# [SOLVED] General "stuttering" not GPU related



## yesyesloud (Feb 26, 2015)

Hey there. I underlined the most relevant information, so that you can skip small talk if you will.

I was playing Far Cry 4 the other day with my just-acquired Radeon HD 7990 (hell of a card, performing generally better than the youngest AMD multi-gpus, BF4 crossfire profile is great for FC4 by the way) and after an hour through the game heavy stuttering happened to appear, only going away upon reboot.

I minimized the game and realized the mouse pointer "stuttered" when moving. If I dragged any window all over the screen, it would stutter all around. I closed the game but the issue persisted. Thus I started to think it was not gpu-related. I waited for the system to cool down, shut down the pc and powered it again.

After a fresh boot, I decided to run Prime 95, stressing all cpu cores to 100%. As it's a CPU test, the gpu is practically idle ("0%" use according to gpu-z). In a matter of one minute into Prime, the whole system started "stuttering" again - a simpler way to describe it is _laggy frame-skipping_.

Prime can run for hours without returning a single error, so my CPU is working properly, but it "stutters" the system. On the other hand, sometimes I can play FC4 for hours without a single issue though.

While playing FC4, cpu usage seldom breaks 60% (and both GPU cores rarely spike above 80%), but the stuttering affects the whole system, not only the game, thus I believe it's the same kind of, say, bottleneck Prime is causing, which's not gpu-related.

Relevant specs:
-Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 2
-AMD FX-8350 @ 4.612 GHz (20.5*225MHz, 1.4V)
-H100i as cpu cooling (problem can't be heat, at least on the CPU itself)
-8GB (2x4GB) MUSHKIN PC19200 DDR3 @ 1800Mhz (11-13-13-44, 1.5V stock profile)

Has anyone else experienced similar issues? Any ideas on how to solve it? There's definitely something going on in the cpu-mobo-memory scenario.


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## erocker (Feb 26, 2015)

I've seen this happen when the power supply is on its way out. It could also be RAM related, so you may want to try testing that as well.


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## Kaynar (Feb 26, 2015)

I had similar stuttering including on desktop a long time ago on a X58 i7 930 and HD5870 that randomly and rarely appeared. I never found what the issue really was, but as I changed hard drive to an SSD and installed fresh windows, the issue went away.

Before doing anything i suggest trying to determine if a peripheral on ur PC is causing this issue (due to drivers?) and trying a different GPU driver version performing a clean install for it.

Your next step would be to remove your SSD, make a partition on your 750GB HDD and install a fresh version of windows so you can determine that its either the SSD or a random windows/driver conflict.


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## R-T-B (Feb 26, 2015)

I've had this on the x58 platform when not supplying the CPU with enough voltage.  Not sure if that applies here.


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## BiggieShady (Feb 26, 2015)

Having an AMD FX CPU overclocked to 4.6 GHz at *1.4 Volts*? ... how are your temperatures while running prime95 when the stuttering happens ... AMD cpus throttle at lower temperatures than Intel's.


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## OneMoar (Feb 26, 2015)

sounds power or temps related Also FC4 stutters like a sob.. %its the game


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## Frag_Maniac (Feb 26, 2015)

Regarding actual game performance, Far Cry 4 can stutter even on an Intel CPU, but clearly the 8350 requires graphics intense games to be very well multi threaded, and games like Far Cry 4 and Dying Light are struggling on it.


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## yesyesloud (Feb 27, 2015)

erocker said:


> I've seen this happen when the power supply is on its way out. It could also be RAM related, so you may want to try testing that as well.


My power supply is rather new and pretty good quality, but I'll likely replace it with a 1000 or 1200 watts one for tri-fire sake. As to ram... I guess I should get some with better cas (not that it's directly related to system stuttering, but heavy games will definitely benefit from having faster DDR3, as GPUs are already miles ahead with DDR5). Thanks, man!



Kaynar said:


> I had similar stuttering including on desktop a long time ago on a X58 i7 930 and HD5870 that randomly and rarely appeared. I never found what the issue really was, but as I changed hard drive to an SSD and installed fresh windows, the issue went away.
> 
> Before doing anything i suggest trying to determine if a peripheral on ur PC is causing this issue (due to drivers?) and trying a different GPU driver version performing a clean install for it.
> 
> Your next step would be to remove your SSD, make a partition on your 750GB HDD and install a fresh version of windows so you can determine that its either the SSD or a random windows/driver conflict.


Hey, thanks big time for the comprehensive suggestion.

My OS installs are all pretty fresh. Whenever I update drivers I use tools to completely remove the old stuff... And I tried many drivers after I got this 7990.

As to SSD and HDD, I moved pagefiles and games to both in order to check out differences. Only conclusion so far is that the SSD improves performance on open world games.



R-T-B said:


> I've had this on the x58 platform when not supplying the CPU with enough voltage.  Not sure if that applies here.


Can't be that. Prime 95 stresses all CPU cores to 100% use, a few minutes (usually seconds) or hours without enough voltage must return errors. No errors so far, meaning the CPU is running at enough voltage. Thanks for taking time to answer.



BiggieShady said:


> Having an AMD FX CPU overclocked to 4.6 GHz at *1.4 Volts*? ... how are your temperatures while running prime95 when the stuttering happens ... AMD cpus throttle at lower temperatures than Intel's.


Yeah, I know 1.4v is near the top of AMD voltage mountain, but my temps are always <42ºc due to H100i. Anything below 1.4v will render 4.6GHz useless on this chip. Anyway, I changed the voltage to 1.37, clock to 4.5 (22.5*200) and cpu nb frequency to 2000MHz - it seems my chip doesn't generally enjoy host clocks above 200 or nb frequencies higher than 2000MHz (225 and 2200 work better for some games on this system, like Crysis 3, not FC4 though).

Changing those settings reduced FC4 stuttering.

As implied on the OP, I can run Prime 95 for hours (even days) error-free, under pretty good temperatures.

Thanks!



OneMoar said:


> sounds power or temps related Also FC4 stutters like a sob.. %its the game


Yeah, maybe power is playing some role on this, 7990 is great but also a hog. Not temps though - unless it's the motherboard northbridge, I could definitely fry a steak with it, all I need is an attachable tool transfering the heat to a pan hehe.

FC4 has a lot of room for improvement, for sure. What I can't quite make out is why exactly it isn't optimized enough, as the new consoles are practically pcs. I guess developers always push things forward on ultra settings so that pc gamers can be annoyed forever.



Frag Maniac said:


> Regarding actual game performance, Far Cry 4 can stutter even on an Intel CPU, but clearly the 8350 requires graphics intense games to be very well multi threaded, and games like Far Cry 4 and Dying Light are struggling on it.


Well, I believe most "new generation" games are developed bearing 8 cores in mind, because of ps4 and xone AMD APUs. This game uses all cores, at least on my system, not so efficiently as you pointed out, yes, but things improved after I lowered some bios settings.

Anyway, the big concern was system stuttering.

Thanks for your answer.

_


Hey pals, one other thing I didn't mention. My wireless mouse. It's capable of communicating with any bluetooth receiver and mine's rather old... Plus, this receiver was "hidden" on the back of my case. I plugged it on a front usb port, really close to my mouse. Now, when the CPU is running at 100%, the mouse pointer won't stutter anymore. Hey, hell temps raiser NB is really close to back usb ports, heat was doubtlessly throttling their I/O.

Problem solved. No more system stuttering, a lot less FC4 stuttering. Thanks to all involved.


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## erocker (Feb 27, 2015)

yesyesloud said:


> Hey pals, one other thing I didn't mention. My wireless mouse. It's capable of communicating with any bluetooth receiver and mine's rather old... Plus, this receiver was "hidden" on the back of my case. I plugged it on a front usb port, really close to my mouse. Now, when the CPU is running at 100%, the mouse pointer won't stutter anymore. Hey, hell temps raiser NB is really close to the back usb ports, heat was doubtlessly throttling their I/O.
> 
> Problem solved. No more system stuttering, a lot less FC4 stuttering. Thanks to all involved.



Oh wow! I would of never expected that. Well done!


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## ...PACMAN... (Feb 27, 2015)

Frag Maniac said:


> Regarding actual game performance, Far Cry 4 can stutter even on an Intel CPU, but clearly the 8350 requires graphics intense games to be very well multi threaded, and games like Far Cry 4 and Dying Light are struggling on it.




Dying light and Far Cry 4 play perfect even with my dual core at stock 3.2Ghz so I doubt it's that.

EDIT - Well done, looks like you may have found the issue


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## Frag_Maniac (Feb 27, 2015)

yesyesloud said:


> Well, I believe most "new generation" games are developed bearing 8 cores in mind, because of ps4 and xone AMD APUs (considering those are multicore both in cpu & gpu departments, although they have the advantage of DDR5 memory for cpu). This game uses all cores, at least on my system, *not so efficiently as you pointed out*, yes, but things improved after I lowered some bios settings.



The point is AMD CPUs really NEED multi thread efficiency, esp in graphics intense games with huge texture files. Trust me, I surf some forums that have high traffic like Tom's and Steam, and performance problems being reported in many of today's demanding games are much more frequent from those with AMD CPUs.





...PACMAN... said:


> Dying light and Far Cry 4 play perfect even with my dual core at stock 3.2Ghz so I doubt it's that.


I've seen the settings scenarios with even good dual cores, and you generally can't go as high. It also depends what GPU you're using. To a certain point you're going to get a serious bottleneck with a dual.

Besides, in a way you kind of make my point, because these are games that aren't optimized for multi threading nearly as well as many other graphics intense games are. It's also well known that AMD CPUs are more outperformed by Intel where single and dual threading is concerned.

If that's not enough for you, AMD themselves have admitted recently that they have discovered they need to improve CPU optimization in their GPU drivers, and get involved with devs more to get performance feedback on it. This is something Nvidia has been already doing for some time.

As far as OPs new found revelation, I'm not surprised, because he was complaining specifically of stuttering, not frame rates. Most AMD CPU compa;lints are about lower than expected frame rates. Some just don't know it's common in games that aren't well threaded.

Bottom line, I won't trust AMD CPUs for gaming until they can prove with their next "Zen" architecture they can be as flexible as Intel at handling a wide variety of game coding well, and that's a pretty tall order.

Also, it's just common sense to plug in a USB based wireless receiver with as little obstruction to the device being used as possible. It's not the kind of thing you plug into the back of the case for neatness or more port access.


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## yesyesloud (Feb 28, 2015)

...PACMAN... said:


> Dying light and Far Cry 4 play perfect even with my dual core at stock 3.2Ghz so I doubt it's that.
> EDIT - Well done, looks like you may have found the issue



Hey, that's a literally incredible dual core in case we also take _perfect even_ literally. Lucky Pacman. That's why I love the PC community, there are miracles. Not joking, I've seen some.

Thanks by the way, sooner or later I'll end up getting a little star on my forehead for my big feats 



Frag Maniac said:


> The point is AMD CPUs really NEED multi thread efficiency, esp in graphics intense games with huge texture files. Trust me, I surf some forums that have high traffic like Tom's and Steam, and performance problems being reported in many of today's demanding games are much more frequent from those with AMD CPUs.I've seen the settings scenarios with even good dual cores, and you generally can't go as high. It also depends what GPU you're using. To a certain point you're going to get a serious bottleneck with a dual.
> 
> Besides, in a way you kind of make my point, because these are games that aren't optimized for multi threading nearly as well as many other graphics intense games are. It's also well known that AMD CPUs are more outperformed by Intel where single and dual threading is concerned.
> 
> ...



First of all, many owners of high-end intel hardware are experiencing a lot of stuttering on FC4. That's what I've been reading on fora.

As to which hardware performs generally better when it comes to "equivalent" competitors, it depends on the quality of all components involved. However, if we make the debate CPU-only, it's a lottery actually. Some games do better on AMD, some on Intel.

Regardless, remember mainstream developers almost always favour consoles. Although the new generation is still young, it's AMD based and will replace the old consoles.

Maybe many games are not very well optimized for multi-core systems yet but this situation won't persist that long. The old console generation will "die" eventually, leaving developers free to prioritize those AMD APUs inside PS4 and XONE.

The new consoles are just "pcs" with better motherboard architecture for their APUs. Their FPS aren't as high as your average high-end pc's, but frame drops and stuttering also aren't (regardless of your favorite cpu brand). AMD has already done a decent work in that department. I bet they haven't released new pc APU mobos in order to protect console sales, however that's probably not a permanent decision.

Regarding my usb bluetooth receiver, it's old but works perfectly well on the back of my case as long as the system is cool, specially for low bit rate devices like mice and keyboards. It used to be ~1m from my mouse, which can be up to 30m away from receivers. The problem here is that the motherboard bridges get too hot and one of them is really close to the back usb ports, making them (and probably the receiver itself) laggy due to overheat. If the usb port is cool, it's cool, so I moved it to the front. There's no signal-blocking problem, it's just performance-lowering heat. I'm not much into common sense, my build is a Frankenstein exposed beside my living room TV (;


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## ...PACMAN... (Feb 28, 2015)

My interpretation of a perfect gaming experience is stutter free, vysnc on and low enough input lag that you feel in total control. I have that in both games at 1080p. OK they are not maxed, what do you expect with a dual core and a 650 ti boost? They do however play smoothly and look great. No miracles here just a system that has no weird issues. 

Videos can be posted if you don't believe but it's true. Win 8.1 just seems to work pretty flawless with my budget rig.


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## Frag_Maniac (Feb 28, 2015)

@YYL,

Don't know why you're implying APUs in consoles being AMD means anything on the PC platform, because consistently we've seen that it doesn't really. It always comes down to how well the games are ported to PC. All I'm saying is many aren't, ironically esp regarding multicore threading, even though they're obviously made very multithreaded for those APUs, because they have to be. You even admitted above the very game we're speaking of is threaded "not so efficiently".

And as I stated I'm also not talking specifically about stutter, but overall FPS vs Intel based rigs that have been proven to be more threading flexible. This is not a revelation, it's something most know by now.



...PACMAN... said:


> ...what do you expect with a dual core....


LOL, now you're being realistic.


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## ...PACMAN... (Feb 28, 2015)

Frag Maniac said:


> LOL, now you're being realistic.



Huh? I never said otherwise.


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## Frag_Maniac (Feb 28, 2015)

...PACMAN... said:


> Huh? I never said otherwise.



Actually you went from saying they play perfect even with your dual to what do you expect with a dual, making it rather obvious "perfect" is not in fact so perfect.


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## ...PACMAN... (Feb 28, 2015)

Frag Maniac said:


> Actually you went from saying they play perfect even with your dual to what do you expect with a dual, making it rather obvious "perfect" is not in fact so perfect.



I said they play perfect which they do.

I then stated my own personal interpretation of a perfect gameplay experience and the fact that due to system restrictions I can not max settings.

Examples of this - I can max everything on Dying Light apart from the highest textures which induces stuttering due to 2gb Vram.
                             I could probably have settings a little higher on FC4 with a quad due to an fps boost.

When I said "what do you expect with a dual core" I'm referring to the fact that Far Cry 4 won't even launch without an injector. Once used however, it allows me to play perfectly smooth, without stutter and with my chosen in game settings. If I had a quad would it be faster? Yes, of course (fps wise) but it plays perfectly as it is so I'm happy.

Is that clear enough for you cupcake?


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## yesyesloud (Feb 28, 2015)

@...PACMAN... well, I saw a 80386 run Doom I, 70% out of virtual memory. Not an actual analogy with your modern FC4, but I was amazed with that _miracle _- just a manner of speech.

It's glorious that you can force-start FC4 with your dual core (what I meant by _miracle _at first), enjoying it smooth on high settings.

Blessed be the PC community. I remember when I could only start given games with custom tools/tricks other people came up with.

I sort of share your _perfect even _concept either, although adding ultra settings to it now that I decided to keep my hardware upgraded for life 
I'm no "omg 1000 players 1000 FPS BF4" dude playing online 25/7. I just wanna enjoy a smooth single player experience when I have the time.

___


@Frag Maniac, I didn't imply new hardcore consoles were pc-like, they ARE actually just pcs. That's the big difference from the old generation, stuffed with incredibly quirky hardware.

The thing is developers are still scrambling code by focusing on Xbox 360 and PS3 - their architectures aren't similar with each other, let alone with pcs. That's not the case of Xone, PS4 and current pcs.

Xbox and playstation are very similar now. And they're just APU computers with for god's sake, specially PS4. Ports coming from next-gen-only games are going to be much smoother in a near future (3 years or so), at least for those who own next-gen APU pcs.

But I bet quad-core+ pcs in general will also benefit directly from this imminent shift.

Why though?

Let me explain an example of REAL next gen: Shadow of Mordor. Its developers favoured PS4 and Xone. VRAM needed for ultra settings (pc-only)? 6GB. It uses 4-5GB on the new consoles, which dispose of 8GB memory dynamically allocated for graphics & central processing.

Consistently we've only seen little of next-gen-only development. It's too early to jump to (keep on?) conclusions that belong to status quo common-sense: we know that's not how technology has been evolving. Definitely not the "tech mindset".

If conservative ideas were sustainable in the long run even among ceos of technology companies that used to be hardware (and software) monopolies not so long ago, no one would have computers at home now.


Again, regarding state-of-the-art PCs:

_As to which hardware performs generally better when it comes to "equivalent" competitors, it depends on the quality of all components involved. However, if we make the debate CPU-only, it's a lottery actually. Some games do better on AMD, some on Intel. _This is a broader approach, while one-core power is a single aspect on this discussion.

Let's talk ultra. Single and dual-core gaming days are numbered (not to say they're living on borrowed time). I'm talking about mandatory software optimization for 8 cores. Pc-only software companies have already abandoned "jurassic" hardware support.

The deal with games is that their universe is dictated by consoles, which are octa-core pcs now.

Even quad-cores will go dino eventually. Let's hope the grunt power in each of a quad core Intel cpu still does a good job on _million_-core games. Their stutter-free "feature" is no more though.


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## Frag_Maniac (Feb 28, 2015)

@PAC,
Perfect, really? Seems like you having said "what do you expect with a dual" means you adjust your definition of perfect to suit your budget. Needless to say you have a different idea of what most do on what it means for a CPU to play a game perfect. Most would agree if there are any settings compromises or bottleneck, it's far from perfect.

@YYL,
Your having gone into the bit about next gen consoles being PCs of sorts makes it sound an awful lot like the typical assumptions many make that the x86 architecture, multi threaded development, and APUs being made by AMD somehow automatically makes the games made on them port better to PC, or even AMD CPUs in general. Most don't go into that diatribe unless that's what they're trying to convey. So it seems you either wasted time saying it, or are waffling on your intent in having done so.

In fact both you guys seem to waste a lot of text waffling, making it kinda pointless discussing this with you.


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## yesyesloud (Feb 28, 2015)

Fo sho. Your arguments are really original. Here, a star for you


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## ...PACMAN... (Feb 28, 2015)

Really? Frag Maniac, King Eggo himself wants to talk about waffling?

When other members on their super rigs get stuttering and I can play "*PERFECTLY*" on a $70 dual core, I'd say I'm pretty happy with that. Anyway, the retard obviously doesn't get big words but you might understand this.

Ignore..............Bye bye treacle x


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## apraetor (Jan 9, 2019)

yesyesloud said:


> Hey, that's a literally incredible dual core in case we also take _perfect even_ literally. Lucky Pacman. That's why I love the PC community, there are miracles. Not joking, I've seen some.
> 
> Thanks by the way, sooner or later I'll end up getting a little star on my forehead for my big feats
> 
> ...



Actually -- what's probably happening is that the receiver is getting hot, which increases the resistance in the components, resulting in an attenuated Bluetooth transmission and/or reception. Bluetooth drivers run in kernel mode, which are costly in CPU time and lost cycles. You've got one effect compounding another, magnifying the impact. During the time the Bluetooth driver has control of the core the game thread on that core won't be executing -- stutters.

Sorry, I know this is an old thread, but it's showing up as the top Google match for 2018/2019 searches.


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## Tatty_One (Jan 9, 2019)

Thread topic was solved almost 4 years ago, this can go in the necro graveyard.


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