need an SSD to load their data smoothly at high settings?



Not all, but a lot of them have.


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## phanbuey (Nov 11, 2019)

Try turning off exploit protection for outer worlds.  That helps to get rid of stutter as well.  (you can just type exploit protection in the start menu).

The older intel processors get hit harder with software mitigations and since you know and trust TOW then there really  isn't a reason to leave it on.  This setting makes a huge difference for me in the Witcher, and according to the interwebs it's a must if you want to play Control smoothly.


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## KKSlider1337 (Nov 13, 2019)

phanbuey said:


> Try turning off exploit protection for outer worlds.  That helps to get rid of stutter as well.  (you can just type exploit protection in the start menu).
> 
> The older intel processors get hit harder with software mitigations and since you know and trust TOW then there really  isn't a reason to leave it on.  This setting makes a huge difference for me in the Witcher, and according to the interwebs it's a must if you want to play Control smoothly.



Thanks, I'd never heard of this! Will give it a go and see if it helps at all.


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