Stuttering in all games help

SiroVai123 · 14 Mar 2016 at 07:07

Hi

Recently all my games have developed this non-FPS micro stuttering rendering them largely unplayable, or at least enjoyable. My hunch is its either a HDD issue when the game is loading new areas or what have you, the HDD is slow at accessing the data making the stutter. Or it's a RAM issue. I've tried running games at minimum graphic settings, reinstalled Windows, updated drivers, defragged, ran memtest and a HDD test to no avail.

When not stuttering games are fine FPS wise and otherwise the PC runs fine in desktop/web. Would you's agree the HDD is a likely cause?

I could purchase a cheap SSD to test, but let's say I get one, plug it in, I now have 1 HDD (system) and 1 SSD. If I install a game on the SSD, won't the PC still need to access data (like system data etc) on the HDD thus potentially influencing the test?

My specs:

I2500K
GA-p67-UD3
Corsair XMS 4gb Ram
MSI GTX 960
Corsair 650W
Some seagate HDD 7200rpm
Win 7 64bit

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Danny75 · 14 Mar 2016 at 07:41

Add more RAM first and test to see. 4GB is scraping it these days. Might as well buy a completely new kit of 8GB (will do) or 16GB (that bit nicer if you can afford).

Then get yourself an SSD regardless. Do a fresh install of the OS (and motherboard drivers) on it, and also put your programs and fave games on it. After copying what you want to keep from your HDD onto an external HDD or something, format the HDD to freshen things up and keep it to serve as additional storage (videos, photos, games you don't play that often, etc) unless you discover it's on its way out.

It could be something else causing the micro-stutter but chances are it's RAM or HDD as you suspect, imo. Even if it's not and you need to keep looking, more RAM and an SSD will be a good upgrade.

SiroVai123 · 14 Mar 2016 at 08:57

Danny75 said:
Add more RAM first and test to see. 4GB is scraping it these days. Might as well buy a completely new kit of 8GB (will do) or 16GB (that bit nicer if you can afford).

Then get yourself an SSD regardless. Do a fresh install of the OS (and motherboard drivers) on it, and also put your programs and fave games on it. After copying what you want to keep from your HDD onto an external HDD or something, format the HDD to freshen things up and keep it to serve as additional storage (videos, photos, games you don't play that often, etc) unless you discover it's on its way out.

It could be something else causing the micro-stutter but chances are it's RAM or HDD as you suspect, imo. Even if it's not and you need to keep looking, more RAM and an SSD will be a good upgrade.

So do you think simply plugging in the SSD and installing a game on won't test properly? I'd rather not reinstall everything again if I don't have to.

Also, it's worth mentioning that this isn't a capability issue. I was running Fallout4 perfectly for a couple of weeks when it suddenly started happening across all games.

pastymuncher · 14 Mar 2016 at 09:33

If it was working ok then all of a sudden started stuttering then that would suggest that something has broken or is about to fail. Test your hdd and ram again for faults. What are your gpu and cpu temps like when gaming? What res do you game at? Is there anything running in the backround? We need to find out what your actual problem is before you go buying anything new.

As for the hdd/ssd concerns, I used to have windows and WoW on a 240gb ssd, steam on another 240gb ssd and a 1tb hdd for data plus it had the windows temp files, my docs, my pics etc also on it. When gaming windows would indeed access the hdd but games still loaded a lot faster than just a hdd. I have done away with a hdd altogether now and have a 250gb ssd for windows and other programs while steam and my other games are on a 960gb ssd. Everything runs so smoothly and quickly now and both new ssd's came in at under £200.

labcoattech · 14 Mar 2016 at 09:43

Try running a graphics benchmark and see if it stutters.

SiroVai123 · 14 Mar 2016 at 18:24

Ran HD Tune full error scan. No errors.
Ran FurMark, no stuttering.
Ran Prime 95, no stuttering.
Ran chkdsk, no errors.
Ran memtest, no errors.

Temps are fine. The stuttering begins right away so they don't even have a chance to get high.

I opened windows resource monitor when the game was running and as it stuttered, I quickly alt-tabbed out and the disk had been spiking at 100% use. So it was being used at maximum, when it stuttered perhaps indicating the HDD is struggling to cope or perhaps it's just coincidence.

Next step will be to buy a SSD and test.

Cern · 14 Mar 2016 at 20:30

To get the best out of a SSD you need Windows installed on it too, not just the games. This is because of all the disk chuntering that Windows does behind the scenes at all times. You can lessen this by turning off indexing and certain other services but it still does a lot of it. With a SSD it happens so much faster you shouldn't get any stuttering when there's disk access going on.

Going up to 8GB ram probably wouldn't hurt either.

SiroVai123 · 15 Mar 2016 at 15:37

I've chosen the following SSD and RAM. Good choice?

SAMSUNG 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6GBPS 32 LAYER 3D V-NAND SOLID STATE DRIVE (MZ-75E250B/EU)

CORSAIR VENGEANCE PRO SILVER 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C9 1866MHZ DUAL CHANNEL MEMORY KIT (CMY16GX3

teenwolf · 15 Mar 2016 at 15:38

4gb ram is no way enough

P4Clock · 15 Mar 2016 at 15:43

SiroVai123 said:
I've chosen the following SSD and RAM. Good choice?

SAMSUNG 250GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6GBPS 32 LAYER 3D V-NAND SOLID STATE DRIVE (MZ-75E250B/EU)

CORSAIR VENGEANCE PRO SILVER 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 PC3-14900C9 1866MHZ DUAL CHANNEL MEMORY KIT (CMY16GX3

SSD is good but what ram just get whats cheap.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...al-channel-kit-hx318c10fwk2-16-my-171-ks.html

running an SSD or not will not make for stuttering in games. i run all my games from an 1tb HDD and only run a 120gb SSD for OS

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-052-ks.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-051-ks.html

dnic77 · 15 Mar 2016 at 16:15

Have you tried checking your vram usage? I had sli 560s and i had stuttering and it turned out to be maxing vram. I swaped to a 3gb 7950 and all stuttering stopped.
Also i have my games installed on a slow 500gb hard drive and i get no stuttering

alphaomega16 · 15 Mar 2016 at 16:20

16GB seems a tad overkill, 8GB should be fine.

djshauny1 · 15 Mar 2016 at 16:38

I had stuttering in a lot of games. Turned out to be a failing HDD.

SiroVai123 · 15 Mar 2016 at 17:41

P4Clock said:
SSD is good but what ram just get whats cheap.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...al-channel-kit-hx318c10fwk2-16-my-171-ks.html

running an SSD or not will not make for stuttering in games. i run all my games from an 1tb HDD and only run a 120gb SSD for OS

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-052-ks.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-051-ks.html

I believe it's worth paying extra for quality Corsair RAM. And my system hasn't always stuttered it's a new problem that through troubleshooting I believe to be HDD related. Plus that SSD has benchmarked exceptionally high. Even if these don't fix the issue I've future proofed part of my system.

dnic77 said:
Have you tried checking your vram usage? I had sli 560s and i had stuttering and it turned out to be maxing vram. I swaped to a 3gb 7950 and all stuttering stopped.
Also i have my games installed on a slow 500gb hard drive and i get no stuttering

If my VRAM was maxing wouldn't the problem have always been present? It was fine one day, wasn't the next on the same game.

alphaomega16 said:
16GB seems a tad overkill, 8GB should be fine.

Future proofing. Most games need minimum 6 gb now, soon it'll be 8gb minimum.

djshauny1 said:
I had stuttering in a lot of games. Turned out to be a failing HDD.

How did you narrow it down?