How's your FrameTime (MS) looking?
How's your FrameTime (MS) looking?
I recently upgraded my gaming PC with an MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z, an I7 10700k processor, 32 GB of 3600 MHz RAM, a 120GB Kingston SSD from my old machine, and a 1 TB HDD from my previous setup. After setting up the new system, I read online that after installation, you need to go into the BIOS and enable XMP settings. I downloaded CPU-Z, checked the speeds, and found that my RAM wasn’t being used at full capacity. So I turned on XMP, and after that, everything matched the advertised specifications. I’m using MSI Afterburner to track FPS, frame time, and temperatures. The frame times look normal, but I notice some lag spikes in certain games—especially titles like Hell Let Loose, Insurgency Sandstorm, and similar ones. Reviews suggest this might be a common issue for those games. In other games, everything seems fine. I’m trying to make sure it’s not a problem with my hardware since I have such a powerful CPU, a top-tier GPU, and fast RAM.
Turn off XMP settings and see if lag spikes continue. If they do, switch on VSync, G-Sync or FreeSync.
It should improve their performance unless there are stability issues.
It's not uncommon for things to be a bit off. You might want to check if disabling XMP and adjusting the timing and speed makes sense for your setup.
Turn them off and check if the low frame rates disappear. If they persist, re-enable them because it might improve performance. If that doesn’t help, try enabling free-sync or another adaptive feature to see if it resolves the issue.
I turned off XMP and read online that lower RAM timings are better. After checking CPU-Z, I saw that when I enabled XMP, it set my DRAM speed to 1800 MHz and used timings of 16-19-19-39. But when I disabled XMP, the speed dropped to 1066 MHz and the timings changed to 15-15-15-36. Is that okay? What should I do? Is this normal? Also, my monitor doesn’t support Free-Sync or G-Sync. Should I disable XMP and adjust the speed and timings myself?
1800mhz equals 3600mhz. It's reduced by half in the CPU-Z. After you turned it off, test your games to see if the frame times remain poor. If they stay the same, restart XMP.
I turned it off but the frame time stayed exactly the same as when it was on, so I re-enabled it. I’m certain there’s no problem since my hardware looks fine. I bought everything myself and built the PC, so I know everything works properly from the inside. The components aren’t weak at all. When I turned it back on, I tried launching Gears 5 but it kept refusing to start even after I enabled it again. After a few attempts, I ran a 3DMark Time Spy Stress Test—something I do often—to check if there were any issues. If frame times or FPS had been off, the test would have flagged them. Once it worked, the game launched without problems. I’m pretty sure the issue is related to the Xbox game pass file, similar to what happened with Rage 2. Spikes appear only when something loads or under similar conditions. While playing games, my frame time graph changes because I use an uncapped framerate, and FPS is also unstable. Capping it (like enabling VSync) still causes fluctuations but doesn’t affect performance. From what I’ve figured out, there shouldn’t be a problem unless the game itself is the cause, like in Hell Let Loose.
Also curious—does a monitor impact frame time?