Micro-stuttering observed in almost every game, unrelated to GPU problems.
Micro-stuttering observed in almost every game, unrelated to GPU problems.
So I'm at my wits end. for the past couple years ive been suffering micro-stuttering and frame drops in prettymuch all my games, with a coil whine coming from my tower akin to the sound cicadas make that stops during stutters, the noise is synced perfectly. I know i said it started 2 years ago but honestly im not sure. and it couldve gotten a lot worse recently as to how it was before, so dont write any of my hardware off the suspect list based on its age. I thought for sure that this was my 2060super graphics card, as it had been RMA'd due to flat out dying and when returned it had started making coil whine.
(Note that throughout this post I'll be referring to the noise as coil whine because i can only assume thats what the noise is but i dont know whats causing it. it seems to be loudest around the CPU socket area)
so 2 weeks ago i finally replaced it with a 7900GRE and wellll. Zero changes. even the coil whine noise is the exact same. This, paired with the fact that the coil whine is for some reason more prevalent in games that arent as graphically demanding as some of the others i play, yet stutter to the degree of making the game unplayable (no mans sky on medium settings for example, graphics setting has no bearing on amount of stuttering or coil whine/unidentified buzzing noise and the game stutters too much for it to be actually playable. 3 hours into my armored core 6 playthrough, a comparable amount of stuttering is beginning to rear its head) Other games like rdr2 do not stutter but have massive FPS drops when the camera is turned. like im talking down from 90 to 25. this happens on other games too like world of tanks which is very easy to run. drops from 170 to 80 when turning the camera (this is obviously way less noticeable)
I'm just at a complete loss for what could be causing this. I'll post a hardware list below and things that i've already tried. any advice or suggestions for diagnosing would be greatly appreciated. Note that my PC is kinda like theseus' ship, some of the parts in here like the game drive are 5 years old and others are weeks or months old.
Hardware list:
CPU: Intel core i5 12600KF (18months old)
Mobo: Asus ROG strix gaming b660a-D4 (18 months old)
RAM: 2x 16gb DDR4 Corsair vengeance RGB 3200mhz (3 months old)
GPU: Asrock steel legend RX7900gre (2weeks old)
Boot Drive: 1tb kingston a2000 m.2 (18 months old)
Steam Drive: Intel 660p 1tb m.2 (5 years old. had originally thought this to be the main suspect but games run from C drive also stutter similarly)
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower g1 80+ gold 750w (18 months old)
Main Display: Gigabyte M27Q 170hz (1 year old. only display that games are run on)
Second display: iiyama Prolite B2783QSU (8 years old. no games are run on this)
(Using High Quality 5month old DP 1.4 cables on both)
Things i have tried:
Formatting SSD and reinstalling windows
Replace graphics card from 2060super
Enable/Disable XMP
Adjust refresh rate to be lower (does mitigate stuttering a little bit but even all the way down at 60 its still noticeable)
Reinstall all drivers
Disabling/Enabling any overclocks
Checking temps on all parts are good
Ran windows memory diagnostic (No issues appeared)
Thanks all.
Welcome to the forums, new member!
What BIOS version is your motherboard using right now? Which Windows version are you running? Did you reinstall the OS to avoid a faulty install? Where did you get the installer from? It’s recommended to install the OS offline and then manually add all drivers in an elevated command—right-click the installer and select Run as Administrator.
Ensure your drivers are up to date before proceeding.
For your first post, you’ve shared a lot of details! Thanks!
Couple aspects to investigate about coil wine and stutters.
Coil wine - Refer to previous message
Link functionality varies; initial posting worked but later returns indicate no connection between site and advertiser. This aligns with what was mentioned earlier.
Stutters - CoryGillmore discussed rainbow lighting effects on the forum.
Hi there,
thank you for your thorough reply and for providing the necessary details. For my DFO, I use standard Windows 10 Pro 22H2 version 19045.4291 with BIOS version 0418. All the other settings you mentioned are correct. I always begin a fresh Windows installation in this exact configuration.
these two options seem interesting, i'll look into them soon. thanks!
So first of all, thank you for disabling C states—it really eliminated the coil whine problems. However, it didn’t affect the FPS drops or stutters, and adjusting the rainbow lighting settings didn’t help either. I haven’t installed Armoury Crate, but even with static effects enabled, I haven’t seen any improvement. If you have other suggestions or ideas, I’d love to hear them. Or perhaps a general direction to better pinpoint the issue.