I recently upgraded to a GTX 1080, an Intel i7-8700, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM, but games that should run easily are stuttering and dropping frames. League of Legends ran smoothly on my previous GTX 1650 and i5 system, while the newer setup stutters even though the game reports around 80 FPS with a cap enabled.
Helldivers 2 runs at roughly 30–40 FPS on the lowest settings, but switching to maximum settings produces almost the same frame rate. Elden Ring behaves similarly, with little difference between low and high graphics settings. Temperatures appear normal, and the system uses an SSD. What could be causing this poor performance?
3 Answers
A single stick of RAM runs in single-channel mode, which can cause major stuttering and reduce minimum FPS even when the average FPS counter looks fine. Adding matching memory to enable dual-channel operation can make a big difference. After installing two additional 8GB sticks alongside the 16GB stick, the system started running Helldivers 2 smoothly at around 60 FPS on high settings.
Check whether your monitor cable is connected directly to the GTX 1080 rather than the motherboard. Also, the exact model of the previous i5 matters—an i5-10400F can outperform an older i7-8700 in some games. Since these games can be CPU-heavy, lowering graphics settings may not improve FPS much if the processor or memory is the bottleneck. Check CPU and GPU temperatures and make sure XMP is enabled for the RAM.
The previous CPU was an i5-10400F. Temperatures were around 50°C, and I eventually found that the issue was the memory configuration.
It is also worth checking the basics on an older GTX 1080: verify that the GPU is being used, update the motherboard BIOS and drivers, and inspect temperatures. A graphics card that needs cleaning or fresh thermal paste can throttle, although that was not the cause in this case.
The storage and installation were fine, and the GPU had already been cleaned and repasted. The memory configuration was ultimately responsible.
That turned out to be the fix. The original setup was using only one stick, and adding the extra RAM resolved the stuttering.