Stuttering in most games

[Raid]

This is something that's been irritating me for a long time, and I want to get it sorted. In just about every modern game, I get a sort of stuttering effect. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. It doesn't look like lost frames or other FPS drop, it's as if the game is slowing down and speeding up once or twice a second. It's particularly noticeable on camera movement. I've taken a very quick clip from The Division's intro as an example:



Youtube may not be showing the effect off properly. The camera movement seems to stutter, but to me it doesn't look like a framerate drop - look at the NPC moving halfway through that clip; his animation looks like it's playing smoothly despite the camera movement.

It's not limited to The Division, it happens in a lot of games. Fallout 4, Just Cause 3 and Mechwarrior Online have all exhibited this symptom, but Diablo 3, MGS5 and Tribes Ascend haven't. It happened in Windows 7 as well as now in Windows 10, and has persisted through several GPU driver versions.

Can anyone suggest things to try? I'm not particularly good at troubleshooting this sort of stuff.

[Jez]

My god that would be unbearable for me. Sorry I don't have any advice but if nothing else I can confirm how awful it is.

[NG]

List your PC specs. You could terminate individual programs running in the background whilst gaming to see if that helps pinpoint the cause.

[Raid]

If anything, it's nice to know that other people can see it and it's not something wrong with my brain.

I've tried FRAPS, and the framerate remains fairly consistent within a certain range, but bounces constantly between the low end and the high end several times a second. It's as if my PC is bouncing off a rev limiter.

[NG]

The consistent frames you're getting from Fraps, is this when it's recording or not.

[Jez]

Have you changed any hardware that might be the cause? Has your system always done this?

[Raid]

It happens regardless of whether I'm using recording software.

I tried limiting the framerate in-game to 30, and it stuck to it without the stuttering. Maybe it actually is just a lack of horsepower. Specs:

CPU: i5-4670 3.4ghz
RAM: Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
GPU: XFX Radeon R9 290 4GB Double Dissipation
OS is installed on an SSD, most games on a 5400RPM HDD. Coulda sworn I'd bought a 7200RPM drive. Maybe that's an issue.

I haven't changed any hardware since I built it. It's also not a recent issue, it's been happening for over a year.

[Raid]

Interestingly, I left The Division running while I typed that post out. It was running at around 40fps when I left it. After going back to the game, it was running at 60, at which point it started to slow down over the course of about 30 seconds and there was an increase in fan noise (this happened while my character was idling, there was no change to the scene it was rendering). Could it be an overheating issue that's causing the throttling effect? The GPU has always run ferociously hot (90 degrees C), but I was told that this was normal for this card.

[Jez]

Does it only happen on cutscenes etc? How about regular gameplay?

[Raid]

Does it only happen on cutscenes etc? How about regular gameplay?

It happens during any in-engine rendering.

[Raid]

Huh, so that's a little worrying. When I first built this machine, I kept a temperature monitor on while gaming as I was worried about my cooling layout. I looked up the typical temperatures for my card, and it seemed that 94 degrees C was not out of the ordinary, which was what I was getting (and still am getting) while the card was under load. Now I've seen this: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/12/ ... scpLPKLQbU

That says 68 degrees is a normal load temperature without overclocking. My guess is that the throttling due to high temperatures is the issue. I'll try running with the case open and see if that helps.

[Snowy]

Bear in mind that leaving the case open often reduces the effectiveness of cooling mate

[Quietman]

I'd give everything a blast with some compressed air and make sure all your fans are working as expected.

[Rusty]

Aha. My mate sold me some 290s. He told me about a tweak he made to that AMD card tuner thing.
One the card gets to a certain temp it ramps up the fans and lowers the power going to it. As soon as the temp drops a little bit it throttles back the fans and pours on the juice again...this keeps happening in a cycle.
He gave me some stuff to tweak and it doesn't do it anymore.I'm not home at the moment but I'll see if I can find it on Monday when I'm back.
So annoying I can't think for the life of me what the app is called. It's the thing people use to show card stats in game. Like rivatuner.

[Dr@gon-UK]

Afterburner maybe?

https://gaming.msi.com/features/afterburner