I'm running a Ryzen 5 5600G, Radeon RX 6650 XT, and 16 GB of RAM. In Control, I usually get a steady 60–80 FPS at 1440p with a 1080p render resolution and medium-to-high settings, but the frame rate occasionally plunges to around 20 FPS or lower before recovering. During these drops, GPU usage decreases, although temperatures stay around 70–78°C. Lowering the graphics settings or resolution only raises the maximum FPS; it doesn't prevent the stutters. I've noticed similar, less frequent drops in other games as well. Cinebench stress testing shows no thermal throttling or obvious CPU/GPU problems, and the RAM is running in dual channel. What might be causing these frame-time spikes?
3 Answers
Make sure the 16 GB memory is actually running as two sticks in dual-channel mode, since a single 16 GB module can noticeably hurt minimum FPS. Since you’ve confirmed dual channel, also check the RAM speed and enable the correct memory profile in the firmware if it isn’t already. If those are fine, the remaining likely causes are game-specific optimization, CPU-side frame-time spikes, shader compilation, or background software rather than overheating.
A sudden FPS collapse while GPU usage falls often means the CPU is temporarily failing to feed the GPU. The 5600G should normally handle this class of game, but CPU-heavy scenes, asset streaming, background tasks, or the game’s own engine can still produce severe frame-time spikes. The fact that lowering resolution doesn’t fix the drops points away from the GPU as the main limitation.
The 5600G has only 16 MB of L3 cache, compared with 32 MB on the regular Ryzen 5 5600. That can hurt minimum FPS and cause more stuttering in some games, especially ones that are sensitive to CPU cache and asset streaming. It doesn’t mean the processor is defective, and it explains why newer or better-optimized games may run more smoothly than this particular title.
Game engines handle CPU workloads very differently. Try closing background applications and overlays, updating the chipset and graphics drivers, checking whether the game is compiling shaders or streaming from a slow drive, and monitoring per-core CPU usage plus frame times rather than only total CPU usage. Limiting the FPS slightly below your normal average may also make the spikes less noticeable.
Is there anything I can try without replacing the CPU? It’s strange that some newer games barely stutter while this one drops constantly.