MSi Afterburner Potential 1% Lows & Stutter Issues - FIXED

[oliv_r]

TLDR; MSI Afterburner's 'Power' & 'Power Percent' causes very bad 1% Lows to the point that it completely stutters your game. Therefore disable them, likewise:

This was tested by other people in this reddit thread, Dannyz (YouTube), my wife and I's respective gaming PCs (5950X & 3950X). My 5950X & 4070 Ti Super was struggling against huge mobs in Path of Exile 2 for the past two weeks since launch to the point where I had to lower all settings. But even then, same bad Lows and stutters persist even if I go 720p.

This all changed when I ran into Dannyz video, linked above and confirmation from other testers in the reddit thread linked above as well. I implemented their suggestions on both rigs at home and voila: my frametimes had been immaculate, 1% Lows are upwards of 110+ fps, no more stutters and GSync is functioning fine on the highest settings for PoE 2. I have yet to test other games but I am confident it will do the same thing: give me a smoother and better gaming experience.

google search tags: fix stutter amd cpu 5950x 9800x3d "x3d" poe 2 reddit msi afterburner techpowerup tech power up issue latency frametime frame time fps 2023 2024 2025

 

[harm9963]

TLDR; MSI Afterburner's 'Power' & 'Power Percent' causes very bad 1% Lows to the point that it completely stutters your game. Therefore disable them, likewise:
View attachment 377119

This was tested by other people in this reddit thread, Dannyz (YouTube), my wife and I's respective gaming PCs (5950X & 3950X). My 5950X & 4070 Ti Super was struggling against huge mobs in Path of Exile 2 for the past two weeks since launch to the point where I had to lower all settings. But even then, same bad Lows and stutters persist even if I go 720p.

This all changed when I ran into Dannyz video, linked above and confirmation from other testers in the reddit thread linked above as well. I implemented their suggestions on both rigs at home and voila: my frametimes had been immaculate, 1% Lows are upwards of 110+ fps, no more stutters and GSync is functioning fine on the highest settings for PoE 2. I have yet to test other games but I am confident it will do the same thing: give me a smoother and better gaming experience.

google search tags: fix stutter amd cpu 5950x 9800x3d "x3d" poe 2 reddit msi afterburner techpowerup tech power up issue latency frametime frame time fps 2023 2024 2025

Never had that issue, power percent and power, only use power for display and monitoring -Tray icon / power percent only in monitoring , but I only play at 4K .

 

[oliv_r]

Never had that issue, power percent and power, only use power for display and monitoring -Tray icon / power percent only in monitoring , but I only play at 4K .

It's case by case - for most, people with X3D chips were seeing the issue. For some reason same thing applied to my heavily PBO'd 5950X (-15 fastest four, -25 rest). I also tested it with Afterburner's monitoring window open in my other screen. When it was enabled, the moment Power started spiking up, my game, in this case PoE 2, started stuttering. I also tested turning off Auto Start on Afterburner and performance was fine (this was before unchecking Power & Power Percent) - I utilized GPU-Z to monitor sensors; no bad dips and stutters.

But like I said, extremely case by case but behavior mostly affected X3D chip owners.