Subtle micro-stutter, input lag, floaty mouse feel - computer feels off

[xtreemchaos]

heres a long shot- a few months ago after a win update i had micro stuttering in vr, the short- windows game mode had rearmed its self after the update and was causing the stuttering i turned it back off and everthing was back to being stutter free.

 

[Deleted member 205776]

Everything else is clutter.

My Argus Monitor is offended

I could have a million things running there and my task manager would look like this on idle:

24 threads don't really care about what's running.

 

[Vayra86]

My Argus Monitor is offended

I could have a million things running there and my task manager would look like this on idle:

24 threads don't really care about what's running.

Looks peachy. No disk activity is the biggest one. Its storage that usually kills system responsiveness especially in games with streamed assets. And then data transport through the system. ANY component you hit along the way that is otherwise busy doing stuff, can increase latency.

(To stress how easily you can get stutter somewhere and how hard it is to kill every single one)

 

[c2DDragon]

Hey ! I wonder if people having this issue have their Windows power plan on high performance or on balanced (normal), if in high performance, do the stutters continue ?
If so, maybe it could be core parking while not in high performance mode ? Some reading here :

Why does Windows 10 have CPU core parking disabled?

Why does Windows 10 come with core parking disabled? It seems to me, that core parking is good in most cases. Especially considering Turbo Boost does not work until some cores are parked. Also wh...

superuser.com

& there :

How to Access Hidden Power and Processor Options in Windows 10

What means are there to access and change hidden power and processor options in Windows 10? A way to find information on hidden globally unique identifier (GUID) power and processor options. A way...

superuser.com

Also what's the state of the C-State feature in the bios ? Auto ? Activated ?
C1E will halt the cores when they are doing "nothing" for a short time but if they have the option to enhance it (in the bios), the halted cores will go to the lowest frequency with a low voltage, then, when they go back in C0 (in action), going from the lowest frequency to a normal (or highest) one, can be the reason of the stutters.
https://software.intel.com/content/...nergy-analysis-metrics-reference/c-state.html

The more the C-State is, the more your CPU cores will have latency before going in full speed (C0) but C1 is good enough be kept. Enhanced C1 (C1E) can be garbage depending on the bios.
Then in game, your cores would not go deeper than C1 so don't worry about the other ones, there should be a C-State Limit option in the bios to test C0/C1E as the deepest C-State if you are worried. With Enhanced disabled.

If the power plan is set to highest performance, no core should be parked by Windows so it could be C-State, disable C-State in the bios and test. If it's what kills your games, try another bios, if it's a nope, disable enhanced C-state only then.

If nothing helps, I can't help

[Edit] : Missing words and derp intel link about C-State, yeah it's not documented enough but hey. Also I shouldn't post before re-reading what I wrote before having enough coffee

 

[Deleted member 205776]

Looks peachy. No disk activity is the biggest one. Its storage that usually kills system responsiveness especially in games with streamed assets. And then data transport through the system. ANY component you hit along the way that is otherwise busy doing stuff, can increase latency.

(To stress how easily you can get stutter somewhere and how hard it is to kill every single one)

All my games are on my three SSDs, while my OS runs on the C:\ drive (980 Pro NVMe). Drive activity doesn't even put a dent in my system.

 

[xtreemchaos]

me too, ive not as fast c drive as you but the same applcation of drives.

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

Be that as it may, I would focus your solution on that CPU spike, because like it or not, that is why you get that stutter.

Maybe its not the game but stuff happening concurrently, you mentioned RGB lighting, if it has a relation to game code, then certainly that can be a performance killer. USB is slow, especially if 2.0. The last place I'd look in any case, is hardware itself or 'a problem with my computer'. Its the combination of elements that causes stutter, not the elements by themselves.

The easiest way to figure this out:
Return to stock settings on everything.
Build your setup back up one piece at a time. If you used framerate tweaks or other non-stock settings in game or gpu settings, consider those all as separate pieces to analyze until you're back to where you want to be.

In this specific case you may want to swap all RGB peripherals with simpler stuff, just a standard mouse and kb. And uninstall the devices too, including the 3rd party software. Those are generally a cause for issues - shitty code, cheap programmers and tons of legacy.

I have returned to stock everything as it's the same. The only nonstock thing that I had anyways was the DOCP for RAM and fan curves. Returning them to default didn't amount to anything, only some performance loss because of lower RAM frequencies.

Simplifying is the way to go -- unplug everything - even case USB headers for the front, everything that you can from the MB, uninstall everything you don't need, kill all the startup stuff and see if the stutter is still there.

There was someone here recently that had stutter that was coming from faulty USB header on the case...

Tried removing case usb, case fan controller, useless peripherals and using no rgb mouse and keyboard together with a clean windows install, same thing - the stutter is present in games.

I agree.

To OP and @SweetPhilosophy: There is always some kind of stutter in all games on all platforms. If your PC is strong enough, you won't notice them, but they are there. Look at frametime pages in hardware reviews. You won't see any single game on any single hardware that produces a static framerate. In the example above, when a game asks for assets to be added/removed, or levels to be loaded, your CPU load will spike. Even if your CPU is strong enough to handle the load, executing code takes time, resulting in a frametime spike. You can reduce it with a stronger CPU, but you can't eliminate it entirely. It's just the nature of things.

My general rule of thumb: More GPU-bound scenarios usually result in lower, but more stable framerates, while more CPU-bound ones look like stutters, as it mostly affects adding assets and loading times. More powerful graphics cards and older / less demanding games create more CPU-bound scenarios. Again, I wouldn't worry about it.

I'm aware that fps can fluctuate and it's hard for it to be a static number all the time, but this is different. More so that on my old rig I was running League of Legends flawlessly on a 144hz monitor and never experienced something like this. And league is not a resource heavy game
Unfortunately I am worrying about it because I didn't spend 2500euros on this rig for it to stutter on a 11 year old low demanding game

your PC specs are so close to mine they should be almost the same in performance (my 3090 is undervolted to 3080 performance)

in that video you can easily see the lag occurs at the same time those models disappear, so thats a good focal point: loading and unloading assets
disconnect your mech drives, keep preferably just the OS drive with league on it and see what happens. that stutter reminds me of my good old WD green drives and their hardware power down timers lagging out my PC every time they woke up

This is something I also noticed, the stutter occurs when loading and unloading assets (but then again - not all the times). I already disconnected HDDs and other drives, as well as installing windows and league on m2 ssd, sata ssd and on both HDDs, the stutter is always there =/

SweetPhilosophy,
Here is something easy and quick to try before doing the other ways:
-Go to the motherboard's bios and disable all of your HDDs. and then see from there? One of your storage devices seems to put your system that way.

If the problem still exists, I will do this myself:
-I will UNPLUG all of the storage devices, except that 1x 1TB M2 SSD, and then install both OS and games on it. And then see from there?

-Take a look at the motherboard manual and look at the storage section. Maybe you did something wrong.
-Get a tool from the vendor of your storage devices to scan for storage health.

At the moment I ordered a Samsung EVO 970 1TB and I'm going to disconnect everything from my pc and install only this drive, install windows and league on it and test.

and i'm gunna state something else semi obvious:
Reset your BIOS, leave it defaults other than XMP (fan/boot settings allowed)
reinstall NV driver with clean install option
uninstall the bloaty crap you want but dont need - RGB software, overclocking software, anything that runs in the tray icons and boots with windows. one of em could be fucky, and if nothing else its a good chance to clean up - you'll lose em all if you have to reinstall windows anyway

I have reset it multiple times and it's the same with either all defaults or DOCP enabled. The only options I had modified in BIOS anyways were only DOCP activated and fan curves.
I have reinstalled display drivers multiple times using DDU, in safe mode and disconnected from the internet, and reinstalling it using a clean install, as well as installing all drivers since the first one which supports my GPU came out (I literally went and installed each one of them until the to date driver and tested)
The stutters occurs on clean windows install with only Nvidia drivers installed. The only thing software related I was able to fix was a stutter that was occurring when opening games, which was fixed by disabling RGB on my GPU (apparently armoury crate and rgbfusion were trying to modify the GPU RGB and they were conflicting), but unfortunately this did not fix the ingame stutter. I do not have other RGB on my components, other than on headset (by default I have it turned off anyway), mouse and keyboard, but I have tried disabling all of it, as well as not installing the Logitech G Hub, unfortunately it's the same.

I wonder if the penny dropped

This is what a gamer PC tray should look like. You can get even less, but PowerToys is one of those productivity things I really like. And it doesn't cost anything if you don't use desktop zoning.

View attachment 195626

Rivatuner, Afterburner, Windows sound options, Defender, NV settings, Realtek and Network.
Everything else is clutter.

And guess what... even this is not a 100% stutter free gaming experience. 98%? Close enough.

Another sanity check is what your idle PC looks like in task manager. This is how it should be:

View attachment 195627

I agree I have even less
System tray:

http://imgur.com/a/xseOnMv

Task manager:

http://imgur.com/a/4nE1wxD

On my old rig I had less performance but league was constant 144fps at 144hz without any kind of stuttering

heres a long shot- a few months ago after a win update i had micro stuttering in vr, the short- windows game mode had rearmed its self after the update and was causing the stuttering i turned it back off and everthing was back to being stutter free.

The stutter for me it's still present with it either on or off At the moment it's off anyways, I've read some forums where people fixed the stutter turning it on, so yeah

Hey ! I wonder if people having this issue have their Windows power plan on high performance or on balanced (normal), if in high performance, do the stutters continue ?
If so, maybe it could be core parking while not in high performance mode ? Some reading here :

Why does Windows 10 have CPU core parking disabled?

Why does Windows 10 come with core parking disabled? It seems to me, that core parking is good in most cases. Especially considering Turbo Boost does not work until some cores are parked. Also wh...

superuser.com

& there :

How to Access Hidden Power and Processor Options in Windows 10

What means are there to access and change hidden power and processor options in Windows 10? A way to find information on hidden globally unique identifier (GUID) power and processor options. A way...

superuser.com

Also what's the state of the C-State feature in the bios ? Auto ? Activated ?
C1E will halt the cores when they are doing "nothing" for a short time but if they have the option to enhance it (in the bios), the halted cores will go to the lowest frequency with a low voltage, then, when they go back in C0 (in action), going from the lowest frequency to a normal (or highest) one, can be the reason of the stutters.
https://software.intel.com/content/...nergy-analysis-metrics-reference/c-state.html

The more the C-State is, the more your CPU cores will have latency before going in full speed (C0) but C1 is good enough be kept. Enhanced C1 (C1E) can be garbage depending on the bios.
Then in game, your cores would not go deeper than C1 so don't worry about the other ones, there should be a C-State Limit option in the bios to test C0/C1E as the deepest C-State if you are worried. With Enhanced disabled.

If the power plan is set to highest performance, no core should be parked by Windows so it could be C-State, disable C-State in the bios and test. If it's what kills your games, try another bios, if it's a nope, disable enhanced C-state only then.

If nothing helps, I can't help

[Edit] : Missing words and derp intel link about C-State, yeah it's not documented enough but hey. Also I shouldn't post before re-reading what I wrote before having enough coffee

It is the same for me in both balanced, high performace and ultra (or ultimate?) performance. Tried them all.
CPU Core parking is disabled from windows, all cores perform as expected.
The C-State feature in BIOS is set on Auto, however I have tried disabling it and there is no different when it comes to this stutter. However I did not find enhanced C-state option, I'm not really sure how that would look like under my BIOS because there was nothing similar to that where I have the Global C-States option.
I also have the latest BIOS version and tried different versions since I first noticed the stutter until now - I basically updated it every time there was a new version but none of the version fixed it

Thank you everyone for you replies here and sorry for my late reply!!
Your feedback was and is most appreciated and I hope that even if I'm not able to fix it we're in some good discussion here and some of the advices will help other people.
I actually searched the entire internet and all possible forums and that's when I started posting my own posts - that's why I'm saying that I literally tried almost everything that is there.
My next steps are in the following order:
1. I ordered a new M2 SSD, a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and I'm going to remove every storage I have in my PC, together with SATA and power cables (idk maybe cables are faulty), install it and install windows and league on it and test.
2. Disassemble the PC and assemble it again and test it out in open air.
3. Order a new Motherboard and/or CPU and test. I have already ruled out GPU, RAM and PSU as being the cause because I have tried my GPU and RAM in a friend's computer and his in mine - no stutter on his side but my stutter continued; I also bought a new, better PSU, and ran it for a week while the stutter continued, in the end I returned it since it didn't fix it
4. No idea what I could do from this point on?

Thank you again

 

[c2DDragon]

I was thinking about the pagefile.
You can see the settings typing SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe into Run (Win + R keys), run it, go to advanced, Virtual Memory, change.
If you got "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" checked, untick it, choose your drive, click on "System managed size" then the "Set" button, "OK" and reboot.
If you already are in "System managed size", then try to set your pagefile in "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives".
If nothing changes, you can try the "No paging file" to see if it comes from this, for the fun of having a nice crash in a game

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

I was thinking about the pagefile.
You can see the settings typing SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe into Run (Win + R keys), run it, go to advanced, Virtual Memory, change.
If you got "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" checked, untick it, choose your drive, click on "System managed size" then the "Set" button, "OK" and reboot.
If you already are in "System managed size", then try to set your pagefile in "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives".
If nothing changes, you can try the "No paging file" to see if it comes from this, for the fun of having a nice crash in a game

Hello! I have changed all the options and it makes no difference. At the moment is set to "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives", by default after a clean windows install. Thanks for advice!

 

[Vayra86]

I have returned to stock everything as it's the same. The only nonstock thing that I had anyways was the DOCP for RAM and fan curves. Returning them to default didn't amount to anything, only some performance loss because of lower RAM frequencies.


Tried removing case usb, case fan controller, useless peripherals and using no rgb mouse and keyboard together with a clean windows install, same thing - the stutter is present in games.


I'm aware that fps can fluctuate and it's hard for it to be a static number all the time, but this is different. More so that on my old rig I was running League of Legends flawlessly on a 144hz monitor and never experienced something like this. And league is not a resource heavy game
Unfortunately I am worrying about it because I didn't spend 2500euros on this rig for it to stutter on a 11 year old low demanding game


This is something I also noticed, the stutter occurs when loading and unloading assets (but then again - not all the times). I already disconnected HDDs and other drives, as well as installing windows and league on m2 ssd, sata ssd and on both HDDs, the stutter is always there =/


At the moment I ordered a Samsung EVO 970 1TB and I'm going to disconnect everything from my pc and install only this drive, install windows and league on it and test.


I have reset it multiple times and it's the same with either all defaults or DOCP enabled. The only options I had modified in BIOS anyways were only DOCP activated and fan curves.
I have reinstalled display drivers multiple times using DDU, in safe mode and disconnected from the internet, and reinstalling it using a clean install, as well as installing all drivers since the first one which supports my GPU came out (I literally went and installed each one of them until the to date driver and tested)
The stutters occurs on clean windows install with only Nvidia drivers installed. The only thing software related I was able to fix was a stutter that was occurring when opening games, which was fixed by disabling RGB on my GPU (apparently armoury crate and rgbfusion were trying to modify the GPU RGB and they were conflicting), but unfortunately this did not fix the ingame stutter. I do not have other RGB on my components, other than on headset (by default I have it turned off anyway), mouse and keyboard, but I have tried disabling all of it, as well as not installing the Logitech G Hub, unfortunately it's the same.


I agree I have even less
System tray:

http://imgur.com/a/xseOnMv

Task manager:

http://imgur.com/a/4nE1wxD

On my old rig I had less performance but league was constant 144fps at 144hz without any kind of stuttering


The stutter for me it's still present with it either on or off At the moment it's off anyways, I've read some forums where people fixed the stutter turning it on, so yeah


It is the same for me in both balanced, high performace and ultra (or ultimate?) performance. Tried them all.
CPU Core parking is disabled from windows, all cores perform as expected.
The C-State feature in BIOS is set on Auto, however I have tried disabling it and there is no different when it comes to this stutter. However I did not find enhanced C-state option, I'm not really sure how that would look like under my BIOS because there was nothing similar to that where I have the Global C-States option.
I also have the latest BIOS version and tried different versions since I first noticed the stutter until now - I basically updated it every time there was a new version but none of the version fixed it

Thank you everyone for you replies here and sorry for my late reply!!
Your feedback was and is most appreciated and I hope that even if I'm not able to fix it we're in some good discussion here and some of the advices will help other people.
I actually searched the entire internet and all possible forums and that's when I started posting my own posts - that's why I'm saying that I literally tried almost everything that is there.
My next steps are in the following order:
1. I ordered a new M2 SSD, a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB and I'm going to remove every storage I have in my PC, together with SATA and power cables (idk maybe cables are faulty), install it and install windows and league on it and test.
2. Disassemble the PC and assemble it again and test it out in open air.
3. Order a new Motherboard and/or CPU and test. I have already ruled out GPU, RAM and PSU as being the cause because I have tried my GPU and RAM in a friend's computer and his in mine - no stutter on his side but my stutter continued; I also bought a new, better PSU, and ran it for a week while the stutter continued, in the end I returned it since it didn't fix it
4. No idea what I could do from this point on?

Thank you again

@Papahyooie your judgment, sir? Trolling or real? Not to put you on the spot there, but I think this handily spells out how difficult a stutter problem really is to be conclusive about. Still - I agree its good to be vigilant.

@SweetPhilosophy
First order of business: stop spending money on this rig. You can make do with less and still get the performance right, this isn't a performance problem in terms of hardware. Its like you say: old game. How the F. I agree. The problem is finding the issue and your steps are going in the right direction, even if the SSD might not be required, you can at least chalk it off as a source and SSD performance is never wasted really.

Clean install with your new storage, that is what I would do. Then you build back up from scratch. I'd not jump on step 2 and 3. There is no reason a component/assembly fault is causing such a minor stutter behaviour and no other symptoms like shutdowns and CTDs. Impossible. From a clean OS install, the next step is installing drivers, double check chipset drivers and getting stuff updated. Make no mistake - you will want to check your game performance after an OS update too. Windows has a tendency to return settings to defaults after big feature updates.

But the big one here: everything STOCK. You revert your BIOS to optimized defaults. The whole shebang.

Another route to explore is how an old game actually does with hardware thats way beyond overpowered for it. I mean, LoL SHOULD have something to mitigate that, but if a game is very light and FPS is running uncapped or very high, a load spike can cause stutter simply due to major frametime variance from the high FPS target, if you catch my drift. The gap between normal and lows is simply bigger so it is more pronounced.

Testing with different hardware is testing a different system. Pointless. You want your solution within the hardware setup you have.

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

@Papahyooie your judgment, sir? Trolling or real? Not to put you on the spot there, but I think this handily spells out how difficult a stutter problem really is to be conclusive about. Still - I agree its good to be vigilant.

@SweetPhilosophy
First order of business: stop spending money on this rig. You can make do with less and still get the performance right, this isn't a performance problem in terms of hardware. Its like you say: old game. How the F. I agree. The problem is finding the issue and your steps are going in the right direction, even if the SSD might not be required, you can at least chalk it off as a source and SSD performance is never wasted really.

Clean install with your new storage, that is what I would do. Then you build back up from scratch. I'd not jump on step 2 and 3. There is no reason a component/assembly fault is causing such a minor stutter behaviour and no other symptoms like shutdowns and CTDs. Impossible. From a clean OS install, the next step is installing drivers, double check chipset drivers and getting stuff updated. Make no mistake - you will want to check your game performance after an OS update too. Windows has a tendency to return settings to defaults after big feature updates.

But the big one here: everything STOCK. You revert your BIOS to optimized defaults. The whole shebang.

Another route to explore is how an old game actually does with hardware thats way beyond overpowered for it. I mean, LoL SHOULD have something to mitigate that, but if a game is very light and FPS is running uncapped or very high, a load spike can cause stutter simply due to major frametime variance from the high FPS target, if you catch my drift. The gap between normal and lows is simply bigger so it is more pronounced.

Testing with different hardware is testing a different system. Pointless. You want your solution within the hardware setup you have.

Sounds good, thanks for input. Tomorrow when the SSD will arrive I will clean install OS without anything else but the essentials: 1 monitor, wired keyboard and mouse and that's it - no internet, no headset, no speakers, no other storage, no usb cables, no fan controller, no case wires connected to mobo. Before installing windows I return everything from BIOS to stock settings and after it is installed I will also disable windows' automatic drivers update before connecting to the internet.

The problem occurs in every games unfortunately. I also play Apex Legends a lot and notice it there to, as well as Warzone, Cold War and to name some singleplayer games - Aim lab, Immortals Fenyx Rising, It takes two, AC Valhalla. In league I noticed it first because I play it since launch and I played it on 2 older PCs and I play it kinda competitively and I immediately notice if something is off. I actually tried on different refresh rates as well, raging from 60 (min) to 165 (max), the stutter still occur but it's harder to notice on lower refresh rates - the FPS drop is actually a side effect of the stutter and League captures it because of how their FPS counter outputs data (something of an average between last times) - in another games for example, Apex legends, the stutter still occurs but I can't see it in FPS after that because the FPS counter there updates in real time (I would say, I'm aware it's not realtime) so it is really hard to catch like 2 digits changing so fast.

Trust me I wish I was trolling but I'm not, I know it's not a BIG PROBLEM and I have really good benchmark scores and all that but this little thing drives me mad and hopefully I can fix it. My friend who I tested different components with didn't see the actual stutter but saw the side effect - FPS drop - after it happened, only after I showed him the slow motion video he was able to observe it better when it happened
Thanks for your implication guys!!

 

[xtreemchaos]

bud it could be worse trust me stuttering on a monitor is bad but in VR its painfull it make some puke. hope you get it fixed.

 

[Deleted member 205776]

bud it could be worse trust me stuttering on a monitor is bad but in VR its painfull it make some puke. hope you get it fixed.

can confirm, i spent 18 hours in VR my first day and felt nothing, but once it started stuttering it gave me headaches

 

[Papahyooie]

@Papahyooie your judgment, sir? Trolling or real? Not to put you on the spot there, but I think this handily spells out how difficult a stutter problem really is to be conclusive about. Still - I agree its good to be vigilant.

I'm sorry, I know that this whole thing is technically off topic, and I wasn't going to continue the discussion. But since I'm asked directly... As I said in my post before, I don't KNOW that this is fake. All I know is, I've gone through nearly identical threads before, with brand new users, and this thread follows the exact same pattern with different hardware and a different game. Perhaps it's real, and if that's the case, I'm sorry to the OP that you got caught in the crossfire of what someone else is (or maybe isn't) doing. I'm not accusing you of anything. Just saying the mods might want to check. I suppose it's not hurting anything even if he is doing what I'm saying, but it *is* technically against the rules. If he's not, I'm sorry. I truly don't mean to flame. Maybe he just happens to write and act exactly like several other brand new users with mysterious latency and stuttering issues.

As for the problem itself, my advice would be to capture some ACTUAL frame time data using something like nvidia's Frameview, rather than relying on a video. The truth is, many games have waits in their code on certain events like loading of assets and network transmissions. These can PRESENT to the user's eyes as stutters when in reality the graphics card is spitting out frames... it's just the same frame over and over. (Obviously I'm talking to the OP here, since the "other guy" you're replying to there actually did this.) But even with his frametimes, we also need to see what his network is doing at the same time. Other than that, you've given him good advice. We will see how it goes from here.

The problem is, I've gone around this circle several times in the past, and none of the suggestions that could actually solve the problem were actually ever heeded. If @SweetPhilosophy does what you tell him to, he'll likely get his problem solved. We will see.

EDIT: and don't get me wrong... I get it. I'm very sensitive to framerate myself. Can't even go to the theatre anymore because it will make me sick. So IF your problem is real, I hope it gets fixed.

EDIT AGAIN: @SweetPhilosophy , looking closer at your frame data, your GPU is sitting at less than half usage, your active CPU cores are basically pegging out. Seems a classic example of CPU cache bottleneck. I realize that you have a monster CPU, but the game probably can't use any more cores (as evidenced by the large amount of "sleeping" cores) and the ones it is using are getting pegged. (Pegged at the peaks, but very stop/go rather than a solid ~99% usage, which says to me the cores themselves are not being fed fast enough.) Going down the chain, could also indicate your ram isn't feeding the CPU fast enough. Troubleshoot ram speeds, turn off xmp etc etc. I'm sure this has all already been said. Do a mem check. Going further down the chain, storage. From what little I read, it looks like you've gotten rid of any mechanical drives and are using good SSDs, so that's good. Make sure you're using a connector that is connected to your CPU and not to the south bridge. (sata/pcie/whatever) to reduce latency there. And last, as I said... make sure your network ping/jitter is good, because a lot of games have suspect code that can cause issues exactly like that.

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

I'm sorry, I know that this whole thing is technically off topic, and I wasn't going to continue the discussion. But since I'm asked directly... As I said in my post before, I don't KNOW that this is fake. All I know is, I've gone through nearly identical threads before, with brand new users, and this thread follows the exact same pattern with different hardware and a different game. Perhaps it's real, and if that's the case, I'm sorry to the OP that you got caught in the crossfire of what someone else is (or maybe isn't) doing. I'm not accusing you of anything. Just saying the mods might want to check. I suppose it's not hurting anything even if he is doing what I'm saying, but it *is* technically against the rules. If he's not, I'm sorry. I truly don't mean to flame. Maybe he just happens to write and act exactly like several other brand new users with mysterious latency and stuttering issues.

As for the problem itself, my advice would be to capture some ACTUAL frame time data using something like nvidia's Frameview, rather than relying on a video. The truth is, many games have waits in their code on certain events like loading of assets and network transmissions. These can PRESENT to the user's eyes as stutters when in reality the graphics card is spitting out frames... it's just the same frame over and over. (Obviously I'm talking to the OP here, since the "other guy" you're replying to there actually did this.) But even with his frametimes, we also need to see what his network is doing at the same time. Other than that, you've given him good advice. We will see how it goes from here.

The problem is, I've gone around this circle several times in the past, and none of the suggestions that could actually solve the problem were actually ever heeded. If @SweetPhilosophy does what you tell him to, he'll likely get his problem solved. We will see.

EDIT: and don't get me wrong... I get it. I'm very sensitive to framerate myself. Can't even go to the theatre anymore because it will make me sick. So IF your problem is real, I hope it gets fixed.

EDIT AGAIN: @SweetPhilosophy , looking closer at your frame data, your GPU is sitting at less than half usage, your active CPU cores are basically pegging out. Seems a classic example of CPU cache bottleneck. I realize that you have a monster CPU, but the game probably can't use any more cores (as evidenced by the large amount of "sleeping" cores) and the ones it is using are getting pegged. (Pegged at the peaks, but very stop/go rather than a solid ~99% usage, which says to me the cores themselves are not being fed fast enough.) Going down the chain, could also indicate your ram isn't feeding the CPU fast enough. Troubleshoot ram speeds, turn off xmp etc etc. I'm sure this has all already been said. Do a mem check. Going further down the chain, storage. From what little I read, it looks like you've gotten rid of any mechanical drives and are using good SSDs, so that's good. Make sure you're using a connector that is connected to your CPU and not to the south bridge. (sata/pcie/whatever) to reduce latency there. And last, as I said... make sure your network ping/jitter is good, because a lot of games have suspect code that can cause issues exactly like that.

Sorry beforehand if I broke any rule - I also created a new thread but got no replies there and kind of "parasited" this thread and another one. As I said I started asking questions specific to my issue and what I've troubleshoot after I tried almost everything I could find by myself - I started other threads on different forums as well as talking to Nvidia customer support (which told me to try my gpu in another pc and another gpu in my pc - which was still the same and on the other system there was no stutter) and AMD customer support (which basically told me I did everything there was and told me to send the CPU to warranty), not sure if I should share the threads since that could be against rules.

I can also confirm to mods I'm a legit person I guess? And with all the recording stuff I'm ready to prove more that my issue exists and is legit.

I'm in to test and record anything you guys want or need to understand and observe the issue - I installed the Frameview just now but I'm not sure how to use it. Should I just leave the overlay and record a game? I'm aware that there are loading times in games that could happen while actually gaming and I'm aware of different techniques of loading assets such as lazy asset loading which could cause problems like this BUT my biggest issue is I wasn't experiencing anything of this kind on my old rig so this is what makes me think it's something related to some hardware or some drivers or I don't know.

Network should be good I have really high speeds and constant traffic, let me know how to record it best and I will share - although it also happens when playing in singleplayer and disconnected from the internet (played some Immortals Fenyx Rising and disabled the internet connection to test at some point).

League is not a demanding game so I'd say GPU not having a stress with it is expected - also the CPU 2 cores bottleneck still wouldn't explain it happening in other games which use multiple cores, such as Apex Legends, Warzone or Cold War, right? I could record a game of Apex as well so we could see how the graphs behave there. Also when I'm running only CPU benchmarks such as Cinebench or prime95 the system doesn't stutter even if the CPU is maxed out. I even tried playing a game of league while running prime95 and the game ran perfectly except for the random stutter which was still present

Memtest86 returned no errors after several nights when I ran it (just to be sure) and as well it happens with other RAM sticks and it doesn't happen on another system with my ram (same CPU and exactly same MOBO actually).

I will come back tomorrow with results of the new SSD and if I can do it tonight I will record with FrameView or anything or any game you guys think it's best to record.

Thanks again very much!!

 

[Papahyooie]

Sorry beforehand if I broke any rule - I also created a new thread but got no replies there and kind of "parasited" this thread and another one. As I said I started asking questions specific to my issue and what I've troubleshoot after I tried almost everything I could find by myself - I started other threads on different forums as well as talking to Nvidia customer support (which told me to try my gpu in another pc and another gpu in my pc - which was still the same and on the other system there was no stutter) and AMD customer support (which basically told me I did everything there was and told me to send the CPU to warranty), not sure if I should share the threads since that could be against rules.

I can also confirm to mods I'm a legit person I guess? And with all the recording stuff I'm ready to prove more that my issue exists and is legit.

I'm in to test and record anything you guys want or need to understand and observe the issue - I installed the Frameview just now but I'm not sure how to use it. Should I just leave the overlay and record a game? I'm aware that there are loading times in games that could happen while actually gaming and I'm aware of different techniques of loading assets such as lazy asset loading which could cause problems like this BUT my biggest issue is I wasn't experiencing anything of this kind on my old rig so this is what makes me think it's something related to some hardware or some drivers or I don't know.

Network should be good I have really high speeds and constant traffic, let me know how to record it best and I will share - although it also happens when playing in singleplayer and disconnected from the internet (played some Immortals Fenyx Rising and disabled the internet connection to test at some point).

League is not a demanding game so I'd say GPU not having a stress with it is expected - also the CPU 2 cores bottleneck still wouldn't explain it happening in other games which use multiple cores, such as Apex Legends, Warzone or Cold War, right? I could record a game of Apex as well so we could see how the graphs behave there.
Memtest86 returned no errors after several nights when I ran it (just to be sure) and as well it happens with other RAM sticks and it doesn't happen on another system with my ram (same CPU and exactly same MOBO actually).
I will come back tomorrow with results of the new SSD and if I can do it tonight I will record with FrameView or anything or any game you guys think it's best to record
Thanks again very much!!

You don't have to prove anything to me. If the mods care, they'll look into it, if not they won't. I was more referring to the OP anyway, you just happen to be one of the new users who showed up in the thread (which is part of the pattern of what I believe to be "fake" threads, at least in the past.) So... sorry if you legit have an issue lol. I don't mean to dissuade you from seeking help. Far from it, in fact. I care more that someone who DOESN'T have a legit issue might be taking the community's resources away from those that do have legit issues.

To be honest, Frameview won't give YOU anything that you haven't already gotten. Was referring to the OP to provide actual data. I'm more inclined to believe your issue is real since you DID in fact provide frametime data. So you're good. I wouldn't bother with frameview, you've already got what you need. Though, I'd run more tests in more games and share here so we can see them as well. Your data, while not synced up with gameplay video, is more useful anyway if it's not used in conjunction with recording software, which brings its own issues.

Yea league is not a graphical intensive game. Unfortunately, I don't play it so I have no clue what typical CPU usage patterns look like, nor do I know what framerates are generally considered "good." But it stands to reason that you WILL be cpu bottlenecked (or some other bottleneck) in the game since it's not graphically intensive. More games with more data would def be helpful.

I'd wait and see what results you get after setting up a completely clean machine like @Vayra86 said, and go from there if it's still around.

 

[Vayra86]

League is not a demanding game so I'd say GPU not having a stress with it is expected - also the CPU 2 cores bottleneck still wouldn't explain it happening in other games which use multiple cores, such as Apex Legends, Warzone or Cold War, right? I could record a game of Apex as well so we could see how the graphs behave there. Also when I'm running only CPU benchmarks such as Cinebench or prime95 the system doesn't stutter even if the CPU is maxed out. I even tried playing a game of league while running prime95 and the game ran perfectly except for the random stutter which was still present

This is a wrong assumption.

Game logic is a realtime process and it directly feeds what you see on screen. Game threads are not - even if your OSD says so - capable of splitting up any way they like to get maximum performance out of a CPU. A cinebench run however, does exactly that. And if you want to do something in Windows alongside those stress tests, unless you fully peg the memory, you will see Windows find ways to schedule that right for you and minimize the latency - it can happily utilize different cores for different threads. That's interaction between separate applications - another radical difference from your in-game situation: the only management for performance is done by the game engine.

Many games even today are still single- or X- number of threads limited. It really depends on the engine used and how well newer APIs are implemented. Older games will run into CPU single thread bottlenecking simply because the GPU performance has increased leaps and bounds, but that single core hasn't.

A simple frame limiter can solve stutter in that case. Yes, maybe LoL doesn't like being run over, say 100, or 120 fps. I can also imagine there is a relation to server tick rates.

In my personal experience, for good, smooth gaming, you never really want to chase the highest performance number, you want to hit the number that fits the application at hand and the capabilities of your system alongside it. There are tons of games with limitations in FPS. Some kick you to 30. Others do 60 vsynced only. Again others happily run 1000 fps. And many games allow you to go anywhere, but there are no guarantees you get what you want.

Similar stuff occurs with monitor refresh rates and ingame FPS. You want them synced, and if not, you want half- sync or something along those lines, so the frame times are evened out and aligned with the refresh of the monitor. That, in the end, is key: frametimes need to align. Peaking high doesn't help that at all Also, its good to admire the precision of frame delivery as it is even with a stutter here or there. We're talking a dozen or less milliseconds in precision here, in a continuous sequence of calculations. Code isn't perfect.

Sorry beforehand if I broke any rule - I also created a new thread but got no replies there and kind of "parasited" this thread and another one.

Wouldn't worry about that - this can easily evolve into a bigger topic regarding stutter, no OP seems particularly active, rather people necro'd it

 

[Mussels]

I agree I have even less
System tray:

http://imgur.com/a/xseOnMv

Task manager:

http://imgur.com/a/4nE1wxD

On my old rig I had less performance but league was constant 144fps at 144hz without any kind of stuttering

Wait is that F.lux?

F.lux is a known cause of stutter

One relevant quote from an early result
"I tried disabling f.lux in its menu but that didn't help, I have to completely close f.lux to recover."

 

[SomeOne99h]

Nice find Mussels!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm .... and what is that icon in the top-right?
Can you keep your system as simple as possible?
Completely uninstall f.lux and then restart even though they didn't say you have to restart, just in case if somehow it needed a restart for your system to take effect, who knows?

Also, what else are you installing in this machine?
Try uninstalling nvidia's HD audio then disabling it.

 

[Mussels]

Nice find Mussels!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm .... and what is that icon in the top-right?
Can you keep your system as simple as possible?
Completely uninstall f.lux and then restart even though they didn't say you have to restart, just in case if somehow it needed a restart for your system to take effect, who knows?

Also, what else are you installing in this machine?
Try uninstalling nvidia's HD audio then disabling it.

top right is logitechs software, i run that and GFE which is his other icon with no issues

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

This is a wrong assumption.

Game logic is a realtime process and it directly feeds what you see on screen. Game threads are not - even if your OSD says so - capable of splitting up any way they like to get maximum performance out of a CPU. A cinebench run however, does exactly that. And if you want to do something in Windows alongside those stress tests, unless you fully peg the memory, you will see Windows find ways to schedule that right for you and minimize the latency - it can happily utilize different cores for different threads. That's interaction between separate applications - another radical difference from your in-game situation: the only management for performance is done by the game engine.

Many games even today are still single- or X- number of threads limited. It really depends on the engine used and how well newer APIs are implemented. Older games will run into CPU single thread bottlenecking simply because the GPU performance has increased leaps and bounds, but that single core hasn't.

A simple frame limiter can solve stutter in that case. Yes, maybe LoL doesn't like being run over, say 100, or 120 fps. I can also imagine there is a relation to server tick rates.

In my personal experience, for good, smooth gaming, you never really want to chase the highest performance number, you want to hit the number that fits the application at hand and the capabilities of your system alongside it. There are tons of games with limitations in FPS. Some kick you to 30. Others do 60 vsynced only. Again others happily run 1000 fps. And many games allow you to go anywhere, but there are no guarantees you get what you want.

Similar stuff occurs with monitor refresh rates and ingame FPS. You want them synced, and if not, you want half- sync or something along those lines, so the frame times are evened out and aligned with the refresh of the monitor. That, in the end, is key: frametimes need to align. Peaking high doesn't help that at all Also, its good to admire the precision of frame delivery as it is even with a stutter here or there. We're talking a dozen or less milliseconds in precision here, in a continuous sequence of calculations. Code isn't perfect.



Wouldn't worry about that - this can easily evolve into a bigger topic regarding stutter, no OP seems particularly active, rather people necro'd it

Indeed, you are right on how games work. League indeed has big issues if you exceed like 300-400 FPS, things will randomly appear and disappear from the screen and stuff like that. 165 fps shouldn't be a problem, I have friends running it at 240fps on 240hz monitor and they have 0 issues. And even myself I was running it 144 fps on 144hz monitor on my old rig and everything ran flawlessly. Even more so that I tried changing the refresh rate of the monitor from 165hz to 60, 100, 120, 144 and granted the game will be choppier at lower refresh rates, which is expected, but the stutter will still be there, so I don't thing this is related to the game code and how it runs at common high refresh rates - even pro players play it at 144-240hz and they don't have any issue.
And I agree, it is amazing how so many calculations are done in such a small time frame with such accurate results wonder what future holds

Wait is that F.lux?

F.lux is a known cause of stutter

One relevant quote from an early result
"I tried disabling f.lux in its menu but that didn't help, I have to completely close f.lux to recover."

Nice find Mussels!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm .... and what is that icon in the top-right?
Can you keep your system as simple as possible?
Completely uninstall f.lux and then restart even though they didn't say you have to restart, just in case if somehow it needed a restart for your system to take effect, who knows?

Also, what else are you installing in this machine?
Try uninstalling nvidia's HD audio then disabling it.

Yes, that is F.lux, but unfortunately it is not the cause of my stutter. I have disabled it many times in the past thinking that could be the cause. The stutter is also present after I cleaned installed windows so I didn't have flux installed. I have also tried fiddling with its settings, especially the hardware acceleration related one - no result. I also had it installed on my old rig and I had no issues with it except when it was changing colors and that indeed caused stuttering - this doesn't happen on this new build as it is more powerful.
The top-right is logitech G hub for my mouse and keyboard - I also tried without it installed and it makes no difference.
At the moment I had Nvidia HD Audio installed but disabled - I disabled the windows automatic drivers install and removed it. In the past I have also uninstalled the default HD audio driver and the headset audio driver - heck, at one point I have uninstalled every audio driver that I had and played with no sound and the stutter still continued.
I'll be honest with you guys and tell you I have a lot of random stuff installed now, which I don't usually have, just because of all the things I tried software related - most notable things related to asus armoury crate with rog live services and all that as well as rgbfusion with rgb software for the ram and such. My PC is with as little as possible RGB but I installed them to disabled it completely (and apparently it fixed a freeze that I was having when opening games)

I didn't receive a message from the courier company yet so I don't think the SSD will arrive today, but in the meanwhile I have recorded a game of League of Legends with more graphs in RTSS, and a game of Apex Legends. I have uninstalled flux, g hub, nvidia hd audio drivers and restarted PC. I had nothing else running while playing except MSI Afterburner without any settings changed and RTSS for monitoring.
I'm also logging the RTSS recording file on my current M2 SSD to avoid any writing issues that could bloat my system (even though they shouldn't matter, but I'm trying to eliminate every little thing)
A league game:

http://imgur.com/a/KGiM5qN

. Happening at the beginning several times and then towards the end. Can be seen in the frametime graphs which correlates to a small dip in fps in the graph above that.
An Apex game:

http://imgur.com/a/5VWPp0h

. Note: I have highlighted when a stutter occurred vs a normal lower fps happened, Apex is more demanding than League and I'm playing it on very high 1440p so I'm not expecting it to run at capped FPS all the time, which is normal, however the stutters are different and this can be seen in frametime with the problematic frames taking a whooping ~200ms to be rendered (considering 222 is max when alt tabbed to start and close RTSS recording). I also think the first frametime spike is a stutter but I'm not 100% sure as I wasn't paying attention in the beginning. I also won this match lol

Another thing I noticed is that on this run of RTSS I recorded less stuttering than on my previous runs. The different thing I did was that I put the recording of RTSS on another drive than C (which is there by default). This kind of makes me think it could be a storage problem in the end but I'm not sure. I'm waiting for the new SSD to arrive to test and post more results.

Thanks guys!!

 

[Mussels]

Just confirming based on the quote i got earlier, did you *uninstall* F.lux and leave it removed? please leave it off the system entirely for now

You could have more than one cause of stutter and remove one to replace it with another so we really want things clean

Can you trigger a stutter outside of a game? Like if you fire up OCCT's power test (or just CPU or GPU test alone) would the mouse stutter, or youtube?
What media are you installing Windows from? Legit MS OS or modded ones? what build?
Are you installing Windows in UEFI/GPT mode, or CSM/MBR mode?

 

[mtcn77]

We really cannot troubleshoot your hardware. The specifics are up to you.
I looked around if we said it, it has been going since #5th post - you have to get latencymon(or dpc latency whichever suits you best) in order.
You cannot have a responsive computer if it is >250. It is just not possible. If you have 100 it is good, if it is 50 even better. The keypoint is it has to remain there, if there are any jumps - a higher level latency eithout those spikes is preferrable to a lower latency with the spikes.
I had a G600 that would spike if I set the presets on the mouse memory. You have to troubleshoot all causative drivers - no less - before we can remark usefully.

 

[SweetPhilosophy]

Just confirming based on the quote i got earlier, did you *uninstall* F.lux and leave it removed? please leave it off the system entirely for now

You could have more than one cause of stutter and remove one to replace it with another so we really want things clean

Can you trigger a stutter outside of a game? Like if you fire up OCCT's power test (or just CPU or GPU test alone) would the mouse stutter, or youtube?
What media are you installing Windows from? Legit MS OS or modded ones? what build?
Are you installing Windows in UEFI/GPT mode, or CSM/MBR mode?

Yes, I confirm I uninstalled Flux, restarted PC and also left it removed, as well as removing logitech's G hub.
I actually tried many times to trigger a stutter outside of a game but I can't. At the moment I'm running OCCT CPU test and the mouse doesn't stutter, not even youtube. Yes, some things are slower like loading my youtube feed but mouse is fine as well as running videos from youtube. No video or audio stutter.
Currently I'm having Windows 10 Pro version 20H2 build 19042.906 and it is installed in UEFI/GPT. Downloaded from microsoft.com and created a bootable stick with their MediaCreationTool20H2 which also downloads the windows image and prepares the stick

Edit:

We really cannot troubleshoot your hardware. The specifics are up to you.
I looked around if we said it, it has been going since #5th post - you have to get latencymon(or dpc latency whichever suits you best) in order.
You cannot have a responsive computer if it is >250. It is just not possible. If you have 100 it is good, if it is 50 even better. The keypoint is it has to remain there, if there are any jumps - a higher level latency eithout those spikes is preferrable to a lower latency with the spikes.
I had a G600 that would spike if I set the presets on the mouse memory. You have to troubleshoot all causative drivers - no less - before we can remark usefully.

I also ran LatencyMon and the highest spikes are on nvlddmkm.sys. I can post a report of latency mon here if you think it would be helpful. I already tried disabling a lot of drivers and other things which could cause spikes based on what I've read until now when troubleshooting.
Related to peripherals - that's the thing, because I used the same peripherals on my last rig, with same configuration, same DPI, same keyboard effects and I had no issues there (I had a 6600k + 980)

 

[mtcn77]

I also ran LatencyMon and the highest spikes are on nvlddmkm.sys. I can post a report of latency mon here if you think it would be helpful.

Good thing you mentioned. You must now search for that. You can develop on that question, however you aren't giving any leads on that. This is an issue you can solve on your own. Do an internet search. Don't leave it unresolved. There are many forums specialized on many topics, you aren't alone in your quandry. Somebody must have answers, just look over them. Everybody isn't experienced in it, but somebody definitely is. These aren't limited hardware.

I don't want to say it could be a cpu spike, or gpu but you can find leads in the internet. You already have the causative driver. You have already solved the hard part.