Occasional Stuttering and massive FPS-Loss

Technical Support
1

Hi,

for a couple of weeks (maybe 2-3 or something like that) my Laptop is behaving really weird while I’m ingame.
The first minutes of a match usually go pretty normal but then I get massive frame drops (from 144 to like 5) and stuttering sound for like 1 or 2 seconds before the game goes back to normal. Sometimes this happens just once a match but sometimes it happens 10 times a match which practically makes it unplayable.
This happens in all modes (comp, quickplay, arcade, custom games) but only in Overwatch. No other game I play shows this issue.

Some background information about my laptop:
It’s an MSI Prestige 15 A10SC with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 and an Intel GPU (which I do not use while gaming). I’m using an Acer Predator XB241H connected via the thunderbolt connection of my Laptop to make sure it’s receiving the 144 fps from my GPU. Additionally, I’m using the audio interface Focusrite Scarlet Solo 3rd gen for my mic and headphones.
This setup worked just fine with the same settings for the last year and a half and just recently started to show the mentioned issue.

I really tried to do/check everything before posting in the forum but I’m running out of ideas and it would be really REALLY nice if someone could help me with an idea or even better a solution to my problem. :slight_smile:

So far I’ve checked the following things without any success:

  • Updated all drivers (even reinstalled all graphic drivers)
  • Updated Windows (even switched to Windows 11 as a last resort)
  • unplugging all unnecessary peripherals
  • checking that the power supply of my laptop was sufficient
  • checking the RAM of my Laptop (works as it should)
  • lowering graphics quality ingame
  • lowering framerate ingame
  • checking the temperature of CPU and GPU
  • used the repair function from the Blizzard launcher
  • reinstalled the game
  • tried different NVIDIA GPU settings (disabling v-sync, trying different power options, …)
  • run the game as administrator
  • disabled game mode of windows
  • given the game highest priority in the task manager
  • checked every solution brought up in the first two google results pages
  • checked countless forum posts in this forum and on reddit

For some further information, I have performed the WinMTR Tests, pathping and tracert things. Listed everything below:
(I can also provide the DxDiag and MSInfo Files if needed)

WinMTR 1 
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |

|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

|                             192.168.0.1 -    0 |  667 |  667 |    1 |    3 |   96 |    2 |

|ip-081-210-141-020.um21.pools.vodafone-ip.de -    0 |  667 |  667 |   11 |   20 |  157 |   15 |

|de-fra04d-rc1-re0-aorta-net-ae-22-0.aorta.net -    0 |  667 |  667 |   15 |   24 |   98 |   28 |

|                           84.116.190.94 -    1 |  652 |  648 |   14 |   23 |  144 |   20 |

|           pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net -    1 |  663 |  662 |   16 |   27 |  157 |   19 |

|                           137.221.80.35 -    0 |  667 |  667 |   28 |   38 |  147 |   31 |

|                           137.221.80.35 -    2 |  617 |  608 |   24 |  103 | 3972 |  153 |

|         et-0-0-0-pe03-eqpa4.as57976.net -    0 |  667 |  667 |   28 |   36 |  101 |   42 |

|                          185.60.114.159 -    0 |  667 |  667 |   29 |   36 |  165 |   32 |

|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
WinMTR 2 
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |

|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

|                             192.168.0.1 -    1 |  583 |  582 |    1 |    3 |   39 |    2 |

|ip-081-210-141-020.um21.pools.vodafone-ip.de -    0 |  586 |  586 |   11 |   19 |   79 |   17 |

|de-fra04d-rc1-re0-aorta-net-ae-22-0.aorta.net -    0 |  587 |  587 |   16 |   24 |  112 |   21 |

|                           84.116.190.94 -    1 |  583 |  582 |   15 |   22 |   64 |   20 |

|           pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net -    0 |  587 |  587 |   15 |   27 |  122 |   35 |

|           pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net -    3 |  534 |  522 |   22 |   52 | 3996 |   32 |

|         et-0-0-2-br01-eqam1.as57976.net -    5 |  498 |  477 |   22 |   82 | 3509 |   37 |

|                           137.221.65.75 -    4 |  509 |  492 |   23 |   75 | 4399 |   25 |

|                           137.221.78.53 -    0 |  586 |  586 |   21 |   30 |   95 |   34 |

|                           137.221.66.47 -    0 |  587 |  587 |   22 |   30 |  130 |   27 |

|                          185.60.112.157 -    0 |  587 |  587 |   23 |   30 |   98 |   25 |

|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

   WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider
tracert 1 
Tracing route to 185.60.114.159 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     3 ms     2 ms     1 ms  192.168.0.1 
  2    14 ms    15 ms    13 ms  7111a-mx960-01-ae17.fra.unity-media.net [81.210.141.21] 
  3    15 ms    22 ms    26 ms  de-fra04d-rc1-re0-aorta-net-ae-22-0.aorta.net [84.116.190.189] 
  4    24 ms    18 ms    18 ms  84.116.190.94 
  5    19 ms    23 ms    19 ms  pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net [80.81.195.26] 
  6    33 ms    34 ms    31 ms  137.221.80.35 
  7    38 ms    79 ms   220 ms  et-0-0-2-br01-eqpa4.as57976.net [137.221.65.26] 
  8    31 ms    30 ms    31 ms  et-0-0-0-pe03-eqpa4.as57976.net [137.221.77.55] 
  9    31 ms    31 ms    31 ms  185.60.114.159 

Trace complete.
tracert 2 
Tracing route to 185.60.112.157 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     4 ms     5 ms     9 ms  192.168.0.1 
  2    15 ms    21 ms    15 ms  7111a-mx960-01-ae17.fra.unity-media.net [81.210.141.21] 
  3    16 ms    21 ms    22 ms  de-fra04d-rc1-re0-aorta-net-ae-22-0.aorta.net [84.116.190.189] 
  4    20 ms    19 ms    20 ms  84.116.190.94 
  5    18 ms    29 ms    18 ms  pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net [80.81.195.26] 
  6    84 ms    57 ms    63 ms  ae1-br01-eqfr5.as57976.net [137.221.80.33] 
  7    26 ms    29 ms    31 ms  et-0-0-2-br01-eqam1.as57976.net [137.221.65.29] 
  8   106 ms    25 ms    25 ms  137.221.65.75 
  9    25 ms    25 ms    25 ms  137.221.78.53 
 10    25 ms    24 ms    29 ms  137.221.66.47 
 11    25 ms    27 ms    25 ms  185.60.112.157 

Trace complete.
pathping 1 
Tracing route to 185.60.114.159 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  DESKTOP-ETICQIS.home [192.168.0.31] 
  1  192.168.0.1 
  2  7111a-mx960-01-ae17.fra.unity-media.net [81.210.141.21] 
  3  ip-081-210-141-020.um21.pools.vodafone-ip.de [81.210.141.20] 
  4  84.116.190.94 
  5  84.116.190.94 
  6  pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net [80.81.195.26] 
  7  et-0-0-2-br01-eqpa4.as57976.net [137.221.65.26] 
  8  et-0-0-0-pe03-eqpa4.as57976.net [137.221.77.55] 
  9  185.60.114.159 

Computing statistics for 225 seconds...
pathping 2 
Tracing route to 185.60.112.157 over a maximum of 30 hops

  0  DESKTOP-ETICQIS.home [192.168.0.31] 
  1  192.168.0.1 
  2  7111a-mx960-01-ae17.fra.unity-media.net [81.210.141.21] 
  3  ip-081-210-141-020.um21.pools.vodafone-ip.de [81.210.141.20] 
  4  84.116.190.94 
  5  84.116.190.94 
  6  pr01.eqfr5.blizzardonline.net [80.81.195.26] 
  7  et-0-0-2-br01-eqam1.as57976.net [137.221.65.29] 
  8  137.221.65.75 
  9  137.221.65.75 
 10  137.221.78.53 
 11  137.221.66.47 
 12  185.60.112.157 

Computing statistics for 300 seconds...

Thanks very very much in advance for even reading until this point. I hope someone can help me. :slight_smile:

2

Damm it looks like you’ve almost tried all the main things to do, any Overclocks? Maybe a setting in the bios is triggering it, a windows update could’ve maybe corrupted some files, it’s so annoying when stuff like this happens and you’ve pretty much done everything you can, I feel your frustration, it could be overwatch in general maybe look at some recent benchmarks to see if there getting any stuttering to?

1 Like
3

Thanks for your kind words. :slight_smile:
Overclocking is a nice idea. Have not tried this yet, but I will do it.
The only thing I tried was undervolting my CPU to check if the temperatures are not a problem.
The benchmarks I found did not seem to have this issue.

If nothing helps i might try to reinstall windows again, but only as a very last resort.

4

As temperature checking goes, did you run 30 min stress test and checked if you have any temporary heat spikes?

As for overclocking, it’s sometimes not the issue with lack of the power, but the issue with GPU being overturned in the first place. For example, I’ve noticed that over time GPU’s can “degrade” and the factor clocks can be just a tad too high for given unit, so slight declocking can solve issues.

Once I found an HD5870 which was causing issues in game, and bringing it just 25/50 Mhz on clock back solved all issues.

You can find the minimum clocks for your GPU model and then using MSI Afterburner safely shave some MHz from GPU and VRAM and at the same time run the game to see if the problem is gone. If not, then just hit restore settings.

1 Like
5

As temperature checking goes, did you run 30 min stress test and checked if you have any temporary heat spikes?

Yes, I have run a 30 min GPU stress test and there were no heat spikes. But I found that my GPU was not on the power limit for the whole test. I sometimes just dipped below the power limit for a second or so before powering back up to 100%. While this happened I could see very minor frame drops but not nearly as strong as while playing overwatch.

As for overclocking, it’s sometimes not the issue with lack of the power, but the issue with GPU being overturned in the first place. For example, I’ve noticed that over time GPU’s can “degrade” and the factor clocks can be just a tad too high for given unit, so slight declocking can solve issues.
Once I found an HD5870 which was causing issues in game, and bringing it just 25/50 Mhz on clock back solved all issues.
You can find the minimum clocks for your GPU model and then using MSI Afterburner safely shave some MHz from GPU and VRAM and at the same time run the game to see if the problem is gone. If not, then just hit restore settings.

This idea looked very promising, especially after observing the power limit fluctuations mentioned above. Unfortunately, declocking didn’t help either. :frowning:
I started with -10 Mhz and worked my way all the way down to the point where the GPU couldn’t provide a stable framerate even when the stuttering didn’t occur.

Thanks for your help anyway. I’m continuing my search for a working fix.

6

If this was desktop, the next logical thing would be to just run PC alone without anything else plugged in, and keep replacing parts for any known working parts to see if there is any change. Sadly the only thing you can swap in a laptop is a drive, and sometimes ram, so I personally would still try different drive just for sanity check.

You said you unplugged all unnecessary peripherals, does that mean that your issue persist when you’re running game only on your laptop alone without external display?

There is a rare chance that some update to the game caused it. I’ve personally had driver crashes when interacting with a specific thing in the game, and it wouldn’t go away until 2 years later they somehow finally fixed the objects in the game.

Is there a specific map on which it’s worse than on others?

1 Like
7

After re-installing windows completely on my laptop I finally found the fix for this problem (and feel a little stupid now tbh).

The re-install of windows did actually not solve the issue which was quite frustrating at first. Then I remembered that there was a program called “MSI creator center” (since it is an MSI laptop) installed when I first got the laptop and decided to give it a try.

This creator center allows you to monitor your GPU and CPU (just like MSI Afterburner), but it also enables power settings. The default power setting was “balanced” and after I switched it to “high performance” the issue was gone completely.

I did a bit of research and found out, that apparently the standard windows power settings only affect the behavior of windows and not the power management on a deeper hardware level.
Since I also tried the “best performance” setting inside the NVIDIA Control Panel (without any success), I was quite surprised that the MSI creator center power setting made a difference at all.

p.s. thanks so much to all who replied and tried to help me. real mvps :blush:

TLDR:
Download the MSI creator center and change the power setting to “high performance”. This will change the power distribution on a sufficiently deep hardware level.

1 Like