A very recurrent problem of gaming PCs is precisely stuttering, an annoying effect that worsens the gaming experience to the point that it is no longer optimal in some specific cases. Any player values not having stuttering, therefore, today we are going to see the main cause of this effect outside of the graphics card, since the main cause of this is precisely the CPU.
When the GPU does its job properly, the game engines are working as they should as well as their post-processing effects, the options for stuttering are greatly reduced internally. For this reason, and although there is usually a main cause, we will also review possible bottlenecks that cause it.
RAM, VRAM, HDD and CPU, the main causes
In the first place we have the RAM, where with the current engines and depending on the resolution it is possible that the dumping of textures is a small problem depending on which equipment. If our PC is moderately modern (less than 8 years old) it is very possible that we do not have stuttering, since the bandwidth of the RAM should be enough to transport any texture to VRAM without delay, even if we are playing at 4K and 144 Hz .
But if it were not, what we would have more than a stuttering are quite wide stops, where the greater the weight of the texture, the greater the stop we could experience. As for VRAM, having little means that the amount of RAM in the system has to be very large, mainly because everything is going to be stored there and the import and export of information must be very fast to compensate for the lack of capacity of the first. .
Logically, any delay in this information will result in stuttering, lag or directly blocking the PC. On the other hand, with HDDs, this or other problems are not usually appreciated, but it is true that they must be fast enough to stop the consequences of the previous two. And it is that they usually do not stop when it comes to playing, due to the low performance rates they have compared to an SSD.
The frequency and its oscillation would be the culprits of stuttering in the CPU
A bad use of the power plans, a bad MEI driver or a bad overclock can take a toll on us when playing games and have stuttering. In any of these cases the main cause is the frequency, rather the fall of it. There could also be an abnormal alteration in it that makes it difficult to play with the maximum guarantees.
How to alleviate this? First of all, we must rule out that it is a power problem with the operating system, so we will go to the Windows control panel -> Power options and in it we will select either Balanced or high performance, where in both cases the problems should be gone.
If this does not happen, we will have to reinstall the MEI of our board, a driver that controls, among many other things, the power management of the OS. An incorrect version, a major Windows update and the PC may stop doing well in gaming. Therefore, we will look for the latest version of the MEI of our board and install it.
A bad overclock can be the cause of the named drops, since although many people use fixed voltage, those who use OFFSET and Adaptive must make sure that the voltage load does not drop or go too high. This can be verified by increasing or decreasing the voltage and removing the processor’s C-States as well as any electrical aids.
We would therefore enter a purer and fixed voltage overclock mode, just as professional overclockers achieve in their records, only adapted to look for the problem. Finally, a poorly performed uninstallation or an over-installed driver can be other points where apart from the CPU, the GPU does not finish well.