Sudden FPS Drops (3-7FPS) Like in a Loop & Stutters, Then Recovery

[3cl1ps3]

I have an old Windows 10 (latest service pack) rig that is going to be completely upgraded once the top two X3D models come up to the market in Q1 2025, maybe keep it as a second system. i7 6850K overclocked to 4.4GHz adaptive all cores, 32GB DDR4 RAM 3.2GHz from default XMP I believe 16-18-18-38 2T to 15-16-16-34 1T), 7900XTX, multiple NVMe and SSD's (all still at 100% and 99% remaining life), Essence STX II discrete audio card used in a 5.1 mode, Seasonic Prime TX 1000 PSU.

Unsure what may have caused this, but I started getting serious FPS drops from let's say 60-70 FPS to 2-5 recently. This happens in both Windows games and emulators (for example Xenia and RPCS3). Steps I've undertaken to troubleshoot and resolve this:
- System file check (sfc), no errors found.
- Loading BIOS optimised defaults. This resets everything to stock - CPU to 3.8GHz, RAM to 2100 or whatever it is, standard voltages, etc.
- The 7900XTX is undervolted and overclocked. Reset to default settings. No change.
- Removed GPU driver with DDU and re-installed from scratch. This has improved things a bit in the emulators, like before that dropping the FPS/stutters almost froze the screen, with the reinstall it still does that but more like a slide show dropping from let's say 70 to 2-5 FPS (no freezing), then returning back to 70.
- Found some Reddit and other threads about disabling Gamebar, including in regedit, which I've done with no change.
- Another "solution", apparently only referring to Nvidia cards in my experience, is disabling driver-specific HDMI sources in Sounds\Playback. Did that with no change too.
- Some posts said that RivaTuner monitoring and especially GPU power on display caused these stutters. Played with the settings and removed "GPU power" from MSI Afterburner monitoring, also completely closed it when gaming, no obvious change.

No FPS drops are observed when CPU and GPU are idle, it starts when there is load and they are always repeated, like almost at the very same intervals (30 to 50 seconds, every minute). Like 70-100 FPS, down to 3-9, then recover to the original level. From monitoring CPU almost never goes to 100%, in the emulators it is mostly from 35% to 90% (according to Task Manager), average and even under load most of the time it is at the ballpark of 70-80% max. GPU power also stays around and up to a maximum of 375W, most of the time less than 250. When I check Task Manager when playing games, although there are other programmes in the background they always use not more than 5% in total, even less.
---
There may have been FPS spikes/stutters before, but I believe something in my system must have changed recently. It may be a Windows update, a GPU driver change or something else, maybe the motherboard (Rampage V Edition 10) is showing its age and the BIOS is unstable? I am yet to try with a GPU driver from let's say 6 month ago and see if there will be any change. I was initially suspecting something wrong with my CPU (for the emulators predominantly), but I've done many benchmarks and CPU always stays at 100% with no drops, never throttling, by the way this is the same in gaming (CPU package is never above 76-78 degrees maximum in a very well ventilated case). Could it be something with the GPU ot RAM?

Device Manager shows no hardware errors so I will blame it on something software-wise, at least for now. Apart from the older GPU driver, I will make some GPU benchmarks and see if there is a GPU drop too. Judging by my online searches, unresolvable FPS drops seem to be pretty common including on new hardware, but in my case these are repeated, like they happen in a timed manner, like something is pushing the system to its limits or something else happens that drops performance to the bottom for 2-7 seconds, then recover.

Any more suggestions or help, I'd really appreciate it. Many thanks.

 

[tommybhoy]

Afterburner can cause issues if you're running any Adrenaline custom settings.

Disable AB from startup/don't run it at all and test.

Used Ddu in the past, I don't anymore as it uninstalled 'too much', personally would jump straight to a clean install of windows/drivers and nothing else apart from emulators/games on a spare hardrive and test if it's an OS issue.

Good luck.

 

[Ormy1]

You need something (I use MSI afterburner) that shows graphs of various metrics like CPU/GPU usage, power usage, frequencies, RAM/VRAM usage etc. Either have those graphs on a second monitor or quickly alt-tab and check them after a slow-down event. Is either GPU or CPU usage (i.e. % utilisation, not power usage or anything else) spiking to near 100% during these stuttering events?

If you could post screenshots of the various graphs during a slowdown that would be really helpful.

If it's the GPU spiking to near-100% usage, use DDU and then install an older driver version.

If it's the CPU spiking to near-100% usage that can be harder to pin down what is doing it. Resource monitor and task manager might come in handy.

Found some Reddit and other threads about disabling Gamebar, including in regedit, which I've done with no change

This is good general advice, I would disable it whenever you're not using it, or even remove it altogether, but that might break some things.

Some posts said that RivaTuner monitoring and especially GPU power on display caused these stutters. Played with the settings and removed "GPU power" from MSI Afterburner monitoring, also completely closed it when gaming, no obvious change

This is nonsense, I have GPU & CPU power usage (among other things) measured & graphed by afterburner and overlaid on games by RTSS and never had an issue across several machines.

More things to try just to eliminate or narrow down possible factors:
32GB is plenty of RAM, trying running with just one stick (16GB) to see if that helps, try with each stick in sequence.
PSU issues: Any sharp bends on cables? Any spare cables (especially GPU 8pin) that you can swap in to try?
Try gaming without the audio card (physically remove it, not just disable in audio settings), just use the sound from the GPU or the motherboard.
Unplug and reseat EVERYTHING, GPU/RAM, all cables, etc.
Try removing all but one SSD, try each one in sequence, copy game files to different SSDs. (again, physically disconnect, not just disable in settings or BIOS)
Disconnect your ethernet or wifi antenna (again, physically disconnect, not just disable in settings)
Turn off all bluetooth and any other wireless communication devices, physically disconnect if you can.
Try different audio devices
Try different display devices if you can.

Also, make yourself familiar (if you aren't already) with the windows event viewer, then start poking around, everything is timestamped to the second so it should be easy-ish to find if anything unusual is happening at those times.

The fact that the slowdowns are so regular suggests there's a specific and easily fixable cause, rather than completely random. Measure the amount of time between slowdowns and the duration of each slowdown, how regular or random is it? Are they happening exactly every minute or just approximately every minute? That will help you pin down the cause.

 

[eeii]

All the above is excellent. I would also update chipset drivers and check for viruses/ malware. A windows reinstall would be my preference but that is a ball ache. Start uninstalling any programs you don’t need. I would also check your startup programs and disable any you dont need.

 

[3cl1ps3]

Thanks a lot guys, this is all very helpful. Not having too much available time at the moment so will first benchmark the GPU with a few tools to see of these repeated stutters happen the very same way as in gaming. Excellent suggestion about Event Viewer, should have done this before but was so certain it has something to do with the CPU. My previous GPU in this rig was 1080Ti and with the CPU overclock for years everything was rock solid until I've got the 7900XTX. The default voltage the latter came with was pretty high - 1150mV and it was also extremely power hungry - like under extreme load/benchmarks it will reach nearly and above 550W. Now it is 1044 with 250Hz+ on memory and if not wrong from default frequency, at least 200Mhz+ main overclock. Power came down by 100+W (if not more but can't go lower as with ray tracing power simply goes through the roof). So I've had to make changes to the adaptive CPU voltage and other secondary ones I've been using for years. It was not stable with the new graphics card, especially with the undervolt. Changes were slight and the system looked stable, no WHEA errors etc., the stable for years RAM at the modified timings also looked okay. But saying that and if this behaviour persists in the GPU benchmarks I may need to look again at the Vcore and VCCSA (Broadwell-E has very weak memory controller). Though at the BIOS Optimised Defaults and stock RAM settings with stock GPU settings I've seen these FPS problems too, which makes me think it could be a more complex and hopefully - a purely software issue. Like a driver one (thanks Ormy1), the Xonar Essence STX II has a main board and a daughterboard where I am getting all 7.1 analog connections from to my 5.1 system (plus optical out also connected as the speaker system supports DTS Live), or a GPU driver one. Onboard audio is disabled in BIOS, bluetooth and any other similar services are off, no bloatwhere and viruses as far as I am aware (will go through them again), all chipset and other drivers seem to be the latest ones (although the rig itself is now ancient). My xbox-type FlyDigi 2.4GHz controller dongle is however in, which makes me think that I am utilising every single USB-A port at the back and there are "if" limitations on the motherboard as far as connections go. Actually this may be the main thing to check now. If reducing the load on the backside USB-A ports changes the situation.

Thanks once again. I will share how it goes.

 

[3cl1ps3]

So yesterday I've bench'd the 7900XTX with Furmark 2 at both 1080p and WQHD and it stayed fully stable with fluctuations within the 20-25FPS range or less, up to 403FPS and solid 2.3/2.4 frame time at 1080p OpenGL and about 170 at the second benchmark at the same resolution. This is with my own undervolt and overclock, though I've raised the voltage just a tiny bit to go from 398-399 max to 403. More than that resulted in worsened performance.

Also checked and disconnected all USB ports at the back of the case. It looks like these influence lower SATA speeds or such on the PCI-e slots, but they seem to have no relation to the FPS fluctuations I am experiencing (although switching connections to different external devices may have improved the way the BIOS treats them and I did it with this exact purpose). For some reason also, AMD Adrenaline disappeared from the taskbar, i.e. it can be opened if I look for it but did not appear in the taskbar even after restarting. So after the benchmark testing I went quickly into a few games and experienced similar performance issues like before (although like a bit less pronounced), which makes me think that I will need to take another look at the CPU/system agent voltages. I may raise a bit the VCCSA and the Vcore while also raising the CPU cache frequency a bit and see if it makes any difference. MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner (on and off) don't seem to matter, but reading comments online I am looking into other methods to display live statistics (maybe AMD's own one or HWInfo + Rivatuner or else). And by the way, unsure why HWInfo during the benchmarks (but also in gaming) has always reported power lin the ballpark of like 100W more than Furmark itself. For example Furmark will report power of 440-470W while HWInfo will indicate 550-560W. The same with GPU clock - Furmark will report up to 2700Mhz (predominantly in the ballpark of 2350-2500) while HWInfo (including in gaming) will go up to 2900-3030MHz. Both report memory frequency of up to 2735 which is what I am expecting/it has been overclocked to (2750). I am still to check Event Viewer in more detail, but if I can't solve this completely will just wait for a few more months and upgrade fully. Still have some hope playing with the CPU voltages and yesterday's benchmarks with solid frame times and framerate (380-403 the whole time) make me think the GPU itself is fine. Forgot to say, I've made a full drivers scan again (Driver Booster free version) and it looks like I am ok. For years it reported updates to the chipset drivers available, but if I went for that the system won't boot at all so I have to revert to the ones I've had/system restore. This is why I don't believe a chipset driver is to blame here while the rest of the drivers seem to be up to date.

 

[tommybhoy]

Personally I wouldn't use Furmark-like ever, it's designed to push past normal usage.

Download 3Dmark and set it on a loop to stress test if that's what your after.

 

[eeii]

Set cpu to defaults run a game in a window preferably one with a benchmark using process monitor see what processes are running.

 

[Marak]

Apologies if I missed it, but have you tried a simple underclock of the GPU by giving it a max clock of say 2000MHz?

I read that you have undervolted but perhaps that undervolt is just on the edge of instability, whereas a simple underclock should stop you hitting any power and temp issues without sacrificing stability.

 

[stuie]

Is this not just a typical CPU bottleneck. I have the same issue since upgrading to a 3090 but still running a 3770k. The GPU is ready to go but as soon as something tries to load in it sluggs down to 10/12 fps till the system has caught up. In short the gpu can only render what its got and if the cpu is lacking itl chug till its fed the vram

and yes a new cpu is on the cards for next year

 

[Firegod]

Is this not just a typical CPU bottleneck. I have the same issue since upgrading to a 3090 but still running a 3770k. The GPU is ready to go but as soon as something tries to load in it sluggs down to 10/12 fps till the system has caught up. In short the gpu can only render what its got and if the cpu is lacking itl chug till its fed the vram

and yes a new cpu is on the cards for next year

Yeah 8 year old 6 core CPU.

 

[3cl1ps3]

Yes, it's old, but it's been good for quite a while and still capable for many things (plus has all its x6 extra threads unlike current Intel's, so 12 threads activated at all times, all maxed out). I am not that guy to throw things out just for being old, also utilised every tiny bit of performance I could squeeze out of it from the moment I bought it. If I wanted it could have reached 4.6 all cores sync'd (then), but at some crazy vcore. Even 4.5 manual requires about 1.36 so I went down a notch. Overclocking is no longer a skill (including RAM) as manufacturers/foundries themselves hit the Moore's law very, very hard so what we observe now is more playing with fire while trying not to put too much oil into it, i.e. deluding ourselves by massively increasing power consumption, illusive moment-like core spikes to 5-6GHz, and stacking things on top of each other, plus going ARM P- and E-style. Absolute evolution, right?, but digressing... Not to mention new motherboards completey forgot about audio (a mic and line out only with pathetically low quality on-board audio), x2 max x3 PCI-e slots, really?, even on a E-ATX boards, none-existent case HDD/SSD LEDs and front connections, not more than x2 front USB-A/C ports (I probably have 16 out of which 8 at the front, one of which super charger - and I use most of them all the time), not even a case Reset Button!, internal bays/slots (more than 2) and what not. Give them RGB's and call it a rig(

Is this not just a typical CPU bottleneck. I have the same issue since upgrading to a 3090 but still running a 3770k. The GPU is ready to go but as soon as something tries to load in it sluggs down to 10/12 fps till the system has caught up. In short the gpu can only render what its got and if the cpu is lacking itl chug till its fed the vram

and yes a new cpu is on the cards for next year

This is possibly what happens, but I havent had these extreme stuttering issues, especially in RPCS3 and normal gaming like 2 months ago. There may have been fluctuations but these would have been maybe up to 10-15 frames down from 40-50 for a second or so, never down to 3-5 leading to almost complete freeze. Also looking at the frames they go all over the place up and down, which is also not normal even if I set these to certain limit to maintain. It may be a few days or even a week/s while I am still troubleshooting, but I will go to the bottom of this.

Apologies if I missed it, but have you tried a simple underclock of the GPU by giving it a max clock of say 2000MHz?

I read that you have undervolted but perhaps that undervolt is just on the edge of instability, whereas a simple underclock should stop you hitting any power and temp issues without sacrificing stability.

My GPU is undervolted but not lacking voltage, I've even added some more after my yesterday's tests with Furmark, just to be extra stable. I tested it extensively when I've got the card and got quite a lot of freezes, also RPCS3 can evaporate the GPU in certain games, especially at higher settings. Card goes crazy so I believe it is more than needed to keep all well.

Event Viewer doesn't show any errors and even serious warnings, apart from some NTP issues once in a while and web browser errors, nothing really to grab in there. No system errors, no Windows errors, etc. I know it may sound weird, but you know yourselves how many times Microsoft have silently caused extreme issues with updates and service stack upgrades and yes, this is an old system, but this is another reason something may have gone wrong with them on it since what they care is the last few CPU generations only and Windows 11 now.

Thanks once again everyone and I will post my findings as I go through this in the following days/weeks. If anything that may help me in my troubleshooting comes up eventually, thanks in advance for sharing.

 

[Firegod]

How Much CPU Does the GeForce RTX 3080 Need?

Breaking the bottleneck

www.tomshardware.com

That talks about CPUs around the age of yours when paired with a 3080 (the 7900XTX being faster yet again). Not sure how accurate pc-builds.com bottleneck calculator is (and I assume a 1440p resolution) but, posting for reference it says:

Intel Core i7-6850K is too weak for AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX on 2560 × 1440 pixels screen resolution for General Tasks.
This configuration has 47.8% of processor bottleneck.

Make of all that as you will.

 

[heatonpkmassive]

How Much CPU Does the GeForce RTX 3080 Need?

Breaking the bottleneck

www.tomshardware.com

That talks about CPUs around the age of yours when paired with a 3080 (the 7900XTX being faster yet again). Not sure how accurate pc-builds.com bottleneck calculator is (and I assume a 1440p resolution) but, posting for reference it says:

Intel Core i7-6850K is too weak for AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX on 2560 × 1440 pixels screen resolution for General Tasks.
This configuration has 47.8% of processor bottleneck.

Make of all that as you will.

I make nothing of that because it's quoting a percentage, which is just an arbitrary figure they've pulled out of their arse.

That's not to say people aren't correct when they say there is a bottleneck here, there most certainly is. But the percentage could make people think they'll have a worse experience than they'll actually have, bottleneck calculators are a load of ****.

 

[G J]

Are you able to put the 1080ti back in the system to test it?

What model of 7900XTX do you have as you possibly have a faulty vapour chamber as their would be a large delta between the the sensors on the GPU although the GPU temp may be ok the hotspot temp sensor is hitting its max limit which would cause dips in performance. Are the fans ramping up in speed/ getting loud before and when it hits 5 fps?

 

[3cl1ps3]

How Much CPU Does the GeForce RTX 3080 Need?

Breaking the bottleneck

www.tomshardware.com

That talks about CPUs around the age of yours when paired with a 3080 (the 7900XTX being faster yet again). Not sure how accurate pc-builds.com bottleneck calculator is (and I assume a 1440p resolution) but, posting for reference it says:

Intel Core i7-6850K is too weak for AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX on 2560 × 1440 pixels screen resolution for General Tasks.
This configuration has 47.8% of processor bottleneck.

Make of all that as you will.

I started with saying the entire configuration will be replaced in a few months (but I still need something until then) and I don't argue the CPU is incomparable/heavily bottlenecking the GPU. That's more than clear, but the problem is not entirely in this. Bottlenecking also means that the CPU will be at (nearly) 100% while the GPU - under-utlilised. This is not the case. Both CPU in particular and GPU, hardly ever reach maximum load and have (the former) at least 20-30% left for that.

Are you able to put the 1080ti back in the system to test it?

What model of 7900XTX do you have as you possibly have a faulty vapour chamber as their would be a large delta between the the sensors on the GPU although the GPU temp may be ok the hotspot temp sensor is hitting its max limit which would cause dips in performance. Are the fans ramping up in speed/ getting loud before and when it hits 5 fps?

The 7900XTX is Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X. I sold the 1080Ti after buying the former so no longer own it or have anything else to try with. After extended testing I do not believe the GPU cooling itself is faulty. At extreme load in Furmark the GPU hot spot temperature never raised above 84 degrees, most of the time around 80-82, which by any standard is pretty low. Fans curve is mine, and they will go to nearly 100% at extreme load/anything above 70 degrees (the AMD default profile is 0 RPM until certain load is reached and I never liked it as sometimes at extreme tempratures fans will still go 30-50%).

Yesterday I went after another DDU driver removal to a driver from March 2024 after reading this and some more. Newer AMD drivers cause unexplicable stuttering and frame drops (if you look at the second comment a guy complains about going from 120 to 30FPS with a 7900XTX which is insane - apparently with a more powerful CPU than mine). I didn't have too much time to test but will do over the next few days. I may need to go even with older drivers (if this is truly the reason), but what I suspect will tell me most is going into the CPU voltages and especially VCCSA as I believe there is something weird going on with the RAM in regard to the memory controller (maybe too tight timings, insufficient voltage or else). To be honest, if it is a GPU driver issues, shame on you AMD. There's been something about a few months in the Realease Notes ago about finally fixing extended idle power consumption with multiple monitors (maybe this messed up with the power delivery and management under load and possibly - not full load), but if you specifically look for 7-series card stuttering and FPS drops, it's all over the place.

 

[MyBrainz]

Wouldnt believe a word of that bottleneck calculator.

My rig result..

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is 'TOO WEAK' for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti on 1920 × 1080 pixels screen resolution for General Tasks.

LoL

 

[Firegod]

Wouldnt believe a word of that bottleneck calculator.

My rig result..

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is 'TOO WEAK' for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti on 1920 × 1080 pixels screen resolution for General Tasks.

LoL

Ouch lol.

 

[3cl1ps3]

I know this is old already, but just wanted to let anyone know I've managed to find and sort out the problem. This may also help others in a similar situation. The culprit had been the iCUE software by Corsair, version 5. Further to the above-mentioned after undervolting the CPU, cache frequency (and other) voltage(s), loosening the timings of the RAM plus running XMP at default settings which also decreases (compared to mine) all other voltages, removing all Adrenaline overlays and disabling any software logging, and running driver-only (no Adrenaline), the issue persisted. Then by chance while still exploring the problem I've read a guy reporting extreme stuttering because his Windows wallpaper slideshow changed once in a minute, exactly around this time that made me think a running programme on my side is causing the issue; and I was right. After exploring further, iCUE v5 - the software suite controlling my Corsair keyboard software settings + RGB lighting for my RAM, keyboard and Asus motherboard apparently messed up with the the chipset drivers, RAM and the CPU in weird ways. It's like it interfered with its IPC bypassing the Intel's. I've noticed multiple processes running along with the iCUE such as something called lighting service (typically using up to 0.8% of the CPU at maximum) and likely Asus and other indistinguishable ones. In total the total CPU usage of these processes never took more than 2-3%, but at chipset level and especially on the CPU side as the stutters took place it looked like to be of the sort of 20 to 40%. Closing down iCUE once started lead to even more horrific results, like instead of sudden FPS drops from stable whatever (70-100), FPS would go permanently at below 20 with constant stutters slideshow-type. I then disabled it from starting clear and was amazed to see CPU butter-smooth as before. There may have been slight dips of like 3 to maximum 5 FPS at times, but never more than that and completely incomparable to 70-80+ down.

So after doubting every single hardware part of my system - processor, graphics card, RAM, motherboard, Asus audio drivers in 5.1 mode (Windows 7.1 with x2 side speakers disabled), discrete Xonar Essence STX II, AMD drivers and software (perfect by the way), it was the iCUE. Completely uninstalled and went back to version 4. something. Funnily and very unusual Corsair for some reason had version 4 on their downloads website. Just two versions - 5 and last of their 4's. Why that? Maybe because they knew themeselves that something was going wrong or can cause severe problems with the latest one and yes, it did. Difference is night and day although with v5 Task Manager never shows CPU utilisation more than 3-4% (my CPU, with newer it may be 1.5-2). With 4 it's more or less the same, but CPU is rock stable and smooth. Very happy for a few more months until I change the entire system. I was thinking to sell this one, but now I believe I'm going to keep it as second or a third...

P.S. And yes, bottleneck calculators are completely misleading as there are many more times important factors to how much the CPU or the GPU wait for each other...