I've been dealing with severe stuttering, inconsistent frametimes, and sudden FPS drops in Counter-Strike 2 and League of Legends for several months. My system uses a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, RTX 4060 Ti with 8GB of VRAM, a Gigabyte B550M Aorus Elite Rev. 1.3 motherboard, 32GB of Corsair DDR4-3200 with XMP enabled, an NVMe SSD, and Windows 11. In CS2, frametimes can jump from roughly 5ms to 30–50ms several times during a round. The issue also occurs offline against bots and continues with Ethernet disconnected or the Realtek network adapter disabled. Offline testing sometimes feels worse, with frametimes around 10–12ms instead of 3ms. LatencyMon repeatedly highlights dxgkrnl.sys, nvlddmkm.sys, and Wdf01000.sys, with peak execution times around 3ms. The problem became noticeably worse after a BIOS update, although reverting to an older BIOS did not resolve it. I've already tried the usual Windows, BIOS, and HPET-related troubleshooting, along with different resolutions and graphics settings. What less-obvious causes or fixes should I investigate?
4 Answers
The LatencyMon results mainly point toward the graphics stack or driver-management components, especially dxgkrnl.sys and nvlddmkm.sys. A clean GPU driver removal with DDU followed by a fresh NVIDIA driver install would be worth testing, including an older known-stable driver version. It’s also worth checking whether the problem changes with XMP disabled, even though you mentioned the issue existed before enabling it.
Process Lasso helped some people with high-FPS stuttering by letting them control process priority and CPU affinity. It isn’t a guaranteed fix, but it may be useful as a diagnostic—especially if limiting the game to certain cores or changing its priority noticeably affects the spikes.
Since the issue happens at every resolution and graphics preset, it probably isn’t simply a VRAM or in-game settings problem. Still, check GPU voltage, clock behavior, and power draw while the spikes occur. An unstable power delivery setup, driver reset, or unusual clock fluctuation could help explain the inconsistent frametimes. Verifying that the PSU is adequate would also be sensible.
Try checking your display synchronization setup. If your monitor supports G-Sync or compatible adaptive sync, configuring it properly and capping FPS slightly below the monitor’s refresh rate can smooth frametimes. Also make sure the AMD chipset drivers are current, then consider clearing CMOS and rebuilding the BIOS settings from scratch rather than relying on settings carried over from the update.
I tested the system before enabling XMP, and the stuttering was already present.