New build with reasonable load but still dropping frames 3060ti i7-13700k

[HootyHooty]

Hi Everyone,

Brand new build as of Friday 9/1/23

MSI MPG Z790 Carbon Wifi
GPU 3060ti Gigabyte eagle OC D6X
Intel i7-13700k
Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 5600MHz 32GB (2x16)
Samsung SSD 980 Pro 2 TB
Windows 11
Monitor 1 Microstep MSI G27CQ4E2 2k
Monitor 2 Microstep MSI G24C6 108P

I'm new at computer building, but reasonably familiar with troubleshooting and am having a problem with games I'm playing. Been trying to figure out what has been happening for two days now and I don't know what else to check.(sorry about the formatting)

Playing fallout 76 on ultra I'm sitting at the following points:
GPU 55-65c / ~40% load / 1935MHz / ~65%kW / 1-1.1V
GPU Mem ~5200mb / 9502MHz
CPU 55-60c / ~10-15% load / 4222MHz
Frames when not dropping avg 82 / min 78 / max 83
I think it drops to like 15 or 20 frames but afterburner doesn't graph it when the event happens

These are the most demanding settings that I can have on the PC at the moment for reference. This happens when I'm at lower settings too, but ofc the load is much lower. Basically I can play just fine for a while and then the frames just drop and sometimes freezes. Usually I can still move the mouse and camera around, but the keyboard inputs get stuck. The frame drop also seems to pause my MSI afterburner charts until the issue resolves, 2-10 seconds. Then play can resume as normal.

Also played League of Legends, which obviously is not a demanding game and have similar issues. Generally, the problems get worse at end game when more is happening, but I'm barely utilizing 15% gpu and cpu in that game. Also, running this one in 1080p as I like the smaller screen for lol. Tried running even at low settings and frame capped at 60fps and still have problems.

Things I've tried or done:
Before running any games:
-flashed mb bios to newest
-newest driver for 3060ti from nvidia site
-all windows updates
-Enabled xmp for ram, confirm its running at 5600mhz

After running games
-run on 1080p monitor only which I was using previously with a laptop gaming
-Nvidia 3D settings
-turned off g-sync as monitors aren't compatible
-monitors to max refresh rate
-Power management mode -> Prefer max performance
-Filter texture quality ->High Performance
-MSI afterburner
-core voltage -> tried default and max (seems better at max maybe)
-Power Limit-> tried default and max (seems better at max maybe)
-clocks i've played with some but just put back to default
-Replaced Razer death adder with office mouse
-Don't have another keyboard to try, but double checked the most up to date drivers
-turned off ALL applications I can think of other than the games
-power connections seem good, have not removed components to re-seat them yet, but seem to all be in securely
-ran CPU stress test for 10 minutes, peak temp 82c, avg 78c, no throttling events, and passed the test

I've just done some free benchmarks to stress the pc and everything seems good. Results below and in attachments. Idk if that even helps tbh
UserBenchmarks: Game 178%, Desk 123%, Work 208%
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K - 126.1%
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti - 142%
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe M.2 2TB - 487.2%
RAM: Corsair CMH32GX5M2B5600C36 2x16GB - 184%
MBD: MSI MPG Z790 CARBON WIFI (MS-7D89)

Ran Heaven bm for 10 minutes as a stress then did the benchmark. No issues from what I saw. Min fps on happened on screen transitions and then went right back to at least 130fps.

Any new things to try would be amazing.

 

[ir_cow]

Often when I see drop frames like your describing for me, it's the video card OC being unstable or the system memory. But it can very well be some software that is a resource hog eating up the CPU cycles.

 

[Selaya]

seeing a singledigit fps min on heaven is absolutely normal, it's counting the frames where you're loading the new scene and it always dips very low

do try to run an actual, contemporary benchmark not something from a decade and a half ago maybe

 

[HootyHooty]

Often when I see drop frames like your describing for me, it's the video card OC being unstable or the system memory. But it can very well be some software that is a resource hog eating up the CPU cycles.

Any idea how to troubleshoot or fix this? I'd be fine just lowering settings but I can't seem to find anything that affects it.

seeing a singledigit fps min on heaven is absolutely normal, it's counting the frames where you're loading the new scene and it always dips very low

do try to run an actual, contemporary benchmark not something from a decade and a half ago maybe

Do you know a free one I can use? I'm basically going off youtube videos so I don't know much about the differences in the bm softwares.


Maybe this is a silly question. I don't have my iGPU disabled, and task manager shows its allocated 15.9 GB memory. This doesn't mean that the iGPU is taking that memory if I'm not using it correct? Should I be disabling the iGPU?

 

[Deleted member 232534]

Any idea how to troubleshoot or fix this? I'd be fine just lowering settings but I can't seem to find anything that affects it.

Do you know a free one I can use? I'm basically going off youtube videos so I don't know much about the differences in the bm softwares.


Maybe this is a silly question. I don't have my iGPU disabled, and task manager shows its allocated 15.9 GB memory. This doesn't mean that the iGPU is taking that memory if I'm not using it correct? Should I be disabling the iGPU?

where it shows that?

 

[ir_cow]

seeing a singledigit fps min on heaven is absolutely normal, it's counting the frames where you're loading the new scene and it always dips very low

do try to run an actual, contemporary benchmark not something from a decade and a half ago maybe

Yeah. It could just be that game. Fallout isn't a very optimized game.

 

[HootyHooty]

There on the integrated graphics. I'm not plugged into it so its not being utilized I'm guessing.

Also noticed in resource monitor, the blue bar that represents '100% maximum frequency' dropped like this in the picture during another lag event. Doing some research now to see if this is a reliable metric on what is happening. Maybe just all the resources are being used by something else at the time so it thinks the clock freq is dropping.

 

[Deleted member 232534]

View attachment 312022View attachment 312023View attachment 312024
There on the integrated graphics. I'm not plugged into it so its not being utilized I'm guessing.

the discrete gpu memory is utilized 98%. this is while gaming right?

why not disable igpu if you not use it?

 

[HootyHooty]

Yeah. It could just be that game. Fallout isn't a very optimized game.

Its also happening in league of legends, which is a joke for requirements. Shouldn't have a problem with that game I'd think.

the discrete gpu memory is utilized 98%. this is while gaming right?

why not disable igpu if you not use it?


View attachment 312026

Yeah I've got fallout on in the background still. Jumps from 30% to 100% when I alt+tab to desktop.

I'll try out disabling it. I've never done that and not sure if that was an ok thing to do, but seems like it should be. At least to test.

 

[Selaya]

[ ... ]

Do you know a free one I can use? I'm basically going off youtube videos so I don't know much about the differences in the bm softwares.

[ ... ]

superposition is unigine's newest, that's fairly useful

other than that 3dmark is good asw but free is kinda limited (id have recommended the stress test but iirc that's paid only)

 

[Solaris17]

but I'm barely utilizing 15% gpu

Sounds like a config problem. Are you playing in windowed mode?

 

[HootyHooty]

Play on "High" settings and you'll be fine, no need for "Ultra" except for bragging rights, which is kinda pointless.

The ultra was just to give benchmarks on the worst case for my hardware which still shows underutilization. The problems happen at all levels graphics settings, as well as league which has super low computer requierments.

Sounds like a config problem. Are you playing in windowed mode?

No, I'm playing full screen

superposition is unigine's newest, that's fairly useful

other than that 3dmark is good asw but free is kinda limited (id have recommended the stress test but iirc that's paid only)

Thank's I'll give that a try and see if it's stable.

I disabled the iGPU and thought it was fine, but 15 min in, have the same problem. Going to swap memory sticks to the other two ports and see if that helps.

 

[HootyHooty]

Still having issues. Tried replacing ram with new stuff and still having same problem. I'm thinking its a CPU or motherboard problem at this point but don't really know. I'm getting spikes across most of my p-cores it seems like, has anyone seen behavior like in the screenshots during gaming? is this normal or no? Still not having any temperature problems that I can see.

 

[ir_cow]

Honestly, looks like a normal CPU. Spikes probably background tasks. You have anti-virus software going?

Have you tried to do a fresh Windows installation? Nothing extra install but the game and see if that solves it? Might be some program running you don't know about

 

[A&P211]

Barret is floating in the air

 

[HootyHooty]

Update from yesterday.

Bought a new set of ram, no change.
Did a 30 minute cinebench R3 stress, and had no problems. Temps maxed at 89-91c

Uninstalled MSI Center. (was just using 8-10% cpu at all times for some reason)
Quit all processes for Corsair, I think this was mostly the iCue rgb stuff even though I had the program exited in taskbar.
Quit Intel driver update process.
Quit all razer processes, again the programs were exited but some processes were still running.
Quit MSI Afterburner monitoring.

Was able to play League of Legends for a few games at 144frames rather than 30 frames and did not have any problems. Had a 3rd party app for Lol running too which was good to see.
Still don't understand why most games are maxing out just CPU24 e-core, rather than sharing with the others, or using more of the p-cores, but maybe the games just aren't optimized for hyperthreading or e vs p-core usage.

Will start reintroducing programs/processes one by one and see if I can pinpoint the troublemaker. Thanks everyone for your insight.