Frame drops/stutter loading in most games

Hi all,

This has been a long term issue with my PC that I've gone on and off with attempting to solve before eventually giving up on ever figuring out - I'm hoping someone can help me finally figure it out.

I built my PC about 18 months ago and have consistent issues with stutter loading/inconsistent framerates ever since, depending on the game (usually less demanding games are mostly fine, but soon as I try to run something that demands some legwork from my system, issues start to rear their head.)

I will note that these don't seem to be "random" - the reason I say stutter loading is it typically always happens in the same spots, no matter the game - for example, it was a huge issue for me when playing Lies of P, to the point it became so unbearably bad upon reaching Krat Factory that I stopped playing altogether. It seems like any game attempting to load larger amounts of assets/shaders in causes my performance to totally crash. Even in lower intensity games, I can usually see massive hitches/stutters when loading a new level.

Right now I'm currently experiencing the issue in Baldur's Gate 3, with framerates become very unstable (fluctuating between 60-130 wildly) in open areas, when the terrain is loading in and out. I do have DLSS on and have tweaked settings, as I do with any game to attempt to help performance, but it never seems to help much.

I will also note that it's especially bad because G-sync seems to either have issues or the framerate is fluctuating too wildly for it to work properly. I've tried simply locking my games to 60FPS, but then it becomes almost unplayable for me - for whatever reason, a locked 60 looks TERRIBLE. It's not an issue of just being used to higher fps - it's as if the entire image becomes choppy. Even when setting the monitor refresh rate to 60, turning off my second monitor, running it in exclusive fullscreen - nothing helps games look playable for me at 60 on PC.

Here are the fixes I have tried to no success -

DDUing drivers, many times
Updating BIOS
Reinstalling Windows
Adjusting every setting I can think of and have been reccommended
Unplugging all perpherials to test potential USB conflicts
Tested all components - GPU/CPU benchmarks had normal results, memtest for RAM was fine, drive health is showing up as fine
I even went so far as to cash in the warranty on my GPU and was sent a new one, which did not change a thing

I'm really at a loss on what else to do. Help has been very minimal where I've sought it, I've even tried taking it to a repair hub at Scorptec (Australian PC retailer), they were incredibly rude and condescending towards me when I was trying to explain my issues and pretty just said I should buy a better gpu... which did nothing to answer or help my issue.

So yeah, any clarity would be a godsend. Sorry for the wall of text

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/BrIflLRpn0kCosOj2ExBVXt - my specs

Not sure if speccy shared all the information, so here's a more accurate spec list -
CPU - Intel 12600K
GPU - MSI RTX 3070
RAM - Corsair Vengeance RGB 2x8GB
SSD - Samsung 970 EVO PRO - 500GB (primary OS drive), 1TB (secondary drive for games)
PSU - Corsair 750W Gold Modular
Motherboard - MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4
OS- Windows 11

veeg said:

Hello

Did you install the chipset drivers for the mobo ?

Click to expand...

Yes, chipset drivers are up to date

Pyro said:

A few things of note:

Windows was not installed in the correct order, the first update appears to be an antivirus update- when doing a fresh load of Windows gaming computers should have drivers loaded as follows: Chipset, Storage, Graphics, All others, Windows Updates.

Did you load W10 or W11 when you reinstalled?



This is my laundry list, it's a good starting point for troubleshooting and should get you an idea what's going on, none of these should impact a warranty claim:


1. Try running the following programs, also try to keep at least 25-30% of your disks as free space.

Run Disk Cleanup (check all the boxes) this will delete things such as your recycling bin, so make sure you don't have any files you want to keep.

Run Defragment and Optimize Drives, run this on your drives.

These will free up some space, but you may need to relocate/delete files to reach the suggested free space.


2. Disable any overclocking or changes to power/performance settings

Undo any overclocking you may have done (if any)

Settings > System > Power and sleep > Additional power settings
Make sure your power plan is set to balanced, high performance/ultimate performance is only beneficial on gaming laptops where it needs that extra boost.


3. Check for Operating System Corruption

Right click on the Windows logo in the bottom left and select Windows Powershell (Admin) - This can also be called Terminal (Admin)
Run these three commands separately:

sfc /scannow

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

These will take a while to run, do not close out of Powershell while they are running, if one fails then move onto the next and then loop back around.

Note: It doesn't hurt to make a system backup before you make all these changes, save any important files of folders. While these changes shouldn't cause any issues, better to be safe than sorry.


4. Unplug unnecessary devices.

If you have a gamepad, extra monitor, external hard drive/flash drive, or anything that is not essential to using the computer plugged in, unplug it.


Once you have completed all of these tasks, restart it (using the restart option in the power menu) and re-test.

Click to expand...

Hi, sorry for the very late reply - life got out of hand for a while and I haven't had time to get back to PC stuff until now.
I tried everything you suggested and after re-testing there's no difference. I tried a couple other things - clearing my temp folder, halting any background processes i thought may be causing issues, even DDU'd yet again, leaving geforce experience out this time. No difference.

Bruce said:

Give the make/model of the PSU, just Corsair 750 doesn't narrow it down enough.
Let's get a fresh Speccy report in case things have changed in the last 10 weeks.

When you reloaded Windows, did you use the Windows Media Creation Tool to create a bootable USB stick and reboot from that stick?
Be sure to have the PC off the network when reinstalling, and install the chipset drivers before reconnecting to the web.

Click to expand...

PSU is an RM750 80+ Gold

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/1nMpFVEDcox0Cgcg3EpZ7FR - fresh report

I reloaded windows off a bootable USB with the creation tool, yes. I think I just let Windows update the drivers through the network and then manually updated the chipset drivers afterwards.

I ran the cleanup program, a lot of the suggestions i've already tried/have been suggested to me before.

Right now I have a new issue of the PC randomly shutting down and turning itself off/on multiple times as if it were trying to reboot into repair mode. I don't know if the PSU is failing or what. I'll try to work out and retest soon, but at this point i'm so exhausted with it all I'm considering just building a new rig altogether.