Game hiccups and freeze spikes. Savvy gamers please assist!

Excellent PSU. :)

Only thing I can think of now is maybe you have something running in the background while playing your games.

I did a fresh format and reinstall of Windows. Only installed the drivers and games to test, and the problem persists. I don't think anything's running in the background, processes show 0-5% usage before I start the game up. Okay, so I've ruled out RAM (memtest86 showed no errors) GPU (swapped 970 with 560 and hiccups continued) and now PSU. Any tips on pinpointing whether it's the CPU or mobo?
 
Seems that's all that's left, the mobo and the CPU but what you have are good stuff..

ETA: How fast are you running the memory?
 
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Right now I'm trying to trouble shoot connectivity. Sometimes storage connectivity looks fine and the system runs flawlessly, but it really isn't.

Let's make sure everything is connected correctly then think of the next step.

Also, try running the game in window mode and enable the CPU usage monitoring under Processes in Windows Task Manager with the GPU usage monitoring and see if at the time the hiccups happen how the graphs acts. Let's see how the system acts when all components work together, something specific device stress testing does not show.

Are the speakers USB?

I'm not aware of a way to pin point things, but with several test we could get to a point the problem does not happen, and that's where things will get much easier.

Alright, so I reseated all my cables on all of my hardware to be certain nothing was loose. I ran memtest86 which showed no errors for my ram. I swapped gpus for an older 560 and the hiccups continued. I did some graph monitoring like you advised, and it doesn't appear to show any strange activity in the cpu when the hiccups happen. Here is a screenshot of the results.
cpu_graph.jpg


You can see the GPU usage spike right before I alt-tabbed. There doesn't appear to be anything in the CPU graph that corresponds with the gpu, but I could very well be mistaken.

---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:04 PM ----------

Seems that's all that's left, the mobo and the CPU but what you have are good stuff..

ETA: How fast are you running the memory?

I haven't overclocked any component, so the ram should be the stock speed which I believe is 1600mhz? Could it be the SSD I bought? I think I skimped out a little on it, it's a OCZ 250gb I believe. Although... I am running the games from my secondary HDD
 
The SSD only loads faster not run faster. I'd have to say you have some weird problem and it could be something simple but what?

Your GPU use a power plug and have one connected to it?
 
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The SSD only loads faster not run faster. I'd have to say you have some weird problem and it could be something simple but what?

Your GPU use a power plug and have one connected to it?


A 6pin and a 6+2pin directly from my psu are the only connectors to my 970
 
Then that's it. What's left?

ETA: I think I got it. It may be your CPU, no it's not bad but the CPU could be throttling itself, kicking up when the demand hits. You can lock your CPU in turbo mode through Windows and BIOS.

I kept mine locked in turbo mode. :)
 
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I wouldn't recommend that right now. Let's see if we can resolve the problem first. He stated he had the stock Intel CPU cooler. I had that on my rig and the temps were always up there. Chug, chug, chug. Temps too high lead to it throttling back.
I then switched over to the Cooler Master 212 evo and it's been a happy camper ever since.

I would recommend the CM 212 evo for your system PROVIDED it fits between the top of the CPU chip and the side of the case. It's a tall tower type of cooler.

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Also make sure you don't over or under do the amount of thermal paste when you install it. Too much acts like a blanket and too little is like it isn't even there.
 
I talked to a couple of serious gamers on my staff and they agree, it's over heating. They too build their own systems.
 
I wouldn't recommend that right now. Let's see if we can resolve the problem first. He stated he had the stock Intel CPU cooler. I had that on my rig and the temps were always up there. Chug, chug, chug. Temps too high lead to it throttling back.
I then switched over to the Cooler Master 212 evo and it's been a happy camper ever since.

I would recommend the CM 212 evo for your system PROVIDED it fits between the top of the CPU chip and the side of the case. It's a tall tower type of cooler.

attachment.php


Also make sure you don't over or under do the amount of thermal paste when you install it. Too much acts like a blanket and too little is like it isn't even there.


Cheers my friend. I will head over to Microcenter with my rig and check out that cooler. It was also suggested to enable Intel's turboboost, so it wouldn't throttle. Unfortunately that didn't work, seems everything leads to cpu overheating issues.
 
Alright, so I reseated all my cables on all of my hardware to be certain nothing was loose.

I haven't overclocked any component, so the ram should be the stock speed which I believe is 1600mhz? Could it be the SSD I bought? I think I skimped out a little on it, it's a OCZ 250gb I believe. Although... I am running the games from my secondary HDD

Good, now we know the hardware is in place.

Weird, from your previous posts (post #8), CPU is not even close to overheating. I run some light 3D games on my computer at work with slow frame rates, but without having hiccups at all, and the case is not even ventilated well (everything is stock and of office quality).

Are you sure there are no programs working on the background causing this? Randomly accessing storage is one known reason.

Try running one of the games on a window and monitor the system processes from the Resource Monitor which shows all processes unlike the Processes tab in the Windows Task Manager. You can access it from the Performance tab two steps next to the Processes tab. I hope it is not the System Interrupts.

Did you always have this problem?

Perhaps you would like to share the system specs in full details, at least for the sake of sharing? Maybe it could give us a clue.
 
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