Help to resolve stuttering in some games if possible

[Spike_UK]

It's been a while since I've paid any attention to my rig but since getting a G-Sync monitor I've been noticing stutters in some of the games I play which are really starting to annoy but cannot seem to track down.

Hardware wise my setup is as follows.

Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3
CPU: Intel i5 2500k (using the 4ghz OC profile in the BIOS)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600mhz (2 x 4GB) (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 - using 1600mhz XMP profile in BIOS)
GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming Edition 4096MB (No OC)
HDD: 2 x Samsung 840 Pro 128GB (1 OS, 1 for Games) connected to SATA3

SSD's benchmark fine and are hitting the expected speeds (>500mb/s Read, 300mb/s Write).
I've recently switched from gaming at 1080 to 1440 due to a monitor upgrade, however these issues were present before that.

Diablo 3 seems to do it a lot. When I first create a game it stutters for the first 5-10 secconds after loading then evens out. But the stutter returns at times when switching zones.
World of Warcraft (Blizzard again...maybe there's a pattern...) also pauses/stutters when switching between zones or phases (in and out of the garrison for example).
It's possible that these are normal with these two games and that everyone suffers from them however from watching other players on Twitch I can't say I've ever seen theirs stutter as much as mine.
Framerates are good 99% of the time, but I seem to be hitting spikes when the games appear to be loading assets in the background. Both D3 and WoW are well above 60fps most of the time.
I captured a video of the stuttering, but I can't say it shows it off that well.

I don't really have time to play much else so I can't say if the issue is there in other games. I can't seem to replicate the issue in the Tomb Raider benchmark.

Is there anything obvious I'm missing? I was considering purchasing more RAM. While PerfMon doesn't suggest that I'm hitting 100% RAM useage while gaming, it is getting close to 80% at times.
Are there any parts that could do with an upgrade for 1440 gaming?

Any advice is most appreciated.

 

[Conor Royston]

The only one I could see any on was Wow.

two things to keep in mind.

1 - is your game on a SSD? This loads faster and also helps with smoothing out in games.

2 - on wow you're switching areas with could just be game lag from amount of people in the area or amount to load.
With your Wow I get the same when I load LOTRO and it's never been different to my knowledge and I can play full graphics at over 300 fps.
Hmm.


Edit - just read you're hitting 80% ram usage in some games?! how much ram do you have?!

 

[lee1101]

The only one I could see any on was Wow.

two things to keep in mind.

1 - is your game on a SSD? This loads faster and also helps with smoothing out in games.

2 - on wow you're switching areas with could just be game lag from amount of people in the area or amount to load.
With your Wow I get the same when I load LOTRO and it's never been different to my knowledge and I can play full graphics at over 300 fps.
Hmm.


Edit - just read you're hitting 80% ram usage in some games?! how much ram do you have?!

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600mhz (2 x 4GB) (CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 - using 1600mhz XMP profile in BIOS)

 

[yashiro]

Video doesn't show much. The spikes on WoW are caused by switching instance servers. ie phasing. It's worse on EU realms which is why it seems less impactful on streams.

Diablo jank is usually server related too. Test games without an always on internet component. Test Fullscreen windowed on blizzard games too.

 

[Spike_UK]

Video doesn't show much. The spikes on WoW are caused by switching instance servers. ie phasing. It's worse on EU realms which is why it seems less impactful on streams.

Diablo jank is usually server related too. Test games without an always on internet component. Test Fullscreen windowed on blizzard games too.

Thanks, I half suspected it may be server related (as both are online only games). I didn't want to start going mad trying to resolve something that's unresolvable. SWoTR seems to feel less spikey than WoW/D3.

I haven't got too many offline only games installed right now, Tomb Raider (the first one) seems to run fine. As does Ashes of the Singularity (which is Alpha/Beta).