Stuttering issues putting me off PC gaming

I came to this forum looking for advice any help is appreciated.

I have been giving PC gaming ago and have been upgrading/changing my PC for years trying to fix this problem but have had no results. I have now upgraded/replaced everything apart from the CPU.

The games i have been experiencing problems with are:

Skyrim, dark souls, spec ops: the line, dota 2 , assassin's creed 1 and duke nukem forever

The games that seem to run fine are:

binary domain, the darkness 2, far cry 2 (i think), need for speed: the run and resident evil 5 (i think)

dark souls and duke nukem get a very minor fps drop but a very noticeable stutter same with dota 2.

assassin's creed 1 gets bad fluctuation and my pc should be able to handle it no problem. and spec ops the line experiences both of the problems above.

My PC spec is

AMD r9 280 x (dual x model) previosuly: nvidia gigabyte geforce gtx 560ti

AMD phenom ii x6 1100t (3.3ghz) previously: AMD athlon x4 (did not play many games but had no issues with this)

Corsair cx 600 Previosuly corsair cx500 and corsair cx 750

8gb of RAM (been replaced several times)

Windows home premium64

Seagate ssd

motherboard: AS rock 960gm-GS3 FX

I have taken this to a PC shop several times and they have stress tested and checked the hardware. I have updated the drivers and tried to tweak each game (dark souls had some improvement after being in the game for 5 minutes the stutter almost was completely gone. Skyrim ran a lot better without the texture pack but i thought my PC should be able to play it. I really have no idea what is going on as how is a PC that is supposed to be able to play crysis 3 not able to handle duke nukem? Pease if anyone can help it will be greatly appreciated, i just want to play the thing i wasted so much money on :(

What the hell is stutter? Bad frame rates, momentary crashing? I'm not exactly sure what your problem is.

Check your PC for latency issues with DPC Latency Checker. This is what the latency looks like on my FX-8350/GTX 560 Ti. I haven't seen any stuttering on any of my games.

I usually disable any device I'm not using through the BIOS such as the parallel and COM ports, floppy port, etc. Any USB device I'm not using I turn off. I also disable services/applets I don't need from starting up. My PC is pretty lean and games well even if it has an old GTX 560 Ti. That's why I'm in no hurry to replace the latter.

I also make efforts to make sure as many devices as possible do not share an IRQ especially the video and audio.

My question as well what is stuttering? V-Sync might be solve the problem, if it's low fps, it could be something else.

Stuttering is a regular visual "twitching" that affects both the sense of movement and mouse use. It can happen even if your framerates are 100+. I'm guessing at least two devices are sharing resources somewhere which then have to alternate between the two devices. That's my take on it. Back in the Win9x days, such a situation would often end in a crash. So, you try to make sure each hardware device have its own resources. But, subsequent Windows OSes allow multiple devices to share resources. No more crashes. But, stuttering is the new result.

What monitor or TV are you using?

Stutter at least in my case is when the game freezes or the frame rate goes dodgy for a split second, like when a game auto-saves except in my case it happens regularly and without reason. Also i did not mention before is i have drops when i should not like in games the PC should be able to handle with ease

When it was the last time you redid windows from scratch? That would rule out driver or general windows clutter issues. Are you running windows on the SSD and games off a harddrive? if so what hdd are you using? Also Why has the memory been replaced multiple times?

@jun_aka_pekto:

@jun_aka_pekto said:

Check your PC for latency issues with DPC Latency Checker. This is what the latency looks like on my FX-8350/GTX 560 Ti. I haven't seen any stuttering on any of my games.

I usually disable any device I'm not using through the BIOS such as the parallel and COM ports, floppy port, etc. Any USB device I'm not using I turn off. I also disable services/applets I don't need from starting up. My PC is pretty lean and games well even if it has an old GTX 560 Ti. That's why I'm in no hurry to replace the latter.

I also make efforts to make sure as many devices as possible do not share an IRQ especially the video and audio.

I have downloaded this, what am i looking out for?

I have a iiyama prolite x2472HD monitor. Last time i reinstalled windows was quite a while ago at least 2 years but i think i re installed it to try and fix the issues and i got no results although i am not sure, windows is on the ssd and so are most of the games i am testing . Thanks for all the replies.

@pigonsteroidz: Keep an eye for red or yellow spikes. You may have to keep it running for a long time.

Also, what do you have showing on System Information? I usually take a look at it if I have problems.

@jun_aka_pekto:

I looked through most of it, everything said ok i think

Oh, I had that with Far Cry 2 back at those days.

Well that monitor is not that good its known to have bad ghosting and have relatively high response times. So it could be part of the problem. With Windows format and start fresh that make sure that nothing on the driver/software side being the culprit.

Stuttering is a complicated issue to solve because so many things can contribute to it ranging from drivers, hardware, and even how the game was coded.

Anyway, this is how I test mine. I run a game that can be windowed and watch how DPC reacts at different parts of the game. When I first started playing Far Cry 3, there were a few spikes which were not noticeable in the game. After a while the spikes dropped off altogether and didn't come back. I'm not sure what caused the spikes. I would guess it could be Uplay calling Ma Ubisoft through my USB WiFi adapter. I'm replaying the campaign and the first image was captured soon after I was given my mission objectives. The latter image is much later after I deviated from the objective.

If you mean System Information, make sure the Audio and Video aren't sharing an IRQ. I've seen it happen a number of times. I keep around a spare sound card (with its own hardware IRQ) just in case.

As far as devices, what other devices do you have on your PC (including external devices such as those connected via USB )?

The most recent example I can think of is when Far Cry 3 first came out. There were a lot of PC gamers reporting stuttering issues even though they had godly components and decent framerates. I think a subsequent patch fixed the issue.

I saw it firsthand whenever I switched to DX9 mode which was frustrating because my framerates were higher with the older API.

I think Bioshock Infinite also had a stuttering issue although I haven't played it yet.

^Yep FC3 was bad for it, especially with dual-GPU setups.

i remember my brother got some cheap pc back in 2001 which really had bad stability and stuttering even within windows and sometimes would almost freeze for a brief instant or so. Its hard to know what was broken so I replaced the entire motherboard and it fixed everything, probably crappy hard drive controller or something like that.... im not saying to replace ur motherboard though, who knows what it could be... it could be even the on board sound bugging things up or onboard network controller or sata controller...

and speaking of sata controller, i had one on my 2600k cpu pc go really funny and it actually cause even worse then ur stuttering problems with hard drives taking forever to work. it was the Asus P8P67 DELUXE revision 1 motherboard that had the problems and im sure anyone with that would remember it.

its too bad u dont have another motherboard to at least eliminate that as a problem.

@nicecall: @SEANMCAD: in my case it is when the screen freezes for a split second usually goes along with a minor fps drop or a big one, i wish i had never experienced it. Wasted so much money. And i have replaced the motherboard, on the previous one i heard a whining on this one no sound but stutter issues did not go.

If your cpu is strong enough to handle the gpu's SLI usually does not have an issue. While Crossfire tends to have more notable issues.

@04dcarraher: I was considering doing crossfire eventually if i got this issue sorted, does crossfire always have issues?

Stuttering is biznotch, new vegas had the worst. Usually a complicated problem often effected by the way ram is accessing and distributing information

@robokill: so what do you suggest? i used to have no problems with new vegas + a few mods haven't tried it recently though

Run latencymon in the background.

there are 2 things for vegas;

-a mod that extends the game to use more 4gbs which helps drastically

-a mod that's called the stutter remover that helps substantially

really fun game once you get it going well, also, the stealth recon armor is the bees knees

I was having issues with New Vegas but one day I decided to disable Vsync and that fixed the problem.

Don't feel too bad. First off Duke Nukem was rushed and Vegas was a buggy mess on release. Dark Souls also you can get a mod for it to get better visuals and controls I believe.

All games will stutter when you save, because you are writing data instantly to the hard drive instead of reading. Do some system maintenance. Get CC Cleaner and clean your temporary files. Also get spybot search and destroy and run that.

Those two programs clean your pc and are free. download.com

oh yeah, the vsync as well as the aliasing in the game are brutal. If you are noticing huge delays when you go in vats mess around with the built in loader settings.

@Realmjumper: @robokill: I had no problems with new vegas, i think i had these problems when i upgraded my CPU i am not sure. I have already tried the dark souls fix and ill try those programs before but i think i've used other programs for some of those steps already, thanks

@JigglyWiggly_: I think I have a similar program, what will this tell me and what am i looking for? thanks

so you get stutter in all games? Did you thoroughly check for mal-ware? Also it could be the hard drive, background services or faulty drivers. Likely one of those, if not it could be something less common such as a registry problem, missing windows files, windows updates that got corrupted etc. Odds are it's malware though if it's pervasive through all games.

Also, check to make sure your video card (for Nvidia it's called Nvidia control panel) is allowed to run games and it's not run off the processor or an internal graphics processor. Usually under global settings for the video card, good luck. I fecking hate stuttering and lag as it gives me nausea and headaches so I feel your pain.

its a hard one to call.

1) try turning vsync off. if the framerate from your GPU is in the 40FPS range then i think it can cause some issues. I have seen it with batman AC on my laptop when running it in DX11 mode. unfortunately turning vsync off also caused ungodly screen tear on my system so i had to cut back on the settings a bit.

2)If you have replaced the mobo and/or CPU since installing windows then i would recommend a format and reinstall. its probably not really an issue. back in the day a new mobo and/or processor usually meant an OS reinstall and i usually formatted just for good measure. modern OSs probably dont get as fussy but it could be an issue. maybe windows is loading a less than ideal driver or something.

3) im not clear whether you are using crossfire or not. if you are turn it off just to see if that improves the stuttering (i am assuming all drivers are up to date).

4) how old is the seagate SSD? is it getting trimmed from time to time? SSDs can get horrendously bad if not maintined. the write speed collapses and older SSDs can be very unreliable. if you even have a spare HDD to try things for a while it may be worth a look...just to rule the SSD out.

5) If you have any extra hardware attached, an external HDD, a joystick or whatever then unplug it and see if it improves things.

6) What is your power supply? powerful enough? from a reputable manufacturer? if the hardware is getting poor quality power then that can cause issues (though i am pulling at straws with the power supply. a poor oen under strain usually leads to system stability rather than performance problems).

7) you say you have replaced the ram but have you tried the sticks in different slots in the mobo? have you tried playing with only one stick?

if you have tried everything you can think of with the tower then look at the monitor. have you tried a different DVI/HDMI cable? Can you connect your PC to a different monitor or TV and see if that improves things?

Thats all i can think of but try and narrow down where the problem is.

It's probably not a big deal. But, I've noticed the power requirements for a PC with a single R9 280x calls for a 750w PSU. He has a 600w PSU. Will that be a factor?

I mean I've used a 430w PSU on a PC with a Celeron dualcore and an HD 5770 (which normally requires a 450w PSU) without any issues. But, the power gap on his is much larger.

@robokill: I get these issues with most games, i have checked for mal-ware on several occasions and i have two hard drives one ssd and one normal, problem is the same on both. My next step is to get a new processor and motherboard as that would be everything replaced and i essentially have a new PC, also i will remove things i do not need. Next step if i am still having issues, will be a fresh install of windows, then it can not be anything software related. If i am still having issues it has got to be something like the monitor or keyboard so ill swap a few things around and see if anything helps. If i do that surely i will have tested everything and there could be nothing else causing it? I still think it is my CPU as the problems arose around the time i got it. Thanks its a pain, got friends who have spent less than half of what i have and there system is working fine -_-

@jun_aka_pekto: The issue was exactly the same with previous graphics card and 500w PSU i think

that's so much work and time and money, it's probably something much more simple than you are making it out to be. There are easier ways to monitor what is going on, try malware bytes. Check your cpu temps

The 280x has only a 250w TDP. he's fine as long he has a good psu.

@robokill: I have run malware bytes already and it has recently come out of a pc shop where they stress tested and checked cpu temps

@osan0: I have reformatted before, no change. I do not have crossfire. The ssd is less than 2 years old, what do you mean by trim? My power supply is a cx600. I have not messed about with the ram as i am not very good with computers and no i have not but will do, thanks for the advice

turn off Vsync.

@ShimmerMan: surely then i will get stutter?

To everyone, my situation not as bad as i thought, i would not need a new motherboard as a new CPU i am looking at still uses AM3+ which i think my motherboard (as rock 960gm-gs3 fx)

supports and my current CPU is still worth an okay amount so it would not cost me much to upgrade. The new CPU i am looking at is a AMD FX8350 black edition. If someone with better knowledge could check if the two are compatible it would be greatly appreciated. Would the CPU even be a significant boost or is it worth coughing up for FX9590. If i can use this on my motherboard, i have read some reviews and apparently the stock cooler is not up to scratch, so could anyone recommenced a decent, quiet one (not water cooled) ? also bear in mind my case does not have big vents as i like my PC to be quiet

The X6 1100T with turbo boost on is actually a pretty good CPU (tad faster than a FX 6350. Overall inbetween a FX 6350 and a FX 8320).

I would only get the FX 8350 if you can sell the FX 1100T for a high price (I've seen some 1090/1100T CPU's sell on ebay for $150+).

@pigonsteroidz: you replaced everything except the cpu? the main component that handles every "step" ... I dunno, if the problem is still there it could be that... most important bit. is it overclocked?

No. Vsync can cause stutter if triple buffering isn't turned on.

@MBirdy88: No it is not

@ShimmerMan: I meant screen tear sorry, @mastershake575 Do you know if my motherboard will support this CPU and also is the CPU could enough not to bottleneck crossfire? thanks

Also if someone could recommend a good cpu cooler for this it would be appreicated