I'm posting this under Graphics Cards because I believe at this point my issue is my gpu, but I'm not entirely sure. In short, I recently upgraded my mobo, gpu, cpu, and ram, and have been running into random lag that is very hard to diagnose. With my hardware specs I should be able to run most any game on the highest settings, so this issue has been very aggravating. More details ahead.
My specs
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
CPU: Intel i7-6700K
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3400MHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960
MOBO: MSI Z170A-G45 Gaming
If more detail is needed I've posted a DxDiag here.
The issue
I've been getting unbearably low fps seemingly out of nowhere. A couple of things I've found as possible triggers are; tabbing out and in, opening steam overlay if it's a steam game, or closing and restarting or switching games. It normally happens after my computer has been on for at least 2-3hrs+ and tends to go away after restarting my computer, but not for long. Lowering settings in game seems to help slightly in some cases, but doesnt get rid of it completely. I've noticed recently when starting Diablo 3 or changing graphics settings in WoW that I'll get the message "display driver has stopped responding and crashed" after a quick freeze up, and then it will restore and go back to lagging. I've haven't found anything that will get rid of this lag other than restarting my computer, so once it's been triggered it's there to stay.
Things I've tried so far
I'll try to order these chronologically, so you can get an idea of what I've done and when.
Tried lowering graphics settings in game to the lowest possible setting but to no avail. Lag was only slight better if not the same.
Completely removed and reinstalled my graphics drivers.
Made sure nothing was overclocked, reset everything to default. (Not sure this worked, as MSI software is super confusing and there's a LOT of it)
Checked to make sure everything was seated and plugged in properly.
Ran a stress test on my gpu and cpu (I didn't do them for long, 30m tops- maybe I need to do longer?) The results seemed fine.
Ran stress tests on my Ram- got a blue screen. I read that RAM is one of the more common components that can be DOA, so I refunded and replaced it with the same RAM, to no avail- still getting lag. Possible the method I was using to stress test was bad and not the ram?
Monitored my temps before and during these lag events- everything seemed to be fine and cool.
Monitored my gpu/cpu/memory usage before and during these lag events- nothing out of the ordinary. During the lag my memory usage has been as low as 19% with my cpu <10%.
Ran malwarebytes, adwarecleaner and roguekiller, which all detected some minor things, which I removed. Still lagging.
Deleted MSI RamDisk that it made for me automatically. It was something like 254mb- not sure if that was doing anything.
I may be missing some things here and there, but I think I've tried most common fixes at one point or another.
Other possibly helpful details
I should note that I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to things like overclocking, "over-volting," and other software to hardware type programs-- and MSI certainly has not made it easy. Instead of 1 program with a nice interface, you've got about eight different ones with different looking icons and interfaces that are very hard to navigate. As a rookie I'm not sure what I need and what I should just ignore. For example MSI Fastboot- do I need it? Is it skipping stuff when my computer is booting? Could it be the cause?
Another piece of info that may be helpful- after upgrading my PCs hardware and reinstalling windows, everything was working fine until I started messing around in the "MSI Gaming App." I believe I clicked on Gaming Mode (which to my understanding overclocks your CPU). It went through a restart and I immediately got a blue screen. The next hour was me booting into blue screens, sometimes getting the prompt to start in safe mode. Safe mode would work for a little and then I'd blue screen again. I had almost resorted to reinstalling windows, but finally found a fix. (I believe it was just finding a way to undo the gaming mode selection- but I could be wrong, it was almost 2 months ago and I didn't document what I did.) I must've gotten 5 or 6 different blue screen errors at least, and may have those written down somewhere if they're needed. I'm not sure if that correlates with my current issues but I was weary ever since then. I haven't had a blue screen since then apart from stress testing my RAM.
I apologize if there's a lot of irrelevant information to sift through, but my main issue apart from lag is not being able to diagnose it at all. I can't find a pattern it follows, a game that makes it go off, or any reason whatsoever as to why it is happening. As such I don't know exactly what information is relevant to helping solve it, so I tried to post as much as I could, in the hopes that someone can.
Any help is greatly appreciated and please let me know if there's more information about the issue or my system that is needed to help figure this out.
My specs
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
CPU: Intel i7-6700K
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3400MHz
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960
MOBO: MSI Z170A-G45 Gaming
If more detail is needed I've posted a DxDiag here.
The issue
I've been getting unbearably low fps seemingly out of nowhere. A couple of things I've found as possible triggers are; tabbing out and in, opening steam overlay if it's a steam game, or closing and restarting or switching games. It normally happens after my computer has been on for at least 2-3hrs+ and tends to go away after restarting my computer, but not for long. Lowering settings in game seems to help slightly in some cases, but doesnt get rid of it completely. I've noticed recently when starting Diablo 3 or changing graphics settings in WoW that I'll get the message "display driver has stopped responding and crashed" after a quick freeze up, and then it will restore and go back to lagging. I've haven't found anything that will get rid of this lag other than restarting my computer, so once it's been triggered it's there to stay.
Things I've tried so far
I'll try to order these chronologically, so you can get an idea of what I've done and when.
Tried lowering graphics settings in game to the lowest possible setting but to no avail. Lag was only slight better if not the same.
Completely removed and reinstalled my graphics drivers.
Made sure nothing was overclocked, reset everything to default. (Not sure this worked, as MSI software is super confusing and there's a LOT of it)
Checked to make sure everything was seated and plugged in properly.
Ran a stress test on my gpu and cpu (I didn't do them for long, 30m tops- maybe I need to do longer?) The results seemed fine.
Ran stress tests on my Ram- got a blue screen. I read that RAM is one of the more common components that can be DOA, so I refunded and replaced it with the same RAM, to no avail- still getting lag. Possible the method I was using to stress test was bad and not the ram?
Monitored my temps before and during these lag events- everything seemed to be fine and cool.
Monitored my gpu/cpu/memory usage before and during these lag events- nothing out of the ordinary. During the lag my memory usage has been as low as 19% with my cpu <10%.
Ran malwarebytes, adwarecleaner and roguekiller, which all detected some minor things, which I removed. Still lagging.
Deleted MSI RamDisk that it made for me automatically. It was something like 254mb- not sure if that was doing anything.
I may be missing some things here and there, but I think I've tried most common fixes at one point or another.
Other possibly helpful details
I should note that I'm not the most knowledgeable when it comes to things like overclocking, "over-volting," and other software to hardware type programs-- and MSI certainly has not made it easy. Instead of 1 program with a nice interface, you've got about eight different ones with different looking icons and interfaces that are very hard to navigate. As a rookie I'm not sure what I need and what I should just ignore. For example MSI Fastboot- do I need it? Is it skipping stuff when my computer is booting? Could it be the cause?
Another piece of info that may be helpful- after upgrading my PCs hardware and reinstalling windows, everything was working fine until I started messing around in the "MSI Gaming App." I believe I clicked on Gaming Mode (which to my understanding overclocks your CPU). It went through a restart and I immediately got a blue screen. The next hour was me booting into blue screens, sometimes getting the prompt to start in safe mode. Safe mode would work for a little and then I'd blue screen again. I had almost resorted to reinstalling windows, but finally found a fix. (I believe it was just finding a way to undo the gaming mode selection- but I could be wrong, it was almost 2 months ago and I didn't document what I did.) I must've gotten 5 or 6 different blue screen errors at least, and may have those written down somewhere if they're needed. I'm not sure if that correlates with my current issues but I was weary ever since then. I haven't had a blue screen since then apart from stress testing my RAM.
I apologize if there's a lot of irrelevant information to sift through, but my main issue apart from lag is not being able to diagnose it at all. I can't find a pattern it follows, a game that makes it go off, or any reason whatsoever as to why it is happening. As such I don't know exactly what information is relevant to helping solve it, so I tried to post as much as I could, in the hopes that someone can.
Any help is greatly appreciated and please let me know if there's more information about the issue or my system that is needed to help figure this out.
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