I've been dealing with annoying microstutters in various games including Arc Raiders and even after switching to Marvel Rivals. For instance, I often see my FPS hover around 140-150, but it randomly drops to about 40 in the middle of gameplay, particularly during team engagements. While Marvel Rivals isn't known for being well-optimized, I'm experiencing similar frame drops in Arc Raiders. I suspect my motherboard might be bottlenecking my CPU and RAM performance. I currently have a Gigabyte B460M DS3H, and despite updating the BIOS, I'm still experiencing issues. Also, I can only enable XMP 1 for my 3600 RAM. Some sources mentioned that I might be facing a frametime bottleneck. If I upgrade to a newer, more powerful motherboard, will this solve my stuttering issues, or should I look for other solutions? Here are my specs:
- Gigabyte B460M DS3H Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard
- Intel Core i9-10850K
- TEAMGROUP T-Force Dark Za 32GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600
- MSI VENTUS 3X OC GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB
- EVGA 600 BQ 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
3 Answers
It's unlikely that your motherboard alone is causing the bottleneck unless you're overclocking. If everything's functioning, a low-end motherboard would typically work without limiting performance. But if you're gaming intensely, it could contribute to instability.
It might be worth considering an upgrade. I had similar issues with my MSI B365M and experienced crashes after upgrading my GPU. Swapping in a Z390 resolved those, and I didn’t notice any stuttering after that, so a new motherboard might help you out.
What CPU temperatures are you hitting during your gaming sessions?
I'm hitting decent temps, around 50 to 70 degrees Celsius.