Can somebody help me figure this out?
My specs are i5 - 7300hq, 8gb ram, gtx 1060. - laptop
I keep getting constant stutters/1 sec freezes.
Changing the graphics settings does not make any difference. I tried changing v-sync /triple buffer and API settings but nothing makes a difference.
I got approx 45%-75% cpu usage while playing BFA, 80% memory usage and 30% gpu usage (on low settings).
Sometimes something random will increase cpu usage like ‘Services and Controller App’.
I have played WoW on this laptop for at least a year and a half on ultra settings with no problems whatsoever. 60 fps smooth , 100% of the time.
Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
edit: this starts to happen after about an hour of playing. (The machine is not hot to the touch and I am also using a cooling pad) I tried lowering the resolution to 1065x599. I tried playing in windowed mode. Disabled addons. Nothing works
What are the max temps of the CPU and GPU when the stuttering starts?
Thanks for replying Kiyuki. Once I saw your message I downloaded speedfan and went to do the Vale assault while monitoring my temperatures.
These were the values when I first logged in:
CPU usage: 30-50%
GPU: 50C
HD1: 32C
HD0: 37C
Temp1: 25C
Core 0: 41C
Core 1: 44C
Core 2: 41C
Core 3: 41C
About 40 mins in, some stuttering. About 1h in, stuttering is continuous and is making the game a constant struggle. These are the values 1h in:
Cpu usage 30-65%
GPU: 52C
HD1: 31C
HD0: 35C
Temp1: 25C
Core 0: 47C
Core 1: 46C
Core 2: 44C
Core 3: 46C
edit: there doesnt seem to be any sort of ‘spike’ to the values During the actual stutter/freeze. they fluctuate normally
My current plan of action is to disable fast startup and reboot the machine as I have read that fast startup might have a negative impact on programs running on the SSD. (WoW is on SSD)
If I see no difference, I will test moving WoW to the HDD as I have also read that an almost full SSD might also cause issues on applications. (My ssd is only 128, so naturally it is almost full).
Thanks in advance to you and anyone taking the time replying
Yes the performance can drop by a lot.
We need to troubleshoot it more. You can try things like:
- Running latencymon, then running the game and when it stutters alt-tab to latencymon to see if it’s not all red (if it is then it’s a driver conflict - some driver cleaning and updating will be required)
- Run userbenchmark - it will show you the percentile performance of your components - if it’s super low it may be a source of a problem. But likely the percentiles will be fine. When the game stutters alt-tab and run the userbenchmark again. Some percentile drops are expected but if something drops dramatically then it may be the problem.
Oof don’t do that… even the slowest SSD will be 10x faster than a mechanical drive.
Your loading times will go through the roof and u might also get popin from loading assets.
If it’s close to full or at a point where it lost backup cells the performance will be close to zero which then can cause stutter or more. If wow uncompresses data files and makes some more temporary ones as the game is played it can reach that point of no return.
Yeah but that happens with any kind of hdd/ssd if there is not enough space.
Thanks for the information, I will be testing these promptly and post any results and/or updates.
In case of SSD it’s bit tricky as there is more space than what is made public to the OS. That extra space is used to replace damaged cells. Also depending on controller used and cache if any this can cause that at low free capacity that free space is used by the SSD controller and not really accessible as write storage. It say you have like 5-10GB free but write performance is disaster. That’s also why more detailed SSD reviews analyze how it behaves at low capacity and what is the point at which it starts to crumble. Some super cheap ones will start it sooner and to larger extent than those better ones.
I ran Benchmark - I got 14% gaming, 43% desktop and 26% workstation. I also got the following:
'‘Overall this PC is performing below expectations (33rd percentile). This means that out of 100 PCs with exactly the same components, 67 performed better. The overall PC percentile is the average of each of its individual components. Use the charts in the benchmark sections of this report to identify problem areas.’’
‘’
[Processor]With a good [single core score, this CPU can easily handle the majority of general computing tasks. Despite its good [single core] score this processor isn’t appropriate for workstation use due to its relatively weak multi-core performance. Finally, with a gaming score of 56.9%, this CPU’s suitability for 3D gaming is above average.
[Graphics] 4.2% is too low to play 3D [games] or use CAD packages. ‘’
It used the intel intergrated card for the graphics measurement. That result is obviously not true.
Latencymon says the following:
''Your system seems to be having difficulty handling real time audio and other tasks. You may experience dropouts, clicks or pops due to buffer underruns. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. Also one or more ISR routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.
*The bars are green. *
Current measured interrupt to process latency fluctuating between 155 and 650 ms
Highest measured interrupt to process latency 1852 ms (edit: this value has increased to 4981 after a while)
Highest reported ISR routine execution time 1140 ms
Highest reported DPC routine execution time 2773 ms’’ (edit: increased to 3437 after a while)
Should I follow the Latencymon advice?
Cheers
Maybe with cheap ones. My first SSD ever was a Samsung 850 250GB which is still in use today and i never had any performance problems whatsoever even if there was only a few gigs of free space left (windows and wow on it).
Check for percentile on your storage and RAM results (below the summary result). The overall scores won’t tell much.
You can check if there is an update to audio and other motherboard drivers. If that doesn’t help you can cleanly remove GPU drivers with DDU and then reinstall them from latest version or just try using a fresh Windows install (like from a spare drive for a test).
Paradoxically it’s easier to get “bad” SSD now that in the past. Like Intel 660p high capacity drives are cheap, relatively new but their performance isn’t the best and degrades quickly when filling up. Some other controllers may have problems efficiently handling compressed data and alike. Segmentation is hard among SSDs.
The sum of the described symptoms here looks a lot like the hardware, specifically the CPU, may be actually throttled for some reason. The rather low temperatures already indicated the hardware may not have been actually pushed to where it’d usually go under load (even assuming absolutely stellar cooling most laptop GPU/CPUs would easily reach 60°C and above), and the benchmark results seem to further support that theory.
I’d recommend to check if any form of “powersaving” mode is active at the moment, especially also in the BIOS of the laptop. Results like this may also occur if the CPUs is underclocked via any means (e.g. a BIOS profile) - an i5-7300HQ should run a base clockspeed of 2.5GHz and boost to 3.5Ghz under load, especially when playing a CPU-heavy game like WoW. Anything below that would be definitely worth a look into.
Throttling would produce rather constant low FPS and would be easily visible in userbenchmark percentiles with CPU dropping to nearly 0 percentile (or just launch monitoring software and look at clocks/temps). Latencymon could indicate that it can be a driver conflict (which tends to happen for Nvidia driver vs audio driver and alike). Almost full SSD could potentially also be the culprit.
Update: I have disabled all CPU power auto-management settings (throttling) , including from power options and BIOS settings. Stuttering in WoW has almost completely gone away and the results I am now getting from the ‘userbenchmark’ programs analysis report in regards to CPU performance are now very positive (performing above expectations).
Thanks to everyone who replied to this thread.
Hm… just to be safe check your CPU temperatures while gaming. Like play a while with MSI Afterburner or other overlay that can display temperatures.