I recently built my first PC and everything was running smoothly until I started playing a few games. I've downloaded Minecraft, BeamNG Drive, Valorant, and Fortnite. While Minecraft and BeamNG Drive perform flawlessly at max settings, I'm experiencing issues with Valorant and Fortnite. They stutter constantly, even when I set the graphics to low. It's puzzling because limiting the FPS doesn't help either. I've double-checked my drivers, tested the stability with OCCT, and everything seems fine. Could it be a driver issue or something else? Here are my specs: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600x, GPU: Intel Arc B580 12GB, Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Eagle, RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB, and SSD: Kingston NV3 1TB.
3 Answers
Can you provide a list of all the drivers you've installed? Maybe there's a scheduling issue that's causing the stutter, but it should be easy to fix with the correct drivers. The order in which you installed them can also matter, so if you missed something, it could lead to performance problems.
Make sure it's actually stuttering, as in inconsistent frame times. Also, check what monitor you're using. If the FPS is way higher than your monitor's refresh rate, you could be experiencing screen tearing. When you limit the FPS, what settings did you try? Sometimes simply looking at frame timing can reveal a lot about performance issues.
The stuttering happens at random times, especially when there’s a lot of action on-screen. The monitor isn't the issue since my sound also freezes—like my background music. I’ve tried limiting the FPS to different levels, from 300 to as low as 60, but it only slightly reduced the stuttering.
Have you checked if EXPO is enabled? Also, check if you have Virtualization Based Security (VBS) turned on, as that can impact performance. Sometimes background applications, like Discord, can cause stuttering too. It sounds like your CPU is getting a lot of load when you play, which might lead to stuttering, especially since at 500 FPS, your CPU is working hard. BeamNG and Minecraft generally put more stress on the GPU, unlike Valorant and Fortnite, which may depend more on CPU processing. Try managing your background applications and see if that improves the performance.
I did enable EXPO and don’t have VBS on. I’m running some programs in the background, like Discord. I mainly see FPS drops, where it suddenly drops from 500 FPS to about 300 FPS every few seconds. Even limiting it to 120 FPS didn’t help much. My CPU usage is around 30-40% while gaming, so I doubt it's overloaded.
I installed the Gigabyte driver, GPU driver, and I forgot to install the CPU driver at first, but got that sorted. Do you think missing the CPU driver might be affecting performance?