Inexplicable hitching in all games.

HammyCakes

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Hey guys! I am in need of some help with a new workstation laptop I have purchased.

For some reason, all games, from the low quality of Stardew Valley all the way up to Overwatch, have this annoying hitch/stutter every few minutes or so. It isn't often enough to be an overwhelming issue, but still bad enough to have cost me a game or two in Overwatch.

Here are the specs of this laptop:

Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
Intel i7 6700HQ 2.6 GHz
12 GB DDR4 2133 MHz
Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB
120 GB Hitachi SSD
1 TB Western Digital HDD
(They're NOT operating in RAID.)

I get amazing frames in these games, but there is still the hitching. I am suspecting the two drives having a hard time working together. Could this be the case?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
 
Do you have the games installed to the SSD? Maybe also check for any driver updates to your graphics card?
 
I don't, as I wanted to put the games on the HDD, as it has much more storage. It's a 7200 RPM drive, so that shouldn't be the issue.

And they're indeed updated!
 
You could try moving a game to the SSD temporarily as a test. Plus my understanding is that's where they need to be to get the performance benefit while playing. Although I agree, should not cause studdering issues.
 
You could try moving a game to the SSD temporarily as a test. Plus my understanding is that's where they need to be to get the performance benefit while playing. Although I agree, should not cause studdering issues.

That would depend on the game, actually. Most games load up front, like a map for Starcraft or Battlefield, but some games load as needed. If the game was trying to load as needed then you can get some hesitation if you get ahead of the game at that point.
 
Are you monitoring temps?

What you're experiencing is what reviewers will call the '0.1% Low' framerate. Essentially, if you're pulling a fairly consistent say, 100fps, and for one or two frame loads the rate drops to say, 40fps, you'll notice a big stutter, before it returns to 100fps and feels smooth again.

This is usually symptomatic of some kind of bottleneck. I used to get this behavior when trying to game with a game installed on a WD Green low-RPM disk. There isn't really any writing going on between disks when you game, so it's not that, and your SSD and WD laptop drive are going to be faster than my low power low RPM archive drive.

I'd do the following:-

1. Update ALL system drivers if updates are available. GPU drivers, Chipset, BIOS/Microcode if one has been released for your device (be VERY careful with BIOS though, read the manufacturers instructions and don't skip versions), SATA or storage controller, the lot. any of them could be causing hitching. Sometimes you might see errors in eventvwr if your sata drivers are causing ATAPI errors.

2. Monitor temps. Are they spiking, is something throttling? Manufacturing doesn't always go smoothly. My friend once bought an MSI gaming laptop and we quickly realised that the cpu heat sink mounting was loose on one side, causing massive throttling!
 
I agree with Trotter. It sound like a memory refresh from the drives. See if you have an option in your settings to enable the cache. That way everything is put in memory before the game begins.
 
The GTX 1060 never dips under 60 FPS on 1080p in Overwatch. If vsync is off, turn it on and try. It should stabilize what's called frame-time.

It's weird tho. If I were you, I'd reconnect all parts I can since it's a workstation laptop and those typically have easy access to internal parts. But don't do that yourself if you're not well versed in it.
 
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