Unbelievable Frame-Drop in games

[JL94x4]

Hello,

I'm in desperate need of your help and so are many others who still have this problem, and I want to solve it once and for all. Last week I upgraded my PC (specs below) but I'm having trouble while playing (intense) games (I'm going to use BF1 in this case).

Every few minutes I get a sudden FPS drop/spike that makes almost every game unplayable. Running BF1 on mixed High-Ultra settings with an average of 60-80 fps suddenly drops to 40-50 every now and then, making the game unplayable for a split second

Things I tried already:
1. Disabling page file/Superfetch + emptying memory StandbyList using RAMmap - did not help
2. Using best (or lowest) settings on the Nvidia Control Panel and also inside the game - cranked up FPS, spikes still occur
3. Re-install all drivers and game(s) - no difference at all
4. Check for malware and viruses - none found
5. Unpark cores - nope
6. Disabled all Nvidia Audio Devices - still spiking

The temperature of most hardware parts is 40-60°C, so I don't think my system is overheating. I also have a pretty good CPU cooler.

I find my FPS around 80-100 on BF1 on TDM so i figured if i don't go below 80 i should lock my FPS in rivatuner to 79. As soon as i set it to 79 my FPS drops below this, to like 75 and sometimes as low as 65.

I have all my power settings on high so that's not the reason, temps are reasonable so i highly doubt that my system is throttling in anyway. I'm desperate for some help now, this doesn't seem normal.

Specs:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (Creators)
Processor: i7 6700K Stock 4.0GHZ
RAM: x2 8GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 933MHz (Total 16GB)
Motherboard: ASUS H170M-E D3 (1151 Socket)
GPU: 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (EVGA SC)
Storage: 250GB SANDISK SSD
Storage 2: 2 TB Seagate 7200RPM
PSU: CX750M Corsair

Anyone out there that can help me with my problem? It's really getting annoyed.

Thanks!

 

[JL94x4]

Had a similar issue for months after the CU update. I don't know if it's the exact same thing (mine used to occur every half hour or hour or so in GTA V and other games/some apps) but here's what fixed it:

1. Disable Windows Live Tiles http://innov8tiv.com/turn-off-disable-windows-10-live-tiles/ (if PushNotifications doesn't already exist there, create it as a key). Then make sure all tiles are turned off after a restart.

2. Go to Services.msc and disable and stop Windows Search and SuperFetch.

3. Right-click your drive/s, Properties, and turn off Indexing.


You can try them one by one, but don't roll back if you need to try (2) and (3). Instead, add them on to (1). Disabling Live Tiles greatly decreased the occurrences in my case, but would still get a few occasional ones. After applying (2) and (3) as well, the lag spikes/severe fps drops never happened again.

Also, hardware acceleration enabled in browsers is causing a ton of issues with the CU update. It is best to disable it in your browser/s right now, just as a general precaution.

Hi, sorry for the late response.

I've done what you suggested to no avail, however I have since found out that the problem may be caused by page file, is my DDR3 1866mhz memory not up to the job?

Do you have access to a second monitor? I would install MSI Afterburner and throw up a big graph of all your system parameter - CPU, GPU, Memory, bus.... so and so on and monitor them all while playing. Watch to see what happens during the glitch.
One thing I would do is add your gaming directories to the exclusion list for Windows Defender. If you are playing online Windows can take it in to it's head to scan anything that's downloaded during the game, which can include textures and so on for player skins. Can cause horrible glitches just at the moment you really don't need them.

This is something I have already tried in the past but never really got anything showing up from it. I reinstalled Windows last night and installed nothing but Steam, Nvidia drivers and 3-4 games and I am still suffering this issue.

 

[JL94x4]

Sorry that didn't work out for you, must be something else causing it. I tracked down my issue with the help of Event Viewer and looking at the timestamps for events that coincided with the lag spikes, if that's any help.

Not sure about Page File, could check your Disk Management to make sure your HDD only says "Healthy, Primary Partition". Sometimes Page File or other bits can get installed on another drive and cause issues.

HWiNFO64 has sensors you can enable in your notification tray (drag them onto taskbar afterwards). The "Write Total" reading would be a handy one to enable, so that whenever you see a value of 100% you can quickly open Task Manager > Resource Monitor > Disk (best to have it open and minimized already really) and see which process is writing so much. I imagine a likely culprit is a process making the Write Total 100%.

Kinda interesting.

Heres my Resource Monitor for the last few seconds. Seems search is hogging disk usage!!
http://imgur.com/a/6q2qJ
http://imgur.com/a/EkXY8

Any way to totally stop Windows search?

 

[JL94x4]

Go to the Disk tab instead and in the Disk Activity section, sort by Write (B/sec). You got to catch it when it's writing 100% to disk, or near that. If that's what's causing it, anyway.

Not sure that Windows Search is actually running, or if it's something else called Search. Double-check in Services.msc to make sure it's disabled, maybe Admin privileges required, not sure.

So the disk tab is showing a "pepflashplayer.dll" is pretty much constantly writing to the disk, located in app data, aswel as "software_reporter_tool.exe" and "pnacl_public_x86_x64_pnacl_llc_nexe"

Checked in game, checking disk usage and its not really being used that much, I get 100FPS, as soon as i drop to say 91fps i'll get a major lag/stutter, is that normal for frame drop to cause such a drastic stutter?

 

[JL94x4]

There's a huge thread over on Nvidia about this. It affected me to, I tried loads of different things including even buying an nvme drive, as it seemed my ssd was too slow to load new data. When explosions etc were going off in bf1 there would be a hiccup, when anything new came on screen for the first time it would hiccup.
Reinstalling windows and letting it update did nothing for me.
Reinstalling anniversary update Windows and blocked updates has fixed mine and other people's issues, I'm not joking it feels like a hardware upgrade. It's a bit of a ball ache but as of now it's the only way.

What Nvidia drivers are you running? I assume your running Windows 1607? I reinstalled that today, using driver 378.92 but still having issues. Not as bad, though.

 

[JL94x4]

378.92
Yeah I'm on 1607. These seems to be the best case atm until they sort this crap out.
I get the occasional hiccup when re spawning in bf1 but everything else is silky.

Do you notice you get a lot higher GPU usage between 1703 and 1607? 1607 being better, I've certainly noticed that, however i still get a few problems. I started a new thread for that here, maybe you can help.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-dropping-from-100fps-to-even-97fps.18788545/

 

[JL94x4]

I cannot say I did. Every hiccup I did get showed up in msi afterburner as a frametime spike.
I suggest you install that and enable the frametime graph.

Another thing I did notice is on CU in overwatch pressing the tab key would result in a very slight bump in the frametime graph
Now im on the AU there is nothing, not a single hump no matter how many times I spam the tab key.

As you can see, everytime my frametime jumps i get a stutter. Really frustrating as it happens in every game, that was one game for less than 5 minutes.

 

[JL94x4]

Is this bf1?
If those are on respawns then it looks normal.

Those are just running around on H1Z1 Just Survive.

 

[JL94x4]

Is anything overclocked?

Nothing.

I know you said you have 1607,have you disabled updates to make sure it doesnt download creators update again?

Yes, used shutup10 to do that.

 

[JL94x4]

This sounds like your system ram is running low or it could also be caused if you are running the game from a mechanical (older style) hard drive, here are some more things you can try...

1. Install a problem game onto your SSD
2. Check that your RAM is not all being eaten, inversely check that the games not using your page file (it should be using just your RAM)
3. Check your RAM timings, lower (tighter) = better so check that they aren't ridiculously high.
4. I've seen people with a similar PSU to yours run into all sorts of problems, I'd recommend if at all possible trying a different PSU
5. Check task manager performance and see if any part of your system is getting hammered during the lag spikes.
6. Lastly check your anti-virus/malware software, maybe an update caused it to check files that are in use (eg. your game files) while you are trying to game making the files slow to access and causing bad fps.
7. Last option to rule out software is to nuke it all and start again fresh, do a re-install.

I've tried both SSD and HDD
RAM isn't be used more than 9GB of 16GB and yeah, the games seem to be using upwards of 6-7GB of Pagefile
RAM timings are 10-10-10-27
Nothing is being hit harder than it should be
Tried disabling/closing whilst running games
Reinstalled 3-4 times with no luck

quick google seems to indicate it is a part of a flashplayer in chrome/adobe
`seems`legit

Yeah, i found out it was chrome.

Have you disabled Game Mode?

Yes, still issues.

 

[JL94x4]

Hi. A little update.



I seem to have tracked down the cause for the stutter, but have yet to find a fix. I was playing Battlefield 1 and FIFA 17 and in the following graph my frametimes sometimes hit 139,000 ms (what causes this?)

Now whilst playing these games none of the CPU Cores go anywhere near 80% let alone 100%. I'm capped in Rivatuner at 100fps and have vsync on but have also tried it off, this leads me to believe should i be able to get consistent frame times i'd be able to get rid of the stutter, but the question is how would i achieve a stable frametime? Instead of it occasionally hitting 130,000+ ms.



I have a 6700K and GTX 1080 which should easily be able to obtain 100fps in most games out today at 1080p, and even 1440p.



Look forward to hearing your replies!