[SOLVED] Frametime spikes/Stutters/FPS drops in all games.

[eidairaman1]

[Solved ] I had the same issue, not only video games but whole system frame and audio stutters every few seconds. if you check your framerate, it would show a smooth 60 or 90 FPS but the video shows stutters every few seconds.
Things I tried:
1. Clean reboot
2. Re-installed Windows 10
3. Tried base drivers originally with Windows
4. Upgraded all graphic drivers
5. Changed all power options
6. Upgraded my BIOS

Final Solution:
I downgraded my windows to windows 8.1, every things is fine now, no video audio stutters.

I will try installing windows 10 again to see if it remain the same.

Definitely give it a try!

Instead of installing ontop of 8.1 get a spare drive to test with a fresh OS

 

[oliseo]

I was just about to go down the path of reinstalling windows. Because Witcher 3 next gen was causing frame spikes every 10 seconds on horse, every few mintues on foot. I went to try and have a nap before I did, but I couldn't sleep due to the stress. So I got up, checked one more time, by eye, and couldn't see any. Did so on a few games. Launched MSI afterburner to double check what my tired eyes were seeing.

Transpires it was MSI afterburner all this time!! I can't even beging to tell you how angry I am right now. The very thing that I thought was helping me, was the very thing causing my issue. A few others have had the same experience. One guy told another who was having the same issue, that it happened to them as well, and the solution was to turn off power monitoring for the GPU in the settings, as they needed it for a undervolt on their 3080.

I have no idea how true this is. As I uninstalled afterburner. I can't believe how many hours I've wasted and getting frustrated when all along it was this garbage POS.

Now, I'm not saying this will work for anyone but me. But after YEARS of frustration wondering why I get frame spikes regardless of what motherboard, what CPU, what GPU, I've owned, I've always had frame spikes. To discover that I've been plagued by this software all this time. I'm more mad at myself than anything else.

I'm sure there will be a lot of people who try my fix, and discover for themselves how it feels to be me. It's as much as a slap in the face as discovering your best friend has been stealing from you.

Maybe you can still use afterburner with the fix that other guy said to do. If so, congrats.

But I'm so livid I even created an account just to post this. As this thread came up when I searched for "MSI afterburner causing frame spikes".

I can only hope that people give it a try, and it fixes their issues, then I'm glad I've finally given them some peace of mind.

EDIT: Just re-read my message, and yeah, not sure how you can undervolt and turn off power monitoring as well. So I went back and found the post they made, thinking I obviously must have read it wrong, being as tired as I am. But nope, I was right. Here is their post.

RVeldhuizen83
There is no need to delete Afterburner.
I need Afterburner for my RTX 3090 undervolt, but also experienced stuttering. The solution was to go to settings, monitoring, and disable all monitoring for GPU power.
Reboot.
Stuttering is gone. Everything runs as smooth as butter."

Again, I haven't tested this, and have no intention to do so either. I will not be installing it ever again.

 

[blackjack_br]

I don't know if you still having the issue, but I would love to give you an advise, sometimes is not your pc components, but the (electricity) there is something called (dirty electricity ) and 85% of people have dirty electricity, but while a 15% of them lives in proper buildings with proper electricity companies that offer a clean service, with less margin of errors

In your case i will highly recommend if you live in America go for a Panamax Power conditioner 110/120v
but if you live in Europe Australia, go for a 220/240v Power conditioner FURMAN.
Also make you sure to buy too a UPS double conversion (it has to be double conversion) that will keep the electricity frequency stable, and the power conditioner will clean the high electricity spikes, mantain the In/out voltage aka 110/120 or 220/240

And I can asure you, that you will have a crisp sound/crisp image, no longer stuttering, or visual lag, less input lag, you will be fixed

Cheers

Are you saying to connect my PC to a UPS, the UPS to a power conditioner, and the power conditioner to the outlet?

 

[kDude]

and the solution was to turn off power monitoring for the GPU in the settings, as they needed it for a undervolt on their 3080.

Is power limit included in the settings to uncheck or is it unrelated to power/power percent?

 

[Frick]

I was just about to go down the path of reinstalling windows. Because Witcher 3 next gen was causing frame spikes every 10 seconds on horse, every few mintues on foot. I went to try and have a nap before I did, but I couldn't sleep due to the stress. So I got up, checked one more time, by eye, and couldn't see any. Did so on a few games. Launched MSI afterburner to double check what my tired eyes were seeing.

Transpires it was MSI afterburner all this time!! I can't even beging to tell you how angry I am right now. The very thing that I thought was helping me, was the very thing causing my issue. A few others have had the same experience. One guy told another who was having the same issue, that it happened to them as well, and the solution was to turn off power monitoring for the GPU in the settings, as they needed it for a undervolt on their 3080.

I have no idea how true this is. As I uninstalled afterburner. I can't believe how many hours I've wasted and getting frustrated when all along it was this garbage POS.

Now, I'm not saying this will work for anyone but me. But after YEARS of frustration wondering why I get frame spikes regardless of what motherboard, what CPU, what GPU, I've owned, I've always had frame spikes. To discover that I've been plagued by this software all this time. I'm more mad at myself than anything else.

I'm sure there will be a lot of people who try my fix, and discover for themselves how it feels to be me. It's as much as a slap in the face as discovering your best friend has been stealing from you.

Maybe you can still use afterburner with the fix that other guy said to do. If so, congrats.

But I'm so livid I even created an account just to post this. As this thread came up when I searched for "MSI afterburner causing frame spikes".

I can only hope that people give it a try, and it fixes their issues, then I'm glad I've finally given them some peace of mind.

EDIT: Just re-read my message, and yeah, not sure how you can undervolt and turn off power monitoring as well. So I went back and found the post they made, thinking I obviously must have read it wrong, being as tired as I am. But nope, I was right. Here is their post.

RVeldhuizen83
There is no need to delete Afterburner.
I need Afterburner for my RTX 3090 undervolt, but also experienced stuttering. The solution was to go to settings, monitoring, and disable all monitoring for GPU power.
Reboot.
Stuttering is gone. Everything runs as smooth as butter."

Again, I haven't tested this, and have no intention to do so either. I will not be installing it ever again.

Vindication! I have said for quite some time now that Afterburner sucks.

 

[eidairaman1]

Vindication! I have said for quite some time now that Afterburner sucks.

Based upon riva tuner, and trouble is i doubt msi cares about the tool

 

[ParadiseBound]

I tried a lot of different things on here and nothing worked for me. What did end up working for me was changing my CPU performance profile in Ryzen Master Software. I have a Ryzen 5950X running with a 4070 super Ti and was stumped trying to figure out why I was getting very consistent FPS drops/Stuttering every 10-20 seconds. It would last for about 10 seconds and then go back to normal. Mine issue was not random, it was quite cyclical when I watched the performance graphs.

After changing my Ryzen Master profile to "eco-mode", every single game plays absolutely perfectly. Apparently my CPU was not optimized and after so many seconds it would just throttle, which caused the lagging. I am now working on further optimizing the settings to get optimal performance for my system.

Some of you are much smarter than me on this CPU stuff so you will probably think I'm an idiot for not recognizing that as my issue earlier, but thought I would share that for people that may not be aware of this being a possible cause as well.

 

[Fullmetalfixer]

*!Workable fix for stuttering!*

Hi all,

Please try this, it works both methods but one better than the other. I was also getting the Micro stuttering on my graph it was all over the place.

You need to install MSI Afterburner along with Riva Tuner, if you cap the fps in Rivatuner to what you know your gpu can reach on a game i.e 60/90/120fps you will get a stable line on the graph.

This also works using Radeon Chill, you just need to match the peak and idle numbers so they are the same, for exame Idle at 120 and peak at 120.

I still had some micro stutters doing it with Radeon Chill, not as perfect as Rivatuner but decent enough.

Doing FPS limits in a game, or from the AMD Adrenaline software (only shows in graphics options when out of a game, limit fps option) does not give you a stable graph.

First try MSI Afterburner with Rivertuner.

Second Radeon Chill setting.

To take a guess, Rivatuner caps the fps on a software level via an API, where as GPU's are doing it on a driver level.

My system specs:
AMD Ryzen 5700x3D
Sapphire RX 7900 XT 20gb Pulse
16GB DDR4 3200MHz ram
Gigabyte b550 gaming X v2
CORSAIR RM850w PSU

Screenshots below using rivatuner to cap fps.

Pillars of Eternity: White March part 2.

Sons of the forest before:

Sons of the Forest after:

Warhammer 40: Rogue trader before:

Warhammer 40: Rogue trader after:

For testing purposed I limited the fps with in game options for each game, Apart from Sons of the Forest that was already reaching 140 before I capped it lol. granted the ms does increase but it's stable. No noticable hicups from having Radeon Anti-Lag on or Freesync as far as I could tell.

Here is where you set the fps limit on the Rivatuner Statistics Server (comes with downloading MSI Afterburner)

I hope this helps!

Cheers.

 

[Chrispy_]

*!Workable fix for stuttering!*

Hi all,

Please try this, it works both methods but one better than the other. I was also getting the Micro stuttering on my graph it was all over the place.

You need to install MSI Afterburner along with Riva Tuner, if you cap the fps in Rivatuner to what you know your gpu can reach on a game i.e 60/90/120fps you will get a stable line on the graph.

This also works using Radeon Chill, you just need to match the peak and idle numbers so they are the same, for exame Idle at 120 and peak at 120.

Yes, capping your framerate will always help, because you reduce your CPU utilisation which means there is more headroom for the rogue process that causes stuttering to run before it takes CPU cycles away from the game's own threads long enough to delay a frame.

It's not a solution - that would be to identify the rogue thread that is causing the stuttering - but it's definitely a viable workaround that suppresses the symptoms for some people. How effective a framerate cap is at supressing stutters depends on how severe the CPU demands of the rogue process are, what priority it's running at, and how much headroom your particular CPU has in any given game at any given resolution.

 

[Fullmetalfixer]

I have found my fix! I rolled back my BIOS update on my Gigabyte B550 GAMING X V2 (rev. 1.4)

I know everyone's motherboard BIOS Revisions will be different, but the latest update for my board points towards AMD "AGESA 1.2.0Cc" fix, but I rolled back to a BIOS update which has version "AGESA V2 1.2.0.C"

I am using Andrenaline Beta version 25.1.1 but I believe this didn't make the difference as the issue was there on other driver versions, this even affected me on driver version 23.5.1 as I was advised to try that.

This worked for me but I can't say if it will work for you.

Everything is buttery smooth now, no longer any Microstutter in any games that I have uncapped, no longer need to rely on Rivatuner to cap the FPS now the GPU just works as intended.

Any questions please let me know.

Cheers.

 

[eidairaman1]

I have found my fix! I rolled back my BIOS update on my Gigabyte B550 GAMING X V2 (rev. 1.4)

I know everyone's motherboard BIOS Revisions will be different, but the latest update for my board points towards AMD "AGESA 1.2.0Cc" fix, but I rolled back to a BIOS update which has version "AGESA V2 1.2.0.C"

I am using Andrenaline Beta version 25.1.1 but I believe this didn't make the difference as the issue was there on other driver versions, this even affected me on driver version 23.5.1 as I was advised to try that.

This worked for me but I can't say if it will work for you.

Everything is buttery smooth now, no longer any Microstutter in any games that I have uncapped, no longer need to rely on Rivatuner to cap the FPS now the GPU just works as intended.

Any questions please let me know.

Cheers.

What were the changes between the 2 bios?

 

[Fullmetalfixer]

What were the changes between the 2 bios?

As far as I can tell and from the result Chat GPT gave me, is vulnerability support aimed at Ryzen 3000 series CPU's. Thing is the latest update can look like it is done properly, but it could of been a bad BIOS flash update still, I am not even tempted to try updating to the latest version as I am happy that it's fully stable now.

I am not particularly too concerned about not having the latest Vulnerability update as sat behind a router firewall like most of everyone else.

This could just be an Gigabyte Issue for this board, but if people here have tried everything and exhausted all other options, it wouldn't hurt (at your users own risk as always) to roll back BIOS back to an earlier version.

It's the September update that caused the issue for me, so I went back to the July update:

Cheers.

 

[eidairaman1]

As far as I can tell and from the result Chat GPT gave me, is vulnerability support aimed at Ryzen 3000 series CPU's. Thing is the latest update can look like it is done properly, but it could of been a bad BIOS flash update still, I am not even tempted to try updating to the latest version as I am happy that it's fully stable now.

I am not particularly too concerned about not having the latest Vulnerability update as sat behind a router firewall like most of everyone else.

This could just be an Gigabyte Issue for this board, but if people here have tried everything and exhausted all other options, it wouldn't hurt (at your users own risk as always) to roll back BIOS back to an earlier version.

View attachment 383468


It's the September update that caused the issue for me, so I went back to the July update:
View attachment 383470

Cheers.

To me it seems GA drops the ball as much as Asus does...