$1500 PC experiencing occasional lag or freezing every half second
$1500 PC experiencing occasional lag or freezing every half second
You're confirming the details. Improve your internet connection and FPS will stay consistent. All listed games are multiplayer online. Try playing a game like BF1 offline in the campaign, capture the session with Shadowplay, and share it here. Make sure to use MSI Afterburner to display performance metrics during play.
It's not usually the case that ping or poor internet causes issues in these games. Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, and Battlefield 1 all feature occasional lag spikes even in single-player mode.
FPS isn't connected to the internet and "lag" covers most gaming performance problems, not just network issues. Are all your drivers current? Is the game loading from an SSD? Is the pagefile large enough (4GB or more)? Can you track your system's usage during these spikes? Are the drops mainly at sub-40fps or just falling from 100fps+? What background programs are running?
It works perfectly for me. I consistently see it every day in GTA 5 online. In crowded lobbies my FPS hovers around 64-82, but when I enter a lobby solo my FPS rises to a steady 105. Playing in story mode keeps it steady between 90 and 105.
If your lag feels like freezes, it might also appear outside games, particularly after switching from an HDD to an SSD while keeping the same configuration. Your BIOS settings could be the issue—though I don’t remember the exact terms anymore. It seems hardware is generally up-to-date, but checking temperatures makes sense if you notice overheating. If the symptoms align, investigating further would be wise.
Games may freeze because of weak internet connections, but this varies by title and its development setup. The server handles sending game data, so if it doesn’t receive updates, the client might stop responding. Some games, like Source titles, seem to handle lag gracefully, allowing other players to keep moving while the issue resolves. Overwatch, Final Fantasy XIV, and The Division appear to manage lag better than others.
All drivers are current, games were playing on a 7200rpm Western Digital Caviar Blue hard drive. I’m not very tech-savvy, so I’m not sure what a "Pagefile" means. If you have any tools that let you track performance during lag spikes would be helpful. The lag usually lasts about half a second and actually stops the game instead of lowering FPS. It happens so quickly my counter only drops by around 10 points rather than reaching zero. I only use the essential programs, such as Razer Synapse for mouse and keyboard. MSI Afterburner is also running in the background for temperature monitoring, and Discord is usually active too.
Other applications using the drive might be responsible. Pagefile acts as virtual memory and some programs require it to function properly. If you're unsure about its purpose, it's likely not a problem. By default, Windows allocates it appropriately based on your RAM capacity. With a second monitor, Task Manager is helpful; otherwise, tools like MSI Afterburner, HWiNFO64 or HWmonitor can help track performance metrics. The areas I find relevant are disk activity, memory consumption, and CPU/GPU utilization (though these mainly reflect the first two). This issue could stem from RAM problems. It was resolved on my previous system by upgrading from 4GB to 8GB, but at that time I consistently had over 80% RAM usage.
I verified there are no software programs installed on my HDD, just games. I’m unsure about enabling a graph for each component with Afterburner—maybe I should switch to another tool. I also have 16GB of RAM.
Enhance your connection and wrap it up. Until then, run MSI Afterburner to display all system metrics—CPU, GPU, RAM, VRAM, etc.—while gaming. Share a video of a single-player campaign here so we can check for any external interference.