Lag Spikes on pretty good PC

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theRTT

theRTT

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Jul 25, 2016
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Hello, I noticed in the last two weeks, that I'm getting lag spikes. My screen freezes for 0.5 second (or so), when I am gaming. I've noticed that my cpu percentage is around 80-94% when gaming. But I don't know if that is causing the problem. Maybe it is my graphics card? I have the lag spikes in GTA V, Star Wars Battlefront, Battlefield 4 and even sometimes in Minecraft. The in-game settings are fine and not too high.

I've deleted my whole PC yesterday and reinstalled windows 10, to see if this would fix anything, but it didn't. I'm even noticing that the FPS is slightly lower than it was before the reinstall, weird.

But when I had the lag spikes, there where no big frame drops or what so ever.

My PC:
Intel i5 4460.
MSI Nvidia Geforce GTX 960 4 GB.
8GB Ram.
MSI H97 Gaming 3 Motherboard.
1000 GB HDD.
250 EVO Samsung SSD.

Who can help me with this?

So what might be the problem? Please respond, Thank You.
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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Just tried it out, for now, when I am not gaming and surfing on the internet, it shows around the 27/30 C. I think that is fine. I'm gonna try it out now how much it reaches when I'm gaming.
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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Okay, I think it's not the heat. It stays around 47/49 C after 1 hour of gaming. Still having the lag spikes. I noticed when loading, my CPU usage is around 99%. For example, in Star Wars Battlefront, I have lag spikes out of nowhere when I look fast in another direction, or when I die, or when loading a new level.. What could be the problem?
 
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T

Thalles Adorno

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What is the anti aliasing are you using ? You could be using, for example, Supersampling set on driver to apply in every game. Check your driver settings. Also, Check your GPU temps, download MSI Afterburner for that, check if it reaches 83C
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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I'm going to check the temperature now. And I will try too find the driver settings. I have the MSI GTX 960 4G as I've mentioned in my post. But if I can't find the driver settings, where can I find them?
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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I've checked after burner and I have some results:
GPU temp: max 64.
GPU usage: max 100%.
FB usage: max 81%
Memory usage max: 3255 MB
CPU1, CPU2, CPU3 and CPU4 usage: all, max 100%

Can you help me further with this?
 
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T

Thalles Adorno

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Let's try a few things, that could not be the problem. Check your driver settings, see the anti aliasing you are using, if the driver forces it in every game... Your MB is MSI, which means it comes with OC Genie, a feature to overclock things. GO to the BIOS and disable it (it will be a big button on the right top corner of the screen). Next thing to check is things running in the background. Are you recording the game play or streaming ? Is there an update of windows (Action center> settings> update) ? Using control alt del open the task manager and see if there is something eating your processor's power or ram. Does the lag spikes happens when the games are in the lowest possible settings ? (I've already crashed a PC with minecraft, if you let it create a big world it will create)
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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In the "Manage 3d settings" tab from the Nvidia control panel, the Anti aliasing FXAA was turned Off, the Anti aliasing Mode was set on Application controlled and the Anti aliasing Gamma Correction was turned On. I have turned all of them off now. I did disable the OC Genie. Nothing else is running in the background, except origin but ok, that doesn't do that much. I did not record the gameplay. There is no update going on. And nothing was eating my processors power or ram, except for the game itself.

I think when I disabled the OC Genie, there weren't, almost, any lag spikes anymore. But when playing and having an eye on the Task Manager, I still noticed the processor percentage going up to 99%! And also my ram to 99%! This does bother me tho. And the game was responsible for that. I am sure about that, because nothing else was running in the background.
In afterburner I also saw that my GPU usage was also getting to the 100%. And the heat was around the 64C.

So I keep the OC Genie disabled for now. Any other solutions why my CPU is getting to 99%? Is that a problem and is it also a problem that my GPU is getting 100%?

I am still getting some lag spikes, but not so often anymore.

 
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Thalles Adorno

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The problem of OC Genie is that it's an automated overclock with no quality control, it overclocked your CPU and RAM without even checking if it worked. You can reset your BIOS to factory settings to see if anything was left from OC Genie.

When you open the Task Manager, check if there is one process using the 100% of the processor and/or RAM. It could be a virus, like WiiUMasterGman said and checking for them is a good ideia.

You said you fresh installed w10, you can try it again asking it to completely clean your HD, go to action center>settings>updates>recovery, it solved a low fps issue on a laptop I have.

Another thing that could be happening is that you don't have the best processor in the world, I have an i5 5675C overclocked (from 3.1 to 3.6) and I see 40%~50% usage while playing Skyrim with the iGPU, you are using a dGPU that is way more powerful.
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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Okay, I have checked multiple times if there is something running in the background, but there is just not. So that is not the problem (;

Installing windows 10 again isn't really an option, because I just did that a few days ago, I don't see any reason that to help.

And what did you say about my processor? I didn't understood that ;p
Do I need a new Processor or is mine just fine?

And I am pretty sure I don't have a virus, because as I said, I cleaned everything form my ssd and hdd. Both formatted twice. So there is no way that is possible. Surfing on the web like now, my CPU only uses 2%. And now 1, and now 2 again (;

So it is not normal that my CPU percentage is that high when gaming?
And where do I find the Energy Profile?
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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A little update: When gaming, (Star Wars Battlefront) it stays around 80% most of the time. Very rarely it peeks to 99%, but it still does. Most of the time, almost always, my CPU gets to 99% when loading. Loading a new level etc.

I have norton security on my PC and I have done 1 full system check. No virus.

I am going to buy a GTX 1070 by the way (;
 
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TMTOWTSAC

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It could be some sort of memory issue. The system memory shooting up to 99% seems pretty suspicious. If it's forced to page to the hard drive it would explain the freezing and slow load times. If you restart (or shutdown with Fast Startup disabled) and immediately start gaming, do you get the lag spikes right away, or does it take a while before they start happening? If it takes a while, you might have some mem leaks gradually building up.

Oh, and are the games installed to the SSD or the HD? How much free space is on the SSD? They really start to slow down as they get full, and that could also be affecting performance.
 
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Thalles Adorno

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About something running in the background: sorry, I said it wrong. The test I wanted you to do was to check if the processor usage in the process tab is the same as the real one you see in the performance tab (let's say 50% of Star Wars Battlefront +5% of chrome = 85%, something is wrong and is not in the process tab, where are those 30% going ?).

About windows 10: I was playing on an old laptop (using an i3 (1st generation) and the iGPU) and I had 12fps on WoW. That was after reinstalling W10, so I tried reinstalling it while using the option to completely clean the partition where it was installed, I got 22fps right after the installation.

I searched for a video of the 4460 +960 4Gb on Star Wars Battlefront to see if other users had similar CPU usage, this guy, playing with everything on ultra, have around 70%, try using everything on ultra and see if you get lag spikes and check for the CPU usage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRJLHukEGo0

About the processor: I have a better one with no dGPU, which means that my CPU usage should be lower than yours. With this setup I have 40%~50% while playing Skyrim and 50%~60% while playing Overwatch. Those results means that your CPU usage is probably normal, but the lag spikes shouldn't happen.

Windows energy profile: Action center> settings>System(first one)>Energy> additional settings>additional plans>set to performance mode. Check the temps when doing this if you have a bad cooler.

About your upgrade: If you feel that the i5 4460 is bottlenecking you it's not a bad option to upgrade it too, add an 4690k or 4790k (or non K variants since you can't overlock with H97 chipset, just the z97) and be happy. More 8Gb of memory wouldn't hurt.

PS: I'm confusing in portuguese and even more in english, let me know if you don't understand something
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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It's installed on the ssd. I have left 138 GB (;
 
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theRTT

theRTT

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I'm gonna try the things you have mentioned. If that's not gonna work, I'm going to re-install windows again and remove everything again. What is the best way to do this?

About the processor usage: all the time when I had the 90%, it is really the game that takes around 80%. The rest is taking the rest ;p Like origin 10% and the rest is 1% or 0%.

In the beginning when I first got my PC and Battlefront, I also was playing on ultra, first my FPS was fine, but later my FPS got around 50, not very nice to play with.

I am going to buy 8GB of RAM extra. And I am going to upgrade my GPU to a Geforce GTX 1070 (MSI).

Your English is good mate :) Thank you for helping me so far!
 
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Thalles Adorno

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Thx :D
About Windows: Action Center>Update and Recovery>Recovery>Start now>Remove everything (Remembering, you want windows to clean your SSD, not just erase things, but I'm afraid to go beyond this step and start the process)>whatever says that it's going to clean the SSD/partition where windows is installed.

A long shot: try playing without origin, but I don't believe that this is the cause.

About the memory, I don't understand about memory degradation so I can't help :(

 
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