Occasional brief delays or stutters occur in some games but not others.
Occasional brief delays or stutters occur in some games but not others.
I’ve been facing issues with lag or brief pauses in several games lately. Over the past few months it’s become more frequent, especially on my high-end system. It feels like my computer takes about half a second longer to start up, which isn’t a prolonged delay but quick enough to be noticeable. When you look closely, it’s hard to catch, yet when you notice it it’s quite bothersome. It seems to appear randomly, without warning.
I’ve attempted various solutions, but nothing has resolved the problem. At this point, I’m considering stopping my gaming sessions if I can’t get it fixed. It’s unclear whether it’s a hardware problem or just specific to certain titles. For example, Cyberpunk runs smoothly with no issues, whereas Witcher 3 stutters during loading or movement. My friend on a 2080 Super doesn’t experience this at all, even when playing games that cause it.
It’s strange how it only happens in some games and not others. I used to think it was just optimization, but it appears in many titles, making it hard to decide. It feels like a random chance—like a 50/50 bet if it happens at all. This has made me hesitant to play new games, as the experience doesn’t match what I expect.
I’ve shared my setup and some troubleshooting steps, including benchmark results and links to videos showing the issue. If you can help identify the cause, it would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry if you've already checked this, but how full is your boot disk? If you've been having more problems than you did when first using it, that suggests something has happened or is happening slowly over time. I experience issues like this if I let my main SSD get too full. TL;DR Check your main drive. If low on free space, delete some stuff to free up space on the drive. This should help things a bit. Malware does come to mind. What anti-malware do you use and when was the last time you did a full system scan? Nasty critters running in the background would hurt performance too. Your memory might be a little too slow. Ryzen tends to favor faster memory.
The CPU is operating at a high temperature thanks to the 120mm radiator. What resolution are you using?
Right now I have roughly 500GB available on my SSD out of a 2TB drive. I’m not sure if it’s infected with malware—I did have a trojan around September, but I removed it using Malwarebytes and completely wiped the drive after reinstalling Windows multiple times. A recent full security scan came back clean. I haven’t installed anything suspicious during the Windows setup, and my system uses less than 60% memory while playing games, usually lower. I’ve heard FTPSM might cause some lag, so I’m planning to disable it until I update my BIOS.
I haven’t noticed it exceeding 75°C even under full CPU load during the stress test, though I’ll keep watching. This might be the problem because the stutter appears in newer games with higher graphics demands. I’m testing at 3440x1440 and have seen the issue on my old 16:9 screen.
The bottleneck shouldn't be a problem at that setting, so that's not likely. Keeping it near 75°C will keep you in that segment. With a high refresh monitor, limiting the frames per second might also assist.