Ingame stuttering freezing. Possible GPU/PSU problem.

[WillSemple]

When playing a variety of games I'l find they will often freeze up for a second or less, despite smooth performance otherwise. It happens fairly randomly, but more commonly in more intensive games. Based on corrolations with spikes/troughs in afterburner graphs (<=linked) (this is from an extreme example, it's not normally so frequent), it seems to me to be linked to drops in voltage. Is this deduction correct, and would it likely be caused by PSU or something else?

My current PSU is 750W (I can't remember brand or model but it's pretty basic, nothing special. Definitely not Corsair or anything (why I'm currently blaming PSU))

Other specs:
i5 4690 3.50 GHz
8GB RAM DDR3 (Corsair)
MSI GTX970
Gigabyte Z87-HD3
Toshiba 2TB HDD (OS and games)
Samsung 850EVO (other games (acting the same as those on HDD))
Win 10 64-bit

Note: I'm fairly certain GPU cooling/temps are not an issue

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/help.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Voltages less than 97% or 96% of nominal are suspect... what does historical range tell you?

 

[WillSemple]

Voltages less than 97% or 96% of nominal are suspect... what does historical range tell you?

Not sure what you mean by that. It seems to drop to 0 looking at graphs in original post. Or is there something else I should be looking at?

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Graphs not useful, sorry. Try HWInfo and look at 'sensors' page while it accumulates information. Pay attention to low end of voltage ranges - +5v should be +4.85v or more and +12v should be +11.62v or more. If not, something is 'pulling' voltage down - bad PSU, bad motherboard or some other component.

 

[WillSemple]

Is this what you're after?

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Umm, yah, that's what you were after. Congrats, your voltages are in spec (at least for whatever period the information was collected). They did not drop to zero - the PSU works 'ok'.

Your graphs show limits - some binary and some % of maximum. Difficult to interpret without digging around in Afterburner manual. You might do that and implement the OSI capability - then you can see the values while you play and you may identify the issue.

Stutter happens, especially from in game movement which suddenly adds large amounts of extra scenery to be rendered. Some folks CAP their FPS in order to reduce the experience of stutter.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

You might google " pc video game stutter" and look at the gamespot forum stuff.

 

[WillSemple]

I've done plenty of messing with FPS capping and Vsync, definitely not a solution, especially as it happens in all games even in cases where I'm not even close to monitor refresh rate.

OP in Gamespot thread seems to have the same issue, however it didn't seem to get resolved.

You might do that and implement the OSI capability - then you can see the values while you play and you may identify the issue.

I'm not sure how to go about this ^

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Google magic....

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Saying it is a 'common' issue leads to asking about drivers, enabled 'ghost' components (like serial ports or P/S2 mouse), interrupts, settings for the video card, etc Are all your drivers (esp. chipset) up to date? Have you removed ghosts from BIOS? Have you checked Event Viewer for errors? Can you easily replicate the issue - if so when doing what?

"especially as it happens in all games even in cases where I'm not even close to monitor refresh rate" - I guess you mean FPS>>refresh or something like that as opposed to refresh>>FPS where a stutter is unnoticeable. Understand that stutter is your perception (an FPS drop of 30 frames to only 65 frames then back up to 95 is stutter) - and at your age you have very good perception (that changes and there is no refresh button) - if it isn't caused by something you can control (bad component, driver conflict, etc) then you just have to fiddle until you achieve some kind of reasonable performance relative to your perception.

 

[WillSemple]

Google magic....

Sorry, I meant I wasn't sure what you meant, not how to do it. Thanks though.

Understand that stutter is your perception (an FPS drop of 30 frames to only 65 frames then back up to 95 is stutter) - and at your age you have very good perception

Stutter I've been experiencing is more of a freeze for up to a second or more (similar to what you might experience when a game auto/quick saves).

Anyway, the extreme example (that prompted me to post here) was actually a seperate issue specific to that game (memory allocation I've now fixed).
Also, I'm not noticing the general issue (atleast for now). I think updating the chipset drivers did it (I never thought too do this before). Hopefully it's fixed, and if not, I've plenty to try based on your advice. Thank you so much for your help/time/patience, it's much appreciated