My games stutter w/ mouse lag (13900k/4090/3080) - Need Help

[Kokkatc]

Hey all. So I wanted to provide an update on this because it's an issue that I've been dealing with for a very long time. I know many others out there deal with similar issues and it can be very frustrating. With that said, I believe I FINALLY figured it out.

If you open device manager and scroll down to 'Software Devices' and click on the drop down arrow to populate its contents, you may find items like 'Microsoft Device Association Root Enumerator, 'Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth,' etc. If you have streaming devices in your house like a TV with network capability, fire TV, etc, these devices like to populate in this section. Turns out either the Samsung TV or one of my fire TV devices were spamming my system over the network causing all of my games to lag and stutter. It basically desynced all of my games, and the level of severity varied. In my case, it was my ?!$@?!@?!!! Samsung TV causing all of the issues. The solution for me was to simply right click and disable all of the network streaming devices. The weird thing is that the very presence of these devices caused my games to lag, even with the network cable unplugged.

This is why sometimes after a fresh OS install or changing of my CPU or mobo, these devices haven't had had an opportunity to connect and install in the background. It wasn't until about either an hour later or after a couple of reboots that my issue would return. These stupid !!!?##??$!!$! streaming devices completely bugged out my games.

Absolutely unreal but I'm incredibly relieved this nightmare is over. This was a very obscure and difficult issue to troubleshoot. I hope this helps some ppl out there. Since this turned out to be network related, I highly recommend using a tool like Wireshark to adequately troubleshoot your network. Know everything coming in and going out to rule out variables. The streaming devices mind you weren't actually 'connected' to my PC, but my PC recognized the streaming devices on my LAN and installed the streaming devices in the 'Software Devices' section of device manager. My Samsung TV then incessantly spammed my PC w/ network requests. Turning network discovery off in your network and sharing center probably could nipped this issue in the bud from the very beginning, but that's speculation at this point.

To the people on this forum, thank you for chipping in. You guys helped redirect my focus to the most likely suspects.

Just to clarify, I always do a fresh OS install off a USB either created by Rufus or windows media creation. After changing out my CPU or mobo, I jump into windows on the existing install for kicks. When games actually performed properly in these scenarios it lead me to believe there is some kind of driver issue somewhere. Finding the conflicting driver however has been difficult, but I do have a positive update! I may have figured it out after refocusing on drivers thx to you guys!

So I loaded up hardware store explorer and took a screenshot of every driver installed on my system right after I changed out the mobo/CPU. If I went straight to a fresh install, other drivers would have been installed and my games wouldn't be performing so I wouldn't know where to start besides using latency monitor to troubleshoot driver dpc latency. I then went ahead and did a fresh install, network always disconnected fyi, installed Intel me, Intel me firmware, chipset drivers and gpu. After this I fully updated Windows and let windows update do the rest. I jump in a game and everything is stuttering again.

I go ahead and load hardware store explorer and compare the drivers installed to the screenshot I took earlier before the fresh install. The primary differences were several nahimic drivers, extensions and software components. I also found a couple of a-volute driver extensions and software components. I force deleted all of these and their drivers and my stuttering/mouse lag in game amazingly appeared to be fixed!

Now I'm not holding my breath because I thought I have solved this a dozen times and the issue normally comes back after a day or so, so I'm going to keep a close eye on drivers to ensure none are installed with out my knowing. Nahimic and a-volute btw are realtek audio enhancements, apparently trash. The other fix was making sure the latest c++ was installed even though the game only installed c++ 2015-2020.

I'll keep everyone posted.

 

[bug]

Glad to hear you figured it out.
But I think the problem weren't the devices themselves (they aren't communicating to the PC when there's no network), but the device drivers for these. After they get installed, they start going haywire...

 

[Kokkatc]

Glad to hear you figured it out.
But I think the problem weren't the devices themselves (they aren't communicating to the PC when there's no network), but the device drivers for these. After they get installed, they start going haywire...

Yes, there's clearly something wrong w/ the drivers as well. The primary issue is the Samsung PC spamming my PC for no apparent reason. I wouldn't be surprised if my fire tv devices are also slightly responsible, but wireshark identified the TV in the moment I was diagnosing. I disabled network connectivity on that TV just to ensure it's unable ever communicate w/ my PC. Ultimately, I'm going to create a vlan and put all of my streaming devices on that as the final solution.

In regards to the 'Software device drivers' for the samsung TV and firetv devices, this issue affects all 3 of my PCS. All 3 of these PCS are on different versions of Windows utilizing entirely different driver versions. There is something inherently flawed w/ these device drivers and it's not worth my time to figure out why. They serve zero purpose being enabled under software devices on any of my PCS. Disabling them is the best solution in my case.

 

[Kokkatc]

I'm honestly not surprised, but the problem has come back. I'm completely at a loss at this point. The problem I did resolve may not have been the primary contributor, maybe just a secondary one.

All my games are stuttering again, delayed/desynced, and similar to how it was before I thought it was fixed last time. I keep thinking it has to be a driver, extension, software components, etc... Something of that nature. It's hilarious to me that the only way the problem is temporarily resolved is by changing out the motherboard and launching the OS off the existing install. This is obviously a big no no, but in my case, some driver or other is uninstalled or replaced with a different driver when it loads windows for the first time off an existing install for different hardware. I'm having trouble pinpointing exactly what changed and figuring out a way to monitor every single driver or other that is installed behind the scenes.

Any thoughts? I'm pretty close to losing my collective !#?#?! at this point.

 

[OkieDan]

Back In earlier versions of Windows you had the ability to have multiple hardware profiles. You could make a copy of current hardware profile and then disable many things in the new profile for troubleshooting. You'd then select the profile you wanted to use on boot. Don't think this is possible anymore, but possibly with 3rd party software.

You might be able to export what's listed in device manager or windows registry to compare what's different in a diff program like winmerge, windiff, etc... but could end up being a waste of time.

 

[Kokkatc]

I wanted to provide an update since I have a positive news to share. Once again, I believe to have discovered the culprit and have fixed my severe stuttering (audio/graphics/mouse) and severe lag.

Just to remind anyone coming across this, my issue can best be described as it feeling like my CPU or GPU can't keep up with the action on the screen. It lags behind and begins to chop/stutter and models begin to move erratically. I have this problem on 3 of my systems (13900k, 7700x, 10900k).

Ok, so now the fix, and it's beyond ridiculous and shouldn't be an issue to begin with.

In the BIOS, I was not selecting what kind of GPU device was going into pcie x16 (primary GPU port). I left it to auto which should have defaulted to PEG. On my 7700x build, I had to specifically choose (PEG) for primary display device. On my Intel builds, I believe I had to change it to PCIE since peg was not an option. After making this change, all my stutter and lag disappeared. Leaving this to auto should have resulted in the same performance, but on 3 of my systems it does not. This comes off more as a BIOS bug that needs to be remedied because even the mobo manual states that auto will default to the settings I had to manually choose if no other pcie devices were installed which they were not.

I'll report back regardless because Everytime I think I have it fixed, the issue comes back, but so far so good.

Yep, and the lag/delay/stutter is back . I feel like an absolute crazy man at this point and just don't understand how my system can go from working to completely lagged another second by changing a simple setting in the BIOS. Resetting the cmos did nothing and what fixed the issue previously is no longer fixing it. It just feels like my GPU is performing as if it's under powered which it assuredly is not. I've used furmark to test whether my GPU is getting enough juice from my psu and all signs point to yes it is. I'm running some power tests using OCCT out of desperation. Maybe the pcie 3.0 GPU cable is bad or perhaps even my monitor? This is just wild at this point honestly.

 

[Kokkatc]

Alright, so I have an update on this, and boy has it been a nightmare. I'm not saying my problem is resolved until I go for 2-3 weeks without issues.

So, I have found 4 or so things directly impacting performance in the games I play. The first being memory stability. What really annoys me about this one is that I have tried 3 different kits, all on mobo's QVL, all kits passing every single memory test I throw at it (memtest, tm5 w/ anta extreme, ycruncher, etc etc etc, running for HOURS, as much as 8-12hrs) showing zero errors. I decided to take the time and manually overclock my memory, fine tune primaries, secondary, tertiary timings and voltage. I went high on voltage and performance is already significantly better. Stutters are less, mouse lag is better, basically night and day difference. We're only talking about a difference of -10ns so it really shouldn't yield the kind of performance gains I'm seeing but here we are.. regardless, my memory clearly wasn't stable even though every test I take suggest it is. DDR5 on z690 and z790 has been a complete nightmare to deal with, at least in my experience. I never had any such issues on DDR4.

Okay, second thing I found. HAGS (Hardware accelerated gpu scheduling) ON for the game I play increases stutter, SIGNIFICANTLY. So this is now disabled. Even REBAR ON adds stutter for the games I play, so I disabled this from the bios as well.

Third, and probably the most frustrating of all. My 13900k is clearly FAULTY. I noticed something was off when I decided to add a +.02-.03 voltage offset to see if perhaps my CPU wasn't receiving enough voltage at default levels. This was a night and day difference. Adding a slight positive voltage offset increased my in game responsiveness, significantly. Also, stuttering was far less pronounced. The problem wasn't fixed entirely, but there was a notable improvement. This led me to swapping out my 13900k w/ a 13700k I still have on hand because that kind of behavior suggests a bad cpu or possibly bad cpu imc.. After I swapped it out and jumped into a game... holy mother of God, I honestly forgot what smooth gameplay is supposed to feel like at this point. All stuttering, lag, etc, was miraculously gone in every game that I play. Everything felt snappy and responsive again, all at stock settings w/ the exception of my overclocked memory settings. That I applied because my stock XMP/XMP2/XMP Tweaked settings do not work well at all for some reason. So, in one game all my problems seemed to have vanished... in the other, desync and input lag was rampant when in an actual game/match/online of course. I find it interesting that now my 13700k seems to be fine when it wasn't initially, probably due to my memory being unstable at the time.

Now the last problem I found w/ a game I play is a game that uses EAC (Easyanticheat). The moment my game becomes desynced while in game, I checked event viewer and immediately found this error:

<Event 2, Kernel-EventTracing - session "dc3a3596-71e1-45a3-b2ea-39ad5322fe51" failed to start with the following error: 0xC0000022>

I quickly found out using ProcExplorer that <dc3a3596-71e1-45a3-b2ea-39ad5322fe51> is Easyanticheat. Something on my system is blocking the session from starting, perhaps preventing EAC to connect with its servers. This error pops up every time I play this game and when this happens, desync and input lag are hilariously bad, we're talking anywhere from +200-500ms. It's an absolutely horrific experience. Keep in mind, I just reinstalled my OS and there are no 3rd party apps. Only drivers (chipset, lan, gpu, etc) are installed along w/ fully updating Windows. It's 100% clean from garbage or 3rd party nonsense. Something inherent to Windows is blocking EAC from starting which makes this problem incredibly obscure and frustrating. What's more likely is the game devs fumbled on the EAC implementation. I have found several potential window's services that could be responsible for blocking EAC from starting a session. Also, running EAC as admin makes the issue worse and making sure EAC is allowed in my firewall and an exclusion set for Defender makes no discernable difference in my case. I'll post back more once I diagnose this issue a little more today but I think I'm getting very close here. I also informed the DEVS of the issue and kindly asked they just disable EAC until it's fixed but I'm not holding my breathe. I've also learned that many others have faced the same issue across other games utilizing EAC such as Apex, Elden Ring, etc.

 

[Palacko]

Yo dude, did you find any update on this.
reading all of this shit feels like its myself.

do you know my videos dani pa input lag csgo?

 

[Kokkatc]

Man... Yeah, it was an absolute nightmare to diagnose but i think i figured out all of the culprits at this point. I'll post an update on this thread later today.

My issues consisted of these things: broken EAC (easyanticheat, game issue), network devices spamming my PC, permission issues w/ my games not being able to write to certificate registry keys for the games I was playing, and Windows 11 thread scheduling issues with the games I was playing.

 

[Kokkatc]

I wanted to provide an update on this if others happen to traverse this post hoping for a solution. I've been getting a lot of direct messages regarding this.

Let me begin by saying I figured out the bulk of the issues. There is no single solution, so please understand that one person's solution may not be one for someone else. PC's are complicated w/ layers upon layers of varying factors. W/ that said, here's what worked for me in the end.

1) Memory stability. DDR5 memory stability is a serious pain in the rear. Please understand that XMP does not = stable settings. They are recommended settings/timings that 'should' work. Unfortunately this isn't always the case. Passing short memory tests will not suffice. I recommend using Y-Cruncher VST stress test to test for overall stability for at least 1 hour. If you have the time, test it for 4-8hrs to know for sure. TM5 using anta extreme profile for several hours should also be run. Look up buildzoid w/ actually hardcore overclocking on youtube. This man knows his stuff and I learned a lot from his content. Ultimately, I tuned my memory from scratch which took me 2-3 weeks to finalize the settings. If your memory is unstable, you will experience a lot of bizarre behavior from slowdowns, freezes, stutters, input lag, etc. Tune your memory properly.

2) Faulty PSU - Properly stress test your whole system, cpu, memory, gpu. You need to determine if you have any faulty devices. Devices can appear to run fine while being faulty causing you to bang your head against the wall. I discovered my PSU was faulty while running Y-Cruncher VST Stress test. I passed all other stress tests, but kept failing this one. It was very bizarre. While running this test, my system kept rebooting after about 10m, every single time. Y-Cruncher VST puts an incredible load on the IMC which is why it's used for testing memory stability settings after overclocking. I reset everything back to stock and it continued to fail at roughly 10m and my system would instantly cut power and reboot. No overheating of any kind. After reviewing HWINFO64, I found weird power delivery readings so I suspected my PSU might be to blame. I locked power limits to 200W on PL1/PL2 to see if less power resulted in the same and it didn't. I was able to pass the test. The bizarre readings happened when my wattage exceeded 250W. I had an extra PSU on hand so I swapped it out and re-ran the test. Stress test passed immediately. Even though I was passing every other stress test, my PSU was not sufficient for this test when wattage exceeded 250W for a period of time. It's unclear if this contributed to any of the issues I was running in to however. The problem only seemed to present itself under very heavy load for a certain amount of time. Regardless. glad I was able to make this discovery.

3) EasyAntiCheat. Despite all of the above, EAC was bricking performance w/ the game I was playing because the EAC session was failing within 5-10m in the background. Only event viewer displayed an error. When the session failed, the game would desync and lag. The only way to resolve this error in my case was to run either Epic Games Launcher or the game's bootloader as administrator so it rolls over to the game itself and runs that in elevated status as well. Running the game in Administrator however also bricked performance and caused heavy stutter and desync, go figure. At least the error was resolved, I guess.... I tried absolutely every possible thing to fix this 'EAC' session failing issue but it turns out this can only be fixed by the game developer. I've been in direct contact w/ them detailing the issue. I demonstrated to them that the session will 100% fail if not run as administrator. I demonstrated this on several different systems along w/ asking friends to test the same so I could show it's a widespread issue. I also found that virtually every game that has used EAC now or in the past has encountered this problem at one point or another so I know it can be patched. Unfortunately my favorite game has a very lower player base and gets very minimal DEV support so it's not actively updated anymore. They've informed me they hope to patch it by next month and are also looking for another anticheat since getting support from EAC is difficult. Apparently w/ EAC, devs do not have a direct line to any of their programmers to assist w/ potential issues so getting help from EAC is difficult. No DEV should EVER use EasyAntiCheat. They offer no support.

4) NIC Task Offload Fix-- TaskOffload is typically enabled (DisableTaskOffload = 0) which means your NIC processes all of the task offloads. DisableTaskOffload = 1 means all the task offloads are processed by your CPU. Mileage on this one may vary as this is dependent on the specific NIC and drivers you're using. W/ the varying NICS and drivers available, some NICS have buggy implementations of its taskoffload feature. I found I was experiencing heavy input lag in online play in all of my games. The LAG would vary, but I was not experiencing the same input lag during local play, so I knew it was most likely network based. I troubleshooted my network, found no issues. Fixed bufferbloat, built a dedicated pfsense router utilizing AQM. Ensured there were no driver causing DPC latency issues utilizing latency monitor. I ultimately started to test all of the NIC's offload settings and in my case, input lag was for the most part resolved by disabling taskoffload at the OS level and disabling every single offload in the NIC's advanced properties. Apparently the NIC I have does not handle LSO/Checksum offloads well and was creating a bottleneck while gaming causing the input lag. Offloading all of these tasks to my CPU resolved the input lag in online play (DisableTaskOffload = 1). This was the case w/ a realtek 5g NIC. You can alter this using netsh in command or the registry. TaskOffloads should also be disabled in your NIC's advanced properties as well if you disable taskoffload in the OS. This will vary from person to person. Some NIC/Drivers may have buggy implementation w/ a particular offload like LSO or Checksum where another NIC/Driver does not. So this is something that needs to be tested on a NIC/Driver basis and not used as a blanket fix.

Also, I don't like blindly pasting commands, tweaks. It's too easy to make a mistake. Figuring out how to disable taskoffload in the OS and in the NIC's advanced properties takes a simple google search and if you do attempt the above, set a restore point and write down your default settings so you can resort back if needed.

Tips: Make sure to disable core parking and set an appropriate power plan (High or Ultimate). Some people like balanced but the latency penalty is too high for my liking. I like using the quick QuickCpu app. It's much easier than going in the registry and you can make adjustments on the fly. If on a hybrid CPU, some games just don't like E-Cores. Test w/ them on vs off and even setting core affinities. Same goes w/ hyperthreading or SMT. Lastly, if you're trying to debug perf issues in any game, make sure all 3rd party apps are either uninstalled or not running in the background. These are pretty basic suggestions but overlooked far too often.

Absolutely everything is running beautifully at this point, minus the game utilizing that cancerous EAC anticheat.

 

[Good Guru]

I had a mouse lag issue one time I realized it was the usb super-charger! driver or usb+charger driver on my z97 mobo.

 

[Kokkatc]

I had a mouse lag issue one time I realized it was the usb super-charger! driver or usb+charger driver on my z97 mobo.

Yeah, it's wild the amount of ways lag can present itself. Seems to be more common on modern pcs honestly.

I've read numerous times where the pc case's usb 3 connector was the root cause of mouse lag, stutter. Best thing one can do is disconnect everything and test one by one.

 

[ohohoh123]

Saw this thread, just wanted to share that processor lasso helped me utilize only power cores for gaming processes - whiched helped with fps and stutter.

 

[Benjji]

sorry to revive this but do you think RAM issues could cause this? my RAM was causing me issues earlier with blue screen looping. had to remove each stick and train them individually. this issue has only started happening to me since around december so im thinking it could also be a windows update issue? ive seen other posts saying how a recent windows update causes them game performance issues, Also im thinking it could be my PSU or my electricity as my voltage on the wallsocket is an inconsistent 240v (drops to 239-238 on one plug and goes upto 241 on another in the same circuit.) also i sometimes feel static/eletrical shock when touching the screws on my pc case. Could you help me in anyway? this issue is driving me insane

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't think you *can* train memory individually and then combine them. The timings for the pair will likely be different to the timings for single-channel. I'm not really a memory tuning expert but that sentence set alarm bells ringing in my head. If the timings were identical for the pair to a single stick, then why would it fail to train?!

Make yourself a Memtest86 USB boot stick and check the RAM is stable in there. It's not the most thorough test but it sure finds issues fast.

 

[Benjji]

I don't think you *can* train memory individually and then combine them. The timings for the pair will likely be different to the timings for single-channel. I'm not really a memory tuning expert but that sentence set alarm bells ringing in my head. If the timings were identical for the pair to a single stick, then why would it fail to train?!

Make yourself a Memtest86 USB boot stick and check the RAM is stable in there. It's not the most thorough test but it sure finds issues fast.

ive had this problem with the RAM for a while, way before i noticed this problem. it has to be trained in a certain order otherwise the pc either boot loops or the ram isnt identified. (ive had all 4 dimm slots filled and it only shown 24gb with 4x8gb RAM) The bsod loop was fixed by retraining the RAM also. even though i had no problem with the pc before shutting down

i did buy the second pair of 2x8gb sticks seperately. they are Corsair vengence Rgb pro. one set is v3.31 and the other is 3.34 (i think) could mismatched timings cause a sort of microstutter that im experiencing in games? some are alot more evident in games than others. e.g league feels smoother than warframe but still has microstutters, probably due to the difference in cameras due to different genres of games. its most evident when camera pans, even does the same in videos

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

That´s presumably Micron B-die vs speculated E-die.

Die versions etc

I found this thread on overclocking that looks to give a ton of info on Corsair Die versions etc https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/wiki/ram/ddr4 Corsair "Version Number" Corsair sticks identify the IC with a 'version number' on the label such as "ver 4.31" - props to them for this as it helps...

forum.corsair.com

 

[Kokkatc]

ive had this problem with the RAM for a while, way before i noticed this problem. it has to be trained in a certain order otherwise the pc either boot loops or the ram isnt identified. (ive had all 4 dimm slots filled and it only shown 24gb with 4x8gb RAM) The bsod loop was fixed by retraining the RAM also. even though i had no problem with the pc before shutting down

i did buy the second pair of 2x8gb sticks seperately. they are Corsair vengence Rgb pro. one set is v3.31 and the other is 3.34 (i think) could mismatched timings cause a sort of microstutter that im experiencing in games? some are alot more evident in games than others. e.g league feels smoother than warframe but still has microstutters, probably due to the difference in cameras due to different genres of games. its most evident when camera pans, even does the same in videos

So I came back to update this thread once again and I came across this reply.

I'm no longer playing the 2 other games I was having a lot of issues w/ due to obvious reasons, but now I began experiencing intermittent lag/stutter in other titles. I noticed that sometimes after a reboot, my system would somehow become unstable and there would be clear input delay in pretty much all games, along w/ a subtle stutter. Basically, all the games felt 'behind' and desynced. At this point I'm thinking okay... maybe my memory isn't stable even though I pass hours of Y-Cruncher VST. I just assumed my memory in XMP was 'stable enough' if I'm passing hours of vigorous stress tests... Turns out I was 100% WRONG on this assumption.

So, I decided to manually train every memory related voltage (VCCSA, IMC VDD (Memory Controller), VDDQ TX, and of course Mem VDD/VDDQ). I began w/ VCCSA and then IMC VDD. I've never actually gone through the process of tuning voltages outside of DRAM VDD/VDDQ. Tuning VCCSA and IMC VDD took me roughly 5hrs. For starters, I decided to shoot for 6800 rather than 7200 which my sticks are rated for (Hynix A-DIE, FYI). I started low and then went up in 100mv increments, ran benchmarks, stress tests and even jumped in game after each step up to test. For VCCSA, it sweet-spotted at 1.33v, exactly. There was noticeable degradation above or below that voltage. For IMC VDD, it sweet-spotted at 1.35v. A step above or below also showed degraded performance. Already my lag/stutter has diminished SIGNIFICANTLY and there's more consistency boot to boot now. Today I'm going to tune VDDQ TX and keep going.

Here's what I basically learned... DDR5 XMP compatibility/stability above 6000mhz is a complete nightmare. You can't rely on XMP to work on speeds above 6000mhz. Even if you pass a stress test here or there, you still might be completely unstable. It's better to train the voltages yourself, go through the process of finding the best voltage for your exact setup or you're probably going to have problems. I completely understand now why some swear on motherboards like the Asus Apex /Dark or EVGA Dark Kingpin (Top Tier Boards, $$$$$), because XMP works on these boards and require little to no tuning to get your memory functioning properly. Mid to lower end boards, even the Asus Rog Maximus Z790 Hero are awful for XMP compatibility and memory overclocking. They require a lot of tuning, particularly VCCSA/IMC VDD/VDDQ TX. If you only plan to run 6000 or under, you're probably going to be fine. Anything above, you're playing the lottery.

I'd also like to add that when a game feels 'desynced, floaty, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, performance changes from boot to boot, or system performs like it's underpowered,' it's probably a memory stability issue. I absolutely despise ddr5, especially coming from DDR4. You think at this point DDR5 would be more compatible/stable across the board, but that's just not the case. Buildzoid (Well known overclocker) will constantly mention how DDR5 suffers from signal integrity issues due to being in gear 2. You can boot 1 time and everything works, then randomly out of no where on the next boot, everything can become unstable for no good reason and there's nothing you can do about it. It's incredibly frustrating to work on something that says it's stable, passes every stress test you throw at it and your system still doesn't perform or will randomly suffer from perf degradation out of the blue. I can see why so many people then turn to thinking their electricity is to blame. In their eyes, there's nothing wrong w/ their memory so it must be something else.

 

[Benjji]

So I came back to update this thread once again and I came across this reply.

I'm no longer playing the 2 other games I was having a lot of issues w/ due to obvious reasons, but now I began experiencing intermittent lag/stutter in other titles. I noticed that sometimes after a reboot, my system would somehow become unstable and there would be clear input delay in pretty much all games, along w/ a subtle stutter. Basically, all the games felt 'behind' and desynced. At this point I'm thinking okay... maybe my memory isn't stable even though I pass hours of Y-Cruncher VST. I just assumed my memory in XMP was 'stable enough' if I'm passing hours of vigorous stress tests... Turns out I was 100% WRONG on this assumption.

So, I decided to manually train every memory related voltage (VCCSA, IMC VDD (Memory Controller), VDDQ TX, and of course Mem VDD/VDDQ). I began w/ VCCSA and then IMC VDD. I've never actually gone through the process of tuning voltages outside of DRAM VDD/VDDQ. Tuning VCCSA and IMC VDD took me roughly 5hrs. For starters, I decided to shoot for 6800 rather than 7200 which my sticks are rated for (Hynix A-DIE, FYI). I started low and then went up in 100mv increments, ran benchmarks, stress tests and even jumped in game after each step up to test. For VCCSA, it sweet-spotted at 1.33v, exactly. There was noticeable degradation above or below that voltage. For IMC VDD, it sweet-spotted at 1.35v. A step above or below also showed degraded performance. Already my lag/stutter has diminished SIGNIFICANTLY and there's more consistency boot to boot now. Today I'm going to tune VDDQ TX and keep going.

Here's what I basically learned... DDR5 XMP compatibility/stability above 6000mhz is a complete nightmare. You can't rely on XMP to work on speeds above 6000mhz. Even if you pass a stress test here or there, you still might be completely unstable. It's better to train the voltages yourself, go through the process of finding the best voltage for your exact setup or you're probably going to have problems. I completely understand now why some swear on motherboards like the Asus Apex /Dark or EVGA Dark Kingpin (Top Tier Boards, $$$$$), because XMP works on these boards and require little to no tuning to get your memory functioning properly. Mid to lower end boards, even the Asus Rog Maximus Z790 Hero are awful for XMP compatibility and memory overclocking. They require a lot of tuning, particularly VCCSA/IMC VDD/VDDQ TX. If you only plan to run 6000 or under, you're probably going to be fine. Anything above, you're playing the lottery.

I'd also like to add that when a game feels 'desynced, floaty, sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, performance changes from boot to boot, or system performs like it's underpowered,' it's probably a memory stability issue. I absolutely despise ddr5, especially coming from DDR4. You think at this point DDR5 would be more compatible/stable across the board, but that's just not the case. Buildzoid (Well known overclocker) will constantly mention how DDR5 suffers from signal integrity issues due to being in gear 2. You can boot 1 time and everything works, then randomly out of no where on the next boot, everything can become unstable for no good reason and there's nothing you can do about it. It's incredibly frustrating to work on something that says it's stable, passes every stress test you throw at it and your system still doesn't perform or will randomly suffer from perf degradation out of the blue. I can see why so many people then turn to thinking their electricity is to blame. In their eyes, there's nothing wrong w/ their memory so it must be something else.

Honestly thank you for such a detailed reply, ive been thinking my issue was something to do with memory stablility since i was experiencing BSOD loops (the error code was saying it was the OS drive that was the problem) but after retraining ram i was able to boot back into windows with no problem, and other problems with ram (DDR4) sometimes not fully detecting in windows but all dimms are detected in bios, this seems to confirm my suspicions about it being related to memory. hopefully now i can finally sort this issue out although i will need to either get a pc specialist to do it for me or will need to learn more about memory overclocking. but hopefully your reply will lead me to the answer

 

[Kokkatc]

Saw this thread, just wanted to share that processor lasso helped me utilize only power cores for gaming processes - whiched helped with fps and stutter.

I gave up on e-cores for now. Many of the games I play are on the older side and they simply perform better with ecores off. Setting affinity kind of works but that alone doesn't guarantee the game won't attempt to erroneously use an ecore.

sorry to revive this but do you think RAM issues could cause this? my RAM was causing me issues earlier with blue screen looping. had to remove each stick and train them individually. this issue has only started happening to me since around december so im thinking it could also be a windows update issue? ive seen other posts saying how a recent windows update causes them game performance issues, Also im thinking it could be my PSU or my electricity as my voltage on the wallsocket is an inconsistent 240v (drops to 239-238 on one plug and goes upto 241 on another in the same circuit.) also i sometimes feel static/eletrical shock when touching the screws on my pc case. Could you help me in anyway? this issue is driving me insane

I find it interesting that this issue 'suddenly' started happening for you. Yeah, could be an update or perhaps some change you made or 3rd party app you installed, perhaps even a faulty driver installed in the background, who knows. Your memory could have have been on the edge of stability this whole time and the issue is now presenting itself.

For starters, I'd suggest updating your bios if one is available, leave xmp disabled, boot into windows and run a strenuous memory stress test like ycruncher VST, prime 95 small fft, or tm5 (absolut config) for several hours. If you pass with no errors or issues, then your cpu, mem, psu, are probably fine. Once you know that, you'll then need to go back in the bios, enable xmp and run the tests again. If errors now populate, your memory/imc/cpu is unstable. It's not uncommon for memory to no longer be stable and require more voltage somewhere. Do the above first so you can rule out faulty hardware. No point in trying a million things if a piece of hardware is failing. You'll go mad.

 

[Chrispy_]

I gave up on e-cores for now. Many of the games I play are on the older side and they simply perform better with ecores off. Setting affinity kind of works but that alone doesn't guarantee the game won't attempt to erroneously use an ecore.


I find it interesting that this issue 'suddenly' started happening for you. Yeah, could be an update or perhaps some change you made or 3rd party app you installed, perhaps even a faulty driver installed in the background, who knows. Your memory could have have been on the edge of stability this whole time and the issue is now presenting itself.

For starters, I'd suggest updating your bios if one is available, leave xmp disabled, boot into windows and run a strenuous memory stress test like ycruncher VST, prime 95 small fft, or tm5 (absolut config) for several hours. If you pass with no errors or issues, then your cpu, mem, psu, are probably fine. Once you know that, you'll then need to go back in the bios, enable xmp and run the tests again. If errors now populate, your memory/imc/cpu is unstable. It's not uncommon for memory to no longer be stable and require more voltage somewhere. Do the above first so you can rule out faulty hardware. No point in trying a million things if a piece of hardware is failing. You'll go mad.

E-cores are completely useless for gaming due to the decade-old IPC and miniscule amount of cache. Even Windows 11's scheduler won't help you in older games because the games are too old to be recognised by it and often get dumped on the E-cores as a legacy, unrecognised, and therefore low-priority process. Intel claim their thread director uses AI machine learning but it never learns because it isn't smart enough to see that there's a problem. As far as it's concerned, the legacy game processes are ticking along happily on E-cores without error.

Realistically, you have to disable the E-cores to get the most out of the CPU for gaming, and at that point you're paying for a bunch of E-cores that aren't accessible. If you game on E-cores you might as well just buy yourself an old 6th gen quad core and motherboard bundle on ebay for $75!

 

[bug]

E-cores are completely useless for gaming due to the decade-old IPC and miniscule amount of cache.

First gen E-cores were about as fast a Skylake core. Not exactly cutting edge today, but no slouch either.

Even Windows 11's scheduler won't help you in older games because the games are too old to be recognised by it and often get dumped on the E-cores as a legacy, unrecognised, and therefore low-priority process. Intel claim their thread director uses AI machine learning but it never learns because it isn't smart enough to see that there's a problem. As far as it's concerned, the legacy game processes are ticking along happily on E-cores without error.

Older games were actually meant to run on Skylake, so running on E-cores they should be right at home.

Realistically, you have to disable the E-cores to get the most out of the CPU for gaming, and at that point you're paying for a bunch of E-cores that aren't accessible. If you game on E-cores you might as well just buy yourself an old 6th gen quad core and motherboard bundle on ebay for $75!

Do that if you need to, by all means. I think some mobos even let you toggle E-core via a key combo. Disable them while gaming, enable them if you run something like Photoshop or some other piece of software that multithreads well.

Fwiw, I did disable E-core initially (Linux support wasn't there) and enabled them later on. I couldn't tell a difference in my day-to-day tasks.

 

[Kokkatc]

Fwiw, I did disable E-core initially (Linux support wasn't there) and enabled them later on. I couldn't tell a difference in my day-to-day tasks.

Sure, for day-to-day tasks, P&E enabled is great. They're also great for most tasks. If you happen to play any games however that are older, e-cores are a nightmare. The Windows 11 thread director is not as great as they claim unfortunately, and games also need to be properly coded to work w/ hybrid cpus, so what you end up with is an app that constantly tries to schedule e-cores regardless of affinity causing all sorts of latency/perf issues.

In regards to parking cores using the motherboard's legacy game compatibility (scroll lock) feature, even this is buggy as hell. Sometimes it parks e-cores, other times it does absolutely nothing. Same behavior over multiple motherboard brands. Some boards actually require a ps2 keyboard to utilize that feature.

 

[jallenlabs]

There is a new Nvidia Hotfix patch for stuttering, it just came out. I cant find the link, sorry.

Is Your PC Stuttering In Games And On The Web? Try This Hotfix From NVIDIA

Attention all GeForce graphics card owners, if you're system is inexplicable stuttering, the latest hotfix GPU driver from NVIDIA may be the salve to sooth your pain.

hothardware.com

 

[AleXXX666]

so you tried it with a 10900k and got the same problem ?

i only use this and got no probs:

Latest Visual C++ Redistributable Runtimes All-in-One Oct 2024 Download

This archive contains the latest version (Oct 2024) of all VCRedist Visual Studio C++ runtimes, installable with a single click by running the includ

www.techpowerup.com

and lastly what monitor are ya using. got a chance to test with another?
i just say this because it looks like you know what you are doing and that could be the last thing to try

why for sake you need 2005, 2008, 2010 etc. in 2k24?