Periodic FPS drops in games on new gaming rig

fgolemo

Reputable
Oct 4, 2014
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4,510
Hi to everyone,

when I play recent 3D games (Battlefield 3 & 4, Tomb Raider, Saints Row 3 & 4, etc.) I experience periodic FPS drops, e.g. in Battlefield 3 from the average of around 70-80 fps to 20-30 fps; Even if I stand still and look at the same spot. It happens about every 3s and the drop is only a spike - half a second long.

It's not the graphics card or driver, because I switched my AMD card with an NVIDIA and the problem persists. And while the game is running, I monitored CPUs, RAM, Pagefile and Graphics card: Each CPU core stays below ~70%, no single core goes up to maximum, RAM always stays below 12GB and pagefile doesn't get touched

Now how can I make the fps become constant or how do I debug this issue? I'm out of ideas.


My system:


  • ■ Motherboard: AsRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer
    ■ CPU: AMD FX-9370 (4.4Ghz 8-core)
    ■ RAM: Corsair 16GB 1860MHz (2 x 8GB in dual channel)
    ■ PSU: Corsair 750W
    ■ Storage: Samsung Evo SSD (OS) and Samsung 1TB 7200rpm (games)
    ■ Graphics: Asus Radeon R9 280X

What I tried:


  • ■ update graphics card driver (to 14.9)
    ■ downgrade graphics card driver (to 13.11)
    ■ switch graphics card to NVIDIA Geforce GTX 760 - still, same frequent fps drops
    ■ play with almost every BIOS/UEFI setting
    ■ reset BIOS/UEFI settings to default
    ■ stress-test the CPU and RAM with Prime95... no power drops, no visual cues that would fit into the 3s-0.5s pattern
    ■ monitor the heat of CPU and graphics - CPU gives me 68 degree Celsius under pressure and graphics don't really heat up too much (sorry, forgot the number). Also the CPU is liquid-cooled.





...here are some graphics: http://imgur.com/a/w0z1o


    ■ Screenshot from Catzilla benchmark, displaying the drops (because
    it measures and displays the fps constantly, not only every second).
    I also noted that the frequency can vary a little bit, i.e. the
    distance between the gaps is not uniform.
    ■ Another Catzilla screenshot, same thing, but only 2s between
    gaps.
    ■ Screenshot of GPUtweak (a graphics monitoring tool with a time resolution of 1s)... notice that in the first benchmark (left) that causes the lags, there is mixed GPU usage, while on the right in a permanently high GPU test there are none.
    ■ CPU usage screenshot. During the benchmark this spiky pattern occurs - don't know if that's normal or related to the lag issues.


...I also noted that it gets worse after some gaming / warming up. Usually if I run the (Catzilla) benchmark twice in a row, the first run gets 1-3 gaps, while the second run is gapping 10-20 times.
 
Solution


It is a thing, another guy with the same problem had his motherboard heat...

Anonymouselite5

Distinguished
One reason why is it could be another program in the background? Maybe popping up for a split second causing your card to go into 2d clocks?
Try turning off aniti-virus programs and other programs and see.

Another reason could be the HDD having high writes at that time causing like a stutter in fps, seems to be happening to me oddly from time to time. Defrag and error check your hdd.

Also pretty sure this isn't your problem, but check the temp of your motherboard, cpu, and other parts of the pc. Some guy had the same problem and had his motherboard to blame.

One more thing it wouldn't hurt to try updating your motherboards bios.
 

ZeusGamer

Admirable


I was gonna say the same about his HDD earlier, but I didn't want to put out the wrong info lol. His computer is pretty new as he stated. Good thing I wasn't the only one haha.
 

Anonymouselite5

Distinguished


haha, unless the HDD was bugged on purchase. Highly unlikely though.
 

fgolemo

Reputable
Oct 4, 2014
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4,510
Thanks! :)
Bios has been updated: no change.
Disabled Antivirus and any unnecessary background processes: no change - I found though, that (at least in BF3) there are periodic spikes in IO on the secondary (gaming) HDD every 5-7s, but those don't overlap with the 2-3s in-game lags.

..but I will next error-check my HDD and for defragging - isn't that done automatically since around Vista?

I also had GPU-Z logging stuff every 0.1s for a few minutes when the lags occured. Might or might not be related, but in the column "VDDC Current (A)" there are some weird drops, e.g.:
67
73
1.2 <-- wat?
60
64

...but those drops are too unperiodic, i.e. sometimes there are 2 just 50ms apart and sometimes 5s. Is this generally normal?

And when I go looking for temperatures... Do you know any tools that can log my temperatures every few milliseconds (not full seconds)? EDIT: will try SpeedFan, then Core Temp.
 

fgolemo

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Oct 4, 2014
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4,510
...Okay, this is weird. When the system is cold (first benchmark run after a long pause), the lagging disappears, but after getting warm (second benchmark run in rapid succession), the lagging starts and the overall performance drops.
When cold the graphics card sensor gives me 40 degr. C, the CPU 64 degr. C. The CPU doesn't change so much (goes up to about 70 under full stress), but when the GPU reaches 65-70 degr. C, the problems occur.
But then again... I switched the graphics cards with an NVIDIA - and also I suppose that those are still temperatures that they can handle. Maybe it's the motherboard warming up or something? Is that a thing? Northbridge?
 

ZeusGamer

Admirable


I wouldn't trust the automatic defrags. You still have to defray it manually at least once a week. MSI afterburner is what I use to log every millisecond. You can change options in the settings menu.

 

Anonymouselite5

Distinguished


It is a thing, another guy with the same problem had his motherboard heat up which caused his bad performance. Although the motherboard he was using was a cheapo one.
 
Solution

fgolemo

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Oct 4, 2014
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4,510
(Kinda) found the solution:

The problem was the combination of components / high temperatures and thermal throttling: both the CPU and GPU draw huge amounts of energy and get very hot* and the motherboard has a "features" to throttle something, possibly the CPU, on high temperatures. I tried all the solutions for the problem from here (except the last one, where you mod your mainboard): http://www.overclock.net/t/1202751/amd-fx-cpu-throttling-fixes-please-sticky

...and it would run fine with almost all games, except Battlefield series (reason still unclear). So I exchanged it with my girlfriend's Gigabyte 970A-DS3P, which is lower-end but serves my purposes and doesn't have the throttling.

*it didn't occur to me that 70°C is "very hot", because my former computer was a Shuttle PC (tiny brick of a desktop, with shitty ventilation) and the top CPU temperature was 105°C. It would still run games at this temp, ...just not for too long.

So, yeah, if something similar happens to you, check if the problems start appearing at a certain temperature level (best tool for that: SpeedFan) - for me it was at about 66°C GPU temp.
 

Coolant111

Commendable
Jan 5, 2017
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The answer is most likely a setting in your BIOS that automatically throttles down your CPU when it hits a certain temperature. I believe the setting in my BIOS is HPT and it was set at 70. My BIOS would not allow me to make changes so all I did was add an external fan to blow into the case and that seems to have fixed it.