Looking for a solution to my screen stutter

[Zepharia]

I hope this was the right area to post in for this as it's related to game fps. I've been having an issue with games stuttering for quite some time. I've notice that it's the opposite of what a lot of common stutters issues are. Most people have stuttering when they have vsync or frame rate caps on or tearing at high fps. My issue on the other hand, is that I'm having stuttering when my framerate is NOT capped. say I'm playing a game at 120 fps where I capped my monitor at and run the game with vsync. As soon as it drops below that 120 I instantly feel a frame stuttering and very slight input lag that's noticable. If I cap the game at 60 fps it feels much smoother without the stuttering, say I switched it to my tv instead of pc monitor, but it feels like I'm wasting that extra framerate I could be getting and I'm so used to 120-144 hz it's hard to even track my cursor at 60fps. My mouse has some jitter from it's tracking in the movements, but by just standing still or using a controller, I ruled out that's not the only issue. The only other thing I can think of is the thermal throttling of my evga 980ti ssc+ that gets better when the framerate is capped. If there is any way I could fix this or another possibility I'm missing, please let me know because it's getting irritating.

Specs: evga 980ti ssc+
intel i5 6600k oc from 3.5->4.3ghz quad
16gb ram
144hz benq monitor set to either 120/144hz and some 42" LG tv 60hz

 

[kastriot]

Can you try this:

Vsync Off in nvidia cp
refresh rate on monitor=120Hz
frame limit on RTSS=120Hz
Turn on msi overlay in game with fps framerate + gpu usage + cpu usage (OSD)

Report what is happening?

 

[Zepharia]

is the RTSS the Rivatune statistics server thing? I'm working on setting up the rest of it now. Oh and I'm assuming set preferred refresh rate to highest available aswell.

 

[erocker]

Try disabling all monitoring with Afterburner. I noticed the other day it was causing some stuttering for me.

 

[Zepharia]

so this is what I ended up seeing. even with nvidia settings all set to vsync off and highest refresh rate in both global and in the game itself, the in-game 120 frame limit (don't think it's vsync) still limits the game to 120 fps. So with the frame cap on, the first portion of the frame-rate graph was while 120 fps was set as the cap. Once the frame-rate dropped, it started spiking. As you can see I was at 111 fps when I took the ss. Although if I turn the in-game frame rate limit to none it seems to be much better. Previously if I set it to none I still had issues. Maybe a setting I changed during this process helped with that somehow. I'm going to test it for a little longer and maybe on some other games to see if I can keep it like that.
Edit: I hadn't been running afterburner before this either so that may have changed something as well...

 

[kastriot]

Well it's now easier for you to analyse it.

 

[Zepharia]

This is my results from black desert which doesn't have an in-game framerate limit. it's not nescesarily stutter but fast movement seems like it's not what 90 fps should look like (I can see that there is lots of frames but doesn't feel smooth). I'm not quite sure if this is normal or even related to the other issue.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

View attachment 121119 This is my results from black desert which doesn't have an in-game framerate limit. it's not nescesarily stutter but fast movement seems like it's not what 90 fps should look like (I can see that there is lots of frames but doesn't feel smooth). I'm not quite sure if this is normal or even related to the other issue.

This looks like a cpu bottleneck to me. From everything i have read BDO is pretty poorly optimized so it may not be a good game to judge performance with. What is your GPU usage when the frame drops?

Also considering you're already in the 80c range without even overclocking your gpu you may need more case airflow. 980 ti hit near 1400Mhz with decent temps on a lot of aftermarket coolers.

 

[trog100]

i tried running the original crysis game a few weeks back.. it twas a stuttery lag fest until i ran it at 4 K and capped the frame rates to 70 fps...

it seems the original single core game engine could not keep up with my 2080 TI card even at near 5 gig clock speeds..

a cpu bottleneck for sure in my case the only answer was to slow the frame rates right down..

some games were just not meant to run at modern gpu speeds..

trog

 

[Zepharia]

My gpu is usually pinned at 99-100% usage on tracking software on any game unless frame-rate is capped. The clock speeds vary anywhere from 800-1300 because it's set to a temp target. I do think I need to figure out if I can change the airflow in my case though because some of the internal fans may be blowing to bad areas. I just set it up as I was told with everything as an intake, except for a large exhaust fan on the top. After checking the flow I found a lot of the graphics card heat is actually just being sent out the side panel's mesh bit instead of being circulated. I'll swap some things around and prob test it after college tomarrow. If it was a cpu bottleneck do u think I should try to push my cpu even past that 4.4 it's already at which seems fairly high for what I have, even though temps are still fine.

Update:

Left pic was with frame limit at 60 though rtss and right is without frame cap. I did just swap my fans around and it feels like most of the heat is circulating better but temps and clock speeds are still around the same values. the 980ti is using the acx 2.0 cooler and turning all the fans in my case to 100% from auto only got me about a 50mhz boost and no temp change(loud AF btw).

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Fist thing you may want to do is fill out your complete system specs in your profile. The second thing I would do is run a 3d marks firestrike benchmark and see if you're seeing the same behavior.
If you're on windows 10 I would download the Forza horizon 4 demo and run the benchmark it's an extremely optimized game if you're having the same issue in it definitely somethings going on.


http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8324455 I was using a hotfix driver with this but as you can see this 980 ti hit 1500Mhz no problem. Temps could have been similar to yours I honestly don't remember.

 

[Zepharia]

This is from the firestrike demo. I have no stutter issues but my gpu isn't coming close to the performance you are saying it should be... I have also updated all my profile info about my pc specs to the best of my knowledge including benchmarks for firestrike and timespy.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Your scores look good for Your system actually. Honestly if you didn't notice the Same stutters in firestrike the stutter is most likely game related.

My score with the 980 ti is higher mostly due to the fact that I was running a 6 core 12 thread CPU at higher frequencies than you. My gpu was a kingpin 980 ti probably why the frequency was about 200mhz higher

I looked into some reviews and a lot of them seemed to cap out around 1350 so 12-1300 seems fine. I Vaguely Remember Temps being in the 75-78c range but my case at the time had much better airflow than yours.

 

[Zepharia]

I have been noticing that the stuttering I was having issues with in many games is not showing up like it was before. I just changed the nvidia control panel to vsync off and highest refresh rate available and manually added frame caps when necessary through rtss instead of in-game. I also switched to using msi afterburner since it has the rtss plugin, instead of just using precision x for fan control. Whatever happened, things feel a bit better now .

Note: before, I had issues with a lot of games stuttering such as, warframe, FFXIV, black desert, overwatch, Paladins, WoW, and some others.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Ingame frame limiters can definitely cause a lot of problems with frame time consistency. Good move switching to RTSS.... I've never personally liked PrecisionX I feel afterburner is superior even for EVGA cards.