Windows 11 causing random stutters / frame-pacing / frame-time issues?

[grvn]

what versione did you have before that

Latest stable version.

The version that seems to run better is the hotfix one:

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

 

[Abortino]

I mean before 24H2, you had 23H2? And what Nvidia drivers? 566.36 you mean? And when was the first time you noticed these issues? I'm trying to build a chronological order on how things were before, and why would the latest hotfix solve a good chunk of the problems.

 

[grvn]

why would the latest hotfix solve a good chunk of the problems

Before I had Windows 10 22h2, now back on it again.

Also some time ago I had 23h2 also, but there... frame drops in Dota 2 while Windows 10 was smooth.

So 23h2 is irrelevant for me as I tested it long time ago.

Either way it doesn't matter because apparently MS is forcing 24h2 upgrade so...

 

[Abortino]

Another update: I asked another friend of mine to tests things out with the FFXIV bench (we tested for a brief Moment also CS2, had shit 99th percentile for the few minutes we tested) I was kind of adamant about the FFXIV, but instead well, It did not happen in 13 hours of testing. He did a bunch of things to his Windows 11 23H2 installation tho, namely debloat the thing with WinUtil and disable Resizeable BAR, he's also got Dual Boot with GRUB. He is on AM4, Nvidia GPU.

PC Specs:
Ryzen 5 3600
RTX 3070 Gigabyte Windforce 3X

Tested myself with the same debloat WinUtil and didn't help, still hard to think It is still related to Windows 11 in general.

 

[grvn]

still hard to think It is still related to Windows 11 in general

Maybe it's related mostly to Windows 11 24h2.

 

[Abortino]

By the way grvn, have you tried disabling ReBAR? You know, stuff like this can cause weird issues, I'm using as a base of reference my friend that doesn't have this issue (that's why I decided to debloat Windows 11 and disable ReBAR) and things seem to help? I haven't seen a stutter in nearly 4 hours of testin and such. I have no idea how ReBAR works specifically, but It does seems to help.

Also, have you tried lowering the resolution? In previous tests I have done seems to completely remove the issue altogheter, very odd, that's another reason why I'm suspecting ReBAR.

 

[grvn]

have you tried disabling ReBAR

Thanks for the suggestion but shouldn't ReBar improve performance?

 

[Abortino]

Only on some titles yes, but I have no clue, doesn't hurt to try I guess. I personally had this friend of mine that solved Tekken 8 frame spikes like this (the last one I asked to test). And besides, of this is the issue you would be sacrificing very little steady performance for better frametimes. It could be related specifically to 4000 series cards, the only way to know Is to keep testing until you got It right.

 

[izy]

With an Nvidia GPU (not sure about AMD GPUs) i was having the some problem at some point, the fix for me was to disable MPO, not sure if thats the case for you but you could try it.

You can disable MPO with the NVCleanstall (it has an option there) or you can use this reg hack (reboot after):

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm]
"OverlayTestMode"=dword:00000005

 

[Abortino]

I completely forgot about MPO, I will give that a try if disabling ReBAR doesn't work, thanks! I believe Nvidia itself has got a script to easily enable/disable MPO.

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

 

[izy]

I completely forgot about MPO, I will give that a try if disabling ReBAR doesn't work, thanks! I believe Nvidia itself has got a script to easily enable/disable MPO.

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

Yeah, I think I used those registry tweaks from Nvidia when I had the problem. I suggest trying to disable MPO first then ReBAR. You could also do a clean installation of the GPU driver, run a RAM test, and try testing with the BIOS settings set to default.

 

[Abortino]

Unfortunately I have already done some of this testing, I mean I don't really think this is hardware related since 2 systems I have here at home present the same problem, plus one of two people I personally know have the same strange issue (I'm not sure of the first one I asked has the same issue, looking at the Nvidia Performance Overlay logs seems like it).

 

[izy]

Unfortunately I have already done some of this testing, I mean I don't really think this is hardware related since 2 systems I have here at home present the same problem, plus one of two people I personally know have the same strange issue (I'm not sure of the first one I asked has the same issue, looking at the Nvidia Performance Overlay logs seems like it).

Do as you think is best but it's always good to rule things out. Sometimes an issue can have different causes, even if the same problem occurs on different systems.
Nvidia Overlay , yeah, could also cause issues, you can try disabling it as well if you have it enabled

 

[Abortino]

I guess testing again wouldn't hurt, being uncommon and all that, I would like mostly to fix It for good and move on, even sacrificing a bit of performance, as long I'm able to figure out what is causing it.

 

[grvn]

Good info from everyone but I guess we also need to find out if first these issues occur on Windows 10 22h2. If not, then it's a Windows 11 thingy or a some kind of incompatibility? rebar / nvidia driver / hags etc. on Windows 11?

 

[Abortino]

grvn give It a swing really, I think It was able to improve everything all across the boards, plus looking at RTX 4070 performance It changes almost nothing, in some instances It can even worsen the performance. At least you will know how to solve the issue.

 

[izy]

@Abortino did you fixed it? -- erm i thought you are the OP

Good info from everyone but I guess we also need to find out if first these issues occur on Windows 10 22h2. If not, then it's a Windows 11 thingy or a some kind of incompatibility? rebar / nvidia driver / hags etc. on Windows 11?

Have you tried the tips I gave you? It’s much faster to check those first than to reinstall Windows.

Order: Disable Nvidia Overlay , Disable MPO, try with BIOS default settings, do a clean Nvidia driver install , disable ReBar, set your power plan to Maximum Performance, test your RAM.

 

[Abortino]

It happened something very odd, I had no drop in 7 hours, then It appeared again. I don't think this was just luck, also because I have done another test (with MPO disabled) after this one lasting 2 hours and nothing happened still. For some reason I feel like It is just decreasing in frequency for some reason.

 

[izy]

It happened something very odd, I had no drop in 7 hours, then It appeared again. I don't think this was just luck, also because I have done another test (with MPO disabled) after this one lasting 2 hours and nothing happened still. For some reason I feel like It is just decreasing in frequency for some reason.

Set your power plan to Maximum Performance and try again.

 

[Abortino]

If It happens still again, I think I will do that + enable Ultimate Performance power Plan. If everything is solved I will just go backwards until I find the culprit(s). I haven't mentioned, but It does seem to disappear too if I reduce the resolution (to 720p). I have always been testing at 1440p, and for this problem nature I always thought It was CPU/RAM related, but now that I have disabled these things and It seems to improve a good chunk I'm not sure.

EDIT: Sorry I ready It wrong, did you mean "Maximum performance" as in the Nvidia Control Panel?

 

[izy]

If It happens still again, I think I will do that + enable Ultimate Performance power Plan. If everything is solved I will just go backwards until I find the culprit(s). I haven't mentioned, but It does seem to disappear too if I reduce the resolution (to 720p). I have always been testing at 1440p, and for this problem nature I always thought It was CPU/RAM related, but now that I have disabled these things and It seems to improve a good chunk I'm not sure.

EDIT: Sorry I ready It wrong, did you mean "Maximum performance" as in the Nvidia Control Panel?

Do it for both , Power Plan in Windows and "Maximum performance" in the Nvidia Control Panel.
Did you check your VRAM usage at 1440p? Can you post some stats of the CPU/GPU and RAM / VRAM usage when it happens?

 

[Abortino]

Sure! Unfortunately Nvidia Telemetry doesn't record or keep track of VRAM usage, It could be related to swapping stuff there, I don't know if It can help, but I have started to notice these problems in July.

 

[izy]

Sure! Unfortunately Nvidia Telemetry doesn't record or keep track of VRAM usage, It could be related to swapping stuff there, I don't know if It can help, but I have started to notice these problems in July.

We need to make sure that your game doesn’t use more VRAM or RAM than available. That’s usually the cause of stutters and low 1% performance. What is the system you are currently testing on?

Do all of the following:

1. Disable Nvidia Overlay
2. Disable MPO (multiplane overlay)
3. Set BIOS settings to default
4. Perform a clean Nvidia driver install (if you haven’t done this already)
5. Set your power plan to Maximum Performance (both Windows and NVIDIA)
6. Lower in-game settings (usually, reducing texture quality helps) - you can keep the 1440p res

After this, retest the game. If it works well, you can gradually go back to your previous settings one by one and try to pinpoint what’s causing the problem. We can work from there.

One more thing you can try is downloading NvidiaProfileInspector and restoring all profiles to default.
Also, you should download HWInfo and keep it running in the background. After testing, check your CPU/GPU temperatures. You can post a screenshot of HWInfo here so we can see the maximum temperatures and other relevant information.

Edit:
One more thing I forgot to mention: you should disable Core Isolation / Memory Integrity in Windows.
Also, check your BIOS settings to see if SVM Mode is enabled and disable it for the purpose of this testing.
To be sure everything is disabled run System Info on your computer and check Virtualization-based security, it should be "Not enabled"

Let me know how it goes., you can post some screenshots here so we can check them out.

 

[Abortino]

If I check the amount of VRAM allocated right now with RTSS or Windows itself, on the FFXIV benchmark, It is less than 2 GB VRAM. I don't know if It helps, but I have also tried with a clean Windows installation (same on the other machine at the time) and things didn't change at all. I will post a time interval tracked by Nvidia Telemetry when the stutter happens, on that there will be everything related to performance and hardware info (aside of VRAM usage unfortunately).

I have already tested with VBS and Core Isolation disabled, unfortunately nothing really changed, as frequent as ever. I have checked with msinfo if everything was off as expected.

 

[izy]

If I check the amount of VRAM allocated right now with RTSS or Windows itself, on the FFXIV benchmark, It is less than 2 GB VRAM. I don't know if It helps, but I have also tried with a clean Windows installation (same on the other machine at the time) and things didn't change at all. I will post a time interval tracked by Nvidia Telemetry when the stutter happens, on that there will be everything related to performance and hardware info (aside of VRAM usage unfortunately).

I have already tested with VBS and Core Isolation disabled, unfortunately nothing really changed, as frequent as ever. I have checked with msinfo if everything was off as expected.

I edited my post, check the System Info. Sometimes VBS (Virtualization-Based Security) doesn’t get disabled even when you turn off Memory Integrity for some reason.
Do all of the things I mentioned in my post (including monitoring with HWINFO) and let me know how it goes. Post some screenshots so we can check the results.

Another tool you can use is LatencyMoon , some screenshots from that would help too.