Please help me solve this stutter problem

[Stutter]

Hello, I have posted this help thread in a few forums but nobody seems to be able to find a solution to my problem. Below I have a few videos to barely show what I am experiencing along with all of my trouble shooting steps. I have replaced everything in this computer except the CPU and motherboard. Maybe this old setup has degraded to a point where it is stuttering, but why does it pass every test on the on the internet with flying colors? I'm hoping someone here knows of a voltage or setting that I can bump up to cure this problem.

The problem is more of a micro stutter but I'm only using one GPU and it happens in many games and benchmarks. Online players skip around, animations are choppy and it looks like frames are being skipped. 120fps looks like 40 fps. This can be felt with mouse movement as well.

The system:

i7 920 @ 3507MHz (stutter happens with optimized defaults as well)
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R-SLI with the latest beta bios
3x2GB Corsair 1600 ram running at 1336 MHz
Stock GTX 460
Creative x-fi xtremegamer
Windows 8 pro 64 bit
Samsung 840 SSD + Western Digital WD6401AALS 640GB mechanical hard drive
Seasonic Platinum 660XP 660w power supply

Example with the vantage CPU test showing the planes skip around and even rewind for a split second: I used afterburner to record this and it only lowered the score, it didn't add any extra stutter.



To troubleshoot my GPU,

I RMA'd it through MSI and the replacement changed nothing. I got a third GTX 460, this time from ASUS, again nothing changed. All three of these GTX 460s passed all benchmarks, EVGA oc scanner and OCCT artifact scanner. I tried using the second PCIE slot but again nothing changed. I also went out and purchased a Gigabyte 7850 but it still showed this weird stutter. Both problems exist with my older 60Hz monitor with a replacement dual DVI cable.

To troubleshoot my processor, ram and motherboard

I ran prime95 blend for almost 19 hours, long enough to pass all of the tests with 90% memory usage and no errors were found. I passed 10 runs of IBT at max without an error. It passed OCCT's 1 hour test. I also left the PC to fold overnight but it was still happily folding on a second work unit when I got up. Overnight memtest86+ AND memtest86 came back with no errors. I ran HCI memtest to 1450% without errors. I also made sure to test the stutter problem with everything running stock by loading optimized defaults but that didn't help. I also tried a second memory kit from OCZ that also passes these tests but the stutter was still there. The highest temperature was 61c and that was during IBT. I tried running the ram with very loose timings just in case but again no change. I tested with Hyperthreading disabled. I added a couple more bumps of VTT and Vcore.

I flashed to different bios versions including the latest beta bios for my motherboard. I tried disabling all power saving features in the bios.

To troubleshoot my hard drive

The hard drive is currently running in AHCI mode but I have also tried IDE mode. I have also tried using the Microsoft AHCI drivers and the Intel drivers but there isn't a difference between them. Iran the Western Digital advanced diagnostics twice and neither showed any errors. The smart data is also all OK without any warnings. I also replaced sata cables and swapped to alternative sata ports. I purchased a Samsung 840 SSD and the problem remains with a fresh install on it as well.

To troubleshoot my power supply

I replaced my XFX 650w XXX power supply with the Seasonic platinum 660XP but nothing changed.

To troubleshoot my network

I mentioned this above but ill add it here too. I had my ISP come out and test my lines and they said everything was fine. I bypassed all cable splitters. I bypassed my router and tried a new modem with replacement ethernet cords but the problem remained. I installed an Intel PCI network card in case my motherboards port was failing but yet again, nothing was changed. I even tried using a wireless USB adapter.

To troubleshoot the OS and drivers

I tried the default windows update drivers for my network adapter as well as the newest available from Realtek. I tried clean installing many whql Nvidia drivers in vista and windows 8. I tried reformatting and installing chipset drivers as well as reformatting again without installing chipset drivers. I have tried enabling and disabling HPET in both the bios and windows. With windows using HPET 64 bit the DPC latency is very low. I have 8 tabs open in Firefox, one of them is a 1080p youtube video playing and another one is pandora playing music and the DPC latency is 5-15 in LatencyMon.

To troubleshoot audio

I pulled my sound card out and removed the drivers. I made sure the integrated sound card was disabled in the bios and drivers for it were never installed. Both problems remained without sound.

What's left to troubleshoot? Did I overlook something?

The only hardware that hasn't been swapped out is the CPU and motherboard.

Could the CPU or motherboard be causing this problem but still pass every stress test that I throw at it? Unfortunately I can't find any cheap X58 boards to buy. The benchmark scores seem to be normal and where they should be. Gigabyte said that they didn't have any refurbished motherboards for me to purchase.

CPU is at 3507 MHz and the ram is at 1336 MHz.

Cinebench 10 = 20264 multithread and 4938 single thread.
Cinebench 11.5 = 6.02 multithread and 1.19 singe thread.

The frustrating thing is that this PC hasn't blue screened or frozen since I have been experiencing these problems. Zero WHEA errors as well. I just don't get it. Please help before I just give up and find a new hobby.

[Stutter]

Another video to show what it looks like during the beginning of the first GPU test. The second GPU test stutters as well, the sides of the large ship jiggle at times. The microstutter shows up as large skips in the recording.

[Stutter]

A second but probably related problem is short pauses in the game when playing online. The net graph in games shows what looks like a network problem but my ISP has come out to my house many times to test the lines. I have bypassed the router and tried a new modem and these pauses do not change. Valve had me change all of the network settings and then install a program called Vtrace to see if any programs or drivers could be causing this but they couldn't find anything. Valve's conclusion was that something was wrong with my network and not with my PC. Both of these problems happen in windows 8 and vista.

Example of the pauses and gaps in the network graph:

[Vinster]

in the nVidia control panel, what do you have processing PhysX?

the 3DM11, that i think is the combined CPU/GPU test, with your CPU/GPU, I'd expect a stutter.. and Vantage, you were processing under 60fps, so that will stutter too... anything under 60fps will do that.

the video for TF2, I didn't see the lag, sorry I watched it a few times, I see the spike.... to test your network speed use this site Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test and post up the speed that it registered.

Also are you overclocking the GPU at all? I know the 4xx and 5xx series sometimes have an issue with DX11 and many ppl bump the GPU voltage up a tick or two to help with certain stability issues.

Vin

[profJim]

What is the size of your Samsung ssd? Is it the PRO version? How large is your ssd? Is it your o/s boot drive?
Have you made any windows changes to the location of your TMP and Temp folders?
Where is your pagefile.sys located and how large is it? How much of the pagefile is used while gaming or benchmarking?
Where did you install your gaming/benchmark software? ssd? hdd?

What are the specific motherboard sata port names that each drive is connected to?
If your ssd and/or hdd is connected to one of the Gigabyte Gsata ports, this might be causing the stuttering.

I've run quite a few graphics benchmarks on both of my systems with my MSI N460GTX video cards with excellent results:

P35-DS3L + E6300 (R0) @ 3.50GHz - single card setup at stock and overclocked settings, up to 920MHz GPU and 4200MHz Memory
N650SLI-DS4 + E6850 @3.30GHz - SLI setup at stock and overclocked settings, up to 920MHz GPU and 4200MHz Memory

Benchmarks used: 3DMark11, STALKER - Call of Pripyat, and Unigine Heaven 2.0
My 3DMark11 scores were in the top category for systems similar to mine.

I don't play computer games and haven't run any network gaming benchmarks.
All benchmarks were run with win7 and an OCZ Agility2 60GB o/s boot drive.

[Stutter]

in the nVidia control panel, what do you have processing PhysX?

the 3DM11, that i think is the combined CPU/GPU test, with your CPU/GPU, I'd expect a stutter.. and Vantage, you were processing under 60fps, so that will stutter too... anything under 60fps will do that.

the video for TF2, I didn't see the lag, sorry I watched it a few times, I see the spike.... to test your network speed use this site Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test and post up the speed that it registered.

Also are you overclocking the GPU at all? I know the 4xx and 5xx series sometimes have an issue with DX11 and many ppl bump the GPU voltage up a tick or two to help with certain stability issues.

Vin

- The Physx processing is default in the drivers, auto-select.

- Many people say the same thing about the stutter caused by low fps but that is not normal because even though the FPS is below 60 this very same benchmark was not frame skipping like this when I ran it before on the same hardware.

- During those spikes in TF2 everything freezes, projectiles and other players pause for a split second and then warp to their actual position when the spike is over.

- Speed test (nobody else is using the connection):

- I'm not overclocking the GPU but I have tried keeping the default voltage for the MSI hawk (780 core) and dropping the clock speeds down to a default GTX 460 (675 core) but that changed nothing.

What is the size of your Samsung ssd? Is it the PRO version? How large is your ssd? Is it your o/s boot drive?
Have you made any windows changes to the location of your TMP and Temp folders?
Where is your pagefile.sys located and how large is it? How much of the pagefile is used while gaming or benchmarking?
Where did you install your gaming/benchmark software? ssd? hdd?

What are the specific motherboard sata port names that each drive is connected to?
If your ssd and/or hdd is connected to one of the Gigabyte Gsata ports, this might be causing the stuttering.

I've run quite a few graphics benchmarks on both of my systems with my MSI N460GTX video cards with excellent results:

P35-DS3L + E6300 (R0) @ 3.50GHz - single card setup at stock and overclocked settings, up to 920MHz GPU and 4200MHz Memory
N650SLI-DS4 + E6850 @3.30GHz - SLI setup at stock and overclocked settings, up to 920MHz GPU and 4200MHz Memory

Benchmarks used: 3DMark11, STALKER - Call of Pripyat, and Unigine Heaven 2.0
My 3DMark11 scores were in the top category for systems similar to mine.

I don't play computer games and haven't run any network gaming benchmarks.
All benchmarks were run with win7 and an OCZ Agility2 60GB o/s boot drive.

- The Samsung SSD is the cheaper non pro version at 120GB. It is my main drive that has the operating system with all benchmarks and games installed.

- I have not made any changes to the TMP folder.

- Pagefile is located in the default location after installing windows. It has been tested with the default windows configured size, a locked 1024 as well as completely disabled.

- All of my sata devices are connected to the Intel sata ports. Each port has been tested alone with the SSD to rule out a specific defective port.

[wazza300]

is your ram running at 1333mhz? tried it at 1600mhz? it might help

[Stutter]

is your ram running at 1333mhz? tried it at 1600mhz? it might help

Yes, the ram is running at 1336MHz and at this speed everything was fine before, no stutter at all. And with this ram even running at optimized defaults 1066MHz everything was smooth at one point.

When I got this ram I tried running them on their XMP profile but it wouldn't even boot. I tried setting the timings manually with 1.66 ram voltage and VTT at 1.26v but it still wouldn't boot. I also tried bumping the VTT voltage two notches above 1.26 (I forget what the actual voltage was) but no luck so I decided to give up, I didn't want to keep raising the VTT for very minor performance gains between 1336 and 1600 ram.

The CPU and Motherboard both have around 20K hours of use on them. The i7 920 is C0 stepping.

Some more details; The problem seems to only happen in games or benchmarks and not on the desktop or while watching youtube or streaming. There also seems to be inconsistent mouse lag when playing first person shooters even though the FPS is 120+ and Vsync is off.

Thank you for the replies.

[wazza300]

can you try with 1600mhz ram speed and 1.315v qpi/vtt

EDIT: it would be handy if you had a spare graphic card to test with just to rule it out

[Stutter]

can you try with 1600mhz ram speed and 1.315v qpi/vtt

EDIT: it would be handy if you had a spare graphic card to test with just to rule it out

I just tried running 1600 with 1.32 vtt with Corsair's recommended 9-9-9-24 2t and windows got stuck loading endlessly. I rebooted and tried running with 10-10-10-24 2t and it got a little further but blue screened while trying to log in.

I have been through various video cards to test that issue but between three gtx 460's (my current card was fresh from RMA) and a 7850 (new) the problem remained.