Games freezing hard drive issue?

[Yanayaya]

Hey,

I apologise if this is the wrong forum, please feel free to move it.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of a particular problem that occurs in various games in that, when the game transitions between zones, scenes or sometimes in combat the game will free for a moment (between 3-8 seconds depending on the title) and then carry on. There is no one game in particular where this happens but there are some titles that it's really bad. It seems (without any ferensic investigation) that any loading of data that's required by the game on the fly seems to have a direct affect on this situation.

So, there are some things that need to be considered such as, the games in question, are they just badly optimised and graphical settings.

• Overwatch 2
  All graphical settings at max, game never misses a beat.
  
  
• Fortnite
  The very first match I play after login takes a very long time to load, when it does let me in the map and assets are all at their lowest LOD and stuttering occurs until everything loads in. After that initial match the game runs fine but that first one is a soul destroying mess.
  
  
• Diablo 4
  Game runs really well, graphics settings are high, full on combat with masses of enemies doesn't cause an issue. Moving between zones causes the game to freeze for a moment and then eventually it sorts itslef out. Freezes can be between 5-10 seconds
  
  
• Alien Fireteam
  This game is known to be badly optimised but again, it demonstrates the freezing issue nicely. Moving between zones the game freezes for 5secs until data is loaded

In the above instances I looked at the typical issues that could cause these problems, graphical settings, network settings etc but nothing turned up any problems. The only common factor in all of this is that I house my games on a seperate SSD on my PC and I'm not sure if that's causing the problems. More and more modern games seem to enjoy being on the same drive as the OS.

On to my rig then, I'm by no means running a beast of a system I run a system that works for me and what I play. I also never run games at max because my card is a 1080 and I know she's getting on a bit.

• CPU: Intel Core i7 10700K (Comet Lake) @ 3.80GHz
• Mainboard: MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon Wifi
• RAM: X2 Corsair 3596 8GB 1798MHz (16GB total)
• GFX: NVidia Geforce GTX1080
• Storage:
  • OS - Samsung 970 EVO Plus V-NAND M.2 1TB SSD
  • Games - Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (SATA)
• Power: 650watt Corsair (getting on now, around 8 years old)
• Cooling: AIO NZXT Kraken

If there is any more information I can provide, please let me know. I really want to get to the bottom of this and my questions, which I hope you can help with, are:

• Could moving the games to the same drive as the OS help?
• What could I monitor that could give me some insight into what is going wrong?
• Has anyone had this problem or similar and how did you fix it?
• Could an old PSU cause strange issues like this?
• Is there anything here outside of the GPU that could be a bottleneck or hinder performance?

I'm looking for any insight I can get at this point, if anyone can help I'd like to hear from you

Thanks for reading

 

[mickyflinn]

Download MSI afterburner and see what the GPU , CPU and memory are running at when gaming ?

Try the games at the lowest detail settings and resolution if you get stuttering then I doubt it's the GPU

Diablo 4 eats memory so you could be running out , I'm guessing your memory runs at 3600mhz as it's DDR not 1800mhz as stated above.

I would try each game on the m2 drive just to see if they improve.

 

[Quartz]

I'm looking for any insight I can get at this point, if anyone can help I'd like to hear from you

Yes, loading times are an issue and have been for a long time. All those crawling through narrow gaps in assorted games are to give the game time to load up the textures for the next area. This is particularly noticeable with HDDs. However, while your thread title specifies HDD your PC spec indicates that they are loaded on a SSD. Did you miss the HDD off the list??

I think your very first step is to move the games in question to your M.2 drive. I'm willing to bet that the problem will disappear. If it does, then you should run CrystalDiskInfo and look at the SMART data of your SATA drive. I expect that one or more warnings will appear. You can also look in Event Viewer for 'disk' events.

 

[Tetras]

• Could moving the games to the same drive as the OS help?

I've run games on a different HDD/SSD than the OS for a long time, I haven't had any problems. I would make sure your drive isn't nearly full, since it is rather small.

• What could I monitor that could give me some insight into what is going wrong?

Have a look in the event viewer as suggested above, you might find that something is firing up. What anti-virus or firewall do you have?

You could try replacing the SATA cable or using a different power connector, though I'd expect the event viewer to have errors reflective of this problem.

• Could an old PSU cause strange issues like this?

Unlikely.

• Is there anything here outside of the GPU that could be a bottleneck or hinder performance?

There's nothing in your PC that stands out. What is your memory usage like when you're gaming? Do you leave anything open, like your browser?