Are Minor FPS Drops Normal/Inevitable In Most Games?

SirDoria

Reputable
Jun 16, 2016
11
0
4,520
In many games (like Fallout 4, Total War: Warhammer, Dark Souls 3, Dragon Age: Orgins) I will, every now and then, get a few frames randomly dropped. It's not game breaking or anything, it's just that I notice it and it annoys me.

So my questions is, since these minor, random frame drops have happened to me on my last 3 PC's, is it both completely normal and also impossible to avoid? Most of my friends that I ask say they never really notice frames drops, and I think it's just that they might not be quite as sensitive to it as I am.

My current build is pretty beefy. It can run most of these games upwards of 150 fps... but of course, without Vsync on, gameplay is very choppy, jittery, and unplayable. With Vsync on, it's smooth but every 10 to 30 seconds or so, random 2 to 4 frame drops.

It doesn't happen in EVERY game but does many. I just want to know that everybody else seems to have this or not. And please be honest.

My current build is:

17-6700k
16 gb of RAM
GTX 1080
Samsung EVO 850 SSD
 
It's normal behaviour.
If you need an explanation: Loading data from disk, loading data from main memory, CPU has not provided enough data to process frames since was busy with something else... there are many more reasons for this.
As long as it's just a FPS drops without freezes, you should not care.
 
One thing to note, is you'll get less frame drops the lower your settings are, even on a high end machine. If the game needs more power, but you're already running at max power, it'll have to stop for a bit to get what it needs, if you have processing power to spare, he'll happen less often.

But things like Antivirus and many other background programs (skype, ect) can contribute as well.