Suttering / Pausing within desktop environment

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Every few seconds, like 3 or 4 seconds - I'll get a what seems like a 0.5 second pause, though it could be much less than that. This seems to be after the PC has been on for a few hours, unsure if this is after some intensive use or with little use beforehand (will have to try and take note prior to this issue occurs).

Newly built PC - spec is:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
ASUS Prime 450 Plus Mobo
Samsung 970 Plus 500gb Nvme m2 SSD
Corsair 3000Mhz 32Gb (2x16) RAM

Linux Mint 19.1 Cinamon (Fresh Install)

This happens whether I'm dragging a window around the desktop or even when watching a youtube video. Once I notice this occuring, I've found that if I restart Cinamon via the troubleshooting menu the problem goes away for a while, but always comes back.

I didn't notice this issue running on older intel hardware with the same OS/Desktop.

Has anyone else experienced this issue with similar hardware/software? I wonder if it's a Cinamon problem or maybe some driver issue?
 
Have ypu run any other OS on this same hardware? If not then what happens if you boot into a live distro on a USB stick (choose a different distro to the one you are using)?
 
Have ypu run any other OS on this same hardware? If not then what happens if you boot into a live distro on a USB stick (choose a different distro to the one you are using)?

Good idea! I can try booting off a USB stick, the only trouble is the issue only occurs after a few hours - I use the PC throughout the day for work, but I guess I can set it going in the evening whilst I'm doing something else.

It's even noticeable whilst I'm typing this, every tenth or so letter is pausing before it appears on screen... really odd, never seen this before on the desktop, only maybe in a gaming situations under Windows where it's been fixed with a driver update.

I wonder if it is a GPU related issue, as my graphics card is pretty old - AMD MSI 7850 Twin Forzr - compared to the mobo/cpu it's now running on? :confused:
 
Update:
I left the machine running overnight and when I went to use this morning, I experienced worse stuttering, even down to the mouse pointer lagging around the screen.

Checked the System Monitor and found that the Cinamon process was using over 700mb of RAM. Restarting Cinamon from the Troubleshoot menu brought this down to below 80mb. Sounds like a possible memory leak directly in the Cinamon desktop perhaps?

I've now removed all desklets and panel applets to see if that makes a difference.. It may well be a rouge applet as some of these do seem a little ropey at times :D
 
I had stuttering/freezing after replacing my old HD5770 with a RX 580. Disabling HDCP for all of my displays was the only thing I found that fixed it.
 
lspci | grep VGA
gives...
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Pitcairn PRO [Radeon HD 7850 / R7 265 / R9 270 1024SP]

Don't know if that's the actual driver version.. am on Mint 19.1 - there's probably a more accurate command..

Though since I disabled all the desklets and applets, the issue appears to have ceased. It's just a case of re-enabling them 1 by 1 until I find the culprit :D
 
lspci | grep VGA
gives...
07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Pitcairn PRO [Radeon HD 7850 / R7 265 / R9 270 1024SP]

Don't know if that's the actual driver version.. am on Mint 19.1 - there's probably a more accurate command..

Though since I disabled all the desklets and applets, the issue appears to have ceased. It's just a case of re-enabling them 1 by 1 until I find the culprit :D

Use
Code:
 lspci -v | grep -A 10 VGA

Should look something like this
Code:
0c:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Vega 10 XL/XT [Radeon RX Vega 56/64] (rev c0) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Vega 10 XL/XT [Radeon RX Vega 56/64]
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 71
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=2M]
        I/O ports at f000 [size=256]
        Memory at fd400000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
        Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
        Kernel modules: amdgpu
 
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