Game Performance Degradation -Stutter- GTX 560 Ti

[Cooldarkfusion]

My Specs:
i7 920 @3.8 Ghz Air Cooled
G.Skill Pi Series 6-8-6-20 6GB Triple Ch.
Asus Rampage 2
G.Skill Pheonix SSD (RAID 0)
MSI HAWK GTX 560 Ti --SLi--
Win 7 64-Bit



Issue:

Performance of games such as Black ops, Battlefield:BC2, Civ 5, F1 2010, suffer performance degradation over a short time.


Details:

+ The game runs very smooth with high frame rates when first played, then after about 10 min stutter slowly begins and gets worse until about 30 min into gameplay where it levels off.

+ Frames per second only drop slightly, not enough to be the cause of the stutter.

+ The stutter sometimes begins earlier or later then 10 min into initial gameplay.

+ Temp on both cards do not rise above 65 degrees, even after hours at max load. Stutter seems to be independent from temperatures as the stutter may occur rapidly at time after only 30 sec of initial game play when temps are low at 59 degrees.

+ CPU temps do no rise above 75.

+ Stutter issues occurs online and offline in all games

Attemps To Solve Issue:

+ A clean Install of OS and all apps. (No improvement)

+ Clearing Bios setting, Flashing. (No improvement)

+ Changing Pci-E slots ---> Stutter seems better when using both x16/x8 slot rather then x16.

+ Disable Hyper Threading ---> Magnitude of Stutter is reduces. Stutter starts of more gradually and doesn't end up as bad.

+ Different Driver releases (No improvement)

+ Stability Tests for CPU and GPU have not shown error. Multiple tests and sessions prove to be stable.

+ Overclocked and stock settings tested for both CPU and GPU. (No Change in Performance)

+ Disabling Sli. Tested Each card individually. (No improvement)

+ Different RAM timings. (No Change)


Conclusion:

I never used to have stutter until about 6 months ago. It just started one day. I remember it was at the same time as some random BSOD's and failed starts which I had previously attributed to Asus Rampage cold start problems because they were so random and only occured if I shut the power supply off for over 2 days.

This problem is certainly more then just a little distracting. I have just recently purchased these gtc 560 ti's. The issues seems much worse with these cards but still existed with my two gtc 460's i had before them.

 

[merloin]

From my own experience with something similar but not exactly the same (I've never run SLI), I would do a good check of your memory. Micros Stutter can also be ruled out if you tested each card individually with the same results. Just my thoughts as checking the memory using Memtest can be done quickly.

 

[Cooldarkfusion]

merloin,

thanks for your reply.

If you are referring to RAM memory, I have tried running the most recent version of memtest on boot up many times for sometimes even 5 or 6 passes and cannot find errors there. I tried one stick of RAM at a time as well with no effect. I did try one card at a time and it doesn't solve the sort of stutter I have so perhaps it isn't SLi micro stuttering causing the issue.