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Micro-Stutters - What is causing this?

O

olm3k

n00b
Joined
Aug 6, 2013
Messages
18
Whenever I am in a game, both online and offline, I experience these "micro-stutters". The game will just stop for a milisecond and then quickly catch back up with itself about once every 5 seconds or so.
It is NOT FPS dropping. It is NOT input latency. It is NOT network lag. It's just as I described it, and I cannot find out what is causing it.

I have more than powerful enough hardware for the games and even have tried them on all low settings without any success. CPU and GPU temps seem to both be reasonable. I have tried the new AMD 13.8 driver and I do NOT run crossfire.

Any suggestions or ways to troubleshoot the problem?


SPECS
-----------------
CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 980 Processor
Mobo: ASRock 970 Extreme3
RAM: 8GB (4x2GB) Patriot DDR3 PC3-8500F (533 MHz)
Vid Card: HIS AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series 2GB
OS: Windows 7 64bit
HDD: WD 1002FAEX (1TB - 7200RPM)
PSU: OCZ XStream 700w


Let me know what you think guys, thanks!
 
Depends on the game. I've experienced this in Skyrim on my HD 6970 as well.

Only thing that smooths it out is a FPS limiter, but that can cause the game to glitch in strange ways (physics and dialog-sync issues, some of them game-breaking). Not really usable for actually playing the game.

Not a problem on my old GTX 260 or my new GTX 780, seems to be AMD-specific. Older drivers might help...
 
Might try cleaning out all of the drivers- that's where I'd start. There's really very little reason for your setup to be causing an issue like this with all games, and if I were to point a finger, I'd probably look closer at your CPU/motherboard than your GPU.

Nuke the drivers any way you can, then reinstall the latest non-betas. Might want to make a full restore image first, especially if you take it a step further and do a clean install.
 
Can we get a time frame? If it didn't always do it then it is helpful to know what may have happened between it happening and not happening.
 
Well, I built the PC back in 2011 and it slowly crept up on me over the last 6 months or so. Its gotten progressively worse I would say. The only thing I have changed was my HDD which was changed AFTER it started happening - so we can rule that out.

For some reason I have this suspicion that its my RAM as they were just hand-me-downs. I don't really know how to interpret this but does this look OK?

SMBus address 0x50
Memory type DDR3
Module format UDIMM
Manufacturer (ID) Patriot Memory (7F7F7F7F7F020000)
Size 2048 MBytes
Max bandwidth PC3-8500F (533 MHz)
Part number 1600LL Series
Number of banks 8
Nominal Voltage 1.50 Volts
EPP no
XMP yes
XMP revision 1.2
AMP no
 
olm3k said:
Whenever I am in a game, both online and offline, I experience these "micro-stutters". The game will just stop for a milisecond and then quickly catch back up with itself about once every 5 seconds or so.
It is NOT FPS dropping. It is NOT input latency. It is NOT network lag. It's just as I described it, and I cannot find out what is causing it.

I have more than powerful enough hardware for the games and even have tried them on all low settings without any success. CPU and GPU temps seem to both be reasonable. I have tried the new AMD 13.8 driver and I do NOT run crossfire.

Any suggestions or ways to troubleshoot the problem?


SPECS
-----------------
CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 980 Processor
Mobo: ASRock 970 Extreme3
RAM: 8GB (4x2GB) Patriot DDR3 PC3-8500F (533 MHz)
Vid Card: HIS AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series 2GB
OS: Windows 7 64bit
HDD: WD 1002FAEX (1TB - 7200RPM)
PSU: OCZ XStream 700w


Let me know what you think guys, thanks!
Click to expand...

Unknown-One said:
Depends on the game. I've experienced this in Skyrim on my HD 6970 as well.

Only thing that smooths it out is a FPS limiter, but that can cause the game to glitch in strange ways (physics and dialog-sync issues, some of them game-breaking). Not really usable for actually playing the game.

Not a problem on my old GTX 260 or my new GTX 780, seems to be AMD-specific. Older drivers might help...
Click to expand...
It may or may not be AMD specific. I will say I did last experience a similar issue to the OP's when I had an AMD CPU and AMD GPU (HD4850). That rig is now my HTPC listed in my sig. Things would slow to a crawl then all of a sudden speed up as if someone just hit the slow mo button or the game would stop then suddenly jump ahead 3 seconds.

I always attributed it to the game itself loading things into VRAM from the hard drive similar to how certain games do level loading, especially since new objects usually appeared on the screen afterwards. However, my graphics card was lacking in both power and VRAM (512MB) as opposed to the OP's powerful 6950 with 2GB. Lowering graphics settings and/or different drivers usually helped my situation. OP hasn't told us what specific games this is happening on, it could also be game specific.
 
olm3k said:
For some reason I have this suspicion that its my RAM as they were just hand-me-downs.
Click to expand...

Can you try disabling XMP in the BIOS? Personally I don't think XMP is a good thing, never had a good experience with it.
Your RAM is 1333Mhz not 1600Mhz. XMP is over-clocking your RAM.
Test your RAM with http://www.memtest.org/
Do tests with both XMP on and with XMP off.


You might as well also test your Graphics card:

GPU
Stress Test (FurMark, MSI Kombuster)

Graphics RAM
Stress Test (Video Memory Stress Test)
 
This is a long shot but worth looking into, since you said it was fine then started up recently.

A few years ago while playing racing games (I think it was Grid) I would notice occasional stutter. Sometimes it would happen and sometimes it wouldnt, but when it did it was noticeable and annoying to me. I finally realized it was the HWMonitor software I would occasionally run while checking CPU or GPU temperatures. Once I realized this, the solution was as simple as closing that program before I played...

Just throwing that out there, it may be something else running in the background causing this stutter.

If you do suspect your memory it is easy to run something like memtest and confirm. Memtest86+ from memtest.org was an old favorite but has not been updated since 2011.
 
Spazturtle said:
Can you try disabling XMP in the BIOS? Personally I don't think XMP is a good thing, never had a good experience with it.
Your RAM is 1333Mhz not 1600Mhz. XMP is over-clocking your RAM.
Test your RAM with http://www.memtest.org/
Do tests with both XMP on and with XMP off.
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea what XMP really does? The ram is set to default to JDEC standard of 1333 (533x2) for compatibility reasons. The ram he has is spec'd to run @ 1600 (800x2)..Check the part number from Patriot yourself.
 
What you're describing does not sound like a hardware issue, especially if it is happening at regular intervals in any game. I would see what services or apps you can kill one by one until you find the offender...
 
You can try testing your RAM first definitely, but if it crept up over time, it sounds like installed program issues. I would get a backup or newly formatted HD, fresh windows install, and see if the issue is still there. If it isn't then it was OS "decay", something is causing conflicts.
 
ccityinstaller said:
Do you have any idea what XMP really does? The ram is set to default to JDEC standard of 1333 (533x2) for compatibility reasons. The ram he has is spec'd to run @ 1600 (800x2)..Check the part number from Patriot yourself.
Click to expand...

Yes XMP is a pre set overclock value. If the RAM was 1600Mhz they would have used the JDEC standard for 1600Mhz.
 
Spazturtle said:
Yes XMP is a pre set overclock value. If the RAM was 1600Mhz they would have used the JDEC standard for 1600Mhz.
Click to expand...

When XMP (and EPPs) were created, there was no '1600MHz JEDEC standard'. That's why they exist; they're designed to specify what the memory is actually capable of running at, so that a BIOS/UEFI can automatically set the clocks and timings when no JEDEC standard exists. This does result in overclocking memory controllers, of course.
 
Spazturtle said:
Can you try disabling XMP in the BIOS? Personally I don't think XMP is a good thing, never had a good experience with it.
Your RAM is 1333Mhz not 1600Mhz. XMP is over-clocking your RAM.
Test your RAM with http://www.memtest.org/
Do tests with both XMP on and with XMP off.


You might as well also test your Graphics card:

GPU
Stress Test (FurMark, MSI Kombuster)

Graphics RAM
Stress Test (Video Memory Stress Test)
Click to expand...

Headsup, windows now has a built in bootup memory tester
type mdsched.exe in run box

Been looking for a video ram tester. Thanks.
 
What you might want to do to troubleshoot initially is fire up something and reproduce the problem. Once you done that take a look at your Windows event logs (Application and System) to see if there is anything abnormal being reported at the time of the issue (driver error or similar).

Another option would be to use perfmon and enable counters from your usual suspects, see if there any strange drop off during the stutters.
 
Are you overclocked at all? CPU or GPU?

If XMP has your ram set to 1600Mhz, did you adjust the cpu-nb voltage at all? From what I've seen in the past, sometimes they can use a slight bump for stability.
 
Have you checked if the card is firmly placed in the PCI-E slot. Check that first!!. This exact same thing happened to me as my card is huge and sagged once..
 
Did you get it sorted out? Also, have you tried a clean install of Windows?
 
Yeah I second or third cleaning the drvers off and then installing the new beta drivers.
 
OP here.

I did some troubleshooting but unfortunately have not had any luck. Tempted to just buy a new computer this is driving me insane (or possibly paypal the money i would have used to buy a new comp to the person who can find me a cure - hehe jk)

One more thing I noticed that I never really mentioned is that the problem occurs heavily in some games, mildly in others, and not at all in some - almost as if my PC has problems with certain engines and not others. For example, it occurs heavily on BF3/BF4/Smite/Crysis... mildly on SCII... and not at all in BatmanAC, TF2, DOTA2 and WoW. I'm not sure if this provides any insight.

Now to address some of the troubleshooting suggestions:

murkris118 said:
Have you checked if the card is firmly placed in the PCI-E slot. Check that first!!. This exact same thing happened to me as my card is huge and sagged once..
Click to expand...

-It is as firmly placed as I can possibly place it. One thing that is weird though is that I can actually see the gap between the long section of the pins and the little short section of the pins on the card itself. It looks as if the little separator inside the PCI-E slot itself would completely fit tightly into that gap, but its not. This is leading me to believe that the card is not fully seating. Absolutely nothing is stopping it and I'm pressing it in all the way, so I'm not really sure but I figured it was worth mentioning. Also - considering this problem has not always happened, I doubt it is anything related to the seating.

David_Schroth said:
What you're describing does not sound like a hardware issue, especially if it is happening at regular intervals in any game. I would see what services or apps you can kill one by one until you find the offender...
Click to expand...

hotcrandel said:
one more random one; disable your antivirus temporarily and see if it helps.
Click to expand...


To address this and all other suspicions that it is a non-hardware problem: I got a brand new HDD and reinstalled my copy of Windows. The problem still persists. I even go into services.msc and manually kill pretty much all non-vital services. I have no anti-virus software at all.

The only non-hardware problem that would persist even through a full new HDD and reformat would be if it was something wrong with the OS (is this possible?) Also - there are some items that I had installed like sound drivers pre and post new HDD. I have tried different versions of my vid card drivers (both current and beta). I have not tried going backwards yet with drivers - so maybe I'll try that next.


maro said:
This is a long shot but worth looking into, since you said it was fine then started up recently.

A few years ago while playing racing games (I think it was Grid) I would notice occasional stutter. Sometimes it would happen and sometimes it wouldnt, but when it did it was noticeable and annoying to me. I finally realized it was the HWMonitor software I would occasionally run while checking CPU or GPU temperatures. Once I realized this, the solution was as simple as closing that program before I played...

Just throwing that out there, it may be something else running in the background causing this stutter.

If you do suspect your memory it is easy to run something like memtest and confirm. Memtest86+ from memtest.org was an old favorite but has not been updated since 2011.
Click to expand...


Spazturtle said:
Can you try disabling XMP in the BIOS? Personally I don't think XMP is a good thing, never had a good experience with it.
Your RAM is 1333Mhz not 1600Mhz. XMP is over-clocking your RAM.
Test your RAM with http://www.memtest.org/
Do tests with both XMP on and with XMP off.


You might as well also test your Graphics card:
Click to expand...

Yakk said:
You can try testing your RAM first definitely, but if it crept up over time, it sounds like installed program issues. I would get a backup or newly formatted HD, fresh windows install, and see if the issue is still there. If it isn't then it was OS "decay", something is causing conflicts.
Click to expand...


Ocean said:
Headsup, windows now has a built in bootup memory tester
type mdsched.exe in run box

Been looking for a video ram tester. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I ran the windows memory test and it reported no problems. It didnt give me a summary of the test or anything - it simply went through both passes and did not notify me of any problems. I also have tried not running my HWmonitor (I use CPU-Z). This does not seem to make a difference.

Moqu said:
Are you overclocked at all? CPU or GPU?

If XMP has your ram set to 1600Mhz, did you adjust the cpu-nb voltage at all? From what I've seen in the past, sometimes they can use a slight bump for stability.
Click to expand...

I have not modified ANYTHING in my BIOS whatsoever and that includes overclocking.
 
Exactly what 6900 series video card do you have? It might be a bios issue where flashing the card could help. And there isn't a need to worry about putting on a wrong flash since there is a switch on top to flash it with a 2nd bios.
 
Thorin08 said:
Exactly what 6900 series video card do you have? It might be a bios issue where flashing the card could help. And there isn't a need to worry about putting on a wrong flash since there is a switch on top to flash it with a 2nd bios.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm, I'm not very familiar with flashing anything, but I'm willing to try it at this point.

Here is the exact link to my card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161372


Could you perhaps link an easy to understand tutorial on how to do what you are suggesting?
 
Also... I know I said my temps seemed reasonable but I figured I would post them here and see what you guys have to say

TEMPS: http://i.imgur.com/OpoerWJ.png

The "max" column on the right side is after 2 hours of SCII on medium settings.
 
Your temps are very reasonable, and infact I would consider that very cool. I have taken my card up to 90 degrees celcius and it held up strong. (sapphire 6950).

The article I link mentions that you can potentially unlock more shaders in your 6950 to make it perform like a 6970, and in hindsight forgot to mention that. *the flashing procedure is the same, you would just have to scour the web for a 6950 bios, they are easy to find*

It is actually relatively easy to do, and it is all done in a Windows environment (I.e. install program...copy bios, install new bios. reset and see if it works.) I would recommend printing the article so you can read in detail what you are doing.

If you card softbricks, or doesn't perform stable you simply flip the switch and you go back to your original settings. (since you'll be flashing the 2nd bios, and not the first) where you would use the same program to flash the (by merely flipping the switch back to 2nd after you boot) 2nd bios back to the original, and un-brick the 2nd bios setting.

If you are having problems its definately worth a shot. I was having graphic issues where some parts of the game would not get rendered in x-fire. Flashing both cards to 6970's helped my problem and gave me more performance to boot.

does that make sense?
 
Random ideas i would have tried:

Underclock everything.
Try different direct x modes.
Prime 95 to check for cpu errors.

Questions:
Which games?
Audio also?
HD video also?
 
Pull out any hardware you dont need to boot and test the game.

Soundcards, optical drives,floppoy drives, any usb devices besides keyboard / mouse etc. See if it works.
 
Ocean said:
Random ideas i would have tried:

Underclock everything.
Try different direct x modes.
Prime 95 to check for cpu errors.

Questions:
Which games?
Audio also?
HD video also?
Click to expand...


In response to your suggestions:

-"Underclock everything" - Ill have to look into how to do this. Do you just mean my CPU and video card? I've never exactly over/underclock anything so if you could link a tutorial that would be awesome!

-"different DX modes": how exactly do you do this?

-"prime 95 to check CPU errors": I can try this, but what will I be looking for when running the test? From what I read about it, this "torture testing" seems kind of scary. Is it completely safe?

In response to your questions:

-This occurs heavily in games like Starcraft II, BF3/4, Crysis, Smite. It occurs moderately in games like DOTA2. It does not occur AT ALL in games like TF2 and WoW. Its kind of strange how its so selective.

-This is not audio lag, just video.

-This does not occur with HD video. - In fact, to be more specific... this ONLY occurs during actual gameplay. For example, if there was some moving 3d model on the menu of a game it would never stutter. Just in-game.

Thanks for the help!


0V3RC10CK3D said:
Pull out any hardware you dont need to boot and test the game.

Soundcards, optical drives,floppoy drives, any usb devices besides keyboard / mouse etc. See if it works.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try this first thing tomorrow. The only thing I really have is an optical driver so I will just unplug the cable from the back of it.
 
May very well be a virus or malware running in the background, running at a high thread priority. I've had this happen before and it can cause games to stutter like that. Try running McAfee free scan or something.
 
OP:

Stupid question: What resolution are you running?

I get microstutters on my HD6950 2GB Crossfire and non-Crossfire because I'm running Eyefinity 7680x1600 and my VRAM gets maxed out pretty much instantly. If you are above 1080p that might explain a lot.
 
olm3k said:
In response to your suggestions:

-"Underclock everything" - Ill have to look into how to do this. Do you just mean my CPU and video card? I've never exactly over/underclock anything so if you could link a tutorial that would be awesome!--- in the bios, decrease fsb. in ccc decrease core clock to something like 500, test, then undo your changes.

-"different DX modes": how exactly do you do this? ----sc2 for example can run at either dx9 or dx10 modes. Tf2 always uses 9, crysis usually uses dx10

-"prime 95 to check CPU errors": I can try this, but what will I be looking for when running the test? From what I read about it, this "torture testing" seems kind of scary. Is it completely safe? ---Yep safe, you are going to run it for about ten minutes amd it will report if your computational result os different than the actual answer, indicating a problem.

In response to your questions:

-This occurs heavily in games like Starcraft II, BF3/4, Crysis, Smite. It occurs moderately in games like DOTA2. It does not occur AT ALL in games like TF2 and WoW. Its kind of strange how its so selective. ----directx version is the difference in those games. Dx9 only ones are fine.

-This is not audio lag, just video. ----

-This does not occur with HD video. - In fact, to be more specific... this ONLY occurs during actual gameplay. For example, if there was some moving 3d model on the menu of a game it would never stutter. Just in-game.-----

Thanks for the help!
Click to expand...

---edited into quotes


run a game in low setting in windowed mode (star craft 2 should work : Alt+Enter) run task manager along side of it. See if any process kicks up higher than the game during the stutters)
 
0V3RC10CK3D said:
Pull out any hardware you dont need to boot and test the game.

Soundcards, optical drives,floppoy drives, any usb devices besides keyboard / mouse etc. See if it works.
Click to expand...

Tried this. Unfortunately did not work :(

Thanks for the suggestion though, any other ideas?

SlipperyPete said:
May very well be a virus or malware running in the background, running at a high thread priority. I've had this happen before and it can cause games to stutter like that. Try running McAfee free scan or something.
Click to expand...

I have a hard time believing its a virus thing, because the problem has continued through two reformats and one hard drive switch. This leads me to believe that it HAS to be hardware related, no?

rtangwai said:
OP:

Stupid question: What resolution are you running?

I get microstutters on my HD6950 2GB Crossfire and non-Crossfire because I'm running Eyefinity 7680x1600 and my VRAM gets maxed out pretty much instantly. If you are above 1080p that might explain a lot.
Click to expand...

Well I've seen the problem on multiple resolutions. Both 1440x900 on my 19in monitor and 1920x1080 on 24 inch.





Also... Ocean... I will be trying some of your suggestions later today.

thanks so much for all the help everyone keep it coming!
 
^If you re-formatted only your OS drive, and hooked up a storage device after, a virus or malware may still exist on that drive and migrate over after the OS engages it. Very unlikely though so I would disregard; if you've formatted and re-installed twice I would move on.
 
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