F5F Stay Refreshed Software PC Gaming Why is my game acting like it's freezing and lagging?

Why is my game acting like it's freezing and lagging?

Why is my game acting like it's freezing and lagging?

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Willty101
Junior Member
23
05-03-2026, 11:08 PM
#1
the name tells me everything. basically, this problem only happens on big games like ARK or COD. sometimes it even shows up in Fortnite and Overwatch. the game gets really slow and lags every single time. when it freezes, your computer uses way more storage space until the lag stops coming back to normal. but once I reset my whole PC, everything runs fast and there is no stutter at all. however, two months or so later, the stutter returned. i have no idea what to do now. My drivers are already updated and I've reinstalled them multiple times. nothing helped except resetting my computer, which brings back the lag after a month. this has been happening for nearly two years! even after fixing it for almost 18 months, I stopped playing games for so long that I came back to try something else. here is what my PC looks like: the graphics card is an RTX 2070 and the CPU is an Intel i7 8700 with 8GB of DDR4 RAM running at 2666MHz. you can guess the rest from this picture, but it shows how bad my computer performed. loading times were way too long compared to before. here is a link to a video showing just how slow things get and how hard it was to load the game: https://youtu.be/wooiPmLL3Tc
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Willty101
05-03-2026, 11:08 PM #1

the name tells me everything. basically, this problem only happens on big games like ARK or COD. sometimes it even shows up in Fortnite and Overwatch. the game gets really slow and lags every single time. when it freezes, your computer uses way more storage space until the lag stops coming back to normal. but once I reset my whole PC, everything runs fast and there is no stutter at all. however, two months or so later, the stutter returned. i have no idea what to do now. My drivers are already updated and I've reinstalled them multiple times. nothing helped except resetting my computer, which brings back the lag after a month. this has been happening for nearly two years! even after fixing it for almost 18 months, I stopped playing games for so long that I came back to try something else. here is what my PC looks like: the graphics card is an RTX 2070 and the CPU is an Intel i7 8700 with 8GB of DDR4 RAM running at 2666MHz. you can guess the rest from this picture, but it shows how bad my computer performed. loading times were way too long compared to before. here is a link to a video showing just how slow things get and how hard it was to load the game: https://youtu.be/wooiPmLL3Tc

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Dorito977
Member
177
05-04-2026, 03:27 AM
#2
Welcome to the forums, new person! Please share details about your setup, like this: CPU: Motherboard: Memory (RAM): Hard drive or SSD: Graphics card: Power supply unit: Chassis: Operating system: Monitor: add how old your power supply is besides its brand and model. When you see stuttering on your monitor, check the temperatures of that device for your computer setup first.
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Dorito977
05-04-2026, 03:27 AM #2

Welcome to the forums, new person! Please share details about your setup, like this: CPU: Motherboard: Memory (RAM): Hard drive or SSD: Graphics card: Power supply unit: Chassis: Operating system: Monitor: add how old your power supply is besides its brand and model. When you see stuttering on your monitor, check the temperatures of that device for your computer setup first.

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BlurryFqce
Senior Member
486
05-07-2026, 05:48 AM
#3
Have you turned the power settings up to High Performance? If not, click Energy Options and turn everything all the way to High. Also, shut down HDD Sleep and anything else that makes your computer stutter. Check out this guide with simple steps: How to Customize Power Options Advanced Settings in Windows 10 for your hard disk, processor, JavaScript Timer Frequency, Graphics, Internet Explorer, plus www.howto-connect.com
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BlurryFqce
05-07-2026, 05:48 AM #3

Have you turned the power settings up to High Performance? If not, click Energy Options and turn everything all the way to High. Also, shut down HDD Sleep and anything else that makes your computer stutter. Check out this guide with simple steps: How to Customize Power Options Advanced Settings in Windows 10 for your hard disk, processor, JavaScript Timer Frequency, Graphics, Internet Explorer, plus www.howto-connect.com

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201
05-23-2026, 10:24 AM
#4
Get this. Start UBM Reboot mode. Just wait some minutes. Then start UBM while your browser is off. Finally, post a link to where you see the results on that page.
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AwesomeIce1121
05-23-2026, 10:24 AM #4

Get this. Start UBM Reboot mode. Just wait some minutes. Then start UBM while your browser is off. Finally, post a link to where you see the results on that page.

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Dolo
Junior Member
12
05-24-2026, 03:34 PM
#5
It's hard to figure out exactly why this happened because lots of things can be making it worse. I had a similar problem a few years ago. What fixed it for me was changing my Windows power settings from Balanced to High Performance. When you use Balanced, your computer might change the voltage and clock speed on some parts of its hardware, which makes performance go up and down too much. Overclocking does this too, whether you are doing custom overclocking or using Intel's turbo boost. If you do custom overclocking, I'd either fix it right or turn it off. Also, if your CPU has a turbo feature from the factory (which is an older version of the processor), try turning that off too as well, because this problem might still go away after changing the power settings. If all these steps don't help at all, you can try temporarily turning off your anti-virus and Windows Game Mode to see if they are causing it. If none of those work, then you'll have to investigate a little deeper.
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Dolo
05-24-2026, 03:34 PM #5

It's hard to figure out exactly why this happened because lots of things can be making it worse. I had a similar problem a few years ago. What fixed it for me was changing my Windows power settings from Balanced to High Performance. When you use Balanced, your computer might change the voltage and clock speed on some parts of its hardware, which makes performance go up and down too much. Overclocking does this too, whether you are doing custom overclocking or using Intel's turbo boost. If you do custom overclocking, I'd either fix it right or turn it off. Also, if your CPU has a turbo feature from the factory (which is an older version of the processor), try turning that off too as well, because this problem might still go away after changing the power settings. If all these steps don't help at all, you can try temporarily turning off your anti-virus and Windows Game Mode to see if they are causing it. If none of those work, then you'll have to investigate a little deeper.

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Irrjr81_gamer
Member
222
05-25-2026, 07:27 PM
#6
hey sorry for the late reply, it just wasn't working today. I'm trying again tomorrow. I'm gonna go to bed now anyway. Thanks so much for your tips!
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Irrjr81_gamer
05-25-2026, 07:27 PM #6

hey sorry for the late reply, it just wasn't working today. I'm trying again tomorrow. I'm gonna go to bed now anyway. Thanks so much for your tips!

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DiamndQueen
Member
210
05-25-2026, 07:43 PM
#7
The quick fix is to upgrade your RAM. Your current 8GB isn't enough for today's games without stuttering. When your RAM gets full, the computer has to move things around on your hard drive or use "virtual memory" instead. This causes stuttering. You should get a better setup with two sticks of 3200MHz RAM totaling 6400MHz (or similar). Are you using two small sticks of 4GB each, or one big stick of 8GB? Some of your 8GB is taken away just for the computer to work normally, so only about 5 to 6GB stays free for gaming. Games like Battlefield 5 need way more than that. Many modern games also use up a lot of system RAM on their own.
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DiamndQueen
05-25-2026, 07:43 PM #7

The quick fix is to upgrade your RAM. Your current 8GB isn't enough for today's games without stuttering. When your RAM gets full, the computer has to move things around on your hard drive or use "virtual memory" instead. This causes stuttering. You should get a better setup with two sticks of 3200MHz RAM totaling 6400MHz (or similar). Are you using two small sticks of 4GB each, or one big stick of 8GB? Some of your 8GB is taken away just for the computer to work normally, so only about 5 to 6GB stays free for gaming. Games like Battlefield 5 need way more than that. Many modern games also use up a lot of system RAM on their own.

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Kapodistrias
Member
130
05-30-2026, 02:10 AM
#8
i actually fixed the disk thing, but now stutter comes back after a few days. it was not bad before, just annoying. whenever it stutters, the disk usage jumps to 100%. is turning on Ultimate Performance Mode good? since i already used High Performance and that didn't help, maybe it's better. I'll keep it that way because I thought it would fix things. also, my game looks pixelated in fullscreen mode.
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Kapodistrias
05-30-2026, 02:10 AM #8

i actually fixed the disk thing, but now stutter comes back after a few days. it was not bad before, just annoying. whenever it stutters, the disk usage jumps to 100%. is turning on Ultimate Performance Mode good? since i already used High Performance and that didn't help, maybe it's better. I'll keep it that way because I thought it would fix things. also, my game looks pixelated in fullscreen mode.

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XDarkSlayerX
Junior Member
20
06-04-2026, 06:29 AM
#9
Thanks a bunch, I'm checking that out!
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XDarkSlayerX
06-04-2026, 06:29 AM #9

Thanks a bunch, I'm checking that out!

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plush43
Junior Member
12
06-07-2026, 01:03 PM
#10
Yeah, I did, but I'm just playing Ultimate Right Now. Haven't heard of HDD sleep yet though, so I'll look into that tomorrow.
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plush43
06-07-2026, 01:03 PM #10

Yeah, I did, but I'm just playing Ultimate Right Now. Haven't heard of HDD sleep yet though, so I'll look into that tomorrow.

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