Gaming So what exactly does game stutter mean?

Giodude

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I like to think I have a medium-high tier rig with an i5-7400 CPU, GTX 1060 GPU, a 1TB HDD and 8gb of DDR4 ram, but often games such as just cause 3 and FFVX have a stutter whenever something new is loaded into the environment. It makes some games near unplayable. I've set them to high priority and nothing is running in the background. I'm using an ROG GR8 II which is a prebuilt, which means AFAIK all I can upgrade is storage and ram. Does anyone know exactly what part of my PC is bottlenecking pretty much every AAA game made after 2016?
 

Tom Bombadildo

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Just because you're using a prebuilt doesn't mean you can't upgrade any of the components (unless it's a laptop, that is). You would be able to upgrade basically any component on that rig if you wanted to so long as it fits.

As to your issues, check the temps on your CPU and your GPU when you start to notice the stuttering. From what I recall, the ROG GR8 models are smaller PCs so this may be an issue with temps spiking somewhere more than anything, which would cause thermal throttling to kick in. Generally speaking, stock coolers (which most prebuilts use) are pretty bad at keeping cool for extended periods of time at high load, and this is especially true with smaller PCs. You can use things like HWInfo to check the temps of your components, just keep it running and then minimize your games when you start to notice a lot of stuttering to check the temps of your GPU and CPU. For GPUs, this generally doesn't kick in until around 90+C depending on how old it is, and with CPUs it's usually around upper 90sC. If your temps are spiking that high, then it's probably time to check your cooling on your PC.

Another issue could also be HDD speeds, since Just Cause 3 and FFXV are generally huge open world games they might have issues trying to quickly load high quality textures and files which could result in stuttering. You could try lowering the graphical settings, and then see if the stuttering continues to happen.
 
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Giodude

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Just because you're using a prebuilt doesn't mean you can't upgrade any of the components (unless it's a laptop, that is). You would be able to upgrade basically any component on that rig if you wanted to so long as it fits.

As to your issues, check the temps on your CPU and your GPU when you start to notice the stuttering. From what I recall, the ROG GR8 models are smaller PCs so this may be an issue with temps spiking somewhere more than anything, which would cause thermal throttling to kick in. Generally speaking, stock coolers (which most prebuilts use) are pretty bad at keeping cool for extended periods of time at high load, and this is especially true with smaller PCs. You can use things like HWInfo to check the temps of your components, just keep it running and then minimize your games when you start to notice a lot of stuttering to check the temps of your GPU and CPU. For GPUs, this generally doesn't kick in until around 90+C depending on how old it is, and with CPUs it's usually around upper 90sC. If your temps are spiking that high, then it's probably time to check your cooling on your PC.

Another issue could also be HDD speeds, since Just Cause 3 and FFXV are generally huge open world games they might have issues trying to quickly load high quality textures and files which could result in stuttering. You could try lowering the graphical settings, and then see if the stuttering continues to happen.
Im actually AFK from my rig rn, but i'll check this all out when i get home. Research on the ROG GR8 II doesnt give any info about being upgradable besides storage and ram, so i'll open mine up when i get the chance and see if it's possible to even get anything out. Super useful, thanks! I'll keep you posted.
 

the_randomizer

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Im actually AFK from my rig rn, but i'll check this all out when i get home. Research on the ROG GR8 II doesnt give any info about being upgradable besides storage and ram, so i'll open mine up when i get the chance and see if it's possible to even get anything out. Super useful, thanks! I'll keep you posted.

Why wouldn't it be upgradable? Sounds pretty limiting if so.
 
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Tom Bombadildo

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Looking more into it, it looks like the GPU isn't upgradeable at all, and the CPU appears to be extremely difficult to get to...so you may be right insofar as not much can be upgraded. Kind of a poor PC design, even if it is compact.

Anyways, check the temps and if that's not it, it may be the HDD. I see a lot of people have opted to put an SSD in it instead to help speed things up, so that may indeed be where the issue lies.
 
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Kioku

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I've got an i7 4790k and GTX 1080ti and I've gotten these stutters since day 1. I dunno what really causes em. As Tom said, one thing to invest in would be an SSD for the newer games. I'm gonna have to look into a bigger one soon. Ha!
 
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Armadillo

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Depending on settings just cause 3 can use >8GB ram. Swaping between page file and ram will cause stuttering. FFXV might as well (judging from steam forums).

Some games you will never be 100% free of it though, stuff has to load, ssd often helps for open world games. Some benchmarks are even starting to include 1% lows and 0.01% lows as certain setups might have a high average on a game, but annoying stutter because of a bottleneck somewhere.
 
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Edgarska

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Sounds like the problem is the HDD. Aside from an SSD being faster in general, not every HDD is made equal, although considering the rest of the components, it would be weird for them to have cheaped out on the HDD.

Also as pointed out above, you might be running out of RAM, I haven't run into a game that uses all 8GB for me, but if you're running something else at the same time it could happen. If you're on Windows, the system and background processes will be using around 2GB already, so you really only have 6GB free for the game.

Another thing is that in open world games that's one of the trade offs, you're trading long loading screens for stuttery loading in real time, you'd need a hell of a setup in order to completely eliminate stutter in loading, with everything working in perfect sync.
 

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