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Vsync stutter - help needed

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Phantastical

n00b
Joined
Dec 29, 2015
Messages
14
Well I have a very odd problem and feel like I've exhausted all troubleshooting options I can muster. Hoping someone with more knowledge on this subject can help. I've asked around on other forums and haven't gotten anywhere. So here goes again.

All my games run at full or near full 30/60fps showing no framerate drops even in FRAPs, so this isn't a performance issue. Yet every 20 seconds or so, always at this timed interval, my screen appears to jerk and stutter for a moment. I would not exactly call it stutter though because the audio remains fine and my framerate is not dropping. More like frames being dropped altogether or something going outta whack. If I disable vsync, then this jittering doesn't occur but then I get terrible screen tearing of course.

Now this does not affect every game or everything I do on my PC. Many PC games and such run perfectly fine. It does however show up on like 60p Youtube videos. In Chrome if I enable "stats for nerds", it shows that frames are being dropped at those timed intervals when the jittering happens. The only fix for it has been using h264ify plugin which forces hardware acceleration. No idea why.

This issue also mostly shows up in emulators too, such as Dolphin and PPSSPP. The only slight workarounds I've found for those has been creating a custom resolution with a refresh rate of 59.4hz. But this introduces a new bug. The jittering won't happen every 20 seconds, but after like 5-10 minutes of playing, everything gets very jerky for a bit unless I jump into an emulator menu or something. So it appears to cause random desyncing.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Why would I get this odd jittering at these timed intervals?

I have tried everything from a fresh Windows install, disabling powerplay via Afterburner, underclocking, overclocking, various drivers, disabling core parking, tweaking bios, disabling HPET timing, testing other monitors, frame limiting, triple and double buffering, etc. I'm stumped. PC is clean, no anti virus running or anything funny. Nothing works. Always this jittering with certain games, 60p Youtube vids and emulators.
 
I've seen this before on my old rig. Core2Quad 6600 with a Gigabyte motherboard. Anyways I had fan speed control with bios temperature monitoring/shutdown if too hot. CPU usage was high and somewhat eractic even with nothing running. Playing games I would get stutter that would drive me insane. Did what you did and killed background programs, processes etc. I thought I had a virus. Anyways started playing around with bios settings and turning off those did the magic.

Not saying that is the issue with what you have but it looked like for me bios interrupts for monitoring temperature was overriding anything the OS was trying to do causing stuttering and increase cpu usage. You might want to try some bios changes, see what your cpu usage is when this happens etc.
 
The only fan control settings in my bios is Asus Q-fan control. Disabling that makes my heatsink fans run at full speed which isn't exactly what I want. I tried it anyway and it didn't change anything. Can't imagine high cpu usage either as I tested on my old AMD Phenom rig and the jittering wasn't there.

Despite the topic title, I don't think I'd call what I'm experiencing "stutter". It doesn't affect every game I play either, only certain titles, 60p Youtube vids and various emulators. It also only happens at timed intervals too, so it really has to be some vsync desyncing issue going on. I just seem to be dropping frames, not overall framerate drops.
 
cageymaru said:
I don't have this problem, but some guys have been complaining about Asus AI Suite software causing DPC Latency problems lately. Here is an article on it. Basically you might want to uninstall the Asus software called AI Suite.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...del=Maximus+IV+Extreme&page=1&SLanguage=en-us
Click to expand...

I like how that post if from 2011 and they still have DPC issues with AI Suite. This is from the Asus rep, three days ago:

Raja@ASUS said:
If you have AI Suite installed, remove it. The current version polls a bit too aggressively, which can cause DPC latency spikes.
Click to expand...

Just stop installing unecessary utilities people. Hopefully the OP's issue is this simple.
 
I have never installed or used Asus AI Suite. I knew better before even purchasing this motherboard lol

I've already run DPC Latency Checker before too and it showed no issues. It hovered around the 30 mark. That's also the route which lead me to test out disabling HPET timing which did absolutely nothing.

As mentioned, this is some odd vsync issue going on. Setting my refresh rate to 59.4hz seems to have a band-aid effect on smoothing things out but has the quirk in that many emulators and games will desync for a bit after playing a while before going back to normal.
 
well instead of using vsync....try using frame rate limiter either with riva tuner stat server, or the built in limiter in the driver? In any case i would run gpuz on sensor tab and glance at the graph to see whats happening during the stutters....as in is the gpu clock speed fluctuating like its some kind of power saving issue? just a thought (something has to be happening right?) if nothing odd shows up in the graph then to me it may be gpu related at all
 
Frame limiter would be a good option for PC games, except my problem branches out to things like emulators too. So when it comes to say Dolphin or PPSSPP, there are some games which run at 60fps, and some that run at 30. So using a frame limiter on those wouldn't help. This is something that shouldn't be happening anyway since it doesn't occur on my old Phenom rig.

I don't believe it is GPU-related either, I just didn't know where else to post this and was hoping someone here would know more on the subject of what is happening. I should mention that I also tested with onboard Intel HD video and this issue still happens, so I don't believe my r9 290 is the culprit.

I checked with gpu-z and nothing funny is happening during the jitters on the graph. I also tested with PowerPlay disabled so there were no clock fluctuations, still the same problem. Tried both under and overclocking, no different. Framerate always appears fine and running at full speed, just these aggrivating jitters going on at around 20 second intervals.

I just don't get it, really makes no sense and I'm at my wit's end. There has to be a solution to this.
 
I noticed no one thus far mentioned it but have you checked your cables? Generally causes issues a bit quicker though.

Also I see you have a XFX 290. My first had issues with HWinfo64 if I used the VRM monitoring, it would do that same hitch exactly every 10 sec or so. I just disabled it and haven't had the issue since.
 
I've tested different sata cables, hdmi cables and even tried an hdmi to dvi cable to my monitor. Sadly it's still the same. Nothing seems to be loose either. I'm having this issue with basically nothing running in the background too which includes monitoring software, so I don't believe it's that.
 
well you should record a video with your phone and upload it to YouTube. its kind of hard to picture what your describing
 
I actually ended up taking my entire rig apart and pulling out the mobo, then putting it all back together again. Just to be sure nothing at all was loose. Of course still the exact same problem happening lol

As for recording footage, I actually can't find a proper to do it. I tried with FRAPs at 60p but when playing back the video, it doesn't display the jittering correctly. Half the footage just looks jerky. I also tried my camera but I can only do 30p on it, so the hitching doesn't show up on that at all. So bizarre.

What in the world is going on? It's making me feel like I'm insane lol. Here is the FRAPs footage anyway. While playing the game, the stuttering actually happend around 2 seconds before I quit recording. While watching the footage back myself, half the vid appears to stutter entirely instead of a brief moment. Just weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isP4EDSaS_Q
 
i think it be prudent to install afterburner and included riva tuner server....just to have as much info as possible...everything from cpu usage to video card temp displaying in the osd. is it possible at all that the cpu or gpu is reaching a certain temp and throttling? unlikely for the gpu since it would stay throttled until after a reboot i guess...but maybe the cpu? I have never had cpu thermal throttle before, some im just throwing possibility.

your not by chance using any oddball mice or keyboards? lol i have heard of super strange issues from certain mice before...stuff that makes zero sense but happens
 
I've already checked my temps and everything appears fine. I've run full x264 HD encodes and such, this isn't a brand new build or anything. I'm using an aftermarket heatsink for my 4670k, so it idles around 30 degrees celc. GPU-Z shows my r9 290 sitting around 25 degrees. The emulators I see this hitching in don't stress my hardware in the slightest.

I'm not using any wonky peripherals. Just a basic Microsoft optical mouse:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00025O7FC

Keyboard is a newer Kensington that I grabbed for the comfy wrist pad:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005SGIILO

As for mouse polling rates, I never heard of that. I checked some program and it showed my rate was 124hz which is supposedly the average.

This is starting to sound hopeless huh? Thanks for all the suggestions so far.
 
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Well this could be more monitor-related than I first thought. I just tried out my old Acer again and the jittering problem still shows up in PPSSPP, but does not appear in Dolphin and other things I tested. Strange. Wish I had the spare money to just grab a new monitor and test a TN panel with 1ms or Freesync lcd but I can't unfortunately. Stuck troubleshooting this to death.
 
Well I've tested 4 different cables now. As in 3 different hdmi cables, then an hdmi to dvi cable. Still the exact same thing with each one. Not sure what else could cause interference. Tried different power outlets too. Is there really anything left to test?

I'm starting to boil it down to either my s2440l monitor or this Asus z87 pro mobo.
 
I discovered something interesting. Get this. When my old Acer monitor is hooked up, it's actually running at 59.95hz. I checked with custom resolution utility. Where as my Dell monitor runs at a flat 60hz by default. So with my Acer running at the odd 59 refresh rate, that is why I wasn't seeing the hitching at the normal timed intervals.

So to state my issue in the simplest way:

a.) Running at 60hz, I see hitching/jittering every 20 seconds. No drop in framerate and doesn't show up in recorded footage.
b.) Running at 59.4/59.5hz (certain monitor's default), I no longer see the regular jittering but after playing a game for a few minutes, everything becomes out of whack and very erratic for a bit with the hitches even worse before returning to normal.

Anyone on these forums have any idea what is going on? Any refresh rate gurus around here? I'm so confused.
 
Well I have seen that some people claim capping at 59hz/fps is better than 60hz/fps, they never said why that I can remember. I have found with my AMD setup that 75hz/fps is smoother than 60hz/fps on my 60hz monitor. Cant explain that one at all. Discovered that while playing Skyrim a year ago. Thought at the time maybe it was some driver problem showing 75 and was actually 60 but it actually was 75 and have been running that in every game since using Frame rate capping not Vsync.

Sorry that is all I got I think, for now.

edit: AMD CPU 8350 with AMD xfx R9-290
 
This monitor can't do 75hz at 1080p, only at 1024x1080 for some reason. Either way, even at 65hz, everything has this jerky look in the games I tested. Same goes for 50hz. Only 59-60hz appears smooth aside from the jittering problem that's happening.

Thanks for the suggestion though, at this point anything is worth a try.
 
Yeah, like I said it is weird and scientifically doesn't make sense. But capping my frames at 75 vsync-off seems to work for me. I wasn't having your issue though. Wish i could be of more help. Sad thing is it could be anything from a NB issue (pci-e control) to some other obscure issue that might be virtually impossible to diagnose nor repair.
 
Yeah I really do wish it were something simple. I've never had any problems troubleshooting and fixing other's rigs before. But then this comes along and it's just so odd. Domething weird going on either with refresh rate, monitor timings or on my mobo I can't pinpoint.
 
Googling around now, it looks like I'm not the only person to experience an issue of this sort. Here's a related post that sounds all too familiar:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=120044&p=1866102&viewfull=1#post1866102

So maybe it just comes down to emulators like Dolphin and PPSSPP using a form of vsync that doesn't play well with something in my PC. Many other games and emulators are perfectly smooth for me. If I could only pinpoint why certain things are hitching for me.
 
Actually that reminds me I was having a problem with a PS2 emulator. It was the sound causing a serious hitching problem, forgot all about it. Anyway I used a different sound plugin and BOOM insta-fix. It was a bit more elaborate a hitching than what you were describing though. But maybe that could be it.
 
If it is possible, try using a custom refresh rate of 60.001 Hz. Just a crazy theory of mine, it may or may not help so don't get your hopes up.
 
have you tried dpc checker? was just curious if it sees any high latency
 
I've tried 60.001hz, and mostly all 60hz related timings. The only refresh rate that seems to have a smoothing effect is 59.4hz. Anything below 59 or above 60 just results in a constant hitching.

Already checked my DPC latency, mentioned it earlier. Sits around the 30 mark, nothing funny going on or anything. Appears normal.

I'm getting to the point where I don't think this is fixable without being able to test a different mobo or freesync monitor, neither of which I can afford at the moment. I suppose it's not a huge deal but it means I'll have to avoid a few of my favorite emulators or put up with the strange jittering.
 
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